O2 moves some customers to 4G for free

4G prices are already tumbling

4G is still finding its feet in the UK, but now that all four networks have their superfast services up and running there's hot competition for customers and O2 is the latest network to rework its tariffs.

From today, O2 has cut the cost of its pay monthly 4G tariffs giving you more data for less money. On the 12 month, SIM-only O2 Simplicity contract you now get 1GB of data plus unlimited calls and texts for £21 per month, down from £26.

The 3GB, £31 per month tariff has been scrapped, replaced instead with 5GB at £26 and O2 is now offering customers an 8GB data option at a palatable £31 per month.

If you're already an O2 4G customer and are feeling a little hard done by, the bubbly network has confirmed that you'll be getting a bump in your monthly data allowance - sort of like an early Christmas present.

Free 4G for 3G

The big news though is that some O2 3G customers will receive an upgrade to the firm's 4G network at no extra cost.

To qualify for the 4G upgrade you'll need to be on a tariff with at least 1GB of data per month and have a 4G-ready handset. If you're on the right tariff, but are still languishing on a 3G mobile O2 will allow you to upgrade to its Refresh contract, giving you a 4G phone and 25% off your remaining line rental.

EE, O2 and Vodafone will be feeling the pinch of Three's free 4G upgrade for its customers - EE has already cut its 4G prices - and it's no surprise that the networks are reworking tariffs to make them more affordable.

O2's 4G network has now been switched on in 13 cities and 140 towns across the UK, and it claims it now covers almost a third of the population.

• Need a 4G phone? Here are the best

Source : http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/o2-moves-some-customers-to-4g-for-free-1207051

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Android Device Manager app finally found in Google Play Store

There's finally an app for that

Careless Android device owners will take heart in knowing Google has their back this holiday season and in the foreseeable future thanks to its new Find My Android-style app.

An official "Android Device Manager" app is finally available to download in the Google Play store, making it easy to track down a lost phone or tablet, lock it or wipe it's data remotely.

The same functionality came to Android devices in August, but it was a cumbersome browser-based solution that wouldn't help anyone in a panic.

The messy setup forced users to visit a website with an extremely long URL and it didn't have the option to lock the phone or tablet at first. It was either "ring" or "erase everything" with no in-between locking measure.

Today's update puts Google's Android Device Manager on par with Apple's well-serving security equivalent, Find My iPhone.

Auto-responder: Gmail for Android gets an update

Android owners will also want to keep their finger on the Google Play update trigger for Gmail 4.7. This latest version adds a vacation responder and the ability to send even more types of attachments.

"If you forget to set a vacation responder as you scramble to pack for a flight, you're in luck since you can now create or update an auto responder message right in the Gmail app on Android," announced Google on its Gmail Google+ page today.

New attachments that can be sent from a phone or tablet include documents, PDFs and zip files. Previously, Android owners were limited to including photos and videos.

Rounding out today's useful Gmail for Android enhancements is the ability to print hard copies of emails if you're one of the luck ones with a device is running Android 4.4 KitKat or, in very select cases, Android 4.4.2.

• Check out: The specs on Dell's Chromebook 11 laptop

Source : http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/android-device-manager-app-finally-found-in-google-play-store-1206979

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Smarty Ring brings smartphone control to your ring finger

Basically it does everything except take calls

Even though smartwatches like the Samsung Galaxy Gear and Pebble are just starting to get into the market it looks like they'll soon be overshadowed by smart rings.

Although consumers won't quite be able to channel their inner Green Lanturn and speak to their ring fingers, the Smarty Ring, a project that launched on Indiegogo, claims it will bring smartphone connected wearable devices to the jewelry world.

The 13mm-wide stainless steel ring features a built-in, curved LED screen that displays the typical notifications users are used to seeing their smartphones. The screen lights-up with icons for incoming caller IDs, text messages, along with updates from social networks.

Lord of the Rings reference incoming

The ring's screen is flanked by two physical buttons, which control apps including the smartphone camera. Another neat feature on the phone is an anti-theft warning that goes off when the ring and phone stray more than 30 feet away from each other.

The one ring to rule all devices

Supposedly the ring can do this all through a Bluetooth LE connection and supports both Android and iOS as long as the device has Bluetooth 4.0. In another lofty promise, the creators say the device has a 24-hour battery life coming from a 22-mAh battery, which happens to charge through a wireless induction pad.

