When asked whether they too would consider getting rid of two-year contracts, Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam said it was something on the table and that it would be “pretty easy” to change their current model to accommodate the new system. This doesn’t mean that Verizon is going to be dropping its contracts any time soon; it just means that they’re open to the idea. And that’s really just the safest PR answer the CEO could give. After all, it’s better to say you’re open to it and never do it than to say you’re against it and then do it anyway.

Realistically, the T-Mobile “UNcarrier” approach is still like a contract, but without the traditional contract. You’re simply paying for the phone in installments over the course of a 24-month period, so you’re still tied to Old Magenta as long as you still owe money on the phone. Of course, you could just buy those phones outright. Up here in Canada, several carriers offer a “tab” system that works in a similar way, except you’re not really paying installments; rather you are given a “free” credit with each monthly bill you pay. Again, it’s like a contract, but not really.

If you were in the position of Verizon, Sprint or AT&T, how would you handle the situation? Would it just be business as usual with the 24-month service agreements or would you propose something different like what T-Mobile has done?

[Source]

The post Is Verizon Abandoning Two-Year Contracts Too? appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

This has now been confirmed by the Verge. If you go out and buy the iPhone 5 from Verizon, assuming that you can find stock, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to hear that the iDevice comes fully unlocked right out of the box. What this means is that you can go ahead and replace that Verizon nanoSIM with one from AT&T or T-Mobile and have it work too. This is particularly useful if you are traveling internationally, because it means that you can pick up a prepaid SIM at your destination and avoid those nasty roaming charges. Of course, many carriers don’t have prepaid nanoSIMs yet, so you may have to break out the scissors and carefully snip the regular SIM or microSIM down to nano-sized proportions.

The good news is that the Verizon iPhone 5 should be fully compatible with the 3G network from AT&T. The bad news is that it won’t work with AT&T’s 4G LTE, since it uses different bands that Verizon. This also means that you’re likely stuck with 2G/EDGE if you pop in a SIM from T-Mobile, though Old Magenta is reportedly rolling out some iPhone-happy 4G HSPA+ coverage in cities like Seattle, Las Vegas and New York.

[Source]

The post No Jailbreak Needed: Verizon iPhone 5 Ships Factory Unlocked for GSM Carriers appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

And that’s why the “starter mode” on the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Stellar isn’t such a bad idea. It’s not exactly clear how they’re going to do this, but the presumed idea is that they’re going to make the smartphone easier to use for average folks. Maybe you can think of it as a stepping stone for people graduating from “dumbphones” or “feature phones.” There’s likely a reconfigured home screen for the most commonly used features and apps, for example. The leaked doc also points toward “on-device help,” which may help users get past issues without having to call into technical support.

As far as the rest of the features go, we’re not so sure either. There’s an indication that it’ll have 4G LTE and that the Galaxy Stellar will let you “shop” and “stay entertained with Amazon apps.” The “compact design” is a departure from the current trend toward increasingly large touchscreens too. In any case, you can expect to pay $99.99 on a qualifying two-year agreement when the Android-powered Samsung Galaxy Stellar launches. The full retail price is $499.99.

[Source]

The post Verizon Getting $99 Samsung Galaxy Stellar with Starter Mode appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The HTC One S and One X have been receiving some favorable reviews, but now it’s time for HTC to update its INCREDIBLE line of smartphones too. In the official HTC tweet, they say that they’ve got “some special fun” heading our way and “it’s going to be INCREDIBLE.” That has now been confirmed as the HTC Droid Incredible 4G LTE for Verizon.

Set to hit shelves later this week on July 5, the new Incredible is once again “Beats-enhanced” and it will naturally have Verizon-friendly 4G LTE. Instead of following the trend toward mega-sized screens, the Droid Incredible 4G LTE is sticking with a 4-inch Super LCD qHD screen, along with a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4. HTC Sense 4 will run on top of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

The HTC Droid Incredible 4G LTE will retail for $149.99 with a two-year contract and a $50 mail-in rebate.

[Source]

The post New HTC INCREDIBLE 4G LTE for Verizon July 5 appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

This isn’t an official release from Google, but RootzWiki went ahead and made the Jelly Bean preview update available to the masses right after the Google I/O event. This update was originally intended for the GSM versions of the Galaxy Nexus, but it has been adapted to work with the LTE models too. This means that all Galaxy Nexus models are eligible for the Android 4.1 upgrade.

At this point, absolutely no bugs have been found and the ROM appears to be 100% functional. Of course, if you want to load up this somewhat unofficial version of Jelly Bean on your Galaxy Nexus, you will need to have root access. That said, if you want Google Now, offline voice dictation, and Project Butter speed, this is the only way you’ll get it at the moment.

You can get the “reverse engineered preview build” of Jelly Bean for your VZW Galaxy Nexus on Rootzwiki. Of course, proceed at your own risk.

[Source]

The post Galaxy Nexus Gets Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Early appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

While Verizon chalked up its three data outages in December to “growing pains,” we have to think that Big Red has beefed up the infrastructure in the last couple months to prevent that from happening again. But it has. Reports of Verizon 4G LTE outages are coming in from Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and Phoenix, as well as certain areas in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The good news is that you’re not dead to the world if you happen to be rocking a 4G superphone from Verizon. That’s because the regular 3G data, voice and text services are “operating reliably.” At least, that’s how it’s supposed to be, but some customers are reporting problems connecting to the 3G network too. And to think that some people switched from AT&T because they thought VZW would be more reliable.

