Hasta La Gadget!

The two year contract is a blessing and a curse, but looking at these updated prices from AT&T we’re thinking those upgrading early and doing so to a one year contract are quite simply doomed. AT&T has upped the price on all early-upgrade one year commitment smartphones by a whopping $150. That’s painful, but the early-upgrades are at least a little less painful. Smartphones like the iPhone are jumping by a relatively meager $50, meaning a new 32GB iPhone 4 will cost you $549 vs the previous $449. Or you could, you know, just suck it up for another 12 months.

Update: As it turns out the $150 premium is unrelated to upgrading — if you want a one year contract you’re stuck with the $150 premium, regardless.

AT&T bumps early-upgrade prices for all smartphones, reminds that patience is a virtue originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Apr 2011 09:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  BGR, AndroidCentral  | Email this | Comments

Before the Gadget Lab crew dives into this week’s tech news, we raise our phones to celebrate the removal of Twitter’s god-awful QuickBar — that annoying black bar that appears at the top of your Twitter feed to show advertising and trending topics.

It was so putrid that people called it the “DickBar.” Fortunately, Twitter took the feedback to heart and abolished the QuickBar in its latest software update.

In other news, some customers have found that their brand-new “4G-capable” phones (such as the Motorola Atrix and the HTC Inspire) aren’t actually uploading data at 4G speeds. In fact, some of their speeds are even slower than existing 3G phones. The problem? AT&T just hasn’t flipped the switch yet to enable 4G speeds on these phones. Talk about lame.

We’re disappointed that there likely won’t be an iPhone 5 from Apple this summer, even though we’ve gotten a new iPhone every summer for the past four years. We’re guessing it’s because the white iPhone 4 still hasn’t shipped due to production problems, and Apple wants to give that model some shelf life before introducing an iPhone 5. Plus, a Verizon iPhone only just came out recently.

On the Android front, Amazon opened an Android Appstore last week, and many people probably don’t realize the security risks involved in shopping in Amazon’s store. Getting apps from a third-party app store such as Amazon’s requires checking off an option to enable installations from unknown sources, which can subject you to harmful malware, just like a Windows PC browsing the web.

Already this week, we’ve seen a trojan horse appear inside third-party app stores threatening to infect Android phones allowing installations from unknown sources.

Like the show? You can also get the Gadget Lab video podcast on iTunes, or if you don’t want to be distracted by our ugly mugs, check out the Gadget Lab audio podcast. Prefer RSS? You can subscribe to the Gadget Lab video or audio podcast feeds. Thanks for listening and watching!

Or listen to the audio here:

Gadget Lab audio podcast No. 110

http://downloads.wired.com/podcasts/assets/gadgetlabaudio/GadgetLabAudio0110.mp3

The Motorola Atrix is one of two phones with disabled HSUPA.

After Texas resident Keith Geissler noticed his new Motorola Atrix wasn’t offering the fast “4G” download and upload speeds that AT&T promised, he filed a complaint to the Better Business Bureau, asking the wireless company to “uncap” his data connection.

AT&T’s response was surprising. While the company assured Geissler it “has not capped the upload speeds on the Atrix,” it did admit that the phone’s HSUPA capability — a key feature in increasing upload speeds on the Atrix as well as the new HTC Inspire 4G smartphone — will not be enabled until a later date.

That means all upload speeds on the Atrix and the Inspire will max out at around 300 Kbps, far below that of the 5.5+ Mbps speeds that HSUPA is capable of uploading. (Geissler wasn’t happy to hear any of this, and posted the exchange to an online message board focused on smartphones.)

In other words, it’s not a hardware issue. It’s AT&T itself, which isn’t ready to flip the switch to turn on “4G” networks, even though it’s already selling 4G phones. Is anyone surprised?

“The concept of 4G is a joke now,” Gartner Research VP Phil Redman told Wired.com. “At the highest level, it’s supposed to be a technology standard, but it’s nothing but marketing now. If and when 4G-standardized technology is actually decided upon and released, we’ve been inundated with this jargon for so long we may not even recognize it.”

The term “4G speed” seems open to interpretation. Since the International Telecommunications Union — the global authority on telecommunications- and broadband-industry standardization – revised its ruling on what defines 4G network speeds in December 2010, carriers have jumped on the opportunity to market many new smartphones as 4G-enabled. Their definitions have been liberal, to say the least.

For AT&T, part of “4G” compatibility involves having HSUPA speeds. AT&T has been mostly evasive as to why HSUPA has been disabled in the Atrix and HTC Inspire 4G smartphones. The company claims it is performing “the testing and preparations necessary” for users to enjoy the HSUPA capabilities when the function is turned on by phone update.

To add insult to injury to Android users expecting 4G speeds, many iOS counterpart devices using AT&T’s 3G network are indeed HSUPA-enabled.

