Hasta La Gadget!

LetsTalk has this morning dropped its price for the HTC Thunderbolt from $200 all the way down to the so-far unmatched level of $175. This applies when bought with the obligatory two-year service plan and will be available to all willing customers, whether they be new to Verizon, adding an extra line, or upgrading their current phone. It also betters Amazon’s $180 price in one other important aspect: Amazon’s Thunderbolts are on back order at present, whereas LetsTalk has immediate stock and will even cover the cost of shipping. All good things must come to an end, however, and this discounted pricing will last only until Monday, at which point the cost will revert to a more sustainable point for the retailer. That said, we’d advise against rushing in unless you’re categorically sure — LetsTalk will ding you for $250 if you don’t stick to the contract that goes with this handset for at least 181 days.

HTC Thunderbolt hits $175 price point with LetsTalk — but only for this weekend originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 Mar 2011 09:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At a quick glance, without any background information, your eyes might tell you that the HTC Thunderbolt is little more than a Verizon remake of Sprint’s EVO 4G and AT&T’s Inspire 4G. After all — like its contemporaries — the Thunderbolt features a spacious 4.3-inch WVGA display, 8 megapixel camera, and dual-LED flash. In reality, though, the Thunderbolt is something more: from the Inspire, it borrows a better, crisper display with a wider viewing angle and a newer-generation (though still single-core) Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. From the EVO 4G, meanwhile, it borrows a cool integrated kickstand and the addition of a second “4G” radio, making this a spec Frankenstein of sorts — the best of both worlds. Of course, instead of Sprint’s WiMAX for that 4G radio, the Thunderbolt grants you access to Verizon’s LTE network — a network so fresh, it still has that new-network smell. There’s a lot of horsepower here.

In other words, the Thunderbolt has a very real opportunity to be the finest 4.3-inch device HTC has ever made — for the moment, anyway. Let’s see how it fares.

Continue reading HTC Thunderbolt review

HTC Thunderbolt review originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Mar 2011 16:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The iPad 2 is only slightly thicker than a pencil. Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

When you’re shopping for an iPad 2, you have a dozen configurations to choose from, and some recent discoveries will make this decision much easier for you.

To configure your iPad 2, you have 12 options as you decide on color, storage and, most importantly, data connection — 3G + Wi-Fi, or Wi-Fi-only.

It turns out that if you’re one of the millions of people who own an Android phone or an iPhone, you don’t need a 3G model, which will save you a big chunk of cash. Here’s why.

Smartphone hotspots

All U.S. iPhones (upgraded to the latest version of iOS) and the vast majority of Android smartphones now officially support wireless-hotspot capability, which turns the handset into a Wi-Fi connection that can be shared with multiple devices, including the iPad.

So if you go with a Wi-Fi-only model and you want to hop on a cellular connection, you can activate the hotspot option on your smartphone through your carrier, pay $20 per month and connect the iPad to that.

That’s not as seamless as having 3G built into the iPad, but it will save you the extra $130 you’d plunk down on a 3G model. Plus, you’d have to pay at least $15 a month just to use an iPad’s 3G connection anyway.

Jailbreaking for free hotspots

If you’re down with getting a little dirty, you can use your Android phone or iPhone as a hotspot without paying monthly fees by hacking your device.

For Android phones, you just have to root (aka jailbreak) the device with a tool called Unrevoked. For rooted Android phones, there are unauthorized apps called Wireless Tether and Barnacle, which offer free hotspot utilities. You can also flash your device and install CyanogenMod, a different Android skin that includes a built-in hotspot feature. Presto.

For the iPhone, all you have to do is jailbreak with any of the tools out there. (Do note that if you do update to the latest version of iOS, you can’t jailbreak yet.) Jailbreaking will install the Cydia app, which gives you access to the underground Cydia app store. There, you can download the unauthorized app MyWi, which costs a one-time fee of $20, and doesn’t charge you monthly.

GPS Transplant

The Wi-Fi iPad doesn’t have built-in GPS, but if you want to use that beautiful Maps app for navigation, you still don’t need a 3G iPad, so long as you have an iPhone. It turns out that if you hotspot with an iPhone, the connection transfers the GPS to the iPad.

Just connect the iPad to the iPhone’s hotspot, then launch the Maps app, and you’ll see the blue dot tracking your location.

(We’re not sure if this works when hotspotting with an Android phone — if you can confirm, let us know in the comments.)

