Verizon to allow more frequent device upgrades with new ‘VZ Edge’ plan

It looks like T-Mobile’s recent Uncarrier campaign is starting to catch the attention of the other major US carriers, because hot on the heels of it announcing its new ‘Jump’ upgrade program, comes word that Verizon may be following suit.

The news comes this afternoon in the form of a [purported] leaked Big Red training slide. The slide details ‘VZ Edge,’ a new upgrade plan that allows Verizon subscribers to pay a monthly fee for the ability to upgrade their devices more frequently…

4 days without apps infographic

Mobile apps have in no time become a true addiction in our smartphone-obssesed society. We use them day in and day out – to the point where we can’t imagine our lives without those lickable Home screen icons. As Apple gave each user five premium apps and games for free as part of the App Store’s fifth anniversary, eBay too celebrated the occasion by conducting an informal survey that challenged 200 iPhone owners with surviving four days without their favorite apps…

Microsoft reorganizes, new 41MP phone

Seemingly taking a page from Apple’s playbook, Microsoft announced a major reorganization this morning. It’s calling the move ‘One Microsoft,’ as it looks to rally behind a single strategy as one company, instead of a collection of separate divisional strategies.

The company says that moving forward, it will continue to release new devices and services. And this new approach will allow it to innovate with greater speed, efficiency and capability in a “fast-changing world,” while helping them execute better than ever…

Steve Balmer made the official announcement this morning:

“Our brand must reflect this plan and its employees — personal, valued, inspired and forward-looking. We will take our products and our customers to new places. We will be on a new path centered around delivering high-value activities on a family of devices with integrated services. We will all be working in new ways together to meet new challenges. But our spirit and values are the same enduring ones that launched this company. Our North Star may be new, but our mission of helping people to realize their full potential through technology remains the same.”

Microsoft hopes the move will enhance collaboration between its divisions, which have seen various levels of success over the years. While the Xbox 360 has been wildly popular, the Surface tablet and Windows Phone have continued to struggle to gain traction.

But the company’s restructuring plan wasn’t the only big news on the Microsoft front today. Nokia also unveiled the Lumia 1020, its new flagship Windows phone, this morning. The handset has a staggering 41-megapixel camera and a 4.5-inch AMOLED display.

The phone comes with a ‘Pro’ camera app, which offers a slew of advanced controls for shutterbugs. Initial reaction to the phone, specifically its photo-taking abilities, has been positive. It’ll be interesting to see what Apple has done, camera-wise, with the iPhone 5S.

Additionally, it’ll be interesting to see what, if any, kind of impact Microsoft’s restructuring has on its future products. Apple executed a similar shakeup last fall, and although we have yet to see any new products since the move, iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks look promising.

What do you think about Microsoft’s reorganization? Nokia’s new 41MP phone?

Beautiful Calendar app launches

Tired of the stock Calendar app in iOS 6? Can’t wait for iOS 7 to launch this fall to change things up? Well lucky for you, there are a number of Calendar alternatives available in the App Store: Tempo, Donna, Calendars+ and Fantastical, to name a few.

And today, we’re adding a new one to the stack that has been causing quite a commotion in the tech world today. It’s developed by Any.do—the same team behind the award-winning task list—and it’s called Cal, a simple, beautiful calendar for iPhone…

From the App Store description:

“A uniquely designed interface gives you clear perspective on what’s on the horizon of your day and what’s already been accomplished. As your day goes along, Cal is right there with you, up to speed on your progress with a host of newly designed features that add to your momentum.

With Cal, important life moments like birthdays and anniversaries aren’t just remembered, they’re celebrated. Contact, location, and social integration allows you to send messages and plan festivities right in the app itself. It’s like having a magic wand at your fingertips.”

Additionally, Cal was designed with deep Any.DO app integration. It can automatically take care of your evolving to-do list without having to plan for the same thing twice. So if you enter in a meeting or task to Any.DO, it will auto-populate in the Cal app.

And here’s your full list of features:

- Each day is celebrated with a fresh & gorgeous photo.
- Your events will come to life beautifully with maps, photos of your contacts, notes & reminders.
- It’s always someone’s birthday. Write on your friends wall, call, or send them a message.
- Planning is simple. By connecting with Any.DO you can check out your Any.do tasks for each day.
- Create smarter events – Cal recognize who you want to invite & where to right from the title.
- Finding the best spot – Easily find restaurants & bars nearby for your events.
- Easy to navigate – Simply jump to a specific date from the month view.

I have to say that Cal looks gorgeous. I like that it uses the so-called ‘flat design,’ but it also fills the empty space with large graphics. I wish Apple was taking this approach in iOS 7. As far as its functionality though, I can’t speak to that, as I’ve just installed it.

