Matt Stoiber, senior vice president of devices for Cricket, had this to say about the impact the Galaxy S 4 will have on Cricket’s customers:

“The Galaxy S4 redefines the smartphone and we are very proud to offer our customers the highest level of wireless technology on the market.” He continued by adding that “Cricket’s three smartphone rate plans start as low as $45 per month1 and give customers value-packed choices for the plan that’s right for them with unlimited music included.”

Unfortunately, in order for this deal to be worthwhile, potential customers will have to be eligible to get in on the extremely low down payment price. More importantly, customers will have to live in one of Cricket’s LTE coverage areas — which is a small list of locations.

[via engadget]

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 reasonable for someone who just wants a phone that can take a bit of a pounding. But wait, there’s more. The Cat B15 has IP67 specification, which means it’s dust-proof, shock proof, and waterproof for up to 30 minutes when submerged in up to 3.2 feet of water.

The Cat B15 is priced aggressively for a decent unlocked smartphone, with its $350 tag. The company has lofty ambitions of becoming the number one manufacturer of rugged handsets in the world. Although this proclamation is bold, we’re positive Motorola will have something to say about that in the near future. However, with Motorola’s direction being changed by Google, Caterpillar may actually stand a good chance of accomplishing what they are setting out do. After all, there’s a wide open market for rugged handsets.

That said, for any of you interested in buying Caterpillars Cat B15 handset you will only have one source to go through, Quality One Wireless. Hey, that isn’t so bad if you’re really in the market for a rugged phone like this.

[via Phandroid]

It’ll be interesting to see how things change next year, especially given how T-Mobile just recently changed its whole strategy becoming the “UNcarrier.”

Are you satisfied with your wireless provider?

[via bgr]

We’re guessing the point of this augmented reality feature is to make it easier to find the spot you are looking for. This is yet another compelling reason for potential Windows Phone converts to buy a Lumia device over the others.

[Nokia; via engadget]

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 some artists will offer exclusive content such as video interviews.

Now the “established” artist tag is a bit blurry as it doesn’t really give any specifics on the kind of artists Pandora is talking about. For instance, will we ever see superstar acts like Jay-Z, Kanye West, or Foo Fighters hit this Premiere section? That question is yet to be answered.

This is an interesting move by Pandora given how the music streaming business is heating up with plenty of valuable candidates in the market for consumers to choose from. Pandora is doing what it has to do to keep its lead in the music streaming business, however, there’s nothing stopping a Spotify or Rdio of doing the same.

[Pandora; via CNET]

The government looks to be just about done with those obsolete BlackBerry 7 handsets that’s grown synonymous with the image of public figures. Now if only stock Android could join the party.

[Bloomberg; via engadget]

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. Furthermore, users have the choice to get rid of specific songs that isn’t exactly their cup of tea.

Priced at $9.99 a month, Google Play All Access matches Spotify and Rdio. However, if you join within the next 30-days (before June 30), you’ll get locked in at $7.99 a month.

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.

Highlights of BlackBerry 10.1

BlackBerry Hub manages all of your conversations

BlackBerry Hub helps you stay organized, in control and on top of all of your conversations, and with BlackBerry 10.1, it just keeps getting better. You can now view emails that are attached to another email, get contact suggestions when you start addressing a message, and send PIN to PIN messages for direct communication between BlackBerry smartphones.

Personalize your Notifications

BlackBerry 10.1 allows you to set up personalized notifications for your contacts and accounts. Customize ringtones, vibrations and the LED light for calls or message from each of your friends, family or colleagues. You can also set up a different notification for different accounts (such as for different email accounts, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

Click to call

You can now click on a phone number in an email or BBM message to call the number or copy and paste it right onto the dialer screen in the phone app.

Better cursor control

BlackBerry 10.1 offers better cursor control making it easier to accurately place the cursor and select text. Just tap once to bring up the cursor control, grab the blue circle and drag it around to the insertion point that you want. Improved visual feedback lets you know where you’re pointing. You can also tap either side of the circle to move forward or backward one character at a time.

Improved picture capturing

BlackBerry 10.1 adds an HDR (high dynamic range) shooting mode for taking beautiful images in tricky lighting conditions. High Dynamic Range (HDR) mode takes multiple pictures at different exposure levels and layers them automatically to produce a single photo that combines the best of the dark and light areas. It also includes improved red eye and golden eye reduction in the picture editor.

More to discover with BlackBerry 10.1

You’ll find a number of new enhancements across the BlackBerry 10 OS like landscape support for the calendar, easier international dialing and so much more. The first step to discovering these new features on your BlackBerry Z10 smartphone is to update your BlackBerry 10 software.

Updating is easy

Updating to BlackBerry 10.1 is free and easy to do. To update your BlackBerry Z10 smartphone to BlackBerry 10.1 look for the alert in the notifications section of the BlackBerry Hub. You can also check for software updates through the software updates section in the Settings menu or through the BlackBerry Link desktop software. The download will happen in the background and the update will be applied without needing to back up your smartphone. All of your information remains safe. For more information on how to update your BlackBerry Z10 smartphone, visit www.BlackBerry.com/update.

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 Windows Phone doesn’t mark it as read on other devices, etc.

[via wmpoweruser]

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 outside of the device. However, judging from the light and dark grey 925’s in the image above, we may see aluminum instead — which isn’t bad at all.

Regardless to whatever material the phone is made of – it should be a compelling choice for those folks on Verizon looking for a credible Windows Phone option.

[@evleaks; via The Verge]

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 flop. In turns out that those reports might have been correct given how true this BGR source is.

The second largest wireless provider in the U.S. will drop the device and return all unsold inventory back to HTC. Ouch. The site didn’t give any specifics on how much unsold inventory was left over, but their source confirmed that AT&T sold fewer than 15,000 units nationwide. So we’d expect a hefty amount of handsets still sitting around in stores.

In fact, these sales figures are so bad, the First has outdone 2011’s HTC Chacha. The phone hasn’t been well received from customers nor AT&T employees. Apparently, no one cares for the handset. AT&T won’t pull the phone from its display until HTC’s in-store display contract for the First expires.

This is a bad sign for Facebook and HTC as both companies try to jock for its place in the lucrative mobile device market. Facebook will have to go back to the drawing board to make Facebook Home more compelling for Android, while HTC has to come out with that next impressive device to go along side the One.

[via bgr]