With AT&T selling an increasing number of iPhone 4S and other smartphones on their network, the current anemic 2GB of data is too little for many of its customers. On Wednesday, AT&T announced that they will now up their smartphone data plans to 3GB and 5GB respectively. This is the first time that AT&T is making changes to its data plans since July 2010, when they first introduced tiered data plans.
Customers are using more data than ever before,” said David Christopher, chief marketing officer, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. “Our new plans are driven by this increasing demand in a highly competitive environment, and continue to deliver a great value to customers, especially as we continue our 4G LTE deployment.
AT&T is making its data services even better, and is competing with data plans offered by Sprint and Verizon by offering unlimited access to AT&T Wi-Fi Hotspots alongside the new data offerings, which will be replacing the current $15 and $25 plans. Smartphone data plans will be offered with the following plans:
AT&T DataPlus 300MB: $20 for 300MB, additional 300MB for $20.
AT&T DataPro 3GB: $30 for 3GB, additional 1GB for $10/each
AT&T DataPro 5GB: $50 for 5GB, with mobile hotspot/tethering, additional 1GB for $10/each
iPad users with the 3G model will be given an option of choosing from 3 plans, as follows:
The current 250MB for $15 plan
AT&T DataConnect 3GB: $30 for 3GB
AT&T DataConnect 5GB: $50 for 5GB
The new smartphone and data plans will go into effect this Sunday, January 22, however, current users of AT&T’s data network will be able to keep their existing plans, but have the option of switching to a newer one.
{via MacRumors}
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AT&T has today begun sending out its second warning to customers who it believes are illegally tethering their iPhone 4 using jailbreak, demanding they either stop tethering, or pay the price. In a stern SMS to select subscribers, the carrier warned that those who don’t pay and continue to tether their phones illegally would be automatically upgraded and charged for its $45 per month tethering plan.
The message is surely aimed at iPhone jailbreak users, who can gain easy access to apps through Cydia that allow them to use to tether their iPhones to their laptops, iPad 2, and any other Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connected device, to share its data connection. Of course, without signing up to a tethering plan with their carriers, these users are using their data illegally.
The $45 per month tethering plan – which AT&T says customers will be upgraded to – is a full $25 per month more than a regular iPhone data plan. It provides customers with 4GB of data between an iPhone and any tethered device.
AT&T issued its first warning to iPhone users via SMS and email back in March, but it wasn’t so forbidding back then: it simply reminded culprits that tethering required an additional plan, and how they could sign up for one. Clearly – and unsurprisingly – many customers ignored the polite message and continued to take advantage of jailbreak hacks anyway, forcing AT&T to take things a little more seriously.
I’m sure anyone who’s jailbroken their iPhone has toyed around with tethering at some point – I know I have. It’s so easy to find tethering solutions, such as the MyWi app, that you can’t help but try them out for a bit of free data on your iPad while you’re out and about. Thankfully, some carriers – such as O2 in the U.K. – now include tethering in their iPhone plans as standard.
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One of the downsides – although there aren’t many of them – to Apple’s new iPad 2 is that if you purchase one of the Wi-Fi only models, it doesn’t come equipped with a GPS chip to pinpoint your location. So, if you purchased a pricey navigation application to use as a big, beautiful sat-nav on your iPad, you’re not going to get accurate results unless you go for a 3G model. However, there is a workaround; it seems that when you tether your iPad 2 to your iPhone, you can use its GPS as well as its data connection.
The feature was discovered by Kyle Carmitchel on a recent road trip, who was tethering his iPad to his iPhone 4 using the new Personal Hotspot feature introduced in iOS 4.3. Carmitchel found that when the two devices were hooked up to each other, the iPhone was feeding its GPS data to the iPad:
It is clear I am being fed GPS information from the phone, at what appears to be an interval of once a minute or so between refreshes (likely they didn’t do real time updating so as to go easy on the phone’s battery).
Without a GPS chip, the iPad is still able to locate itself using Wi-Fi hotspots; by taking the MAC address of the router the it’s connected to and looking it up in a database of router locations, the iPad can come up with an approximate location, but it’s not at all very accurate. However, by gathering an iPhone’s location data over a Personal Hotspot connection, the iPad can take advantage of the same pinpoint GPS accuracy as the iPhone.
At present, it’s hard to say whether this is compatible with the original iPad, or any iPhone earlier than the forth-generation device, but if it works well, you could save yourself a few bucks on the iPad if you were planning to pay extra for the GPS chip. However, if the location data is only fed to the iPad once a minute as Carmitchel describes, it still may not be accurate enough for some navigational purposes.