The post Verizon 4G LTE Outages Experienced Across the Country appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The Samsung Galaxy Note was one among the popular devices to be shown off at CES 2012. The device turned out to be quite a head turner with its 5.3 inch HD Super AMOLED display and dual-core CPU, and is also 4G LTE enabled. But many were disappointed as the device was announced only for AT&T. But now, according to a new rumor, the device appears to be headed to other carriers as well.

The Galaxy Note will hit both Verizon and Sprint during the first half of 2012, and will possibly be called the Samsung Galaxy Journal. That’s according to Industry Analyst Paul Mueller who spoke with the Examiner.

It will definitely be great if the device arrives on two more carriers, but so far we haven’t got any confirmation whether it will actually happen. But that does not mean it will not happen. We hope its coming as we found it to be an awesome device from our hands-on experience.

Back in July last year, the same Paul Mueller indicated that Verizon would be the first carrier in the US to launch the Samsung Galaxy S II (as the Samsung Function). But that rumor turned out to be very wrong. So we better take the current rumor with a pinch of salt.

Just to let you know, a CDMA version of the Galaxy Note does not exist anywhere on the planet. But it is possible to make one and it will be a great experience to use that on Verizon’s extremely fast network.

We will keep you updated on the matter. So stay tuned.

The post Samsung Galaxy Note Might Hit Verizon And Sprint As The Galaxy Journal appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

When talking about boosting the performance of Verizon Wireless 4G/LTE service, we mentioned the Verizon JetPack 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot MiFi 4510L as a good supplement to the Sleek 4G signal booster .  Here, at CES 2012, Verizon Wireless and ZTE  have now announced the Verizon Jetpack  EuFi890 model. Developed by ZTE, the Jetpack is a 4G /LTE Mobile Hotspot allowing 4G/ LTE – customers to get download speeds of 5 to 12 megabits per second (Mbps) and upload speeds of 2 to 5 Mbps in 4G/LTE Mobile Broadband coverage areas.  The global ready device will work in 205 different countries, and 125 more with 3G too.

Other key features:

• Support for up to 10 Wi-Fi-enabled devices
• OLED display with interactive keypad
• Backward-compatible with the Verizon Wireless 3G network
• Data usage alerts via text message displayed on the Jetpack
• Wireless Connectivity: 802.11 b/g/n
• Supports Windows®, Macintosh® and Linux operating systems
• Security: WEP/WPA/WPA2 and VPN pass-through support
• Dimensions: 3.49″ x 3.49″ x .70″
• Weight: 4.7 oz

Looking like a 3.49-inch rounded compact plastic square with an OLED display, this particular Jetpack has 3 buttons that let you manage connections, settings and display data usage alerts.  Pricing for the device is not released yet. $269 is the price for Verizon’s Jetpack 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot MiFi 4510L if that’s any indication to you.

The post Verizon ZTE Jetpack 4G/LTE Mobile Hotspot appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Verizon Wireless at CES had Golden-i on display. The rugged headset is aimed to public safety and field work applications where visual data can be fed to the wearer. This is not so far away from Terminator T-800 facial scanning and recognition technology we saw in the sci-fi flick from 1984. Information like missing children, floor plans of the building, and remote surveillance camera feeds are just some of the examples of the data that could be attained when in use in field.

The display sits in front of your right eye, it’s easy to read, sound is clear and audible even in CES. Navigation was done by voice command, like bringing up the home screen or launching apps. Noise cancellation microphones are heavily used otherwise it would have difficulty in its surrounding environment. The device will run on Verizon’s LTE network since the bandwidth to send this video will be quite vast. It supports Bluetooth, runs a TI OMAP processor and is essentially a full computer running Windows CE 6.

[ Golden-i ]

The post CES: First Hands-On Golden-i Visual Headset Display appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Verizon sold 4.2 million iPhones during the fourth quarter of 2011, according to Verizon’s CFO Fran Shammo speaking at a conference on Wednesday, reported by StreetInsider. That’s more than twice as many iPhone devices as it sold during the previous quarter, an increase no doubt spurred by the launch of the iPhone 4S.

This might not be a really big bonanza for Verizon though, as Verizon complained about narrower profit margins for all new phones and contracts because of added upfront costs on such deals that offer discounts to new customers.

Then, on top of that, Verizon had this setback with three separate outages of their 4G/LTE network in December alone, and it’s unclear whether customers will be receiving a credit on their accounts because of the outage or whether the 4G/LTE network will be able to support additional devices like the iPhone 5.

The iPhone currently isn’t set up with 4G technology, but the bad press probably still could have hurt Verizon as the outages of their 3G network were also widely reported.

Whatever Verizon gets or doesn’t get from increased sales of its iPhones, it certainly doesn’t matter much for Apple which enjoys doubling the sales of iPhones in full.

Add to these Verizon figures this overall picture: analysts have been predicting upward of 30 million iPhones sold for Apple’s holiday quarter, which would be almost double the 17 million it sold during the previous quarter. 

Estimates also show that most of this success of iPhone sales can be attributed to a timely release of the iPhone 4S. Success of the iPhone 4S in its turn can be attributed to the tremendous popularity of its Siri service.

The post Verizon iPhone Sales Double Over Holidays appeared first on Mobile Magazine.