Good Great news for those who managed to snag one of Verizon Wireless’ unlimited data plans before they took off into the night earlier this week: if you’re rocking a 3G smartphone, you can eventually upgrade to an LTE handset, keep the unlimited plan, and have access to a / month 4G tethering plan. That’s according to VZW’s official Support account on Twitter, and it’s decidedly lovely news for those who were concerned that they’d be locked into EV-DO forever. So, anyone had any luck taking Big Red up on its offer?

Verizon: unlimited 3G customers can upgrade to 4G, keep data pack and grab tethering originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Jul 2011 16:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Verizon adds 4G LTE to nine more cities, expands coverage in Chicago, Philadelphia

Verizon adds 4G LTE to nine more cities, expands coverage in Chicago, Philadelphia originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 May 2011 11:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nice timing, Verizon. Just as thousands — possibly zillions — of smartphone users are pondering the switch to Big Red for Apple’s iPhone 4, the carrier has slipped in two critical policy changes that are apparently effective immediately. Tucked within loads of fine print in a new PDF that surfaced on the company’s site, there’s this:

“Verizon Wireless strives to provide customers the best experience when using our network, a shared resource among tens of millions of customers. To help achieve this, if you use an extraordinary amount of data and fall within the top 5 percent of Verizon Wireless data users we may reduce your data throughput speeds periodically for the remainder of your then current and immediately following billing cycle to ensure high quality network performance for other users at locations and times of peak demand. Our proactive management of the Verizon Wireless network is designed to ensure that the remaining 95 percent of data customers aren’t negatively affected by the inordinate data consumption of just a few users.”

To our knowledge, this is the first time that VZW has taken a notable position on throttling, and the link to its stance on net neutrality (as it applies to wireless, anyway) is fairly obvious. What’s most interesting to us is the five percent figure; the top one or two percent isn’t a huge amount, and there’s a good chance that bandwidth abusers are up in that echelon. But we’re guessing that quite a few business travelers will fall within this particular range, and given that VZW now holds the right to throttle data for your existing billing cycle and the next one… well, good luck gritting your teeth and lasting through that two-year contract.

In related news, the company is also implementing optimization and transcoding technologies in its network, which is a politically correct way of explaining that it can downres any multimedia you try to send through Verizon’s pipes. Head on past the break for the full quote.

Continue reading Verizon can now thottle top five percent of bandwidth hogs, downres multimedia uploads

Verizon can now thottle top five percent of bandwidth hogs, downres multimedia uploads originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Feb 2011 12:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For me, the best part of the Super Bowl is the commercials. And after you see this one, you may have to agree. Just note that you’ll have to play the video several times over before you realize there’s a phone there – the Motorola DEVOUR with MOTOBLUR, to be exact. So, what happens when Megan Fox uses her DEVOUR to send out a hot, wet image via a social network?

Read the rest of this entry at MobileCrunch>>

Well that didn’t take too long at all. Just this morning, the Motorola DEVOUR with MOTOBLUR was announced, and now in-the-wild pics and hands on impressions are surfacing on the web. Pictured next to the Nexus One, the DEVOUR looks much smaller than it does in press images. So how does it feel and what can be expected from the device?

Read the rest of this entry at MobileCrunch>>

Writing about tech is so peculiar. On one hand we’re expected to be enthusiastic about the things we cover; no one wants to see us being negative and dismissive about every little thing. That’s no fun. On the other hand, you don’t want a bunch of ninnies bleating on about how great this year’s piece of plastic is compared to last year’s. How is that useful to anyone? A bit of skepticism is necessary so we don’t come across as cheerleaders for this or that company, or for this or that device. You can’t be objective if you worship the ground that the two Steves—Jobs and Ballmer—walk on.

I bring this up not as a condemnation, but rather a recognition: much of this is quite silly. The Motorola Droid comes out today, and my first reaction was, “Eh, so what?” That’s not a popular opinion, of course, and a quick trip to Techmeme will confirm that for you. (Techmeme is a king-making Web site that’s really, really influential for some reason. You can’t fight city hall.) I just can’t get excited over the launch of a device that should have come out years ago. I can recognize its importance to Verizon Wireless (the Droid being the first non-BlackBerry smartphone worth its salt that’s available on VZW), and its place within the wireless industry, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit here and be all, “Woo, a phone is available! Hooray for the corporations behind it~!”

Look at the unemployment numbers that the Department of Labor released today. A full 10.2 percent of Americans are out of work right now. That’s a big deal, and will most certainly affect consumer electronics’ companies bottom line this holiday season. How many of these people (or people in similar, dire economic circumstances) are looking forward to a new smartphone? Or a new HDTV? Or a $150 video game?

I’m actually surprised that I haven’t seen more made of these unemployment numbers. The holiday shopping season starts pretty soon (if it hasn’t already!), and I really do wonder how many of the companies we write about will fare. Not to pick on the Droid again (it’s just in the news today, so it’s in my head), but how many people are prepared to buy the phone for themselves or a family member, and then commit to paying a minimum of $70 per month just to use the thing? How many copies of DJ Hero will be under so many Christmas trees when mommy and daddy are having a tough enough time paying the bills as it is? I’m not saying these things won’t sell at all, but I haven’t noticed too many stories in the tech press that so much as hinted at the tough times these companies might have. Not everyone can swing $200 + $70 per month (for one line!) on a basic communication device. I mean, does a $200 smartphone sound any better than a freebie phone you can grab with a $40 per month contract? As impressive as Android 2.0 is, I don’t know if I’d say it’s any more important than putting food on the table for your kids.

(Incidentally, a comment over at TechCrunch made a similar point, that, you know, providing for one’s family is more important than having the latest version of Android in your pocket.)

I write about this stuff with a few things in mind, one of which is that this is all largely for funsies. It’s fun to see that latest super-thin netbook, or to see what new developments that are in the e-book front. It’s fun to tease the Apple TV for being a useless hunk of junk, and it’s fun to predict to what degree that Apple tablet will destroy its competition. But don’t think I assume that all of you have tons of disposable income to throw around to buy the latest widget, one that’ll be obsolete within six months.

I completely lost track of this some time ago, yes. I just sometimes feel that the whole tech world gets caught up in the hype of THIS THING or THAT THING without considering what’s happening in the real world. A tech bubble, if you will. Just know that I recognize it (as do the rest of the CG guys), and try not to get caught up in it. That’s all.

Image swiped from Drudge. Can’t beat bold, red font.