[via Cult of Mac] ]]> https://touchreviews.net/wifi-ipad-2-iphones-gps-tethered/feed/ 3As a standalone tablet machine, the PlayBook won’t have access to PIM functions such as email, calendaring and contacts. All these features requite a smartphone in order to function – a limitation sure to put some potential purchasers off.
But fear not PlayBook fans, for BlackBerry’s Senior Product Manager Ryan Bidan says the device is still a capable machine ‘in its own right’ while going on to say, “This is not a device that is reliant on a BlackBerry.”
Interestingly however, Bidan did stop short of addressing the issue of the missing apps directly but he did say that PIM functions “will come as the platform evolves’.
That’s no good now though is it, Ryan?!
]]> https://touchreviews.net/rim-playbook-capable-pim-features/feed/ 0The screenshot below, taken by 9to5 Mac, shows that the tethering options previously available are no longer present under the ‘Cellular Data’ fields within the settings app on the iPad.
The removal of the tethering feature from the latest beta could mean several things. Although it won’t necessarily mean that the feature has been scrapped for the tablet device, as 9to5 Mac points out, it could be that a code mix-up with the iPhone caused the feature to appear in the software for the iPad. However, it could be that the feature wasn’t quite ready, and that it will reappear in a later beta or in the final release of the 4.2 iOS software.
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Apple’s WWDC 2010 is scheduled to kick off on June 07 and Steve Jobs is widely rumored to unveil the new iPhone 4G / HD. If you have been following news reports and rumors about the new iPhone 4G then you would probably have a very clear picture of how the next iPhone will look and know the exact hardware specification which will be offered.
The prototype leak and iPhone OS 4 beta code has revealed some interesting information about upcoming features and heres a round up of what we know so far.
iPhone 4G Hints in OS 4
The values for video capture in the third beta hint at a high resolution camera which could record 720p high-definition video.
iPhone OS 4 beta code had various references to error messages which prompted the user about video call being disconnected because the local Wi-Fi connection was lost.
Various news sources have confirmed that the code in iPhone OS 4 had reference to titles like “Flash is disabled” The design of the leaked iPhone 4G prototype also confirmed that next iPhone will support a camera with flash.
iPhone OS 4 Features Round Up
This has been one of the highly anticipated features for iPhone and Apple will finally allow you to customize the home screen of your device with new wallpapers in the background.
The average number of iPhone apps a user installs is increasing as more and more apps are made available. iPhone OS 4 will enable you to manage your apps with ‘Folders’ You will be able to group 9 apps in one folder to save the number of icons appearing on your home screen. This will also enable users to easily access the frequently used apps and games.
iPhone OS 4 will imporve the SMS app and now you’ll be able to Limit character count, Repeat alert, Show preview, Toggle MMS and group messaging and Toggle subject field viewer.
The fourth beta of iPhone OS 4 had an option in the settings menu which suggests that AT&T will finally be offering internet tethering on iPhone.
Apple provides seven multitaking services as APIs to developers which include Background audio, Voice over IP, Background Location, Push Notifications, Local Notifications, Task Completion and Fast app switching. These APIs will allow you to stream internet radio using Pandora in the background while you surf the internet and receive incoming Skype calls even when when the app is not active.
Multitasking is only supported on iPhone 3GS, iPod touch 3rd gen and iPad.
Mail app on iPhone OS 4 will include Unified Inbox, Multiple Exchange Accounts, Fast inbox switching, Threaded messages and the ability to open attachments with apps. This will certainly make emailing on iPhone much more efficient and provide an enhanced user experience. iPhone OS 4 will also add support for Gmail Archive.
If you love reading eBooks on the go then you will finally be able to access the iBooks library on your iPhone running OS 4.
iPhone OS 4 will add software support for orientation lock which will make reading eBooks and performing various actions on your iPhone in the orientation set by you and will not rotate the screen when you change your angle of viewing.
iPhone OS 4 will add new iPad-style spelling correction features to iPhone and iPod touch. If you misspell a word it will be underlined with red color and you will be able to correct it with suggested words which will appear in blue color.
With more than 50,000 games and entertainment titles on iPhone and iPod touch Apple realized the importance of native social gaming network. Game Center will include Matchmaking and leaderboards too.
iPhone OS 4 Rumors
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