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Pebble Introduces iPhone Message Reply to Pebble Time

Pebble introduces iPhone message reply to Pebble Time line of smartwatches as the features seems to be increasingly attractive.

The voice control feature now enables iPhone users to act upon messaging notification received on their Pebble Time smartwatches. Replying to incoming messages becomes an easy task to be performed directly from your wrist. The messages can either be dictated or one can choose from a wide array of preset messages fit to the situation.

Pebble Time has introduced the same feature for Android some time ago. However, this is the first time it’s being rolled out for iPhone. Considering Apple restrictions regarding this party accessories, the fact that Pebble introduces iPhone message reply to Pebble Time should be considered a success.

Apple does provide this feature. However, it targets specifically Apple Watch and the iPhone. Pebble has found a way to overcome this hurdle and has announced that the voice control feature is and the messages will be routed through the carrier rather than iPhone’s messages. The tricky part is that for now, it only has one partner, and that is AT&T.

The voice control feature for message replies on Pebble Time is available for post-paid AT&T customers. The messages sent from the Pebble Time will not be found in the iPhone’s messaging app. At the same time, they will be sent at text messages, prompting a green bubble to show up on the receiver’s display. Group messages aren’t supported by the feature at the moment.

As for other carriers, Pebble announced that it is taking steps in this direction. Yet no definitive timeline has been set in place.

Nonetheless, adding the voice control feature overcomes one of the biggest barriers that using any other smartwatch than the Apple Watch with an iPhone put up. With a more open approach, the wearables becomes more useful. Especially for iPhone users.

Receiving notifications on any smartwatch is useful. How companies choose to deal with customers being able to act on the notifications is another. With voice control limitations related to the reduced input methods or the small screen of smartwatches are overcome.

Photo Credits: Wikimedia

Nokia Lumia 950 Starts Selling Tomorrow with AT&T

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No need to hold your breath anymore. Nokia Lumia 950 starts selling tomorrow with AT&T, available for preorder. The official start date is set on November 20th.

At this moment AT&T is the only U.S. carrier that announced Lumia 950. Verizon and Sprint are out of the deal at this point, and news on T-Mobile selling Lumia 950 or Lumia 950XL are nowhere to be found for the moment. The certain thing is that Nokia Lumia 950 starts selling tomorrow with AT&T.

The first smartphones complete with Windows 10 are here. Lumia 950 is up for pre-order tomorrow. However, the larger and slightly better Lumia 950XL hasn’t been announced yet. Perhaps it would be wise to order that one from Microsoft or wait until Microsoft decides to expand availability, if it happens.

A quick recap on Lumia 950’s features. For starters, it packs of course a Qualcomm hexa-core Snapdragon 808 chipset. The phone also sports 3GB of RAM, making it level with for instance Moto X Pure. Moreover, with the separate display dock it offers the possibility to elegantly and effortlessly turn your phone into an actual mini-computer. Windows 10 plays a nice trick here.

Lumia 950 features a 5.2-inch WQHD screen. In addition, the 20 MP of this phone’s camera is bound to make Lumia 950 topple Lumia 1020 from fans’ favorite lists. So far, it adds to a pretty good choice in the Lumia portfolio.

The price for Lumia 950 with AT&T is set at 600 dollars without a contract. The carrier offers the possibility that the lump sum is divided in several monthly options, each with its quirks. However, to make the deal more bearable, AT&T is throwing in a Surface 3 as well.

This is the first time in almost two years that Microsoft is releasing a flagship Windows phone. In 2013, AT&T also announced the Lumia 1520.

Photo Credits: geeky-gadgets.com

AT&T Has to Explain Itself Before the FCC

Earlier this week, AT&T announced that they would put their plan to deliver the installation of one gigabit-a-second hyper speed fiber network in 100 cities in the United States on hold. While the initial plan made millions of Americans happy about the new infrastructure and the benefits coming with it, now the same expansion program raises concern. Chicago, San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cleveland and Miami now just have to wait to be blessed with high – speed fiber Internet, provided the company resumes its previous plans. But AT&T has to explain itself before the FCC for this decision, as this delay reaches the highest levels of public interest.

AT&T motivated the push back of the Internet super speed fiber program on the grounds of losing money if the FCC strengthens its net neutrality policies. On the one hand, we have the Obama administrations and President Obama himself wanting to expand the FCC’s role in regulating broadband networks. This debate sparked heavy controversy among telecom giants, AT&T included. Last week, a rather upset AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson declared that

“If you can’t bring new products to service at your speed, not the government’s speed, if you can’t change prices at the market speed, not the government’s speed, why would you ever make these investments? So we’re on a pause mode right now.”

