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| Samsung TecTiles: Wireless Stickers With Secret Phone Powers | |  Near-field communication (NFC) is joined at the hip with the concept of mobile payments, or buying things via cellphone. But the tech actually has many more applications, and Samsung wants owners of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone to discover -- and perhaps even create -- some of those novel uses of NFC with a product called TecTiles. TecTiles are tiny little stickers with a simple NFC tag inside. Although they look identical, each one is unique, letting users "program" the sticker to have a specific response whenever any device with an NFC chip is floated over it (NFC only works at extremely short ranges). How does one do that? Users can program TecTiles via an app that runs on any Samsung phone with an NFC chip, including the Samsung Galaxy S III and S II, the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus S, and the Galaxy S Blaze. After launching the app, you can set the tag to tell phones to do any number of functions -- from opening a website to relaying contact information to calling a phone number. Anyone who "engages" with the TecTile will still need to tap his or her approval on many of those functions, however, since it would be an inherently insecure if random NFC tags were, say, wirelessly telling phones to call specific phone number, or worse. SEE ALSO: Samsung Galaxy S III: 6 'Human' Features The usefulness of "democratizing" NFC tech in this way is compelling: Think a TecTile on your nightstand that automatically sets your alarm. Or business cards, each with a TecTile that sends contact information. Or poster advertisements for an app that include a TecTile that automatically cues up a download. Unlike QR codes, NFC doesn't require launching an app or using your phone's camera -- just put your phone on top of it and hit "OK." We got a chance to play a little bit with a TecTile Samsung provided us with an NFC phone. The app is super-easy to use, and within seconds we were able to program the TecTile with simple commands like phoning a specific number. You have to be careful not to "lock" the TecTile, or it'll be permanently set to perform that command and can't be reset -- though you'll obviously want to do this for any tag you're exposing to the public. The design is fairly distinctive, with four squares, in various shades of blue, arranged in a larger square. I hope Samsung comes out with multiple colors, however, since having a bunch of TecTiles that look exactly the same will get confusing for some. All four major carriers in the U.S. will be offering TecTiles when the Samsung Galaxy S III launches later this month, and the TecTiles app will be in Google Play. A pack of five TecTiles goes for $14.99. What's your take on Samsung's do-it-yourself NFC tags? Do you think you'd use them, or are they a solution looking for a problem? Share your thoughts in the comments. |
| HTC Will Acquire S3 Graphics, Improve Its Patent Portfolio | | Tuesday, June 12, 2012 10:43 PM | Emily Price |
|  HTC has reportedly decided to complete its purchase of S3 Graphics, an acquisition that will help it better its position in its patent fight with Apple. HTC's general counsel, Grace Lei reportedly announced company's plans to acquire S3 Graphics during the company's annual shareholders' general meeting. "We think S3's patent portfolio is valid and strong, and we have decided to complete the purchase of S3 after cautious assessment," she said. S3 currently owns around 270 patents, some of which are licensed out to other companies such as Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony. The acquisition will give HTC control over those patents, which will better its position in its patent-based lawsuits, specifically those with Apple. HTC had originally planned to purchase S3 Graphics for $300 million in July 2011, however, the company decided to reevaluate the purchase after losing a patent-infringement case against Apple later that year. In that suit a judge handed down a limited exclusion order for two of Apple's 10 claims against the company preventing it from selling devices in the U.S. that infringe on those claims. That exclusion order officially went into effect in April of this year. Recently two HTC phones, the One X and EVO 4G LTE, were delayed in U.S. Customs due to a "review of shipments that is required after an ITC exclusion order." The review requires phones to be inspected to ensure they are not in violation of the order. Both phones passed the test, and were eventually able to enter the U.S. In the case of the HTC EVO 4G LTE, however, the delay in customs forced the phone's release to be delayed as well. |
| Turn Home Devices On and Off Remotely With Plug-Connected App | | Tuesday, June 12, 2012 9:54 PM | Joann Pan |
