Verizon representatives have confirmed to Bloomberg that the carrier will push out a future update to the recently launched Galaxy S IV that will enable AWS LTE support for future compatibility with its forthcoming update to its LTE network that will enable even faster downlink and uplink speeds compared to current performance by a factor of two.

The next stage of the network is expected to be rolled out later this year in select metropolitan areas while Verizon works to acquire and deploy more AWS spectrum in order to expand the rollout, with New York City being named as one of the first markets slated for the expansion.

Currently, the vast majority of the LTE network is powered by the 700MHz band and Verizon is already maxing out its spectrum holdings on that band, both in terms of usage and data capacity, hence the need to roll out LTE on AWS in such a timely manner.

Verizon’s Galaxy S IV is so far the only model to be explicitly confirmed for the AWS LTE update and the carrier has yet to make any more official announcements on AWS LTE compatible devices or rollouts.

LG has confirmed that it will not manufacture the next Google Nexus smartphone following the success of the Nexus 4. Last year’s Google-backed Android flagship was notable for being subsidized directly by Google in order to attempt online sales through its storefront once again and to draw as many people as possible to Android with its lower than average pricing for a flagship smartphone.

The phone itself was notable for featuring high-end specifications thanks to sharing hardware with the Optimus G while removing some features, such as the microSD slot in favor of internal flash memory and LTE support, despite shipping with radio hardware which supported T-Mobile and partial AT&T LTE access and being enabled by modders before being disabled by updates and re-enabled in an ongoing cat and mouse game.

The White Nexus 4 is otherwise identical to the previous model with a  4.7-inch 1280×768 True HD IPS Plus display at 320ppi supported by Zerogap Touch technology and the Qualcomm Snapdragon™ S4 Pro processor with 2GB of RAM running Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2. The phone will be launched starting tomorrow in Hong Kong before expanding to other markets such as Asia, North America, Europe and the Middle East over the next several weeks.

After living with and paying for Straight Talk for 2 years, this review /editorial will serve as the official follow-up to my initial review filed in May 2011.

Keep in mind that my experiences will not necessarily mirror your own and  as always, do your research before purchasing wireless service with a new service provider, lest you end up with an expensive paperweight.

1. Introduction

On May 10th 2011, after taking some time out to investigate my options for prepaid flat-rate monthly wireless service I took a chance on Straight Talk after being unsatisfied with the then current options in MetroPCS, Boost/Virgin Mobile and smaller alternatives due to their rates and lack of options.

At the time, Straight Talk was the best compromise for what I was looking for with a price at or below $50 a month, with full flat rate monthly access which meant unlimited voice, messaging and data without having to worry about burning through talk time or messages. Since those days, StraightTalk itself has gone through many changes, some good and some bad.

2. Straight Talk’s Recent Changes

The good about the changes centers on an official program for bring your own device support for non-BlackBerry GSM and Verizon CDMA devices, after months of unofficial device swapping tricks and hacks. The program first made its debut last year after months of speculation and anticipation, and it seemed that it addressed many of the needs and desires of those that wanted to purchase their own devices or bring previously activated AT&T phones to the virtual operator, but the worst change since then has been the elimination of AT&T from the majority of its service area and BYOD offering at the beginning of this year, only to replace it with T-Mobile network access and the recent addition of Verizon BYOD.

Following the initial introduction of BYOD last year, Straight Talk scored another big point against other virtual operators later in the year by being the first virtual operator to offer a Verizon-powered Android smartphone after years of the carrier refusing to support smartphones on MVNOs and pricing data access to the point where many Verizon MVNOs had the smallest data allotments out of all offerings.

With the introduction of the Samsung Proclaim, StraightTalk had simultaneously revived its Verizon agreement and ushered in a new wave of customer gains as current and former StraightTalk customers rushed to purchase the phone to take advantage of Verizon’s expansive prepaid coverage compared to previous Android options powered by Sprint.

3. The Glaring, Long Standing Negatives of Using Straight Talk

However, since those days, the bad aspects about Straight Talk have also made themselves more apparent, such as low quality telephone support, arbitrary data limits without explicitly stating limits leading to customers being throttled or even booted from the service and very little in the way of transparency when taking terms and conditions into account. To this day, representatives refuse to elaborate on data limits despite advertising unlimited service and repeated questions across the media concerning the issue, forcing users to discover the limitations on their own through trial and many errors.

3. Staying with Straight Talk During The Explosive Growth of Prepaid

Two years on from my first review of the service and even taking the aforementioned issues into account, I’m happy to say that I’m still a satisfied StraightTalk customer, even with the exponential growth of flat-rate prepaid and more compelling alternatives from other brands and even carriers. I still use the Nokia E71 I purchased to start Straight Talk service with no issues and it has served me quite well, with many trips across the country for conventions and solid performance wherever I needed it, both in terms of talk time and battery life, as well as serving as a decent hotspot modem in a pinch.