What Stephenson didn’t see coming was the FCC’s letter, due to which AT&T has to explain itself and present a heap of documents to motivate the delay of the plans. Keeping in mind that AT&T still needs to obtain the FCC’s approval on the merger with DirectTV, the telecom giant is now put in a difficult position.

They basically need to prove that going on with the installation of the fiber network covering 100 U.S. cities would turn to be unprofitable under Obama’s regulations. However, if they prove this, all conclusions will reflect upon the merger with DirectTV, a deal which has as main goal the wiring of two million homes across the country.

Being between a rock and a hard place is an understatement, but AT&T has to explain itself and comply with the FCC request in one week. While the US Federal Communications Commission is not convinced about AT&T’s math, the company got authorities’ attention. Alex Macgillivray, Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer, gave an interview to Washington Post earlier this week. One of the most powerful and awareness – raising statements he made was

“It’s not every day that a business says that they’re not going to do something that’s good for their customers. That’s a strong statement.”

AT&T has to explain itself in front of the FCC and present all the convincing documents. The date to pay attention to is November 21, as the FCC decision most likely will affect not only the population, but also public policies.

AT&T Brings Gigabyte Internet to Nashville

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Americans are craving for faster internet, but providers are not moving fast enough in this direction. Google Fiber seems to have provided strong incentives for other internet providers to start taking consumers seriously. Nashville will soon benefit from an astounding internet speed, as AT&T brings Gigabyte internet to the city.

Earlier this month Acatel-Lucent announced a ground-breaking discovery. Their researchers managed to achieve a data transfer speed of 10 Gbps using the classical copper wire. The news is great because if the technology is deployed, it might drastically reduce the implementation costs for providers.

At&T released a press statement confirming the expansion of its ‘ultra-fast network’. The 1 Gbps will be symmetrically available for downloading and uploading. The At&T Gigapower Network will provide ‘cutting edge TV services’. Clients will be able to record up to five HD streams in the same time. Nashville customers will be able to download 25 songs in one second, a TV show in less than 3 seconds and an HD movie in less than 36 seconds. This is pretty impressive.

AT&T brings Gigabyte internet to Nashville, but not time frame was set

As expected, everybody from Nashville is very excited, starting with mayor Dean, who said that “This kind of technology is important to keep our city vibrant and attractive, and it is further proof of how Nashville is positioned as a city of the future. We look forward to working with AT&T as they bring this exciting new service to our residents.” AT&T announced its intentions, but so far no dates have been set and prices are not disclosed.

A couple of months ago, AT&T announced it will expand the ultra-fast internet to up to 100 candidate cities. In the meantime, the company worked to offer the upgraded service to some Texas cities. The announcement states that AT&T might provide the ultra-fast internet in other five other Tennessee areas – Clarksville, Franklin, Murfreesboro, Smyrna, and Spring Hill.

Google included Nashville in its list of 34 cities where Google Fiber might be rolled out. If this happens, Nashville will be one of the luckiest cities in the U.S. At the moment most customers are very displeased with the current performance of their internet speed. Google Fiber is widely expected to make a difference across the U.S. AT&T brings Gigabyte internet after Google Fiber started offering it in 2012 in Kansas City.

The AT&T Data Breach May Affect Your Banking So Watch Out!

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It seems that hackers and cyber bullies are getting a lot of nerve these days, so they go after larger and larger companies. If you remember the news in May, we alerted everybody to change their eBay passwords, as over 140 million user accounts have been hacked.

Also in May we reported that Spotify got hacked and all Android users were urged to keep their eyes peeled for patches. Luckily, in both these past cases, no severe damage has been done.

Unfortunately, serious threats are now hanging above the heads of AT&T users, whose social security numbers and dates of birth, among others, have been stolen in a hacking scheme.

Let’s see this story from its beginning. The AT&T data breach didn’t take place yesterday, but between April 9 and April 21. The cyber attack wasn’t performed by some secret hacking society, but by three employees of one of the company’s vendors. According to the news, the AT&T data breach was reported only last Friday and the company officials didn’t disclose the exact number of accounts that have been hacked.

An official AT&T statement explains what happened:

We recently learned that three employees of one of our vendors accessed some AT&T customer accounts without proper authorization. This is completely counter to the way we require our vendors to conduct business. We know our customers count on us and those who support our business to act with integrity and trust, and we take that very seriously. We have taken steps to help prevent this from happening again, notified affected customers, and reported this matter to law enforcement.

If you are an AT&T user and you received a snail mail telling you that you have been affected by the AT&T data breach, the wisest thing you can do is watch out for anything remotely fraudulent happening to your credit card, banking details and so on. A full change of passwords and supplementary safety measures are also in order. The carrier announced all its hacked customers they would receive one year of credit monitoring services free of charge.