|  Think you left the coffee machine on when you left the house? Now you can turn it off with a simple plugin and mobile app that syncs and controls your home devices. A new Kickstarter project called Elphi aims to help you keep control of appliances when you're not around. The device plugs in to any electrical outlet and syncs with appliances via its iPhone and Android app. Not only can you turn devices on and off, you can also check power activity. This means if you're monitoring an elderly grandparent, you can see when they turned on the light in the morning. The products you want to control must be plugged into the Elphi plug, so if you want to remotely control your television, coffee machine and computer, you'll need three plugins. The plug and the app communicate with each other through the cloud in real-time, according to the Elphi's Kickstarter page. For a closer look, check out the video above. SEE ALSO: About 41% of Kickstarter Projects Fail/a> The Elphi system was created by Seattle-based engineers Cameron Colpitts and Nicolas Flacco. For now, the smart plug is only available to users in the U.S. and Canada with a Kickstarter donation of $69 or more. The team has raised $21,000 on Kickstarter with 16 days left on the platform, hitting 23% of their $90,000 goal. The money raised on Kickstarter would contribute to the manufacturing and production of the plugs. The funds would also help the company get FCC and UL regulatory approvals, plus make high-volume parts affordable. The Seattle team hopes Elphi plugs will be widely available by October. The plugin and app will maintain an open API to encourage developers to further advance the technology. How are mobile apps helping you complete everyday tasks? Would you use Elphi plug? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. Thumbnail image courtesy of Elphi on Kickstarter |
| Hands-On First Impressions of iOS 6 | | Tuesday, June 12, 2012 7:24 PM | Christina Warren |
|  At WWDC 2012, Apple unveiled the next generation of iOS. iOS 6 sports more than 200 new features and upgrades -- including the new Apple Maps, deep Facebook integration and improvements to Siri. Although iOS 6 won't be available on compatible devices until sometime this fall, the first beta build is currently available to developers. We've installed iOS 6 on our new iPad (64GB Verizon LTE model) and poked around with the new features. While it is clear that this is a beta -- certain features aren't fully baked, and there is some crashing and inconsistency with a few existing apps -- it's equally clear that this is a solid OS update. SEE ALSO: iOS 6: Everything You Need to Know Because we've tested iOS 6 on an iPad and not an iPhone, we can't explore all of the new iOS 6 features. But this release, more than any other, is intended to unify iOS across platforms. Maps Apple's decision to eschew Google Maps in iOS 6 is a big deal. Mapping and location are an integral part of the modern smartphone experience. Google and Microsoft own their own mapping technologies, and it makes sense that Apple would want to make good on some of its mapping investments. These include Poly9, Placebase and C3 Technologies. The 3D models from C3 Technologies are immediately evident in Apple's new mapping app -- at least, in the areas that have already been rendered. In our tests, certain areas -- including Cupertino and the Apple Campus at 1 Infinite Loop -- had beautiful 3D terrain overlays. In New York City, however, those images looked pretty bad. But again, this is a beta. The street mapping aspect of the new iOS Maps app pulls in data from Yelp and from what we can tell, Open Street Map. TomTom technology helps power the Turn-By-Turn navigation. While we haven't had a chance to go hands-on in a car with Turn-By-Turn, in our walking tests, it worked as you would expect. What didn't work as we expected was transit directions, and this could be a real wrinkle for Apple. In Monday's WWDC Keynote, Apple's Scott Forstall said that the company would highlight transit apps from the App Store in its mapping product. At the time, I took this to mean that it would highlight other location apps. What I didn't realize is that Apple is actually going to rely on these apps to power the transit directions within iOS. Now, we don't know what the final version of this product will look like -- but if this means users will need to download a local area transit map or schedule tool in order to get transit directions in iOS 6, that's going to be a problem for many thousands of users that rely on their iPhones for public transit directions on a daily basis. I like third-party transit apps as much as the next person. But I also really, really like having a schedule built into my main mapping client, so I can quickly get directions in an area where I don't know the bus or train route layout. That quibble aside, our first experience with Apple's new Maps app is positive. In fact, with the exception of Turn-By-Turn nav, it doesn't feel that much different than the Google Maps app. That's a good thing. Facebook Integration We've already detailed a bit about how Facebook's integration with iOS 6 works. At this very early stage, the Facebook/iOS 6 integration works in a way that's nearly identical to Twitter's current integration with iOS 5. That is to say, it's part of the system -- if you want it to be -- and third-party apps can plug into the architecture for even better use. For sharing photos and websites, the ability to share directly to Facebook is great. In Safari and the Photos app, you can easily post to your Facebook account. You can also choose what level of visibility you want a post to have and attach a Facebook location to the object you are sharing. For now, videos cannot be shared directly to Facebook -- only YouTube. But we expect that to change in the future. The real potential of the Facebook integration is within