For folks that are already in the Any.do ecosystem, Cal seems like a no-brainer. But it’s a well-designed app that’s worth checking out regardless—especially considering its price tag. If you’re interested, you can find Cal in the App Store, for the iPhone, for free.

T-Mobile unveils Jump

So, both AT&T and Verizon are now making you wait longer to upgrade to a new smartphone, going from 20 to 24 months?

That’s exactly where T-Mobile is hoping to leapfrog the nation’s leading telcos with its new upgrade initiative called Jump.

As reported earlier today, Jump basically lets you upgrade when you want, not when you’re told (“two years is too tong to wait” to upgrade your phone”).

More precisely, you can upgrade up to twice a year as soon as six months from enrollment. So welcome to the Jump upgrade club my friend and don’t forget to jump past the fold (pun intended) for the full breakdown…

ATT invitations sent out

AT&T sent out invitations today for a press event later this month teasing a look at “what’s next in wireless.” Whether that’s a new handset or a new wireless technology has yet to be revealed, but we’ll have all the details as soon as they come.

Why 4KHD cables aren't needed

Maybe it’s the appearance of Seiki’s ultra-cheap Ultra HD displays. Maybe it’s the fact that both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One will support 4K video output (for movies; not for games). Whatever the reason, 4K is certainly making more of a splash with the average consumer than I would have predicted a year ago. And to cash in on that market awareness, cable manufacturers are already introducing special, spiffy new 4K HDMI cables, targeted at the consumer who wants to be as future-ready as possible.

The problem with that? Chances are very good that if you’re pumping 1080p video through your current HDMI cable, it’s already perfectly capable of handling 4K, Ultra HD, whatever you want to call it. Look past the fold for more info....

Android powered systems coming to flights

Some flights have started giving out iPads during flights loaded with games, movies, TV Shows, books, magazines and more. Now Norwegian and Panasonic have partnered to give us Android-powered entertainment while in-flight.

There aren’t a lot of details yet, but the picture looks intriguing. The system will be built into the seat back, and according to the press release, it will give users access to movies, music and games.

Of course, you’ll also be able to buy snacks and drinks in addition to accessing entertainment content.

There were no specifics of costs to user, if any, although from this quote, I’m assuming it won’t be free:


“… enabling Norwegian to engage passengers in an even more amazing entertainment experience while creating new revenue streams.”

Of course, the biggest question of all. Can we use it during take-off and landing?

PlayOn adding Aero to media server

PlayOn is about to make Aereo much more accessible by adding it as a channel within its service. Aereo will become an official option on July 11, 2013. PlayOn specializes in streaming videos from a variety of online sources run by television networks and independent providers. With the addition of Aereo, PlayOn users now have a way to watch live local television on devices where Aereo isn’t currently offered such as game consoles and Android devices.

Let’s back up for a moment and go over what PlayOn is. Basically, PlayOn turns your computer into a media server. When you run the software, you can choose to watch videos from a variety of online sources. The catch is you can only access content that has been made available on that source’s website. For example, if I wanted to watch an episode of Hell’s Kitchen from Fox.com, it would have to be already available on the website in order for PlayOn to retrieve it. The video is really silently running on your computer in the background. PlayOn just pushes it to your selected device using a shared Wi-Fi connection. The Aereo channel will work the same way.

None of this is free though. PlayOn costs $25 a year or $50 for a lifetime membership. Aereo is only available in Boston, New York and Atlanta and costs $8 a month.

iOS 7 icon grid on physical products

With iOS 7, Jony Ive designed an icon grid that was meant to give developers some guidance on how to proportion their icons so they would look “harmonious” on the new iOS 7 homescreen. As you can see above, though, Jony Ive has been using a similar mental grid to design Apple’s physical products for a long time. As Reddit user Kepano notes, however, Ive has probably not used this grid as a precise guide to design in the past.

“In my opinion as an industrial designer this image suggests that there are some intuitive similarities between all of Ive’s designs but that the iOS 7 icon grid is probably the first time he’s defined those proportions so strictly. The fact that certain shapes match so closely (e.g. the width of the donut shape on the iPod) is probably not a coincidence but a matter of taste. What the image doesn’t show is that these products have radically different dimensions which is why the corner radii are very different from one another.”

Your phone can predict where you'll be in 24 hrs

We all know that companies like Google and Apple can track our locations 24-7 using our cell phones, but what if they could predict where we'd be in 24 hours? A group of people have created an algorithm that allows your phone to predict where you'll be in 24 hours from current time. Look just past the fold for more details...

