LG G2 Coming to T-Mobile, Verizon This Month

LG's newest flagship device finally has a U.S. release date - two, actually. Verizon will be the first to offer the LG G2 when it goes on sale Sept. 12 for $200 with a two-year contract. Meanwhile, T-Mobile is taking preorders for the smartphone today, with expected availability on Sept. 18. The cost is $100 down and 24 equal payments of $21. Introduced in August, the G2 is LG's latest effort to make a dent in the U.S. market; it features a 5.2-inch HD touchscreen and 13-megapixel camera. AT&T and Sprint are also expected to offer the device.

New OEM Verizon LG Accolade VX5600 Belt Clip Holster

New OEM Verizon LG Accolade VX5600 Belt Clip Holster

• Belt Clip Holster

Enjoy the convenience of easy access to your phone while attached to your belt, purse, backpack etc.....

Netflix Performance on FiOS Dropped Another 17 Percent in June

Verizon Internet customers who want to watch Netflix at high quality and without interruption just can't catch a break. While Comcast subscribers saw near-immediate speed improvements after Netflix paid for a direct connection to the Comcast network, Netflix performance on Verizon remains poor-and it's getting worse. Netflix's latest ISP speed rankings, released today, show that the average prime time streaming speed on Verizon FiOS dropped from 1.9Mbps in May to 1.58Mbps in June, a decline of 17 percent. Verizon DSL dropped from 1.05Mbps to 0.91Mbps, a decrease of 13 percent. Verizon FiOS previously dropped from 1.99Mbps in April to 1.9Mbps in May, while Verizon DSL had dropped from 1.08Mbps in April to 1.05Mbps in May.

Read the full story at Ars Technica.

Verizon OEM 3.5mm Handsfree Headset Wired Dual Earbuds Stereo Earphones Mic for Straight Talk LG Optimus Zip, Motorola Defy XT, Motorola EX431G, Samsung Galaxy Centura, Galaxy Precedent, Samsung Galaxy Proclaim, Samsung Galaxy S 2 SGH-S959

• High Quality Premium Verizon Brand Ergonomic Wired Headset with 3.5mm headset connector. Excellent audio quality.
• Brand new high quality OEM Verizon MP3 earbud and hands-free headset for your phone/tablet/mp3.
• Includes a Send / End key on the mic to allow you to receive and end calls with the push of a button.
• This Headsets allow private stereo music and hands-free phone calls.
• In-line microphone: Microphone reduces background noise, & increases the volume & clarity of your voice transmission.

Verizon OEM Universal 3.5mm Stereo hands free, Ear-bud Style headset, Black, with Send/ End button and microphone. Verizon 3.5 mm universal port Stereo hands free, ear bud style headset is specifically designed to fit 3.5 mm universal port stereo cell phone models with a sensitive microphone and stereo audio output built-in! In-line microphone: Microphone reduces background noise, & increases the volume & clarity of your voice transmission. Molded audio adapter is integrated in-line, to eliminate static connections. Excellent audio quality enabling the use of your cell phone's built-in stereo output, hands free! Drive more safely with both hands on the wheel!

Price: $29.95

Report: Verizon’s ‘VZ Edge’ Would Let Customers Pay Monthly for Smartphones, Upgrade Early

Back in April, after extending upgrade periods to a full 24 months, Verizon introduced a new device payment that would allow customers to upgrade phones by purchasing them at full prices with the payments spread out over a 12-month period. According to sources of ours, Verizon will introduce a new upgrade initiative on August 25 called "VZ Edge" that will allow customers to upgrade their phones much more frequently to "stay on the leading edge of technology." In an training slide detailing the new plan, we can see that Verizon is offering up VZ Edge as a way for customers to avoid signing contracts and upgrade fees, while remaining on the "best network" and with the latest devices. All of the specifics are not yet available, but this slide does mention that if customers are on the previously mentioned monthly payment plan, that they can upgrade to a new device at any time once they have paid off 50% of their current phone.

Read the full story at Droid-Life.

The Copycat Culture of Tech Hits the Mobile World in Full Force

Tech culture is a funny thing. If you track tech news, releases and new ideas closely enough, you'll notice there's a very apparent trend that pops up all the time:

1. Some company has a truly original idea.
2. Every competing company copies that idea.

It's funny and sad at the same time, and it's the same thing that happens every time there's a truly unique idea in the tech world.

A Truly Original Idea

The most recent example of this has been the ability for tech-happy smartphone owners to upgrade their phones far more often than once every two years. T-Mobile made a big splash in the mobile market last week when it announced 'Jump,' which would give customers two mobile upgrades every year for an extra $10 per month. (As a refresher to the new way T-Mobile sells smartphones since they no longer have mobile contracts, you can catch up here.)

Jump is a great idea! A truly original idea. People love upgrading their phones and hate having to wait 20 months two years for a new gadget. (Let's put aside the fact that you don't save a much money by constantly upgrading your phones and you no longer have back-up phones to give someone or use in case of emergency. It's still a very original idea.)

... and the Rest Shall Follow

You know what's NOT original? The fact that AT&T just announced an almost identical program: Next. (All Things D notes that AT&T issued a memo teasing Next before T-Mobile announced Jump, so it's unclear whose idea came first. The bottom line is still the same: derivative ideas.) Next would be slightly different from T-Mobile's plans in a few ways: You're eligible for an upgrade every 12 months, not six; you don't need to put a down payment on your device; and there's no additional monthly fee. It would be more forgivable of a copycat if it was better, but the numbers don't add up. T-Mobile's not scared, either, as an executive said it's a "poor imitation" of Jump.

Want to hear a funny story? Verizon's reportedly planning the same type of program, called VZ Edge, which would launch in August. The plan is almost identical to Next, which means it, too, is a slight derivation on Jump.

It's just that type of copycat culture. I wouldn't be surprised to see Sprint announce something similar, except Sprint seems to be doing its own thing over there, with Unlimited, My Way essentially giving you unlimited everything forever and ever.

Not an Isolated Incident

Think back to the biggest tech breakthroughs of the last few years: iPhone, iPad, etc. Every major breakthrough has been imitated and copied and modded and tweaked by just about every company under the sun. I've just never seen it happen as quickly as we've seen phone carriers do their thing this week.

And this isn't the last time we'll see this type of behavior this year. The Pebble Smartwatch was last year's Kickstarter darling, and recently hit store shelves. You know who else is interested in the smartwatch business? Oh, just about everyone: Google. Apple. Mozilla. Microsoft. TomTom. Sony. Dell. It's amazing. For a while, I seemed to be posting a story about a new company wanting to enter the smartwatch business... and I know we'll see the same thing once Google Glass becomes more prevalent.

Innovation breeds competition, which helps create better products for all of us to buy and use. I'd just like to see more unique ideas, rather than everyone piling on whichever bandwagon is hot this hour.

Shelly Palmer Talks About Verizon Edge on Fox 5 News at 5

Shelly Palmer chats with Dari Alexander and Steve Lacy on Fox 5 s News at 5 about Verizon Edge, AT&T Next and T-Mobile Jump.

T-Mobile Jump, AT&T Next, Verizon Edge: Which Saves You the Most Money?

Within the space of little more than a week, three of the largest carriers in the US have introduced completely new plans to go alongside traditional contract agreements and prepaid services. T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon Wireless, with their new plans called Jump, Next, and Edge, respectively, are all going after the same thing: subscribers who want to get the newest smartphone as quickly as possible. That's not the only thing that brings these new plans together, however. They're all extremely complicated. And make no mistake, carriers like it that way - it's easier to overcharge if customers don't know it's happening. So let's untangle the secrets behind these plans to see which (if any) are a good deal. The best way to analyze these plans is to take a real-world example. For the charts below, we're looking at what you'd expect to pay for a Galaxy S4 on each of these carriers using one of their new plans.

Read the full story at The Verge.

Shelly Palmer Radio Report – July 22, 2013

Once T-Mobile unveiled Jump, its program that gives you access to a phone upgrade every six months, AT&T and Verizon answered by announcing their own early upgrade plans. Verizon Edge lets you get a shiny new smartphone every six months, while AT&T Next gives you a new phone once a year. Like T-Mobile Jump, both programs require a trade-in of your old device when you upgrade, but unlike Jump, neither program requires a separate monthly fee. And you're not eligible to upgrade to a new device until you've paid off half the cost of your phone. But that's not the whole story. T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon build the cost of phone subsidies into their monthly service fees, so with all these plans you're actually paying for the phone twice. Once, built into your monthly phone bill and again in the installment plan. Next and Edge won't save you money, so go pick the phone with the features you want, and get another new one for free in two years.

Verizon ‘Edge’ Gives Customers Early Upgrades on Mobile Phones

Verizon has echoed the new pricing models of rivals T-Mobile and AT&T with its very own, called Edge. The plan will offer customers more frequent upgrades, and also ease the cost of smartphone subsidies on Verizon's balance sheet. Verizon says the Edge device payment plan spreads the retail price of a smartphone over 24 months, and allows customers to upgrade their phone after just six months, if they've paid 50% of the retail price of the phone. The 24-month payment period then begins again. The program works with all of Verizon's available smartphones, including the iPhone, and becomes available to its Share Everything customers on August 25. Shares of Verizon were down 1.7% to $49.87 on Thursday afternoon in New York. On a conference call Thursday Verizon's chief financial officer Fran Shammo described Edge as "yet another choice" for Verizon customers, though he was light on details about how the plan would work.

Read the full story at Forbes.

U.S. BlackBerry Fans May Not See Q10 Until Late Q2

BlackBerry diehards looking forward to purchasing the company’s new keyboard-equipped Q10 handset around its promised launch window of April may have to wait a month or two longer if they live in the U.S.

That’s the latest from BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins, who tells the Associated Press that the Q10 isn’t likely to ship in the States until eight to 10 weeks after its touchscreen-only sibling, the Z10, arrives at market.

Currently, the Z10 is expected to make its U.S. debut sometime in mid-March. Eight to 10 weeks after that puts us in May or even June, which means the Q10 might not ship in the States until late-spring/early summer. I asked BlackBerry to confirm that release window, but a company spokesperson declined to do so.

“We expect the first global carriers to launch the BlackBerry Q10 in April,” BlackBerry spokeswoman Amy McDowell told AllThingsD. “We will announce new pricing and availability information as carriers roll out around the world. We are working closely with our carrier partners to accelerate their testing process, but cannot offer any specifics on U.S. availability.”

It’s clear, then, that the Q10’s stateside release date is something of a moving target.

Not that there’s much to be done about it. Wireless carriers like AT&T and Verizon have extensive testing protocols for new devices that often take months to complete. When a new operating system must be vetted as well, that process becomes even more involved. BlackBerry might have been able to avoid the delay it’s suffering now if it had delivered the Z10 and Q10 to U.S. carriers earlier than it did. But it didn’t, and now there’s little to be done to expedite the testing process. An unfortunate situation for BlackBerry, given the string of delays that put BlackBerry 10’s delivery more than a year behind schedule.

“Am I a bit disappointed [by the delay],” said Heins. “Yeah, I would be lying saying no. But it is what it is, and we’re working with all our carrier partners to speed it up as much as we can.”