For some perspective this battery has more than 10-times less energy storage capacity than the 315-mAh equipped Samsung Galaxy Gear that promises 25 hours of operational time. That said, in our review we found the Korean smartwatch actually lasted for even more time than Samsung originally let on. The same thing could happen with the Smarty Ring, but we won't know until we really get our hands – err fingers on it.

Much like the Pebble Smartwatch, the Smarty Ring has blown past it's initial $40,000 (about £24,395/AUS $44,125) goal by more than five times. As of this writing, the project has a little less than 12 hours to go and is currently sitting at $223,436 (about £136,270/AUS $246,482) in funding totals.

Those that want to get their fingers wrapped around by this fully featured smartring can do so by preordering one on Indiegogo for $175 (about £106/AUS $193) with free international shipping. There are also a number of stripped down versions that only feature a watch and other bits like the phone tracker. The creators estimate the Smarty Ring will begin arriving to backers around the world by April 2014.

Source : http://www.techradar.com/news/portable-devices/other-devices/smarty-ring-brings-smartphone-control-to-your-ring-finger-1206945

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Step aside iBeacon, Qualcomm has low-cost Gimbal Proximity Beacons

Apple's iBeacon has a new contender

The iBeacon, Apple's tool for tracking users in stores to personalise their shopping experience, is no longer the only such solution on the market.

Semiconductor giant Qualcomm has released a new rival sensor called Gimbal Proximity. At a price of $5 (£3, AU$5), the concept of the sensor is similar to the iBeacon in that it tracks the in-store location of customers accurately.

Use of the platform promises to allow brands to increase sales and drive loyalty by delivering relevant and targeted messages while their consumers are physically in the store.

"With the availability of Gimbal proximity beacons, we are empowering brands to take mobile engagement with their customers to a whole new level through micro-location," said Rocco Fabiano, president of Qualcomm Retail Solutions.

Using the sensor, retailers would know what area of the store customers are in, and can then tailor adverts, information and special offers towards those people.

Two Gimbal sensors are available, the Series 10 and the larger Series 20, both of which use low-energy Bluetooth Smart technology, which is said to be accurate to within a foot. These can be be placed throughout any brick-and-mortar store without loss of connectivity.

Versatility

Qualcomm's Gimbal combines "physical location, activity, time and personal interests" and is available for iOS devices with support for Android coming later.

It is versatile enough to be used in many other ways. Interaction for marketing purposes, as an early demo of the Gimbal showed with the Star Trek film franchise, is also a possibility. They would allow consumers to complete actions and tasks to reward them with special offers and increase their loyalty to the brand.

Using Bluetooth Smart technology gives the Gimbal an easier mode of connection, with GPS and NFC both having drawbacks in usability.

Rather than using the cloud, the Gimbal Beacon processes the data received within its device, making the interface and interaction at a customer level, far faster.

• Qualcomm has also announced a new 64-bit mobile processor

Source : http://www.techradar.com/news/software/applications/step-aside-ibeacon-qualcomm-has-low-cost-gimbal-proximity-beacons-1206903

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EU warns Nokia not to become 'Patent Troll'

Come on Nokia, play fair

In a wide-ranging speech in Paris on Monday, the vice president of the European Commission, Joaquín Almunia, reserved a strong warning for Nokia.

Following the agreement to the $7.2 billion (£4.38 billion, AU$7.87 billion) sale of its devices business to Microsoft in November, Nokia held onto its portfolio of patents, one of the most valuable in the mobile industry. Selling its smartphone business could clear the way for Nokia to enforce its patents more aggressively in the global market.

This new stance would see them evolve into a so-called 'patent troll', a company which looks to obtain its revenue solely by exploiting their licenses. Last year Nokia's chief financial officer said that he saw "good opportunities" for profit in Nokia's pool of patents.

Lawsuits

Almunia warned that "if Nokia were to take illegal advantage of its patents in the future, we will open an antitrust case". The threat of opening of such a case would give the company a good incentive to regulate its actions. He later added "I sincerely hope [we] will not have to."