the App Store. Users can now "like" an app directly from the App Store on Facebook, and see what apps their friends like. This also works for Music and Movies. Apps that hook into the Facebook login in iOS 6 need only request permission to do so once. Actions still need to be explicitly performed; users just don't have to initiate a login each and every time. The nice part of all of this is that users can revoke access to an app at any time from the Facebook panel in the Settings app. This makes it easy to turn a feature on or off, without having to mess with a bunch of hard-to-find settings. As for Contacts and Events and Birthday integrations -- these are nice features. Windows Phone has had them since its inception. Many Android skins, such as HTC Sense, also include the option. We appreciate that users can use Facebook but opt not to link a calendar or address book with the service. Siri Siri is finally on the iPad! Well, the new iPad, at least. Siri works just as you would expect it to -- except it now hooks into Yelp, OpenTable, Rotten Tomatoes, various sports score services and more. Users can also now launch apps, post to Facebook and send Tweets with their voice. In our tests, Siri worked as expected, though we did run into a few problems posting to Twitter. Still, the service works quite seamlessly on the iPad. For us, the more command-like nature of Siri -- and the fact that various iOS tasks can now be started using voice commands -- is a great step forward. Photo Stream Sharing, Safari, FaceTime 3G and More One of the features I'm really excited to use with iOS 6 is the new PhotoStream shares that are part of iCloud. Users can quickly and easily share groups of photos to a select group of other users. Just find your photo, choose "Photo Stream" from the share menu and add your contacts. You can choose to make the collection private or visible on iCloud.com. Users can then comment on photos and add their own to the collections. Removing a photo from a Photo Stream will remove it from everyone's device. It's a bit like Glassboard, but baked into the OS and tied to iCloud. Another new feature in iOS 6 is the ability to FaceTime over 3G or 4G. I tested this by calling my phone from my Verizon 4G LTE iPad. It worked exactly as you would expect. My only concern with this sort of feature is that it has the potential to use up more bandwidth than users might expect. Keep an eye on your data usage. Safari for iOS 6 has a redesigned sharing menu -- icon-based this time -- and the ability to sync with tabs across other iCloud devices. You can also now read items from Reading Lists offline -- which can act as a low-level replacement for Instapaper, Pocket or Readability. In my experience, heavy users of those services (including myself) are unlikely to give them up for the built-in options, but it's a great way to introduce the concept of reading later to more people. Mail Mail has received a few updates in iOS 6, most notably with the ability to FINALLY inserts photos or videos in a message directly from the Mail app. It's about time. Users can also craft different signatures on a per-mailbox basis. Apple has also introduced a new VIP feature that allows users to highlight email from important contacts in their own folder and with their own notification system. If you get as much email as I get, that's a great feature. The Early Verdict I'm very excited about the potential of iOS 6. The first beta is remarkably stable and the new features are welcome. Still, as with all OS releases, the most interesting bits are usually what happens on the backend and not the flashiest user-facing features. Some of the early criticism of iOS 6 is that it isn't enough to compete with Android or Windows Phone. I don't think this is true at all. Third party apps are what define modern smartphones and tablets and in that respect, Apple remains the platform of choice for developers. With iOS 6, it looks like developers will have even more options to create great apps for users. Plus, this is just a taste -- as the months go on, I expect we'll learn even more about what unearthed secrets remain in the OS. What are you most excited about in iOS 6? Let us know in the comments. |
| iPhone with Built-In Facebook: Will it Lead to Oversharing? | | Tuesday, June 12, 2012 5:14 PM | Samantha Murphy |
| | Apple's forthcoming software update for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch will make it a whole lot easier for Facebook members to post to the site. But does that put you (or your friends) in danger of oversharing? During Apple's keynote at the Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Senior Vice President of iPhone Software Scott Forstall announced that the company's mobile iOS 6 software -- in beta now -- will feature deep Facebook integration. Here's how it works: After upgrading an iOS device to the latest software, Facebook will appear as a setting inside iOS 6. Users who sign-in to Facebook via iOS will have access to the social network within many most-used apps including calendar and contacts. If you opt to sync contacts, events and birthdays from Facebook, this information will populate on your mobile device. For example, your Facebook friends' birthdays will show up in your iPhone calendar. Other features include uploading your Facebook location information right from Apple's new Maps