AT&T is changing the price of their fee to upgrade handsets while on contract, reports BGR.
Originally, AT&T only charged customers $18 to upgrade to a new device, but now they want to charge $36. And to top things off, their reason is pretty bogus...
AT&T has had a tumultuous relationship with its own customers over the last few years, with issues stemming from its lack of network capacity being exacerbated by the hugely popular iPhone being an exclusive handset to the carrier.
Data has tended to be one of the biggest sticking points for many, the lack of ability to make a phone call not withstanding. The recent change of AT&T's data plans has only managed to muddy the waters somewhat, and now things are getting even more confusing with the news that the carrier is throttling users who are on the old unlimited data plan and use 2GB of data per month.
The obvious question now is simple: why is AT&T throttling users who use 2GB of data but continues to accept new users on the updated 3GB limit plan? No, we don't know either...
I've never been a huge fan of carriers advertising themselves by means of the carrier logo in my iPhone's status bar. For that reason I usually remove them with a tweak like CleanStatus or Springtomize 2.
But Zeppelin — a new jailbreak tweak that just appeared on Cydia — has me considering carrier logos again...
Apple sold 37 million iPhones last quarter, making it the top smartphone manufacturer in the world by volume. But interestingly enough, the record-breaking number didn't include any sales from mainland China.
With nearly a billion wireless subscribers, China is a major opportunity for Apple to increase its handset sales. And it's already starting to make its move. Earlier this month Apple launched its iPhone 4S on China Unicom, and now reports are coming in that it's reached an agreement with China Telecom to do the same...
This is kind of interesting. The JakartaGlobe is reporting that three of Apple's Singapore-based carrier partners are planning to offer camera-less iPhone 4S models to their subscribers in the near future.
While this removes one of the handset's biggest features — its 8MP camera, it does make the device more appealing to the the military crowd. Which is perfect, because that's exactly who they're targeting...
Yesterday, we passed on a report from CNET that claimed that Verizon would soon be enforcing a "hard requirement" that all future smartphones be LTE-compatible. The news made some sense considering the carrier has been leading the LTE movement.
But today, the Mac Observer is reporting that they've heard a different story. While Verizon might eventually start requiring manufacturers to incorporate LTE chips into their products, it doesn't look like it'll be happening anytime soon...
If there's one thing Apple's mobile products have taken a lot of criticism for recently, it's their lack of LTE support. The company released a new tablet and handset last year — neither of which contained the popular 4G technology.
While nearly every Android partner has implemented LTE into their products, Apple has continued to ignore the tech in favor of battery life and reliability. But they may not have a choice in the matter in future Verizon-bound products...
While some of us have had the iPhone 4S for nearly three months, folks in China are just now seeing the handset in the flesh. And if you thought the hype for Apple's new smartphone was starting to die out, you're very much mistaken.
Several news outlets are reporting today on the massive lines that have formed outside of Apple Stores in both Beijing and Shanghai, China, for the iPhone 4S launch. Apple's latest handset is expected to go on sale in less than one hour.
T-Mobile CEO Philipp Humm recently explained why the iPhone is not capable of running on his 3G network, despite earlier claims that iPhone users were able to establish an intermittent 3G connection in certain areas of the United States.
Humm told AllThingsD that frequency band incompatibility is the main reason the iPhone isn't able to use high-speed data on T-Mobile, and that the carrier hopes to resolve this issue in the near future.
December was another great month for iPhone sales, according to research by Canaccord Genuity analyst Mike Walkley and his crack team of number crunchers, with all three major US carriers seeing the new iPhone 4S top their sales charts.
Two months after its initial release on Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon, the iPhone 4S is still the best-seller for all three of the carriers that offer the handset in the United States, with two Android phones helping make up the top three, the Samsung Galaxy S II and the newer Samsung Galaxy Nexus.
Less surprisingly, the top-selling tablet device in the United States was the iPad 2, with the cheaper Amazon Kindle Fire being its nearest competitor. We expect the tablet landscape to alter during 2012 however, with more Android and Windows 8 machines offering more competition for Apple's device...
This Christmas saw lower than normal numbers for SMS, according to new numbers released by Forbes. As is to be expected, certain times during the year cause higher than usual numbers of SMS messages to be sent.
Major sporting events are one cause, as is events Christmas and the ringing in of a new year. The numbers this year show that we sent less messages through the carriers' SMS networks than we did last year, which will no doubt be a concern to those same carriers who have been overcharging us for years to send a few characters of text.
Verizon discontinued its unlimited data plan last July, thereby joining the ranks of AT&T with tiered data offerings for smartphone users. Thankfully, a nifty trick has surfaced for getting unlimited data on Verizon, despite the CDMA carrier technically not offering its all-you-can-eat plan anymore.
While we can't verify the legitimacy of this method, many Verizon customers have reported that performing this workaround has indeed unlocked unlimited data...