Tag: iphone 4

Posted in Apple, Rants, Technology

AT&T announces unlimited iPhone Data Plans again (kind of)

Posted on by RustyG

Well who didn’t see this one coming? It seems since Verizon officially announced the iPhone data plans, earlier this week, at $30 for ‘unlimited’ access, AT&T couldn’t stand by silently. It was last June (2010) that AT&T announced their new data plans for iPhone users, and it came at a price. If you were any new user of the iPhone or upgrading your plan, you could no longer get the ‘unlimited’ 5GB of data, but that you were paying for at most a 2GB data package for $25 instead of the previous $30. Now with the announcement of the iPhone 4 coming to Verizon, AT&T has to come back, but with a hitch. The only people currently allowed to get the ‘unlimited’ back, are the people who had it previously and lost it. WHO are these people??!! I ask because, if you remember when they started this new pricing plan, if you already had the ‘unlimited’, you got to keep it, and you were grandfathered in. So therefore, as long as you didn’t change your voiceplan or upgrade, there was no need to change your data package. Then if you were a new user who bought the iPhone 4 upon release, you never had the ‘unlimited’ in the first place, so that specific of a demographic is a VERY SMALL number. Wow, everyone else keeps talking about how AT&T sucks (Kevin Rose, Brian Tong & countless others), and I have stood by them because they don’t suck here in the southeast, and they have been a reliable provider since I had the original iPhone, but NOW, WOW! AT&T should just keep their traps shut, or go all out and just drop 2GB cap, and allow for every iPhone user to get that ‘unlimited’ plan for $30!

That’s my two cents..

via [CNET]

Posted in Apple, Technology

Verizon iPhone Announced: My Prediction – Wrong

Posted on by RustyG

Ok, so I was wrong on my prediction, it ended up being a CDMA device. Maybe shoot for dreams next year.. sometime for the iPhone 5 around June 2012. I only say this, because I don’t think Apple will up the ante in June to a whole new phone. I think it will be a small step, like the 3G was to the 3GS (aka 4S). I am assuming those defecting to Verizon will be much happier, as well as the rest of us on AT&T will be as well, due to the lightened load. I’ll hold off for opinions to show you the official information that we have.

Verizon iPhone

  • CDMA 3G (not LTE 4G)
  • New Antenna Design (not phone, just antenna)
  • $199 for 16GB & $299 for 32GB
  • Wifi Hotspot capability (via iOS 4.2.5, not yet for AT&T, iPad or iPod Touch)

Everything else is basically the same. There was a few Q&A after the announcement to clear up some other questions. There was talk about putting LTE in the iPhone 4, but it would have required a whole new design to get that chip in there. Also, according to Apple’s Tim Cook, this is a multi-year, non-exclusive agreement, but I just don’t see Sprint or T-Mobile picking this one up. I have heard however that many people think that this will be a killer to AT&T, but I am just not seeing this one either. I just watched the 404 on CNET, and they had an idea that AT&T will just start an influx in Android phones to help out. As the Android platform recently just surpassed the iPhone in market share in Q4 of 2010. AT&T hardly has any of those as it stands now, so I could see that to be a plausible idea.

The one thing I don’t get, especially from the video and pictures that were posted, they got the antenna chassis part correct, except for the SIM. The SIM card slot is not present, but all the black lines were correct. So is that a future phone? Possibly the LTE iPhone case for the future? We shall see..

Posted in Apple

Forget Facetime: Skype Video Calling is here!

Posted on by RustyG

So apparently, this news wasn’t expected by any of the tech blogs, and we are all very surprised by it, but YAY!!!! Skype has announced video calling on the iPhone 4! Which is great, because you can call desktop clients as well, so no longer are you tied down to only iPhone 4 users, but now you can call anyone with a webcam and Skype software! NOT ONLY THAT, but it is as well over 3G!!!! So now you can call someone on Skype while you are out and away from your wifi (network load dependent). I have seen a few demos from different websites, and it is kind of choppy when on 3G, but the video does work! I would use the video calling over 3G as a last chance shot, but if you ever want to try it go ahead! This is definitely the greatest update to the iPhone 4 since Word Lens (live augmented reality word translation), VLC (non iTunes video content player) or even Netflix!! If you have an iPhone 4, go upgrade NOW! This opens up your friends list to more people you can call with your front facing camera!!!!

check out the promo video below:

UPDATE: Sype blog quoted for version availability:

Skype video calling is supported over WiFi and 3G* data connections. You can enjoy video calls with users on all Skype desktop versions and with other Skype for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad users.

You can make video calls in both portrait and landscape mode and use both front and back cameras.

Users on iPhone 4, 3GS and iPod Touch (4th Generation) can enjoy full 2-way video calling. Users with iPod Touch (3rd Generation) and iPads can receive video.

Video calling with Skype requires iOS 4.0 or above to be installed on your device. Skype 3.0 for iPhone will also work on iOs 3.x, but without video support.

via [Engadget]

Posted in Apple, Technology

Netflix added video out on the iPhone

Posted on by RustyG

We all remember the day when Netflix was finally announced for the iOS devices. Then finally in August, we finally got the app for our iPhones and iPod Touchs!! Well apparently I completely missed another major part of this continuing story way back in the 1st week of October (10/5 to be exact). The Netflix app added video out support for their iPhones and iTouch devices. Now they did support this on the iPad previously, but was not a feature for the more mobile devices when the app first hit the market, so this is a big deal if you want to put your Netflix streaming up on a big screen! Now this feature will only work on 4th gen iPhone and the 4th gen iPod Touch, but this is a better option, and more of a reason you should upgrade if you currently own a iPhone 2G, 3G or 3GS or any earlier version of the iPod Touch.

You can download the app for your iPhone or iPod Touch on iTunes

via [iLounge] & [Engadget]