Posted by Jonathan Pentecost on Mon, Jun 04, 2012
..if you have one, that is.
The buzz all around the Internet these days is about the release of Samsung’s “Galaxy S III” smartphone. According to the http://news.yahoo.com/samsung-galaxy-iii-invades-u-beginning-month-113538279.html website, it is the first time that Samsung will be using the same name for the device regardless of the carrier it is on (AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless). Previously, each carrier had a different name of the device in order to blend in with the other smartphones that the particular wireless carrier used for phones. The Galaxy S III is set to be available this month by all above named carriers, as well as U.S. Cellular, so you should be able to get one soon if you are so lucky!!
I personally have an HTC Thunderbolt and have loved it ever since I made the switch from the Windows Mobile platform. I used to be an MS guy all the way, but seeing the HTC Android that a friend of mine had, it looked very appealing. It had many more features and options that I just didn’t have. There was no “store” that I could browse to from the phone to download new apps, there was no built-in GPS (I have MS Streets and Trips and the GPS unit would need a converter to connect to the phone), and the screen was much smaller. The Thunderbolt has the Google Play store (formerly Google Market) for easily (and for the most part, free) downloading new apps, has built-in GPS that integrates with both Google maps for planning trips and Navigation for on-the-go turn-by-turn directions, as well as having a nice screen. Granted, I do miss my old QWERTY keyboard on my old phone that I could slide out and use easily, but I have adapted to the on-screen keyboard on the Android phone.
So what smartphone do you have and what stories do you have about trading up or trading in? Would you like to know more about offerings that Trigon Technology has about our Mobile IT Solutions for Philadelphia? Contact us and we can work with your SMB to develop a plan that best suits your needs.
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Fri, Sep 24, 2010
Wall Street Journal:
Verizon Chief Executive Ivan Seidenberg said Verizon Wireless's new data plans, which will likely roll out over the next four to six months, would be different from AT&T's plans, but he didn't provide details.
"We're not sure we agree yet with how they valued the data," he said at an investor conference Thursday.
If I were a Verizon subscriber, that last sentence would scare the pants off of me.
The cheaper, popular, ATT smartphone data plan is only $15/month for 200MB. Many iPhone users hover around that level either because they aren’t super nerds that browse the web all day on their enterprise network, or are near Wi-Fi while away from home. If you’re feeling fruity, there is the $25/month plan for anything under 2GB. I usually don’t get that high but I do come close. (Refreshing the Twitter is hard, painstaking work.) But that doesn’t matter as I was grandfathered in thanks to the now defunct unlimited data plan.
Verizon will be moving to a similar system, but if their CEO thinks ATT didn’t value their data appropriately, my guess is the Verizon alternatives will be more expensive. And why wouldn’t they price them higher?
I’m loathe to bring up the iPhone when taking about Verizon, but dammit, I’m going to do it right now. Let’s say that ATT no longer has exclusivity with the iPhone, and both carriers can sell it. Even better, as a super awesome managed services IT support company, that means we can support more folks. Who will the general public choose between ATT & Verizon for the iPhone; a carrier that has zero public history with dropping calls, or the one that has seemingly failed iPhone users for nearly 4 years?
I’d bet that the prospective iPhone owner wouldn’t care about paying an extra $5 or $10 a month for some peace of mind. And even if we’re just talking about someone looking for a smartphone in general, outside of the iPhone and the new Galaxy S phone, what does ATT even have to offer?
Verizon could charge $35 for 2GB of data and customers would still choose them over ATT.
Time to grab some VZW stock.
Posted by Matt Kolowski on Mon, Jul 12, 2010
No, I’m not talking about Windows Phone 7, which IT Support Engineers like me are actually excited about. I’m talking about the Microsoft KIN phones. They were billed as the new-ish SideKick phones for tweens and the like. Microsoft calls them the “upload generation”. HA!
I guess you could now call them the “I’m not dumb enough to buy your POS phone that doesn’t do anything I want generation”. Am I right, folks!?
The KIN one & two phones were slim on features but really concentrated on kids that wanted their social content all at once: Myspace, the Twitter, RSS Feeds, and Facebook. They all showed up in the main screen updating through the day. The problem was these feeds only updated every 15 minutes. Oh well, you still had email, right? Sure, if you had a LIVE account. Otherwise, beat it. Obviously this phone is not something we'd recommend for Mobile IT solutions.
Oof.
Not to worry. It’s not like these kids are in the smartphone market. They want a cheap phone with an also cheap monthly plan so they can text their little hearts out. What? The phones were $50 and $100 after rebate? And they *had* to be sold with a Verizon Smartphone monthly contract, like any DROID phone? Good grief, Charlie Brown. That’s just silliness.
One can only hope that Microsoft has learned from these mistakes and will push forward with Windows Phone 7…right?
(cue ominous music)