app, and posting a game score from Game Center. But since iOS users stay logged in to the Facebook, they might end up oversharing photos, updates and geo-location tags because it's that much easier. The simple solution, of course, is to monitor what's posted to Facebook and keep it under control. SEE ALSO: iOS 6: Everything You Need to Know The Apple-Facebook collaboration is not entirely a surprise. Not only did Apple's previous iOS 5 software include Twitter integration, Apple CEO Tim Cook's recent suggestion to "stay tuned" about his company's relationship with Facebook indicated that there was a partnership on the horizon. The move to integrate Facebook into iOS has been in the making for quite some time. As Mashable previously reported, internal politics at Apple and Facebook nearly derailed the entire effort last year. Sources close to both companies have told us that in the last six months, both sides have worked hard to smooth out the relationship, with the understanding that the partnership is in the best interest of both companies. The move is also a jab at rival Google, giving Apple iOS users more incentive to use Facebook rather than Google+. The news also comes as Apple pulled the plug on Google's Maps app, which typically came bundled with iOS devices. Apple announced yesterday it would be rolling out its own custom Maps app. "Yesterday's announcement from Apple is great news for Facebook users and iOS and Mac OS X developers," a Facebook spokesperson told Mashable in an e-mailed statement. "With deep integration throughout iOS and OS X, people will have new ways to share and connect and it becomes easier for developers to integrate Facebook into apps and games." Facebook integration will eventually come to OS X Mountain Lion -- the latest version of Apple's Mac software -- in the fall. However, Mountain Lion will officially launch in July. Facebook users with iOS or OS X Mountain Lion will be able to link their accounts to the iTunes Store or the App Store to see what their friends are downloading. This is also a big advantage for app developers who can look for Facebook-connected accounts to gain access to information, rather than having to sign in again through Facebook. This is already how things work with Apple's Twitter integration, which was launched last year in the company's iOS 5 upgrade. Judging by the existing iOS integration with Twitter, this will be a big win for both Apple and Facebook. In fact, the number of Apple users who also use Twitter tripled following the parternship. Meanwhile, about 10 billion tweets have been sent via iOS 5, and nearly half of all photos posted to Twitter come from an Apple device. Do you think this is the start of a long-lasting partnership between Apple and the social network? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. Christina Warren also contributed to this report. |
| Google Launches Street View For Hiking Trails | | Tuesday, June 12, 2012 2:25 PM | PSFK |
|  Google's quest to create the perfect map has reached a new milestone. Using a backpack-mounted multilens camera setup, Google employees can now record places and routes only reachable by foot (or ski). The Android-powered device weighs 40 pounds and holds 15 cameras, a hard drive and enough battery power for a full day of exploration. After Google's indoor maps for navigating large interior spaces and Street View for the Amazon and landmarks, perhaps this was inevitable. It certainly democratizes outdoor spaces to an extent, allowing those unable to travel far the benefit of at least visually experiencing nature. See a typically cheerful Google video of Trekker in action below: |
| iPhone Lifts Off, Plays Video in Space | | Tuesday, June 12, 2012 1:26 PM | Brian Anthony Hernandez |
| | This year, we've seen several things sent to space that aren't shuttles or satellites: an iPad, copies of the Mass Effect 3 video game and even an MIT admissions letter. Well, now you can add an iPhone to that list. Internet encyclopedia Open Site launched the Apple gadget skyward to encourage future space exploration. During its flight -- captured on footage by two GoPro cameras -- the iPhone played a video of past space missions and quotes well-known space advocates such as Space X co-founder Elon Musk and U.S. presidents Barack Obama, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. The site hosting the clips quotes Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and meme: "Apollo in 1969. Shuttle in 1981. Nothing in 2011. Our space program would look awesome to anyone living backwards through time." The iPhone in space project also served a more romantic purpose. The behind-the-scenes footage shows an out-of-this-world marriage proposal (click here to watch the proposal). SEE ALSO: For Marriage Proposal, Man Uses Meme and Asks Internet for Help/a> "Took me a trip to space to finally get the balls to do this, but I love you so much and I want to spend the rest of my life with you," says director Jason Hakala to his girlfriend Stella Yi. "Will you marry me?" Yi said, "Oh my god, yes." The 50th anniversary of John Glenn's orbit of Earth in 1962 inspired the iPhone flight. BONUS: 10 Marriage Proposals Using Memes, Social Media, Gadgets and Games What are you waiting for? Grab some tissues (the first video is precious) and flip through the galleries below. |