I’ve been tempted to move to other prepaid services during my tenure with Straight Talk, such as Sprint-powered Voyager Mobile, owing to its much cheaper $39 monthly rate for unlimited service which includes LTE service, but what keeps me from making the move centers on the current lack of nationwide LTE coverage and giving up a fair bit of overall coverage, which I’ve come to rely on during travel. Other virtual providers and brands may also have lower rates or faster data access for more per month, but as in my first review, they lack the peace of mind I found with Straight Talk.

4. Savings And Phone Upgrade Possibilities

I’ve saved exactly $1209.12 over 2 years with Straight Talk, doubling its oft advertised $950 yearly savings rate, and the savings are indeed appreciated, though what would be even nicer would be keeping the $45 rate while including all necessary taxes and fees, which would make the offering even more attractive than it already is and is the main reason I plan to stay a Straight Talk customer for the foreseeable future, though now I have another dilemma.

As is common with many people after 2 years, now it’s time for me to upgrade my phone. While the E71 is perfectly useful, only needing a new battery and in near mint condition otherwise, the operating system itself in Symbian is close to being officially sunset and apps for the device are steadily declining despite the steady stream of operating system updates before support officially ends in 2016.

Paying a consistent $50.38 per month has been a small joy over the 2 years I’ve had service, because it’s been the only consistent monthly expense I have while everything else I pay for has gone up in cost, something that should be taken into account when budgeting for monthly expenses.

5. Viable, Timely Options for New Devices

This is where the biggest positive change for Straight Talk has pushed it to the top, as it now offers halo devices such as the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S III while still offering mid-range smartphones and cheaper feature phones that made up the bulk of its line up 2 years ago. More smartphones are also available for every budget level, a stark difference compared to 2011 and a major reason for the explosive growth both in smartphones and customer growth.

I’m not necessarily starved for choice the way I was in 2011 having chosen the E71 due to the relative lack of compelling phones at the time, but now that I can choose between iOS and Android as well as Windows Phone 8 with the Huawei W1, the question now becomes which platform do I tie myself down to for the next 24 months, as all three have their advantages and disadvantages.

6. Unlocked Devices: Even More Choice

Even with all of the increased choice, I can still choose to forgo buying a branded Straight Talk smartphone and just pull the active SIM from my current phone and buy another device, giving me potentially more choices. My current mission now is finding the perfect device to fit the service I’m using, especially since I still have access to AT&T service and coverage.

My ideal device would actually be the BlackBerry Q10, as it features a similar shape to the E71, though it isn’t widely available as an unlocked device yet and the AT&T-branded version hasn’t been released yet, making it very likely that I won’t be able to just buy one outright when it is launched sometime next month, owing to routinely stupid store and company policies regarding new devices and outright purchases without a plan purchase from AT&T.

Barring that option, this is what I’m currently looking at for an upgrade from my current phone:

• iPhone 5 (64GB Straight Talk version)
• Samsung Galaxy S IV (16GB AT&T version)
• Sony Xperia ZL (Unlocked 16GB version)
• Nokia 808 PureView (Unlocked version)
• Huawei W1 (StraightTalk version)
• HTC One (64GB AT&T version)

While I mull over my options in terms of an upgrade, I’ll close this by saying that I’m glad I chose Straight Talk over other more well-known and better advertised offerings in 2011, even when they weren’t as well-known as they are now.

7. Conclusion

Time will tell if I’ll feel the same 2 more years from now, but these past two years have been a smoother experience than I could have ever expected or wanted from a prepaid service. Will experiences vary? Of course they will, such is the nature of cellular service in the US, especially prepaid service.

What I can say is that anyone paying more than $50 for service a month is doing themselves a great disservice by not looking and shopping around for alternatives to pay less money for identical service per month. Straight Talk currently offers the most options for different needs and situations, something that can’t be said for the majority of virtual operators and even carriers. Will Straight Talk be right for everyone? No, but it should be kept in mind as a viable option when shopping around for prepaid service.

For those of you that may need a cheap phone for international travel soon, Newegg is running the best deal ever on the BLU Samba JR Dual SIM candybar phone.

The phone is being sold for $19.99 before an additional $10 mail-in rebate, bringing the total to $9.99. The phone itself is rather basic with a microSD slot, QWERTY keyboard, 1.3 megapixel camera and FM radio along with built-in Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo!/MSN IM clients. The phone carries a 3-month warranty from BLU Products.