T-Mobile to "upgrade upgrades" with new plan

T-Mobile is holding a media event later today at 2:30PM Eastern / 11:30AM Pacific to announce “our boldest moves yet.” A leaked memo suggests the Deutsche Telekom-owned telco is readying a new unlimited upgrade plan for smartphones. “We've upgraded upgrades,” the memo reads. Called Jump, the idea is to allow customers to upgrade when they actually want to instead of waiting the usual two-years until their contract expires. I've included more tidbits after the break…

“Don’t pay more than new customers. Seriously ” reads one bullet point.

“No annual service contracts. No overages. No brainer,” another one has it.

I’ll be looking forward to hearing T-Mobile’s CEO John Legere curse during today’s press conference.

The memo, obtained by The Verge, can be seen top of post.

TmoNews yesterday speculated Jump would require a “very small” membership fee and that T-Mobile would ask customers to trade-in their existing handset in order to qualify.


In exchange for this fee, customers would receive insurance on their device as well as the two annual upgrades. The idea of this club is just one of many opportunities T-Mobile’s CEO is considering with their new UNcarrier model.

Jump could fly in the face of AT&T and Verizon as both carriers recently killed early device upgrades, pushing the waiting period back to 24 months.

What’s your take?

Is Jump going to make a difference in the greater scheme of things?

Hidden code says iPhone 5S could record at 120FPS

We don’t know much about the next-generation iPhone, which is Apple is expected to introduce later this year. It’s believed to be an ‘S’ model, with a faster processor and other upgraded internals. Outside of that, however, we literally know nothing about the handset.

But if past ‘S’ iPhone releases are any indication, the iPhone 5S will surely offer at least one ‘stand-out’ feature. The 3GS had video recording, for example, and the 4S added Siri. So what will the 5S’ killer feature be? A new report says it could be slow-motion video…

'5 Years of the App Store' live on iTunes

With just two days until Wednesday’s fifth anniversary of Apple’s App Store, the company conveniently delivered a celebratory poster highlighting key moments in the application’s store five-year history. And just a few hours ago, Apple slashed a number of premium apps and games to zero bucks. In in another tease, a new section dedicated to the anniversary has just gone live on the App Store. The ’5 Years of the App Store’ is accessible both in desktop iTunes and the stock App Store app on iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices by following this link…

iOS 7 Beta 3 seeded to devs

As predicted last month on our Facebook page, Apple today released iOS 7 Beta 3. I'll have a video on it later this week (and since I missed beta 2 I'll show changes for both). Look past the fold for a full change log as we discover them...


New in Beta 3

• Faster and more reliable than previous releases (of course) 
• Minor UI changes in Notification Center 
• Minor UI changes in Music app 
• Minor UI changes in Weather app 
• Larger status bar on Lock screen 
• Calendar app now shows scheduled events on monthly view 
• New search bar, animations in Mail app 
• Folders now appear more transparent 
• New icon animations when downloading an app 
• New font in Settings app 
• New font and font color in Messages app 
• Minor UI tweaks in Safari (new keyboard for unibar search) 
• You can now use apps while they’re updating 
• Lock screen now shows clock while playing a song 
• Tweaked UI for wallpaper chooser. 
• New silent control in iPad Control Center 
• New app icon loading UI for download apps 
• New animation when compressing video to be shared 
• .com key in Safari’s unibar keyboard is finally gone
• New Top Charts icon in the App Store
• Boot up no longer shows spinning wheel
• Now Playing track now displayed fully in Music app
• You can now pinch-to-zoom in Music app while in landscape mode
• Now remembers app placement on the springboard, so now if you delete and reinstall an app it will be placed in the same folder or location on the springboard that it was in prior to deleting the app
• Per app settings for background refresh now honored
• Dictionary is functional (laggy however)
• Rating of a song in Music.App now changeable
• Cool new animation when going to spotlight search
• Parallax, Translucency, Transparency, and Dynamic wallpapers have been disabled for iPhone 4 in Beta 3.
• New font on 'slide to power off'.
• On iPad, now non- optimized apps (only iPhone/iPod) are rendered to be displayed almost full screen (less grainy), only one view, no 1x and 2x zoom on lower right hand corner.
• Swipe down on notifications to open Notification Center.
• Tapping on items in Today View (NC) opens their corresponding apps.
• New playlists icon in Music.app

If you find anything let us know via email, or post to our Facebook wall!

Premium apps/games go free for App Store's 5th

Apple's App Store is coming up on it's fifth birthday. On Wednesday, July 10. As spotted by The Verge, several premium apps and games that have never been free before, are free. No explanation was offered from Apple or in the description of the apps. We have a full list of discovered apps and games just past the fold...