| 4G Explained: What Is LTE? | | Tuesday, June 12, 2012 1:15 PM | Tecca |
| | We've all seen the ads from the major carriers touting "the largest 4G network in the country," but what does that even mean? And what's the difference between AT&T's two 4G networks, one that's LTE and one that's not? And what is LTE? In 2010, the major carriers in the United States were looking for a faster option than their current 3G networks. Sprint was the first company to take the leap into "4G" territory in 2010 when it released the HTC Evo 4G, the first 4G smartphone ever, which ran on its WiMAX network. But WiMAX didn't catch on, and the other carriers decided to go in a different direction. AT&T and T-Mobile decided to go with a standard called HSPA+, which is basically a supercharged 3G network. At the same time, Verizon decided to go with the eventual winner of the 4G battle, Long Term Evolution or LTE. This is where we've run into issues. Everyone is riding the LTE train Today, AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon all advertise their networks as 4G, and this confuses a lot of people, including their own employees. While LTE is the true 4G network, the HSPA+ networks operated by AT&T and T-Mobile are noticeably faster than their 3G counterparts, prompting them to proclaim them to be "4G." After AT&T finally woke up last year and noticed that Verizon's rapidly expanding LTE network was substantially faster than its HSPA+ network, the company decided to build its own LTE network while still calling its HSPA+ network "4G." Sprint and T-Mobile followed suit, announcing they too are developing LTE networks. The most notable change you'll experience when moving from a 3G to a LTE device is a dramatic speed upgrade. LTE networks are on average 10 times faster than their 3G counterparts. Sites load faster, Netflix doesn't pause every five seconds, and apps download at greater speed. Choosing the right network After getting off to a massive head start, Verizon now has the biggest 4G LTE network in the country, no matter what the AT&T and T-Mobile commercials say. With more than 250 current LTE markets and plans to cover 400 markets with LTE by the end of 2012, Verizon is your best bet if you are looking for true 4G speeds countrywide. In comparison, at the time of publishing, AT&T has 39 markets with LTE coverage, Sprint expects to have six markets up and running by mid-2012, and T-Mobile is in the beginning stages of building its LTE network. Be aware that if you don't live in a LTE market, you won't get the faster speeds whether or not you have a LTE device. (If you have an LTE device but are not in an LTE market, your device reverts to 3G speeds.) Undeterred by its lack of a working LTE network, Sprint released its first LTE smartphone, the HTC EVO 4G LTE, on June 2. If you are in a market where AT&T currently offers LTE service, the HTC One X -- which may be the best Android phone available -- is your best choice for a smartphone, with the new iPad your best bet for a tablet with LTE. Verizon offers a plethora of options including standouts like the Galaxy Nexus by Samsung with Android 4.0; the Droid Razr Maxx by Motorola, which has the longest talk time ever for a smartphone; and for those of you who enjoy a physical keyboard, the Droid 4, also by Motorola. Along with the new iPad, Verizon offers great Android tablets with LTE, such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7.If you are in the market for a new device and want something much faster, a LTE device is the way to go. But if you plan to travel and would like to maintain those speeds around the country, go with Verizon, which is currently the only carrier with a truly nationwide LTE network. |
| Requiem for an iPad 1 | | Tuesday, June 12, 2012 12:29 PM | Lance Ulanoff |
|  By now you've probably heard about iOS 6, the much anticipated and now 100-percent real mega-update to Apple's mobile platform. It's the system at the heart of your iPods, iPhone and iPads. Happy owners of these pocketable and carry-worthy devices are queuing up to get their update fix; to marvel in the Google Maps replacement and taste the sweet nectar of complete Facebook integration. To revel in real-time photo stream sharing and thank heavens for mobile phones' first digital Do Not Disturb sign. Everyone is lining up, except me. I'm an iPad 1 owner (also known as "first-gen iPad," "Original iPad" and the rarely used "iPad Classic") and have just learned, thanks to an exhaustive presentation by Scott Forstall at WWDC in San Francisco, that my precious table is ineligible for this iOS upgrade. The iOS upgrade train will leave the station without this passenger. There's not only no room on board, Apple didn't even build me a seat. I'm not oblivious to the fact that my iPad is a full two generations behind the curve. It's fatter and heavier than the iPad 2 and iPad Retina. It's slower than both of them and the latest iPad's Retina display blows away my 1024 x768 resolution. In Apple terms, I'm using a dinosaur, a product that should have been retired as soon as the iPad 2 arrived on the scene in early 2011. To be honest, I did consider swapping out my iPad for a new one. Eventually, however, I bought my wife an iPad 2 and stuck with the classic model. Why? Because it still works. Not just works. It works really, really well. In fact, I love my iPad and use it in all the ways Apple