Holiday Gift Guide »
RSS

Posts by Charles West

Cricket to launch Samsung Galaxy S 4 on June 7, with $55 down payment

Cricket has announced that it will be offering the Samsung Galaxy S 4 phone on June 7th. This is big news for those who want the phone but don’t want to get in a two-year commitment with the one of the major four wireless providers. Although Cricket is coming to the GS4 party a bit late, they’ve stepped their game up by offering the device with a ridiculously low down payment fee of 55 bucks. Matt Stoiber, senior vice president of devices for Cricket, had this to say about the impact the … Read more

Galaxy S4 stock photos 2 days ago

Charles West

Caterpillar CAT B15 rugged Android phone makes US debut, priced at $350

Caterpillar has officially launched its extremely rugged Android smartphone called the Cat B15 in the U.S. This comes after the device hit the United Kingdom first last month for 300 GBP. The company’s durable handset comes with some decent features and specs that aren’t anything to sneeze at. Specs include the following: 4-inch WVGA display MediaTek MT6577 1GHz dual-core processor 1GB of RAM 4GB of internal storage 5 megapixel rear camera with 720p video recording VGA front camera GPS microSD card slot Runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean These specs are more than … Read more

cat-b15-640x339 2 days ago

Charles West

Verizon snags top spot for customer service in latest survey

Once again, Verizon has topped all other major U.S. carriers in the latest survey for customer service. According to the annual American Customer Satisfaction Index survey, Big Red was ranked highest in customer service quality by subscribers. The survey was conducted by using a 100 point system. Verizon scored 73 points, while Sprint came in second place scoring 71 points; AT&T came in third followed by T-Mobile taking the fourth spot. It’ll be interesting to see how things change next year, especially given how T-Mobile just recently changed its whole … Read more

Verizon-logo 2 days ago

Charles West

Nokia Lumia phones get exclusive Foursquare augmented reality feature

It looks like owners of Windows Phone powered Nokia Lumia handsets is getting another perk when it comes to apps and features. Foursquare is granting Nokia devices access to a small set of exclusive features in the latest update. The major addition being touted is a new augmented reality view that puts venue information right in your live camera view. To access it, all users have to do is tap the camera icon at the top of the map screen. We’re guessing the point of this augmented reality feature is … Read more

WP-Foursquare 3 days ago

Charles West

Pandora to let users listen to unreleased albums a week in advance

Pandora today launched a new service called Pandora Premieres, which lets subscribers stream unreleased albums from well-established artist a week in advance. This comes after Google launched its own service called ‘All Access’ to the market at Google I/O last week. The way Pandora Premieres works is users get access to any track on a featured album, regardless of the order, without any limits to how many times the album is listened to. This can go on for the time period the album is available on the station. In addition … Read more

Pandora_Premieres_610x340 3 days ago

Charles West

iOS 6 gets green light from the US Defense Department

Good news for Apple as the company’s iOS 6 software just received clearance from the United States Defense Department. This undoubtedly sets the stage for the iPhone and iPad to become standard commonplace in the hands of workers in the Pentagon.  This comes to no ones surprise, considering how the approval of the DoD has been rumored for some time now. Apple’s iOS 6 joins Samsung running the Knox security suite and BlackBerry 10 devices. The government looks to be just about done with those obsolete BlackBerry 7 handsets that’s … Read more

4siphone 7 days ago

Charles West

Google I/O 2013: Google announces ‘All Access’ music streaming service, goes after Spotify and Pandora

Google announced its long-rumored music streaming competitor to Spotify, Pandora, and Rdio called All Access. Much like other music providers, All Access lets users hear new and favorite music when they want and not ask them to upload their personal libraries of existing songs. All Access brings a unique feature called “Listen Now,” which offers an experience Google’s Chris Yerga calls “radio without rules.” Listen Now curates and produces playlists to listen to on the fly, and offers genre-specific stations that can create queues based on the music you like. … Read more

Google-AllAccess-1 1 week ago

Charles West

BlackBerry Z10 to finally get OS 10.1 update today

At the BlackBerry Live event today the troubled company announced many new features and products. One of those new products included the entry level BlackBerry Q5, which is a cheaper version of the Q10 with different colors. The company also announced that it would be finally rolling out the latest version operating system 10.1 to the Z10. OS 10.1 comes with some much-needed improvements, including HDR camera, improved apps, Instant Action, battery improvements and much more. Here’s the full description of features and improvements provided by BlackBerry.

bbz10 1 week ago

Charles West

Skype for Windows Phone updated, brings added reliability and other fixes

Skype for Windows Phone just got updated to version 2.6. This new update is predominantly filled with many fixes along with some new and changed features. Here’s how the full notes breakdown: increased chat reliability increased call notification reliability improvements in call reliability to phone numbers There’s also some problems in the earlier version software that was addressed such as known issues like calls keep ringing when answered on a different device, or ended by the caller, video stops when the call is in the background, reading a message on … Read more

Microsoft retires Windows Live Messenger in favor of Skype 1 week ago

Charles West

Nokia Lumia 925 spotted in leaked picture

Nokia’s London event is fast approaching, so it’s only natural that its newest device leaks on the internet before its officially announced to the world. Thanks to yet another leaked image by the notorious @evleaks, we’re able to see what appears to be Nokia’s latest handset encased in aluminum. The Nokia Lumia 925 is expected to hit Verizon, but it might also be released as international version as well. From the beginning, the rumors have suggested that the phone may be launching with a plastic or aluminum frame around the … Read more

Nokia-Lumia-925-EV 2 weeks ago

Charles West

AT&T discontinues the HTC First ‘Facebook phone’, due to “shockingly bad” sales

Well, this didn’t take long. AT&T has decided to pull the plug on the HTC First ‘Facebook phone’ after only being on the market for a few weeks. According to a trusted source obtained by BGR, the First is getting canned due to “shockingly bad” sales. This should come to no one’s surprise considering the scathing reports that were suggesting pedestrian sales numbers, which made AT&T drop the price of the phone to a meager $0.99 — beginning the whispers of the HTC First being the social giants first official … Read more

HTC first 2 weeks ago

Charles West