3G FaceTime

Another surprise is that if you turn your smartphone into a wireless hotspot, you can connect to it with your iPad 2 and use FaceTime videoconferencing.

That’s interesting because typically you can’t use FaceTime over a 3G connection; it’s supposed to only work on a Wi-Fi connection. Because a hotspot shows up as a Wi-Fi connection, you’re basically tricking the iPad 2 into using a 3G connection for FaceTime.

AT&T's billing policies may be clearly stated in the company's contracts, but they can still be infuriating. Photo: Jason Morrison/Flickr

One Wired reader got an unpleasant surprise upon testing his new AT&T GoPhone last week: Even if a call hasn’t been connected, you are charged for the call after 30 seconds.

Lon McQuillin, a San Mateo, California, writer, decided to test his new pre-paid phone by calling his main cellphone, and it took a little while for it to start ringing. Once the other phone did ring, he ended the call without completing the connection.

Thinking he would be charged only if the call were completed, McQuillin was shocked to find that he’d been billed $0.10 for the call.

It was only subsequently that he discovered AT&T’s wireless customer agreement, which clearly states that:

Airtime and other measured usage (“chargeable time”) is billed in full minute increments…. Chargeable Time begins for outgoing calls when you press SEND (or similar key) and for incoming calls when a signal connection from the caller is established with our facilities.

AT&T representative Seth Bloom confirmed that this is true for all phone models: The caller will be charged — even for unanswered calls — unless you hang up within 30 seconds of hitting the Send button.

This policy gotcha may not be a big deal for those on a data plan (you’re already overpaying), but for GoPhone users who are charged 10 cents a minute, those minutes can add up.

There are numerous past instances of carriers billing customers in questionable situations. Verizon was fined $77 million for unfairly charging 15 million customers for accidentally going online without a data plan in October 2010. And remember all those crazy roaming charges when people began traveling abroad with the original iPhone?

Are such charges legal? Certainly. Ethical? Doubtful. They certainly seem like cheap shots.

In the case of AT&T’s “30 seconds and you’re charged” policy, $0.10 may not be much, but across millions of subscribers over the course of a month, AT&T could be raking in quite a bit of money on short and failed GoPhone calls and overage fees for data-plan subscribers who exceed their monthly minutes.

Unfortunately, exact numbers for that data aren’t readily available in any of AT&T’s recent sales reports or annual reports (.pdf).

Apple's iPhone 4 became available on the Verizon network in February. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

The iPhone appears to be gaining serious momentum on the Verizon network after just one month on the market.

About 10 percent of iPhone customers in the United States could be on Verizon, according to estimates by mobile advertisement firm Chitika.

If that estimate is accurate, it signifies rapid growth of the iPhone on Verizon. The Verizon iPhone went on sale online Feb. 3 for pre-orders, and the handset hit stores Feb. 10, ending AT&T’s exclusive partnership with Apple.

“For Verizon to pick up that big of a share of iPhone users in about a month is impressive, and doesn’t bode particularly well for AT&T,” Chitika said in a blog post.

Chitika has been using a live tracker to monitor web usage of iPhones on the Verizon and AT&T networks, based on activity of websites running ads on Chitika’s network.

The live tracker on Tuesday peaked at 12.7 percent of iPhones surfing the web on the Verizon network. As of Wednesday morning, the tracker shows 9.4 percent of iPhones are on Verizon. The results are based on 700,000 impressions from Chitika’s network.

“The spike is really interesting to me,” said Daniel Ruby, research director of Chitika, in an e-mail to Wired.com. “I’m trying to figure out if it’s indicative of a different usage pattern between AT&T and Verizon users, or if it was just a spike in Verizon usage across our network.”

Though Chitika believes the data presents a problem for AT&T, AT&T has said it’s not worried about iPhone customers switching over to Verizon.

AT&T previously told investors that it was confident iPhone profits would remain strong because many customers were on family plans and corporate plans, which would make it difficult to transition to a different network.

See Also:

• The iPhone Is Now a Phone. Who'da Thunk?
• Verizon iPhone Gets Better Coverage, Slower Data, Wired.com Test
• Hands-On With Verizon iPhone Hot Spot
• Verizon iPhone's Download Speeds Are Worse Than We Thought
• Verizon iPhone Gets $30 Unlimited Data for Limited Time
• Switching to Verizon iPhone? 3 Ways to Shave the Termination Fee