05
Apr
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T-Mobile Launching Even More Plus Unlimited Plan For Just $59.99 A Month

Posted by in 4G, Carriers, Deals, News, T-Mobile, Tips & Tutorials

T-Mobile is starting to get aggressive with customer acquisition and retention, and in light of less than stellar fiscal performance and the news of the AT&T deal, it's not hard to see why.

On April 13, the carrier will begin offering a new off-contract smartphone plan, and it's a steal - for $59.99 a month (down from $79.99), you'll get unlimited talk, text and data*. But, there are some significant catches. The first is that you'll have to pay full retail for your phone of choice - the Even More Plus plan is a month-to-month affair.

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The second is arguably worse - your data usage is technically unlimited, but after the first 2GB (as opposed to the current 5GB) your data speeds will be throttled down until the next billing cycle.

04
Apr
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Increase Your SD Card Read Speeds By 100-200% With A Simple Tweak [Hands-On, Benchmarks]

Posted by in Development, News, Tips & Tutorials

Poor SD Card performance can definitely have a negative effect on overall experience with your device, especially when considering apps that rely on speedy SD Card access, like the Gallery, or features, like Apps2SD.

XDA forum member brainmaster has been hard at work on tweaking some settings in Android to improve the situation in this very department. By adjusting a certain SD card cache value, he, along with many others on xda who tried this out, were able to significantly improve read speeds, usually at least doubling or tripling them, and in certain cases going even higher.

I thought it was a pretty interesting concept, so I decided to give it a run on my OG Moto Droid and outline my results here.

01
Apr
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Updated: AT&T Raising Smartphone Prices For 1-Year Contracts, Full Retail, And Early Upgrades

Posted by in AT&T, Carriers, News, Tips & Tutorials
Last Updated: April 4th, 2011

Update: BGR just confirmed with AT&T that the early upgrade price bump listed for iPhones applies to all smartphones - that means early upgrade pricing for 2-year agreement customers will go up by 50 bucks on all Android phones.

Well, there's not a lot of ways to spin this positively, and it's pretty clear what's going on - AT&T is disincentivizing its 1-year and no contract plans in order to goad customers into making more economical 2-year agreements. Customer retention method much?

If you want to go month to month (no contract) on AT&T, the full retail price of your smartphone of choice will shoot up by $50, for no apparent reason other than to discourage you from making that decision.

01
Apr
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Verizon's 4G LTE Up To 10 Times Faster Than Sprint's WiMAX 4G, Says Independent Testing

Posted by in Carriers, Editorials, News, Sprint, Tips & Tutorials, Verizon Wireless

An independent test conducted by a research firm in New York City comparing the speeds of Verizon's and Sprint's respective 4G networks has made at least one thing clear: Big Red owns the Big Apple. After conducting over 1000 individual network speed tests in various locations throughout the city, BTIG Research tallied up the averages, and it's not a pretty picture for Sprint:

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The connections were tethered through an HTC Thunderbolt and an HTC EVO 4G, respectively

You're seeing that right - Verizon's 4G LTE is averaging a whopping 10.3Mbps (down) when on a laptop tethered to an HTC Thunderbolt, while the EVO 4G barely eeks out 1.6.

31
Mar
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PSA: Verizon's Warranty Exchange Policy Is About To Get A Lot More Strict Starting Tomorrow

Posted by in News, Tips & Tutorials, Verizon Wireless

It appears Verizon has altered the terms of its "Certified Like New Program" ("CLNP") (pray they don't alter them further) to be a lot more demanding regarding the condition of exchanged devices.

Namely, if you send in your destroyed DROID, don't expect to get a shiny new replacement without a serious penalty - all phones sent in on warranty exchange must now meet the following requirements:

CLNR Cosmetics Standards

CLNR Cosmetic Standard Summary:

  • No blemishes are permitted on front surfaces such as the touch screen, keyboard
  • No more than two flaws, which must be less than 5mm in length, are permitted on other surfaces
  • No flaws or defects on lens
  • No dust, dirt, or fibers under lens
  • Ports must be free of foreign material and corrosion, be in operating condition, and have the plugs in place if applicable

This means even if your Android device suffers from a warrantied defect and fails, you may be out of luck trying to get it exchanged if you haven't kept it in tip-top condition.

30
Mar
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[Tutorial] Sync Passwords Across Computers And Android With KeePass

Posted by in Applications, Tips & Tutorials

Have you ever been in a situation where you needed to remotely access an account but couldn’t remember its password? I know that I have done so all too many times, so I started looking for a secure solution to this quandary. Although there are several good options, I chose KeePass - read on to discover how you can too.

Before we begin, there are a few things you will need:

On the Desktop

The first thing that you will need to do is install Dropbox, if you haven’t already.

29
Mar
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[Review] Amazon Cloud Player For Android - Google Music Who?

Posted by in Applications, News, Tips & Tutorials

It’s not much of a secret that Amazon is quickly becoming one of my favorite companies. The way they have embraced Android is wonderful, creating diversity where there used to be none. I recently ran down some of the pros and cons of the Amazon Appstore for Android, which is starting to become my go-to marketplace for new apps. Now they have released a new music streaming service, Cloud Player, which brings some of the functionality that was originally a hope of Google Music to my Droid.

Cloud Drive and the Web App

The Cloud Player is basically a frontend to all of the music that is stored in the Cloud Drive (which can be used to store any file type).

29
Mar
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Tip: Get 20GB Of Amazon Cloud Drive Storage For Only $0.69

Posted by in News, Tips & Tutorials

If you read today's Amazon Cloud Storage announcement carefully, you may have noticed that Amazon threw in a special offer allowing a free 1-year upgrade for your Cloud account from 5GB to 20GB with the purchase of any MP3 album. Why pay $20 a year when you can buy an album cheaper and achieve the same thing without spending the extra money (otherwise known as taking advantage of a loophole)?

Ready for it? Head over to the MP3 Albums $0.01 - $1 area and pick an album for as low as $0.69. Buy it and add it to your Amazon Cloud Drive.

28
Mar
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Amazon Appstore Doubles Down: Farm Frenzy And Newsweek Mobile Both Free Today

Posted by in Applications, Deals, Games, News, Tips & Tutorials

That's right, Amazon's offering not one, but two free apps on the Amazon Appstore this morning! You can pick up the popular HeroCraft title Farm Frenzy along with the official Newsweek Mobile app from Amazon free of charge.

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I don't know about you - but I can't tell which is which.

Newsweek Mobile offers Amazon's "Test Drive" in-browser emulation, so you can try it from your browser before making the 15 second commitment to put it on your phone. Anyways, load up the Amazon Appstore (if you can) and grab these freebies while the getting is good.

Update: We've gotten in touch with Herocraft, the developer of Farm Frenzy, about extra permissions that their game uses (such as access to contacts).

27
Mar
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Breaking: Download Leaked DROID 2 Gingerbread (Android 2.3.3) Update

Posted by in Development, Droid 2, Gingerbread 2.3, Motorola, News, Tips & Tutorials

TeamBlackHat has publicly released a leaked official Gingerbread (Android 2.3.3) software update build for the Motorola DROID 2. To install the update, you must have the DROID 2 Bootstrapper by Koush. Instructions and download links below:

Installing Firmware
1. Download this file from the TBH app or download below
2. Use Bootstrap to get your phone into recovery.
3. Create a backup (This is not compatible with new firmware)
4. Install the Firmware using recovery

In Recovery

1. select install zip from sdcard
2. choose zip from sdcard
3. navigate to teamblackhat folder
4. select the file you downloaded
5.

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