Nokia has not been unafraid of using lawsuits alleging patent infringement in the past. In 2012 it filed lawsuits against HTC in Germany and the USA for patented parts in mobile devices but didn't persevere because of the threat of counter-lawsuits on its own devices.

Having now sold that sector of their business removes that threat to Nokia. The Commission had previously dismissed the possibility that Nokia would attempt something along these lines when it allowed Microsoft to acquire its devices division. Although Nokia has not said that it would use its portfolio to take action against other companies, its sheer size, nearly 39,000 patents, may compel it to do so.

• Can Nokia teach Microsoft to be one company?

Source : http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/eu-warns-nokia-not-to-become-patent-troll--1206769

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Voice calls are a bigger 4G headache than data

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

4G is here, bringing superfast data to the palm of our hands, but while we consume more content on our handsets it appears a rather important part of what constitutes a mobile phone has been left behind - voice calls.

When making the decision whether or not to make the switch between 3G and 4G, performance of voice calls probably doesn't come to mind - they'll just keep on working just the same, right? Wrong.

"4G networks at the moment don't actually have a voice service, so the handset has to drop back to either 3G or even 2G to make a call," Phil Sheppard, responsible for Three's 4G technical program, told TechRadar.

"It's an underlying assumption that your voice service will work just as well on 4G as it will on 3G."

Top 4G complaint

Three is the first to admit that it's slow to the 4G game with EE, O2 and Vodafone all launching their superfast services before it, but that extra time has allowed Three to study issues its competitors faced.

"We've seen a lot of the complaints of the other 4G operators have been around voice performance. It's been very slow to move across from 4G to 3G, or it's failed to move across at all," Sheppard revealed.

"We spent the last two months really optimising that and just testing, tweaking and re-modifying things. Technically the handset has to do a bit more work, so it's really important to make it fast and we've now got it down to a point where people really can't tell the difference."

It's not just voice calls which Three has been focussing on however, as data is still clearly the big draw for 4G.

"We want to make sure data performance is really good as well, so what we're doing is we're taking clusters of sites, maybe 20-30, and doing a drive test all the way round each one to ensure the handover between the sites works.

"What you don't want to do is move from one site to the next and the network drops and has to reconnect. We've got it sorted now and it's pretty much 100% in terms of moving in and out of different sites in the areas where the 4G network is live."

There's still a long way to go though, as Three needs to cover all 14,000 sites it has across the UK in its van - something it hopes to have completed by the end of 2015 where it predicts 98% population 4G coverage.

• Have you experienced voice call issues since making the switch to 4G? Let us know in the comment box below, via Facebook, or over on Twitter.

Source : http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/voice-calls-are-a-bigger-4g-headache-than-data-1206888

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AT&T looking to reduce smartphone subsidies

AT&T might soon be reducing the subsidies for the devices sold on its network. The wireless operator CEO Randall Stephenson feels that the carrier can no longer afford to fund the maintenance and upgrade cycles of the smartphones it sells.

At an investor's conference in NY the AT&T said that the smartphone penetration is at over 75% currently and as it approaches 90%, the carrier would better focus on helping consumers make use of the network and not just attract them to it.

As a first measure, the carrier launched a new campaign where they offered an incentive of $15 per month to all its consumers who decide to get on with their old smartphones, instead of getting a new one with the new contract.

Randall Stephenson also said AT&T is working hard towards creating a balanced pricing structure. In the past, AT&T was one of the first carriers to cut down on the unlimited data plans and at the moment, about 70% of the carrier's consumer base gets charged based on their consumption.

Having covered the high end market with its LTE coverage, the carrier now wants to concentrate on the low end market and improve the overall experience on its network.

Meanwhile, T-Mobile seems to think otherwise as it has announced that it will be dropping iPhone down payments for the holiday shopping. The limited time offer has the 16 GB models of iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c, iPad Air, iPad mini and iPad mini with Retina display up for grabs with $0 down payment for new and existing customers.

You can get your hands on the iPhone 5s with monthly charges of $27 for a two year period. The iPhone 5c costs you $22.91 per month and of course, you need to stick with the carrier for the next two years. You can check out the second source link below to know more about the pricing and terms of the contracts.

Source 1 | Source 2

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/at_t_might_soon_cut_down_on_subsidies_for_smartphones-news-7350.php

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