There is also an official letter AT&T sends to its customers you might want to read top to bottom if you are an AT&T user. So far, there are few details missing out of the picture, but we’re sure we will find out about them at some point. Briefly, there are at least two questions that beg for an answer:

1. Why did AT&T wait almost two months before reporting the security breach to the authorities?

2. What happened to the three employees responsible for this fraudulent act? Were they identified / caught / arrested?

What is of utmost importance right now is for you to check for any sign of suspect activity related to your social security number in case you feel you might have been hacked.

AT&T Is Rumored to Buy DirectTV

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Recent reports and rumors roaming around the tech world these days focus mainly on the said intent of AT&T to buy DirectTV for a rough of $50 billion or $100 per share. AT&T is rumored to buy DirectTV by people familiar with the undergoing negotiations who preferred to preserve their anonymity because the deal and its details are not yet public. However, since this leak, many financial and tech analysts started sharing their opinions related to this subject. According to them, this may become a historical deal. In the words of Alex Sherman and Jeffrey McCracken from Bloomberg News,

The purchase would give AT&T a national satellite-TV provider to combine with its wireless, phone and high-speed broadband Internet services as competition ramps up. The pool of pay-TV customers is peaking in the U.S. because viewers are increasingly watching video online, and the combination would keep DirecTV from being on its own with just a TV offering and no competitive Internet package.

The deal is supposed to be officially announced in about a week from now, but by the looks of it, AT&T is apparently coming up from behind its competitors, as Comcast Corp. is trying to buy Time Warner Cable Inc. since the beginning of this year. While considered a “industry-redefining deal” by AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, the acquisition process involving Comcast and Time Warner Cable is still slowed down by the regulatory steps necessary to be taken.

Back to the fact that AT&T is rumored to buy DirectTV, the same undisclosed sources said that DirectTV will still operate independently as an AT&T unit ran by its own management team. DirectTV is the largest satellite TV provider in the United States and it is clear that AT&T takeover will consolidate the company’s position not only in the U.S., but in Latin America too, according to some analyses conducted by specialists.

AT&T would be getting a pay-TV business that’s expanding in Latin America and generating higher monthly bills from U.S. customers. DirecTV’s exclusive content includes the National Football League Sunday Ticket package and products such as Genie, a multiroom digital video recorder.

For now, AT&T is on the verge of expanding its services on a very large scale and even if the regulatory hurdle will take about 12 months, it seems that there is no turning back. We will soon witness the “holistic market” the specialists are talking about for years, with a few tech giants running the show. All we can do is wait for more details about the deal between AT&T and DirectTV to leak or get officially confirmed.

AT&T News: In-Flight High-Speed Internet Is Coming

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AT&T announced that it will be teaming up with Honeywell to offer its clients high-speed in flight-internet. The company made the announcement on Monday and it appears that it will be competing with another in-flight internet provider, Gogo, the industry leader. Gogo’s shares dropped 14% following AT&T news. The new service promised by AT&T will use a 4G LTE network and Honeywell systems and hardware that will supply broadband service to commercial, business and general aviation passengers. The new service will also be available to airlines that seek a high-speed connection onboard.

Honeywell announced that the deal with AT&T will bring them about $1 billion in revenue in the next ten years. AT&T refused to say what their revenue from the agreement will be. Honeywell also said that the two parties have signed a letter of intent and are expecting to sign the formal contract in the nearest future.

The competitor, Gogo is currently providing similar “air-to-ground” cellular network based technology. Their services are used by about 80% of wired American commercial aircraft. This included Delta Air Lines and American Airlines. After Gogo’s shares dropped abruptly, Mike Small, the Chief Executive said that Gogo has been in the business for the last 20 years and it’s doing great. They have announced recently that they will be launching a service that will provide internet over water. This will use a dual antenna that will produce speeds of 70 mb per second, in comparison with their air-to-ground speed of 9.8 Mps.

Honeywell announced that the new AT&T system will provide super high-speed and a greater bandwidth than any other existing systems. They didn’t give out any approximate figures about the speed, though.

AT&T said that the upcoming airborne internet connectivity service will fit perfectly in their future strategy of adding internet connectivity to various applications, from homes to cars. AT&T currently has about 116 million subscribers in the US.

AT&T news – teaming up with Honeywell to bring in-flight high-speed internet

AT&T wants to provide greater internet speed and this would make it easier for pilots to communicate with each other and with the crew members. This will help provide real-time weather tracking and reports on plane parts.

What are your thoughts on the latest AT&T news? Do you use it as your internet provider or do you use others? Do you think that their partnership with Honeywell will be successful? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.