Newegg – Blu Samba JR Dual

Chinese manufacturer Hisense and Walmart have announced a new agreement whereby the companies will cooperate on an exclusive line of Android tablets which will be sold through retail locations and online. The HiSense Sero line will initially consist of the 7 LT and Pro at $99.99 and $149.99 respectively.

As far as specifications are concerned, the LT features a 1.6GHz dual-core CPU, 1GB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage plus a microSD slot with support for 32GB cards, a 1,024 x 600-pixel 7-inch display, 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera, a four-hour battery life and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

The Pro model moves up to a 1.3GHz quad-core Tegra 3 processor, 1GB RAM, 8GB of storage, an upgraded 1,280 x 800 HD display, a 2MP camera up front with a 5MP camera on the rear along with support for NFC, Bluetooth 3.0, mini HDMI out, haptic feedback, GPS support, up to 10 hours of battery life and Android 4.2 Jelly Bean.

The tablets are sure to appeal to those that are looking to a less expensive alternative to the Nexus 7, albeit with additional features not found on that tablet, such as the cameras and microSD slot as well as GPS support and NFC on the higher-end Pro model.

Walmart – Hisense Sero 7 LT 8GB

Walmart – Hisense Sero 7 Pro 16GB

AT&T has announced that it has re-opened official support and access to GoPhone prepaid service to iPhone after a three-year blockade that began with the release of the iPhone 3G.

At the launch of the original iPhone, customers were able to officially activate iPhone on GoPhone without having to institute workarounds, while the launch of the 3G and 3GS forced AT&T to officially exclude the iPhone from prepaid access due to heavier data usage and the drive to sell postpaid accounts while it still had exclusivity. That forced many to use workarounds for GoPhone access until the loopholes were closed indefinitely, the last wave of changes allowed iPhone access again starting 18 months ago.

Now, AT&T is also opening GoPhone access to 4G LTE and HSPA devices, albeit with limitations on plan selection, as as the iPhone and 4G LTE/HSPA+ devices will all require separate data plan packages on the low-end $50/$25 plans, while the higher-end $65 smartphone plan will be reconfigured to support the aforementioned devices without losing Visual Voicemail support or other features required for full HSPA/LTE access on GoPhone.

As of May 24, 2013, new GoPhone customers who activate with an iPhone or 4G/LTE device can use network data. Visual Voicemail is also available, from May 24, 2013, or later, for customers who activate on a GoPhone monthly plan designed for smartphones.
Visual Voicemail is supported on $65, $50, and $25 monthly plans (with compatible devices). Visual Voicemail supports Windows 7.5 or higher, Apple 3GS or newer (with iOS 6.0 or higher), and Compatible Android Devices

While the update to GoPhone service is welcomed, it does follow AT&T’s launch of its first spinoff brand in AiO Wireless, which is a wholly-owned flat-rate prepaid service provider available in select markets in the same vein as T-Mobile’s GoSmart Mobile. Current customers that wish to take advantage of the new changes will be able to call AT&T customer service to manually reprovision their accounts and devices starting today, while over-the-air updates will be pushed out next month on the 21st to enable all devices to be fully GoPhone compatible.

Google has updated the Chrome Beta for Android with additional features, including the following:

• Google Translate: When you come across a page written in a language that isn’t in the same language as your phone or tablet, look for the translation bar
• Fullscreen on tablets: Simply scroll the page to dismiss the toolbar
• Support for fullscreen API
• New graph showing your estimated bandwidth savings when you use the experimental data compression feature
• Mobile friendly error pages

The latest version of Chrome Beta is 28.0.1500.21 and is available now.

Earlier today, Samsung posted two versions of its Developer Edition Galaxy S4 to its Mobile portal, one for AT&T and another version for Verizon.

However, outside of confirmation of a single developer edition announced by Google earlier this month at Google I/O  due to go on sale in two months, the manufacturer had not confirmed any additional variants of the model. The Developer Edition as detailed by Google and being sold through its Nexus sales portal will feature an unlocked bootloader as well as stock Jelly Bean, albeit unlike the Nexus device line, it will not be subsidized by Google or Samsung, with a $649 pricetag.

With the appearance of additional Developer Edition models for both Verizon and AT&T, this has led many to assume that both carriers will also carry their own variants of the same Developer Edition, though as of this posting Samsung has yet to return our requests for comment, being caught completely off guard by the listings. Until we get confirmation, it’s best to assume that the listings were mistakenly added by a developer for their web portal until confirmed otherwise.

However, should the listings pan out (and previous history has shown that such listings have been confirmed after a few days), this would mark a further change in carrier policies regarding Android devices with unlocked bootloaders, as AT&T is also expected to carry a developer version of the HTC One in the future, while Verizon has been typically loathe to support any sort of developer initiative directly, preferring to quietly release devices with locked bootloaders and usually putting off community developer support in favor of general consumer needs.

