Chris Velazco is a mobile enthusiast and writer who studied English and Marketing at Rutgers University. Once upon a time, he was the news intern for MobileCrunch, and in between posts, he worked in wireless sales at Best Buy.
After graduating, he returned to the new TechCrunch to as a full-time mobile writer. He counts advertising, running, musical theater, and soup among his myriad interests.
AT&T unveiled its new Mobile Share plans earlier this morning, and at first blush it seemed awfully familiar. Under those new plans, users pay a set monthly access fee for unlimited talk, messaging, and a specified lump of data, with different classes of devices adding to the total monthly cost.
It’s nearly identical to how Verizon’s Share Everything plans work, but that’s not exactly new for the two carriers — they’ve been jumping on and implementing each other’s ideas for years now. That said, there are still some notable differences between how AT&T and Verizon have approached the shared data situation.
The biggest of those differences? Unlike Verizon, AT&T’s Mobile Share plans supplement their current offerings instead of replacing them, so new customers don’t need to run with a shared data plan if they don’t want to. → Read More
When Apple announced at WWDC that FaceTime would (officially) work over cellular data networks, the company deftly avoided offering up much in the way of details. Now that iOS 6 beta 3 has been released into the wild though, a clearer picture of how Apple and their carrier partners will handle the situation is beginning to emerge.
The folks at 9to5mac discovered last night that attempting to enable FaceTime over 3G on an AT&T iPhone running on the most recent iOS 6 beta would bring up an interesting little message: To enable FaceTime over cellular on this account, contact AT&T at 611 or visit http://www.att.com/wireless. It looks an awful lot like AT&T is planning to charge customers for using FaceTime over 3G, though the revelation isn’t particularly out of character. → Read More
It won’t be long at all before Microsoft pushes Windows Phone 8 into the wild, and that means we’re probably about to see some serious discounts on existing Windows Phone handsets.
In fact, that price-slashing process has already begun, as Nokia recently announced that their AT&T-bound Lumia 900 now sports a much lighter price tag — it can be had for the terribly-reasonable price of $49.99. The question is, should you buy one? → Read More
And RIM’s rough ride continues. Within the past few weeks, the Canadian company has had to announce all sorts of bad news, and now RIM has been dealt an expensive defeat in court to add that list.
Bloomberg reported late yesterday that RIM must now shell out nearly $150 million in order to settle a patent suit with a New Jersey-based mobile device management company called Mformation. → Read More
Competition in the tablet space has been heating up for a while now, and it’s not just the big guys that are feeling the strain. Take the tumultuous story of OGT Mobile, for instance — they tried to make their mark on the industry by creating their own Android tablet, but just couldn’t see the project through.
I can’t blame you if you’ve never heard of OGT before — back in April 2011 when the company revealed the Eros tablet, it made a few waves thanks to its claims of being the thinnest Android tablet in the world. → Read More
Over the past day or so, a few lucky souls have managed to get their hands on Google’s much-anticipated Nexus 7 tablet, leaving the rest of us to wonder when our time would come. As it turns out, the answer is very soon.
After their Nexus support phone line tipped users off earlier today, Google has finally come right out and said it — the company has begun shipping those wallet-friendly tablets to all those who pre-ordered from them.
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A solid chunk of my formative years was spent lurking under tables, peering around corners, and generally tiptoeing around whenever possible. I fancied myself a tiny James Bond (or Weng Weng, considering my heritage) and — strange as it may sound — there’s nothing I wouldn’t have given to have the bitplay BANG! remote controlled lamp help me live out my pre-adolescent fantasies. → Read More
Nielsen released another of their periodic looks at the U.S. smartphone market today, and aside from the revelation that two-thirds of U.S. phone purchasers went for smartphones in Q2 2012, the results are as you’d expect.
Android still leads the pack in terms of pure penetration — as of this past June, it accounts for 51.8% of smartphones in use (up from 50.4% in Q1 2012) with Apple’s iOS right behind it at 34%. Don’t feel too bad for Apple though, as they still have the highest manufacturer share by far (34% in Q2), with Samsung at a distant second. → Read More
For a particular set of phone geeks, the problem with owning a popular flagship device is that plenty of other people will end up with the exact same thing. After all, it’s a proven fact — your phone isn’t cool if everyone else has one too.
That’s where carrier-exclusive color options come in, and both AT&T and Sprint have chosen today to spill the beans on their newest chromatically-tweaked handsets — AT&T’s red Galaxy S III and Sprint’s white EVO 4G LTE.
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Don’t let their recent quiet streak fool you — the team at Eric Schmidt-backed receipt aggregator/tracking service Slice have spent the last few months slaving away on revamped versions of their iOS and Android apps, and now that major update is ready for the purchase tracking masses.