“Not to twist the dagger that’s already in our backs on this one,” said one forum user at XDA Developers, “as many know, the iPad 2 came out today and guess what … HSUPA enabled.”

Also HSUPA ready: the iPhone 4, a device using AT&T’s 3G network.

So when can we actually expect 4G upload speeds from these “4G” phones? AT&T gave Wired.com a rough street date of next month.

“We will be turning HSUPA upload speeds on via a software update to the Motorola ATRIX 4G and HTC Inspire 4G planned for April,” a spokesman said. He also added that “the Samsung Infuse 4G will launch with HSUPA.”

AT&T isn’t the first to fudge facts on its data practices. In the weeks before the iPhone’s release on the Verizon network in February, the carrier published a document that said the top 5 percent of data users on the network may have their data speeds reduced “to ensure high-quality network performance for other users at locations and times of peak demand.”

As Wired.com’s Brian X. Chen reported, “One of Verizon’s selling points for its version of the iPhone is that it would come with an unlimited data plan — a marked contrast to AT&T, which eliminated its unlimited data plans last year.” But when a company’s shifty data-throttling practices are “disclosed” in unpublicized PDF files, Chen’s assertion that “you just can’t trust wireless carriers” proves accurate.

AT&T obviously hasn’t claimed the lack of HSUPA-enabling in the two phones to be a data-throttling technique. But until we hear reasons beyond “network testing and preparation,” we won’t be so quick to believe them.

See Also:

• Ahead of iPhone Release, Verizon Throttles Network Speeds
• FCC Delays Net Neutrality Over Mobile, ‘Managed’ Services
• Verizon iPhone Shows You Can’t Win: Carriers Hold the Cards
• T-Mobile to Throttle Data Speeds After 5 GB Use
• AT&T Says Grandfathered Unlimited Data Plans Will Work on iPad 2
• AT&T’s Data Limits Rein In Cloud-Based Media Services
• What AT&T’s Limited Data Plans Mean for You
• AT&T’s Limited Data: Should You Care? Vote in Our Poll
• AT&T Adds iPhone Tethering, Kills Unlimited Data for iPad, Smartphones
• AT&T Exposes Data on 100000 iPad 3G Owners
• AT&T Puts Broadband Users on Monthly Allowance

It almost goes without saying that Sprint has probably been opposed to AT&T’s recent proposed purchase of rival cell phone carrier T-Mobile.

Now it’s official.

On Monday afternoon, Sprint issued a press release publicly condemning the potential merger between the two carriers, asking the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission. In the release, the company claims a takeover of this proportion “would reverse nearly three decades of actions by the U.S. government and the courts that modernized and opened U.S. communications markets to competition.”

The argument cites an approval as very bad news for Sprint, which would rank in last place in U.S. wireless providers behind Verizon and AT&T if the deal went through:

AT&T and Verizon are already by far the largest wireless providers. If approved, the proposed acquisition would create a combined company that would be almost three times the size of Sprint in terms of wireless revenue and would entrench AT&T’s and Verizon’s duopoly control over the wireless market. The wireless industry moving forward would be dominated overwhelmingly by two vertically integrated companies with unprecedented control over the U.S. wireless post-paid market, as well as the availability and price of key inputs, such as backhaul and access needed by other wireless companies to compete.

But the statement reads as an appeal almost as much to the general public as it does to the government agencies monitoring the case. The company claims the “Ma Bell duopoly” created by the potential takeover will harm consumers “at a time when the country can least afford it.”

AT&T’s statement of intent, issued on March 20, defends the deal in a more attractive appeal to rural cellular subscriber, claiming the extension of coverage to “95% of the U.S. population,” or an “additional 46.5 million Americans, including [those] in rural, smaller communities.”

The deal is still being reviewed by the DoJ and the FCC.

See Also:

• AT&T’s Purchase of T-Mobile Will Face Opposition, Thankfully …
• AT&T to Buy T-Mobile, Becomes No. 1 U.S. Wireless Company …
• With AT&T/T-Mobile, Wireless Net Neutrality Should Be Back on the …
• Ingenio to Keep its NSFW Holdings in AT&T Deal?
• Verizon ‘Not Interested’ in Sprint: CEO

Yes, you read that right. Sprint is actually going out on a limb and officially opposing AT&T’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile USA. Apparently, it thinks that the transaction would “reduce competition and harm consumers” if it’s allowed to go through, and it’s vowing to “fight this attempt by AT&T to undo the progress of the past 25 years and create a new Ma Bell duopoly.” It further goes on to note that the combined company would be almost three times the size of Sprint in terms of wireless revenue, and that it and Verizon would “overwhelmingly dominate” the US wireless industry and have “unprecedented control” over the post-paid market. Full press release is after the break.

Continue reading Shocker! Sprint officially opposes AT&T’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile

Shocker! Sprint officially opposes AT&T’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Mar 2011 16:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments