Verizon Wireless apparently isn’t done talking about its controversial plan to phase out “grandfathered” unlimited data plans for smartphone users. It issued a statement to The New York Times Thursday, detailing exactly how the policy would be implemented. What it boils down to is this: You can keep unlimited, but don’t expect Verizon to subsidize your device.
Customers will not be automatically moved to new shared data plans. If a 3G or 4G smartphone customer is on an unlimited plan now and they do not want to change their plan, they will not have to do so.
When we introduce our new shared data plans, Unlimited Data will no longer be available to customers when purchasing handsets at discounted pricing.
Customers who purchase phones at full retail price and are on an unlimited smartphone data plan will be able to keep that plan.
The same pricing and policies will be applied to all 3G and 4GLTE smartphones.
What that means is that you can probably cling to your unlimited plan from now until the end of time, like some old codger that refuses to give up his party line. But Verizon isn’t going to make it easy on you. The people who like unlimited data tend to be the people who like high-end smartphones, and since Verizon will no longer cut them deals when they upgrade to newer and better devices, they’ll be on the hook for full sticker price. I’m not sure if you’ve seen the prices on a brand new unlocked iPhone lately, but they ain’t cheap: $650 to $850 depending on the model.
The odd thing is, depending on how they’re priced, Verizon’s new shared plans might actually wind up saving a lot of current unlimited customers money. For instance, if you’re in a household with two smartphones both grandfathered to unlimited, you’re basically paying $60 a month for data. If Verizon keeps its same pricing structure in place you could get 2 GB to share for half the monthly cost, plus whatever per line charges Verizon chooses to charge.
The larger majority of U.S. smartphone users consume less than 1 GB of data a month. There are still plenty of people who use their unlimited data plans to the hilt – many of them GigaOM readers – and they’re going to hate this policy change in the very cores of their beings. But my bet is that a lot of people currently on unlimited plans might benefit from switching over to shared data. We’ll have to see the details of Verizon’s shared pricing, though, before we can say for sure.
AT&T has outed the new Samsung Focus 2, a $49.99 Windows Phone packing 4G LTE and a 4-inch Super AMOLED display with a front-facing VGA camera. The latest in Samsung’s Windows Phone 7 devices, the Focus 2 has a 5-megapixel main camera with 720p HD video recording, and will go on sale in the US on May 20 for under fifty bucks with a new, two-year agreement.
That undercuts the Nokia Lumia 900, also running Windows Phone and pairing it with LTE on AT&T’s network, though the ecosystem of devices supporting Microsoft’s OS is hardly saturated right now. The Focus 2 will be available in “pure white” only, and measures 10.98mm thick and tips scales at 4.3oz.
All of the usual Windows Phone functionality is present, such as voice control and Bing integration, and AT&T Is positioning the handset as a cheaper way for new owners to get on the smartphone ladder. Even by opting for a cheaper device, though, they’re not exactly missing out: Microsoft’s stringent specification control around Windows Phone devices mean a budget handset like the Focus 2 isn’t much different from more expensive models running the same OS.
We’ve always been fans of Samsung’s Super AMOLED technology, and the 4-inch form-factor has plenty of fans for its compromise between portability and browsing real-estate. The Samsung Focus 2 will hit AT&T on May 20, priced at $49.99.
(CNN) – Apple isn’t the only global smartphone maker having a good week.
Samsung overtook Apple in the first three months of the year to become the world’s largest smartphone vendor and ended Nokia’s 14-year run as the largest maker of all phone handsets by volume, according to research release Friday by Strategy Analytics.
The South Korean electronics giant reported Friday a record net profit of $4.44 billion in the first quarter, led by strong mobile sales.
“Samsung’s global smartphone shipments rose 253% annually to 44.5 million units, as demand surged for its popular Galaxy models such as the Note, S2 and Y,” Alex Spektor, associate director at Strategy Analytics, said in a news release.
Apple’s sales of 35.1 million iPhones in the first quarter helped lead the company to double first quarter profits. Nokia sold 11.9 million handsets January through March, more than half as many the Finnish firm sold year on year, eroding its smartphone market share to 8.2% from 23.5% in 2011.
In overall handset sales, Samsung sold 93.5 million phones while Nokia sold 82.7 million units – the first time Samsung has topped Nokia in market share, Strategy Analytics reports.
Nokia – while still popular in developing markets – has seen its market share slowly erode due to slow entry in the high-end market and its former reliance on its Symbian software, which had proved all-thumbs compared to Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. Nokia is phasing out its Symbian phones after signing an agreement with Microsoft last year to switch smartphone software to Windows.
It appears that Samsung’s purported efforts to mask the launch version of its upcoming next-generation Galaxy smartphone have once again paid off. A new image of the Galaxy S III has emerged on a Chinese forum, though the look (and name) of the device will likely be different when the new flagship phone is finally unveiled next week. Few new details can be gleaned from this new leak, though it appears that Samsung may have taken some liberties with the stock on-screen navigation buttons in Ice Cream Sandwich. Samsung’s next-generation Galaxy phone is expected to feature a quad-core 1.5GHz Exynos processor, a high-definition Super AMOLED display, 4G LTE, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and a ceramic case available in either blue or white. Samsung will unveil the Galaxy S III next week at a press conference in London.
The Facebook app for Windows Phone is certainly serviceable, but it’s never really been anything to get excited about. In fact, it wasn’t really something you looked forward to using and it’s been slow to add the features considered standard on competing mobile platforms. Well, with the soon to land version 2.5, that capability gap will get quite a bit smaller. It hasn’t hit the Marketplace yet, but when it does it’ll bring support for group chats, threaded messaging, tagging in posts and the ability to like or delete not only posts but comments as well. The photo pages have also gotten a visual refresh and you can now tap on links in posts to go straight to the relevant content. For a few more details hit up the source, and keep checking the Marketplace for updates — Facebook promises it won’t be long now.
Sammy’s latest marketing ploy kicked off with a string of nonsense that could just as easily have come from the Sunday morning jumble: “Destination: tgeltaayehxnx,” declared the Samsung Mobile Twitter account. Anagram wizards will read that as, “the next Galaxy,” and wouldn’t you know it, it’s also the URL for a auspicious countdown clock. Sammy promises to let visitors take “the next step” in about 17 hours and counting. Bonafide internet sleuths can find an extra carrot strung up in the site’s source, reading, “discover how Samsung is about to challenge the way you view the Galaxy once more.” Is Samsung about to break its own May 3rd unveiling? We’ll let you know in 16 hours and change.
Verizon Wireless chief financial officer Fran Shammo said the company is looking to market a third mobile platform to help develop a strong competitor to Apple and Google. That operating system will be Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Phone 8. “We’re really looking at the Windows Phone 8.0 platform because that’s a differentiator. We’re working with Microsoft on it,” Shammo said in an interview with Reuters following the company’s earnings call on Thursday. The carrier expects to have Windows Phone 8-powered handsets in time for the 2012 holiday shopping season. The executive suggested that Verizon could play a similar role in helping Microsoft’s platform to grow as it did with Google’s Android OS.
BGR exclusively broke the news last November that Samsung’s vice president of consumer and enterprise services Gavin Kim had left the company to join Microsoft. As general manager of Windows Phone marketing, Kim was tasked with steering the future direction of the Windows Phone platform in the eyes of consumers and partners. In an interview with BGR at the time, Kim said he planned to “win the hearts and minds of consumers, carriers, device manufacturers, developers and partners,” and he said he viewed the new role as an “amazing opportunity.” Now, just five months after joining Microsoft, Kim has left the company. ”We can confirm that Gavin Kim has made a personal decision to leave Microsoft,” a Microsoft spokesperson told ZDNet in a statement. “We feel very good about the work he has done to set the team, and its new lead Eugene Ho, up for success. We wish him all the best.” Kim’s reason for departing from Microsoft so soon after joining the company remains unknown.
If the third digit of your birth year is a nine (or heck, a zero), you’ll likely never have experienced the true agony joy that was BBS or Bulletin Board Systems. Well, thanks to nostalgic developer Norbert Landsteiner, you can take a glimpse at how your dad got online with an HTML / JavaScript emulation BBS Google. Likewise, more seasoned travelers of the internet can take a trip down memory lane and see what Mountain View’s search engine might have looked like “back in the day.” All the details are there, right down to the familiar modem tones and ASCII graphics, it’s even somewhat functional (when the API isn’t over its limit.) So, want to appreciate that browser you complain about on twitter all the time over your LTE connection? Tab on down to the source link for a lesson in gratitude.
The technology that drives the Kinect system for your Xbox 360 as well as your Windows PC will soon be coming to Windows Phone in miniature. Several sources (one of them drunk, the others said to be entirely reliable) have spoken with VR-Zone’s Theo Valich about Kinect NUI (Natural User Interface) and its future with Windows Phone 8. This technology will be coming to Windows Phone 8 codename Apollo or one of its updates and will have the platform transformed in no time flat.
What we’re seeing here, or what we very well might be seeing here in the very near future, is the ability for Windows Phone users working with next-generation hardware to use both voice commands and non-touch gestures to control their phone’s many abilities. Over at WMPoweruser we’re reminded that Windows Mobile 7 (a now-dead platform) was being set up for motion gestures before the plan was scrapped in early development. Perhaps we’re seeing that dream come to fruition now?
“Windows Mobile 7 will use motion gestures, something the iPhone does not. It will not use an intricate and complicated series of gyroscopes and accelerometers. Instead, it will use the camera on the phone to detect motions and create appropriate actions. You will be able to shake, twist and otherwise manipulate the phone and get things done. The phone will be able to perform actions when placed face down on a surface, and it will know when it is in your pocket or bag.” – Microsoft Internal, pre-2009
Of course you’ll also remember, perhaps, that Microsoft also previewed technology connecting Windows Phone to Kinect on the Xbox 360 all the way back in February of 2011. We’ve not seen really anything else from them regarding this connection since – but even this early preview has promise:
What would you do with a Kinect’ed Windows Phone? Make it take photos from afar? Perhaps play some strange teeny-tiny gesture controlled games? The possibilities are endless!
Verizon Wireless apparently isn’t done talking about its controversial plan to phase out “grandfathered” unlimited data plans for smartphone users. It issued a statement to The New York Times Thursday, detailing exactly how the policy would be implemented. What it boils down to is this: You can keep unlimited, but don’t expect Verizon to subsidize your device.