With Slice 2.0, co-founder and CEO Scott Brady wanted to do more than just track packages and aggregate users’ purchase histories. Perhaps the most notable addition to the updated Slice mobile apps is a new personal analytics option that breaks down how much users have spent on what kinds of products, with options to drill into specific purchase categories, item types, and merchants. → Read More
FreedomPop, the ambitious startup devoted to bringing freemium internet to the masses, has been awfully busy lately. The last time they popped up on our radar the company had just put its WiMAX-capable iPhone sleeves on pre-order, but the team has been up to more than just churning out data-friendly cases.
In addition to working with Clearwire, FreedomPop announced earlier today that it has also inked a network access deal with Sprint, allowing their forthcoming devices to run on both the carrier’s 3G and LTE networks. → Read More
Well, today’s shaping up to be a banner day for Kindle Fire owners. If the news of some nifty features for Kindle Fire games isn’t enough to get owners hot and bothered, how about a nice dose of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean?
Android developers and hackers have been working feverishly ever since Google released Jelly Bean to the Android Open Source Project repository two days ago, and it wasn’t long before a ROM for the Kindle Fire was pushed out into the world.
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Amazon has just announced a bit of good news for avid Kindle Fire gamers and developers — the company has been working to revamp the gaming experience on their wallet-conscious tablet and have decided to share the fruits of their labor.
Starting today, developers can use Amazon’s GameCircle APIs to implement a host of new features in their Kindle Fire games. Considering how many other console and mobile gaming platforms already support them, it should come as no surprise that support for achievements is on that list of features. Also on deck is leaderboard functionality, which allows users to see how they stack up to their rivals without having to pop out of the game in question. → Read More
Well, if you needed any more proof that the Galaxy Note will soon make an appearance on T-Mobile’s store shelves, take a gander at this.
TmoNews has discovered that a slew of Galaxy Note related documents can be found by searching for — what else? — “Galaxy Note” on T-Mobile’s website. Sadly, there’s no word yet on whether or not that rumored July 11 release date is still in the cards.
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Considering the sheer amount of data people produce every day, there’s really no such thing as having too much storage space. Users of cloud storage service Dropbox seem to agree, which is why the company revealed that it would be significantly bumping up the amount of storage space available to its paying users at no extra cost.
According to Dropbox’s official blog, the company will be replacing their 50 and 100 GB tiers with 100 and 200GB tiers for free. → Read More
The team at GroupMe has certainly had an impressive ride so far — after winning the Disrupt NY Hackathon in 2010, they quickly locked up some funding, and were eventually acquired by Skype.
So what’s next for GroupMe co-founders Jared Hecht and Steve Martocci? As it turns out, they’re looking to get into the group-buying game, and to that end they have just launched a new service called Experiences by GroupMe into private beta. Its goal: to simplify the process of getting people together and doing cool things in the real world. → Read More
There’s no shortage of services that will take your blog or your content and build an app out of it (our own Sarah Perez worked up a hefty Google Doc full of them a while back) but Israeli startup UppSite thinks theirs is a faster, simpler solution for the masses.
As it turns out, they’re not the only ones who appreciate their approach. The team announced earlier this morning that they secured $2.1 million in “pre-A” funding from Israeli incubator thetime and Matomy Media. → Read More
And RIM’s post-earnings PR offensive continues. This time, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins sat down with the folks at CIO for an in-depth interview about himself and the company’s future, and as you may expect he had a few juicy tidbits to reveal.
The most notable of those little revelations has to do with the company’s forthcoming BlackBerry 10 smartphones. Last month RIM infamously delayed the launch of their first BB10 devices until “Q1 2013″ and left it at that. Interestingly, Mr. Heins seems to have put a finer point on that launch window.
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Microsoft kicked off its Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto with a bit of a bang earlier today — during the event’s keynote address, Microsoft VP and Windows CFO Tami Reller revealed when manufacturers and consumers would be able to get their hands on Windows 8.
The long-awaited operating system is on track to be released to manufacturers in the first week of August, with a consumer launch slated for “late October.” → Read More
If you thought the standard black, white, and cyan Lumia 900s just weren’t eye-catching enough, you may want to keep your schedule clear this Sunday.
Nokia confirmed earlier this year that they would spice up their flagship Lumia 900 line with a splash of magenta, but at the time they were awfully coy about when the device would actually ship. That’s thankfully no longer the case — according to a new post on the Nokia Conversations blog, AT&T will begin taking orders for the rosy Lumia 900 starting on July 15.
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