Everyday new mobile technology comes out. From cell phones to laptops and everything in between, technology seems to be moving at the speed of light. Currently just out on the market is the new HTC 4G LTE, which was late coming out because of a conflict with Apple. I patent war erupted between Sprint, AT&T and Apple. HTCs new phone was affected by a "standard U.S. Customers review of shipments" Apple is/was claiming two patent infringements. "A system and method for preforming an action on a structure in computer-generated date" and "real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data". Sounds bad, as Apple points its finger at both AT&T and Sprint for stealing their technology and it comes on the heels of Patent victory for Apple back in December of 2011.
After a bit of a workaround from Sprint their HTC 4G LTE, the newest mobile device has hit the market. Nice screen, great design and a bunch of nice features. Except it is not really 4G and will not be until Sprint is able to get the LTE 4G network up and running, until then it is nothing more than a big G4 little playground of G3 devices. This might cause a few folks to slow down and wait for the network to be running. While others that needs to always have the newest mobile tech will rush right out and buy it.For those of you that do not understand the difference between 3G and 4G, from the outside it might seem as if they are the same. But once you dig around in the little bits you will quickly see the differences.
The G word
If asked what G stands for when it comes to networks like 3G. The G stands for Generation, in tech terms think of it as this way. 1G was somewhere between the brick cell phone of the late 80's and the 2G technology of the mobile phones of the early 90s. Each for the time worked great and other then dropping some calls now and then and the odd restrains you would find where inside a concrete bunker you could make a call from 100FT below the surface but stand in the middle of Manhattan and you could not get a signal.
3G ushered in smart phones and there would be computer technology. These little mobile computers where (and still are) a huge hit. 3G speeds are pretty good reaching speeds of about 3 megabytes per second, great connections just about global coverage with the networks 3G has been the standard for a few years now. Yet now the new 4G or 4th generation phones that are coming out on the market are designed to be their own mobile hotspots. The goal is to have 4G move pretty much at light speed. Hammering home speeds from 100mbps to 1Gig this network is blazing fast. Currently Sprint has the only 4G network, and the speeds are great, but it is still not perfect. The coverage areas are not there yet and while it is true that 4G mobile phones work fine on a 3G network, you're really just missing out on what could be.
Currently there are a lot of 4G phones on the market. LG Viper, Titan II, Lumia 900 are all 4G. But they are all on LTE or the light side of the network, which is just a nice way of saying we are not fully ready for the full 4G network. Yet smart phones are still, well smart, being able to do just about everything you could with your computer a smart phone will do all that and let you make a call. Technology at its finest, and the new phones coming out on the market right now will make phones that are just a year old seem completely obsolete.
Verizon is planning on launching the Galaxy S3 come June of 2012. Offering the latest tech, but coming in with nice new features. The new Android Platform, A pop up and play feature that lets you have picture in picture while still being able to run apps and surf the web, A Camera with face detection and Bluetooth 4 just to name a few improvements. But will these new features be enough to get customers to jump to a new service provider?
No More
So the economy twisted around and crashed on just about everyone. One of the first things many people did was cut the extra bills. But with so many people being under contract with different service providers with was not that easy. Now a few years later those contracts are running out and people are looking for ways to still cut costs. While some of the risks are gone, more and more people are moving to the higher end, pay as you go programs.
The days of being pulled in by a free cell phone only to get wrapped up into a long term contract are changing. As people move to programs that have no contract they are finding many that are cheaper then what they had been paying for, and offering even better features. This does put some pause in some new mobile phone buyers. To buy the latest phone might mean having to sign on the dotted line with a contract or pay an inflated price for the same phone.
The market is changing and to keep pace with many of the no contract providers, providers like Sprint are starting to offer lower cost plans and even some plans that do not have any penalties for cutting the contract short. But the fine print tends to explain how they can get away with it. Overage fees, roaming charges and even restrictions on data can affect the monthly cost. With or without a contract, the new mobile phones that are coming out are a blast to use and offer users more features and functions than ever before. But come back a year from now, the technology will be different then too.
No comments:
Post a Comment