Samsung Galaxy S5 is Available for Ordering from AT&T

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Whoever was interested in the new gadgets showcased last month in Barcelona, Spain, at the Mobile World Congress knows that the new Samsung Galaxy S5 is something to look forward to in the niche of smartphones. While the specs of the new Galaxy S5 were leaked a long time ago, the world saw with its own eyes the new Samsung flagship, a worthy competitor for the iPhone family, in the opinion of some experts.

The Galaxy S5 comes with a 16-megapixel camera that goes well with a screen diagonal of 5.1 inches and a 1,920×1,080 full HD resolution display which is superior to the iPhone 5S’s video and footage display capabilities. As we got used to already, this new Galaxy S5 comes with the AMOLED screen technology, while it works on a Snapdragon 801 processor which 2.5GHz. The new Galaxy S5 took the cake from the iPhone 5S as it comes with a 2GB of RAM memory (twice in comparison to the iPhone), but only with two storage versions, one offering 16GB of storage and the other 32GB of storage, with the added benefit of allowing a micro SD card slot to be used with a maximum of a 128 GB card.

But without getting too far from the initial point, starting Friday, the Samsung Galaxy S5 is available for ordering from AT&T. The carrier is open to orders and will ship the new smartphone within a few weeks, accompanied by a price of $650 if you don’t opt for the contract, or a $200 price if you also contract a two – years service agreement. But don’t fret, as Samsung made sure everybody knows that the new Galaxy S5 is going to be available for worldwide shipping at the beginning of April.

The good collaboration between AT&T and Samsung seems to strengthen, as the carrier will also sell the wearable Samsung family, namely the Galaxy Gear 2 smartwatch at an announced price of $299, while Samsung’s ambition to provide the world with worthy wearable gadgets is unstoppable, the tech giant announcing the Gear 2 Neo and the Gear Fit – two low – end smartwatches with fewer features and a cheaper price – coming soon. So far, the Samsung Galaxy S5 is available for ordering from AT&T and if you are a Samsung fan, keep your eyes open to the offers.

LG G Flex reportedly coming to US carriers AT&T and T-Mobile

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Samsung may be fine with keeping the Galaxy Round in South Korea, but LG have big plans for the G Flex, their first flexible smartphone. The LG G Flex wowed a few millions viewers on YouTube, not for the rounded display, but for the self-healing back cover.

It may be a bit of a big jump for the LG G Flex, but according to a new leaked image by Evleaks, the flexible smartphone will be coming to both AT&T and T-Mobile in the coming months, bringing the first flexible phone to US soil.

The LG G Flex has already passed through the FCC database, making it certified to be sold in the United States. It was only a matter of time before a carrier picked it up and the two most open carriers have come forward, we are actually surprised T-Mobile is going to sell the smartphone.

We have seen a Sprint version swimming about, but there is no clear release date in sight and the carrier may end up not selling the smartphone. We do have dates for the two others, T-Mobile on March 12 and AT&T on March 17.

As we expected, Verizon Wireless is the only major carrier in the US not interested in the LG G Flex. The thing about Verizon is even though they carry a smaller line of products, normally all the ones that do well are available on their service.

The LG G Flex is a nice phone to try out, but we cannot see that many sales happening for the flexible device. Apart from the self-healing back that markets to a niche audience who really want a clean smartphone, there is no real feature to draw users in.

The flexible display isn’t really “flexible” since it is still incased in a plastic shell and the software is just the same old LG skin over Android, with a few customisations for the rounded screen.

Even though AT&T and T-Mobile may see the interest as enough, we cannot see the interest turning into actual paying customers.

HTC M8 to be available on four major carriers in Q1 2014

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We have had quite a few rumors on the HTC M8 in the past week, pointing to some truth on the notion HTC will announce their new flagship smartphone early this year and it will come with the same design as the HTC One and possibly the same name.

According to a new report, the HTC M8 will land on all four major carriers in the US following its announcement at one of the big events early in 2014. This is a big deal for HTC, who have struggled previously to grab the support of all carriers.

The HTC One did manage to grab all support but Verizon Wireless took a few months to actually pick up the smartphone. The idea is that with the HTC M8 we will see all four carriers announce availability straight after the release of the smartphone.

Availability is not the only problem for HTC, last year the HTC One was out of stock in most places for a good two months. Problems with the Ultrapixel camera made the HTC One unavailable for a time in the US and may have lost HTC a huge amount of potential sales.

The HTC M8 may be a fix to all the problems HTC had in the short term, from the brief overview we got of the new specs, it looks like a slightly upgraded version of the HTC One, nothing that should push the availability or stock out of the water, at least in the short term.

Specs include the Snapdragon 800 chip, 3GB of RAM, 16/32GB of internal storage, an updated Ultrapixel camera and 2560 x 1600 5-inch display. The last part is really exciting and HTC will not be the only ones offering a new high-res display, with the Galaxy S5 and Xperia Z2 expected to up-the-ante for MWC.