AT&T is currently sending out text messages letting eligible customers know that they may use Wi-Fi Calling when traveling abroad. Users on iOS 9.3 will be able to use Wi-Fi Calling when traveling abroad to place calls that won’t accrue airtime charges.
Verizon today has announced the return of its popular promo that offers users an extra 24GB of data per year for free. The deal is available to users who activate or upgrade to a new phone with a device payment plan on XL or larger Verizon agreements. Verizon’s XL plan starts at $80 per month with 12GB of data (14GB if you include the promo), while the XXL plan runs $100 per month for 18GB of data (20GB with the promo).
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson is the latest to weigh in on the issue of data encryption policy with the executive telling The Wall Street Journal that Apple CEO Tim Cook and other tech execs should leave the decision making on encryption policy up to Congress:
“I don’t think it is Silicon Valley’s decision to make about whether encryption is the right thing to do. I understand Tim Cook’s decision, but I don’t think it’s his decision to make”… I personally think that this is an issue that should be decided by the American people and Congress, not by companies,”
…The AT&T chief said his own company has been unfairly singled out in the debate over access to data. “It is silliness to say there’s some kind of conspiracy between the U.S. government and AT&T,” he said, adding that the company turns over information only when accompanied by a warrant or court order.
That statement follows a meeting among Cook, other Silicon Valley executives and White House officials last week to discuss topics related to encryption policies and government access to data.
If you’re feeling jealous of any friends grandfathered into an existing AT&T unlimited data plan (especially since ‘unlimited’ was redefined from ‘5GB before throttling kicks in’ to ’22GB before throttling if congested’), the company has good news: it is launching a brand new version of unlimited data tomorrow.
Pricing starts at $100/month for a single line, plus $40 for each individual line. Unfortunately, there’s bad news too. As The Verge notes, there are some pretty big catches – the biggest of which is that you need to be a DirecTV or U-Verse subscriber to even be eligible, which of course adds to the cost if you don’t already have a subscription …
The trend of carriers ending contract pricing continues today. According to an internal leaked document obtained by Android Central, Sprint smartphone subsidy options are now limited to customers who wish to add a line to an existing account or upgrade their existing phone. This move follows AT&T’s announcement that it will stop offering two-year contracts this week, as well as Verizon, who simplified its offerings last August.
Apple is already facing one class action lawsuit alleging that customers were unknowingly using up substantial amounts of mobile data, and it now faces a second.
The issue at stake in this new suit is that the iPhone 5/5s could silently switch from Wi-Fi to LTE under some circumstances, resulting in mobile data usage even when the phone was on Wi-Fi. This was fixed for Verizon users back in September 2012, but law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP claims that Apple didn’t fix it for AT&T users until more than two years later.
According to the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose, Apple knew about the defect “almost immediately,” yet failed to fix it for AT&T wireless subscribers for years, and did not even disclose the defect. The defect affected all versions of iOS 6 and 7 and was only resolved with the release of iOS 8.1 in October 2014.
AT&T is offering a buy one, get one free deal currently on many of its popular smartphones, and while it’s not listed likely due to Apple, we’ve learned that iPhone 6s is actually eligible.
You won’t find any mention of iPhones in AT&T’s advertising for the deal— in fact, it’s promoting the Samsung Galaxy S6 as the standout device for the deal— but we’ve confirmed with AT&T reps that iPhone 6s is also included and eligible for customers to include in the offer.
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Apple today released iOS 9.2 for iPhones and iPads after several versions of testing. The point update so far has included improvements to Safari including an improved Safari View Controller for viewing websites within apps and easily dismissing them afterwards, the addition of Arabic language support with the Siri voice assistant for the first time, and more.
The carrier wars in the US are heating up as we head further into the winter, and that’s generally good news for consumers. Verizon is currently adding 2GB of data for new and current subscribers that upgrade to certain plans over the next few weeks. T-Mobile is targeting switchers by offering AT&T subscribers that jump carriers the chance to buy the 128GB iPhone 6s at the price of the 16GB model and save as much as $125 on financed accessories including Beats headphones and the Apple Watch. Read on for details…
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AT&T subscribers who previously had unlimited data plans back in the iPhone 3G era and have managed to hang onto that plan are in for their first price increase in seven years, a source with knowledge of the matter has informed 9to5Mac.
Update: AT&T has now publicly announced the change. Additional information has been added below.
T-Mobile has announced its latest “un-carrier” initiative, dubbed “Un-carrier Unwrapped.” Rather than a permanent addition to the company’s offerings, Un-carrier Unwrapped is a month-long event during which the carrier will gift its subscribers and new customers with special deals and benefits.
The first of those was announced today: unlimited LTE data for all subscribers on Simple Choice post-paid plans for the next three months.
Apple’s massive new iPad Pro is only available with built-in cellular connectivity in the pricey 128GB configuration, but all four of the major carriers in the US are offering the $1,079 tablet at discounts on contract or through installment plans. Here’s where you can find the iPad Pro 128GB + Cellular and how much you should expect to pay:
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When the iPad Pro goes on sale later this week, Apple won’t be the only retailer carrying the massive new tablet. Ordering from Apple.com may be the most convenient way to ensure your new iPad is delivered on day one, but Apple Stores and authorized resellers including select carriers will be selling the iPad Pro as well. Here’s what we know so far:
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Apple has released the second beta version of iOS 9.2 to users running the iOS public beta. The pre-release software was pushed out to developers yesterday alongside new versions of OS X, Xcode, and tvOS.
