Hasta La Gadget!

The old and the new: Original GSM iPhone Bumper case on the left and new universal case on the right

Apple has quietly modified its iPhone 4 Bumper cases to fit the new Verizon iPhone. A difference in the antenna designs for the standard GSM and the new Verizon iPhones meant that the mute switch had been moved very slightly closer to the volume switches on the new model, meaning that precisely-fitting cases like Apple’s own would no longer fit.

The new Bumper elongates the cutout for the muse switch, so it will now fit whatever iPhone 4 you have (or will have, as the Verizon iPhone won’t be available until next month).

The comparison photo above comes from an un-boxing video by YouTube user Alerio.

The bumper product page in the Apple store makes no mention of this redesign, nor should it. In Apple’s mind, and in the minds of everybody who doesn’t read gadget blogs, there is only one iPhone 4.

iPhone 4 Universal Bumper for Verizon and AT&T [YouTube]

See Also:

• Repositioned Mute-Switch Means Cases Won't Fit Verizon iPhone …
• Verizon Wireless Finally Gets Apple's iPhone

“To our millions of customers, who never stopped believing this day would come…” Alright, we guess they earned just this one moment of visual hyperbole.

Verizon’s ‘It Begins’ ad plays up the iPhone wait for all it’s worth (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 20:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Verizon’s gone to the US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC today to officially take issue with the net neutrality policy that the FCC laid out in the waning moments of 2010, saying that it’s “deeply concerned by the FCC’s assertion of broad authority for sweeping new regulation of broadband networks and the Internet itself.” The company’s extremely brief press release on the matter doesn’t detail where their issues lie, specifically, but they’d said back in December that they had concerns, so the move doesn’t come as a terribly big surprise. If we had to guess, the no-blocking rules surrounding wireless networks are certainly high on that list of concerns — Verizon and others have long said that wireless needs to be left largely out of the net neutrality debate — but we won’t know until we’re able to dig into the court case. Follow the break for the press release.

Continue reading Verizon appeals FCC’s net neutrality rules

Verizon appeals FCC’s net neutrality rules originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 16:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Bad news for all of you Sprint-subscribing, bandwidth-hogging data gluttons out there: The company will soon implement a new $10 monthly data-plan fee for smartphones activated after Jan. 30. And it applies to all Sprint smartphones, including those capable only of using Sprint’s 3G network.

Sprint announced the upcoming change in a press release Tuesday. But in a leaked memo sent to third-party retailers, the company more narrowly defined the types of phones and customers affected by the new fee. It includes “all smartphones operating on the CDMA, iDEN and 4G networks,” where a smartphone is defined as “a device that supports a robust operating system including: Android, BlackBerry, Instinct, Palm and Windows Mobile.”

The $10 premium-data charge currently applies to all HTC EVO 4G, EVO Shift 4G and Samsung Epic 4G smartphones in the Sprint network, so now 3G smartphone users will feel the same financial burn as 4G users, but without being able to access the 4G networks’ faster speeds.

For those of you that already have 3G phones on the Sprint network, fret not (or at least not yet), as you won’t be dinged with the new charge unless you either upgrade your existing smartphone or activate a new smartphone on your existing account. If and when you do decide to upgrade or change your plan, however, even those of you that aren’t packing the latest 4G phones will still have to pony up another $10 bucks a month.

Sprint claims a “wireless data explosion” in smartphone user growth and network popularity have necessitated the company’s fee expansion. Complaints about fees first circulated in June, when Sprint debuted the HTC EVO 4G with a mandatory $10 data fee for 4G. The company’s initial statements made the fee seem a necessary counterpart to 4G access.

Before griping, we should remember that giving Sprint that extra 10 bucks a month gets you unlimited 4G data with no tiered pricing structures for different monthly caps. (Sprint does cap its 3G data plan at 5 GB monthly, however.) That means there are no overage fees for exceeding your monthly data-plan limits, either. AT&T currently offers a tiered system, with a $15 fee for a 200-MB monthly limit, or a $25 fee for a 2-GB monthly cap. AT&T ceased offering an unlimited data plan in June 2010.

Verizon may follow AT&T, but for the time being maintains a $30 monthly unlimited-data-plan option. We may see that change, however, with the company’s recent iPhone 4 deal. Verizon also offers a $15 monthly plan for 150 MB of data.

So, after looking at other pricing models, the $10 monthly option from Sprint doesn’t look half bad. But with Gartner’s report that smartphone sales in the fall of 2010 were up 96 percent over the same period in 2009, we’ll wait and see if Sprint’s pricing model is sustainable.

Photo: Samsung Epic 4G/Samsung

See Also:

• AT&T’s Data Limits Rein In Cloud-Based Media Services
• Verizon to End Unlimited-Data Party
• Samsung Launches 4G Phone on Sprint

Edited at 8:33 a.m. for a clarification on iPhone network capability

Apple is a cyclical creature, like bears, unicorns and ladyfolk. iPods in September; iPhones in June; and likely, iPads in April. April is not so far away! So, unsurprisingly, we’re starting to hear what the next iPad looks like. More »