intended. It's powerful enough and adeptly handles games (including Infinity Blade 2), all my email needs and accounts, Netflix, Pandora, calendaring, Twitter and drawing. I've created a lot of art on that 9.7 inch screen. That may be the reason I feel an almost personal connection to the tablet. I continue to use it because it's still in great shape. There are no body dents or screen scratches. Nothing is cracked or worn. This iPad is the epitome of craftsmanship. If Apple wanted me to stop using it in two years, why the heck did they make it so damn well? It offends my Depression-Era mentality to discard such a useful and worthy device. Yet, now I face a dilemma. Apple is forcing me to choose between the future and what is, arguably, my favorite gadget. In order to step lively into the mobile OS of tomorrow, I have to plan an exit for my iPad. That's right, I have to End of Life it on my own. Doing so may not be easy. Unlike the options available after previous updates, the value of this iPad will not be so great. This despite the fact that it's a loaded model: 3G and 64 GB of storage. Who wants to buy a product that's stuck in the past? I may get $180 bucks for it, instead of the typical $350 (it originally cost around $800). SEE ALSO: iOS 6: Everything You Need to Know It's not that I will immediately miss iOS6's feature additions. I probably won't. I can still use the Facebook app. The device has no cameras, so photo stream and Facetime over cellular are not a huge deal for me. Google Maps is a more-than-workable Apple Maps alternative (and should function as long as Apple doesn't do anything to break it in an iOS 5 slipstream upgrade). That Safari upgrade looks sweet, but I can get by with the current version. Passbook would have been a ticket-master, saving me from my disorganized self, but I can keep track of that stuff in my breast pocket, just fine. Siri is relatively useful on the iPhone 4s, but I don't miss it when I can't access it on a standard iPhone 4. I doubt I'll miss it on my iPad which doesn't have the requisite hardware to support it, anyway. In reality, it's not the current new iOS features that have me worried. It's everything that comes after them. As soon as your hardware is out of synch with the latest and greatest OS platform, the chasm between what you can do and what everyone else with similar, yet newer devices can do widens with each passing day and upgrade. iOS6.1 will soon follow iOS6. iOS 6.2 and iOS 6.5 cannot be far behind that. iOS 6 apparently has 200 new features. Those smaller upgrades will have 10, 20, 30 or more. All updates that will leave my poor old iPad 1 in the dust. Look, I'm not an idiot. I get that tech marches on and we are the better for it. I've witnessed the steady flow of progress. My closets are a testament to that harsh reality. At home, I have loads of discontinued and orphaned legacy technology. Most of it is 5, 10 even 20 years old. You just don't expect this kind of thing to happen after two and half years. How long can I afford to be out of step with everything that's new? Not long at all. iOS 5 was an option I partook of as soon as it arrived. It made my iPad smarter and more stable. It's the apex of the iPad First Gen's functionality. It's all downhill from here. What about you? Did you dive head-first into the iPad mania in 2010 only to feel left behind in 2012? What will you do? Let's come up with an action plan in the comments. Bonus: WWDC 2012 Keynote in Pictures |
| Verizon Lets You Share Everything With New Data-Focused Plans | | Tuesday, June 12, 2012 10:21 AM | Stan Schroeder |
|  Verizon has announced a complete overhaul of its billing plans, for the first time offering customers the ability to share their data allowance across several devices. The new plans are dubbed "Share Everything" and offer unlimited calls, unlimited text, video and picture messaging and a single data allowance for up to 10 Verizon Wireless devices. Here's how it works: First, you select the devices you want on your accounts, and then you choose a plan -- all plans offer unlimited voice minutes and messages, and the only difference is the shared data allowance, which starts at 1 GB for $50. Smartphones cost $40 per device, and data plans go up to 10 GB for a monthly $100. You can also add a tablet for an additional $10, without the need to sign a long-term contract. "(Share Everything Plans) are simple; customers no longer have to think about their voice and message plans, because both are unlimited. Share Everything Plans are convenient; customers purchase one data plan and they share it with up to 10 mobile devices. And, they are worry-free; customers can connect their 3G or 4G devices wherever and whenever they want," said Tami Erwin, vice president and chief marketing officer for Verizon Wireless. This time, we have to agree with some of the marketing speak from Verizon -- focusing on data for billing and allowing users to share the data allowance across several devices is a breath of fresh air, and many users will love the idea. The amount of data being offered, on the other hand, could be a limiting factor for some, as 10 GB of monthly data can go pretty quickly on several devices, especially if some of them are tablets. How do you like Verizon's new data plans? Share your opinions in the comments. |
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