In this new beta, users will find the ability to take advantage of AT&T’s NumberSync offering, which allows other devices such as a Mac or iPad to make and receive phone calls using a customer’s iPhone number without actually being connected to the phone.
Apple has built support for AT&T’s NumberSync technology into iOS 9.2 beta 2, which was released to developers earlier today. Currently Apple’s Continuity feature allows users to use their Mac, iPad, or iPod touch to make phone calls as long as the computer (or other iOS device) is connected to the same Wi-Fi network as their iPhone.
The software upgrade will allow users to enable Wi-Fi calling on all of those devices and make and receive calls without the need to be on the same network, or even in the same area.
Below you’ll find steps to setup and start using the feature now.
Wi-Fi calling – the iPhone feature Apple introduced in iOS 8 – is a really handy feature, routing phone calls over Wi-Fi when the mobile signal is poor or non-existent. There’s just one problem: it’s illegal for U.S. carriers to support the feature because it breaks the TTY text-chat protocol used by some hearing-impaired users. AT&T asked the FCC to grant it a waiver to switch on the service, and now Verizon has done the same.
The two companies have, however, adopted different positions on the service …
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Developer Simon Gladman today demonstrated (via Jeff Benjamin) the use of the iPhone 6s display as a way to compare weights of an object, here denoted in a percentage of touch, on Apple’s 3D or Force Touch display.
The app called “Plum-O-meter” for obvious reasons is currently a jailbreak option for tinkerers. I think it is unlikely that this will hit the Official App Store because it likely makes private API calls to acquire the data. However, it does show yet another device the iPhone could one day replace. Full video follows.
Update: Huawei, which announced a “Force Touch” phone a few weeks before Apple, has a scale app on their phone. Hadn’t seen this, where’s the App Store app then?
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta6beOvyhYE&start=95]
Apple has been building Continuity features into its software that let you make phone calls and send messages from iPads, Macs, and Apple Watches through your iPhone for a while now, and today AT&T is announcing a new network-level advancement called NumberSync capable of doing that for all connected devices.
With NumberSync, AT&T customers will soon be able to use what’s called mobile twinning to share a single phone number with multiple SIM cards in smartphones, smartwatches, tablets, and other connected devices. The goal is to let you send and receive phone calls or messages from all your connected devices without relying on a specific app or operating system feature.
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When Apple introduced the iPhone 6s at its September 9th special event, it billed the new model as the “best phone for traveling around the world,” thanks largely to support for “23 bands of LTE wireless networking.” But that day, the new iPhone’s tech specs page told a more complex story: Apple advertised a seemingly U.S. and Puerto Rico-specific A1633 iPhone 6s with 23 LTE bands (including AT&T’s exclusive band 30) but no CDMA support, while Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, and every international carrier outside China got an A1688 iPhone 6s with 22 LTE bands and CDMA support. Clearly, the “best phone for traveling around the world” would be the international A1688 version, right?
Wrong. This week, Apple started selling a SIM-free, unlocked iPhone that works with “any supported carrier worldwide, such as AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, or Sprint in the United States.” Hidden inside a text link titled “Learn more about the SIM-free iPhone,” Apple notes that the SIM-free iPhone 6s is model A1633 — the AT&T version, not the one sold internationally. How could this make sense?…
AT&T was officially granted an FCC waiver this week to enable Wi-Fi calling for its customers with supported devices like iPhones running iOS 9. Wi-Fi Calling first appeared during the iOS 9 beta period and remained functional for those who enabled it previously, but AT&T stopped sign-ups for the feature once iOS 9 was publicly released due to requirements set by the Federal Communications Commission.
While AT&T has officially turned on Wi-Fi calling for its subscribers, the carrier is doubling down on its position that rivals T-Mobile and Sprint have deployed and marketed Wi-Fi calling features for a while without proper FCC approval. At issue with the FCC is how Wi-Fi calling lacks support for teletypewriter (TTY) devices. And although AT&T has been cleared to turn on Wi-Fi calling without meeting that requirement, it wants in FCC investigation into its competitors’ behavior.
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AT&T has called out two of its competitors, Sprint and T-Mobile, over their decision to offer Wi-Fi calling support on smartphones without first getting proper authorization from the Federal Communications Commission in a letter to that organization’s chairman.
According to AT&T, the FCC has been too slow in issuing a waiver that would allow the company to bypass certain requirements for hard-of-hearing users—a move that’s necessary for Wi-Fi calling to work.
While the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus aren’t supposed to start arriving to pre-order customers until this Friday, at least one lucky AT&T customer got a surprise today. A Twitter user by the name of @MoonshineDesign based in San Diego today received her iPhone 6s in the new Rose Gold color variant. According to her tweets, she ordered the device through AT&T.
Sprint has officially confirmed our report last week that it will start selling the Apple Watch from its retail locations as of the arrival of the iPhone 6s/Plus on Friday. The confirmation is in an Apple Watch tab on its iPhone 6s pre-order page.
We’re expecting the Watch to go on sale at other carriers, and it seems a near-certainty that all the major carriers will begin selling it on the same day. T-Mobile CEO John Legere tweeted that his company will be selling the Apple Watch, though without naming the date.
Apple has been gradually rolling out sales of the Watch to other retailers, including Best Buy, department stores and computer stores.
AT&T today has revealed a slight change to how it is handling throttling users grandfathered into unlimited data plans. Up until today, AT&T has throttled unlimited data users when they hit 5GB of usage and are in a congested area. As a reader has pointed out to us this evening, however, the carrier has updated its website with a new policy for throttling those on an unlimited data plans…