What has yet to be confirmed is whether the AT&T and Verizon variants will support either Samsung’s TouchWiz overlay or if they’ll ship identically to Google’s forthcoming edition with stock Jelly Bean. As of now we have no word either way and past events have proven that AT&T and Verizon may choose to ship the phones with TouchWiz, while Google may offer the alternative stock Android experience as a separate download, though the odds of such a scenario happening is extremely rare. For now, we at least have the possibility of such a release on two carriers without the implied exclusivity of the Google offering.

Clearwire’s board of directors has officially accepted Sprint’s increased bid for the remainder of the company Sprint does not already own after months of accepting Sprint’s loan facilities and mulling over a shock competing offer from Dish Network. The $3.40/share offer represents a 15% increase from the previous $2.90/share offer made by Sprint in order to purchase the rest of the company it didn’t already own.

The initial offer for the increased was first made yesterday, with the expectation that it would be accepted as quickly as possible, owing to the fact that Clearwire was already making use of the aforementioned loan facilities provided by Sprint for the beleaguered mobile broadband carrier to continue operations in the short-term. The increase represents a total of $2.5 billion for the remaining stake in Clearwire and was increased in order to appease the remaining shareholder holdouts that were against the initial offer.

The Board of Directors and shareholders are expected to reconvene at the end of the month to formally accept and ratify the increased purchase offer. With the imminent purchase, this puts Sprint in an improved position ahead of the completion of the majority stake purchase by SoftBank later this Summer, a purchase frequently attacked by Dish Network in order to poison the well to serve its own ambitions for a mobile network to utilize its own spectrum holdings and to become a “triple-play” service provider, ambitions that have yet to find a solid foundation outside of constant talk from current CEO Charlie Egren.

Hello from Team iConsole.tv

Last week, I had the honor of launching what a few people have been working for quite awhile on, iConsole.tv.

If you aren’t familiar with this, it’s been an effort of mine over the past few years to reinvent the gaming console, and give a new path forward for personal computing on the desktop. As you may know, both gaming consoles and desktop computers are not exactly the hottest things out there today. I believe, for the most part, it’s because they have ignored the advances that mobile computing has emerged.

You may recall from 2009 to 2011, I was working on something similar. During that time, we built an awesome gaming platform and introduced it to developers on MeeGo. Android at the time wasn’t mature enough to do what we wanted. Microsoft cut a billion dollar check to Nokia, and the rest is history. MeeGo died a mere ninety days after we introduced our set-top box platform to developers… and no, we got zero heads up from Intel that they were pulling the plug.

Moving forward, my small team took another good look at Android. With Android 4.0, we saw the start of something that could really take on console-quality gaming, but it wasn’t there yet. In some ways, it’s still in the home stretch. That’s where we started building iConsole.tv.

While we can’t share just yet what the final box will have in terms of specifications, or the final price, we are shipping dev kits this month to developers. It’s a huge accomplishment, and I want to take a moment to thank everyone that has helped along the way. If you haven’t seen iConsole.tv yet, go check it out! Engadget has already declared our dev kit the most powerful Android they’ve ever seen, and we’re continuing to triage a lot of attention. We’ll have a second round of announcements in just a week or two.

Why is this on PhoneNews.com? No, it’s not a shameless plug. I created PhoneNews.com because I wanted to help fight the walled gardens, and keep consumers informed on how the tech sector could be better with mobile technology. At this point in time, I think leading the team at iConsole.tv is how I can best do that.

PhoneNews.com

One of the most painful choices on building iConsole.tv was resource allocation – I couldn’t say why PhoneNews.com was in the proverbial crudster, but engineering iConsole.tv took every ounce of blood, sweat, tears, and yes, cash that was available.

There is an action plan for moving PhoneNews.com forward. Part of it requires us bringing onboard talented writers and editors. We’ve already identified a few people for that task, but we want more.

Honestly, I hope I’m not back to PhoneNews.com, because I’m determined to make iConsole.tv work – it’s the most exciting (albeit, draining) thing I’ve ever done. But it means restructuring PhoneNews.com to spin off into an operation on its own.

Here’s what I’d like you to do. If you know people who understand wireless, really have a passion for it, and have superb writing skills, pass them this link. We realize not everyone can write for PhoneNews.com, but we’re really hopeful that you know someone that can. It’ll help us move PhoneNews.com forward, and help me not have to worry about it.

And, thanks to everyone for tuning in over the years. I’m sure PhoneNews.com is going to keep running strong for years to come. June 30 will mark my tenth year in the blogosphere, but I’m happy to be hanging up my hat a few days before that.