Update: T-Mobile has made it official and is carrying the device starting January 26th.
In addition to arriving in more European countries, the BlackBerry PRIV will also be available through all four major carriers in the United States. BlackBerry CEO John Chen confirmed the news at CES today, but did not offer a timeline for when they’d be released.
T-Mobile has announced its latest “un-carrier” initiative, dubbed “Un-carrier Unwrapped.” Rather than a permanent addition to the company’s offerings, Un-carrier Unwrapped is a month-long event during which the carrier will gift its subscribers and new customers with special deals and benefits.
The first of those was announced today: unlimited LTE data for all subscribers on Simple Choice post-paid plans for the next three months.
Sprint today announced a new agreement with the Telecommunications Company of Cuba that will allow the fourth-largest US carrier’s subscribers to roam in Cuba. The move comes on the heels of changes to US-Cuban relations recently implemented by the US government.
The Sprint press release (below) mentions two of the company’s global roaming initiatives, but doesn’t specify whether Cuba will join the existing programs or will be part of a different offer.
The company says the exact details and the timing of the launch will be announced at a later date.
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. – Nov. 2, 2015 – Sprint (NYSE: S) today became the first U.S. wireless carrier to sign a direct roaming agreement with Telecommunications Company of Cuba (ETECSA).
“As the commercial relationship between the U.S. and Cuba continues to progress, it is expected that the number of travelers to Cuba will increase exponentially,” said Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure. “We want to make sure any Sprint customer traveling to Cuba can use their phone the same way as they do in the United States.”
Claure made the announcement at a signing ceremony in Havana as part of the U.S.-Cuba Business Council (USCBC) delegation to Cuba.
As the only U.S. carrier with a direct roaming agreement and a direct long-distance interconnection agreement with Cuban provider ETECSA, Sprint is leading the way for U.S.-Cuba telecommunications.
More than 3 million people from around the world are expected to visit Cuba this year. Within 10 years, that number is projected to grow to more than 5 million.
The USCBC, an advocacy organization housed at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is a formal commitment by the American business community to build a strong and strategic commercial relationship between Cuba and the United States.
Earlier this year, Sprint launched Sprint Global Roaming and in August launched Sprint Open World, an industry-leading plan for connectivity in Canada, Mexico and most other countries across Latin America. The agreement signed today with ETECSA makes it much more convenient for Sprint customers who plan to work, study or visit family in Cuba. Offer details and timing of availability will be announced soon.
Following T-Mobile’s announcement yesterday that it has expanded its Simple Global program, which provide inclusive data and texts while travelling, Sprint has made a similar move with its Open World plan, adding an additional 33 destinations.
Sprint now offers free calls and texts, plus 1GB of free data, in 14 countries. A further 50 countries get free texts, calls for $0.20 per minute and data for $30/GB …
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Like every other US carrier, Sprint has been working diligently to release a patch to the Stagefright vulnerability in Android to its lineup of phones, and today HTC One M8 owners get the fix.
The release notes for the update only list a “Patch for critical security vulnerability (‘Stagefright’)” as being included in this update, so don’t expect anything else.
Stagefright is a vulnerability spotted in Android’s default MMS behavior that makes delivering and executing code on an Android-powered smartphone as simple as delivering a rich text message. Android has the ability to fetch the contents of a message before the user even opens it (this functionality itself is called “Stagefright” in Android), and most messaging apps previously didn’t prevent this from happening because, why not? Pre-fetching contents would be ideal as it means the user doesn’t have to wait for something to download when they tap and open a message.
Unfortunately, however, it’s also an easy way for bad guys to gain control of your phone. Google’s default text messaging app on Android, Messages, as well as its Hangouts messaging app, have both received updates to solve this from happening. Other popular messaging apps have followed suite, but Google’s vulnerability patch means that more apps won’t need to do the same.
Since this is a carrier update it’s being rolled out in stages, so it could be a few days before you see it hit your device. You should receive a notification when it’s available, otherwise you can manually check by visiting Settings > About phone > System updates.
A few weeks after Sprint and AT&T pushed over the air updates, upgrading the HTC One M9 to Android 5.1, HTC has made the open source kernel files available to developers. The files will be of particular help to those creating custom ROMs.
The files can be downloaded from HTC’s Developer Center.
Via Android Police
The Galaxy Note Edge wasn’t exactly the most popular smartphone that Samsung ever sold, but it was the prototype to what would become the hugely popular Galaxy S6 Edge. If you’re still rocking the Note Edge on Sprint, though, you might be happy to hear that the device is receiving Android 5.1 Lollipop as of… right now.
According to Sprint’s website (via Android Police), the OS upgrade comes with a bump to Android 5.1, as well as “various bug fixes and enhancements.” The OTA should be rolling out over the next couple of days. The version number is N915PVPU4COFE, and you should be prompted to install the update at some point soon, after which your phone will walk you through the process.
The HTC One M9 might not be the most popular flagship of the year, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t get its share of software updates. Those who have the device on Sprint will be happy to learn that they will be getting Android 5.1 Lollipop starting today, according to Sprint’s website.
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If you’ve got a Samsung Galaxy S6 edge and are on the Sprint network, you can expect to see an over-the-air upgrade to Android 5.1 over the next few days. The update provides better control over notifications, device protection that persists even after resetting to factory settings and the usual performance improvements and bug fixes.
Sprint has posted a support page showing the release, which states that updates are issued in stages and can take several days to hit all phones.
T-Mobile rolled out Android 5.1.1 to the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge earlier this month.
The well-reviewed (click here for our review) and hotly anticipated LG G4 is almost here for most major carriers here in the United States, but the exact date when you can pre-order the phone along with its launch date, pricing, and customization options vary across all of them. We’ve covered the announcements on this information from each carrier as they’ve trickled in, but thought it’d be helpful to collect everything we’ve got as of now into one post.
A newly-leaked internal Sprint document (via Android Police) suggests that Android 5.1.1 for the Nexus 6 is right around the corner. Specifically, build LMY47Z for Google’s 5.92-inch flagship will be released on May 26th, 2015, according to the leak. Features of the update—as has been the case with the other 5.1.1 releases—include “general updates” and “security enhancements.”
The Nexus 6 is the final Nexus device yet to receive the latest version of Android, while even the cellular Nexus 7 models have gotten the latest version (notable because the cellular tablets typically take the longest to be updated). This date would put the release of 5.1.1 for the Nexus 6 right before Google I/O kicks off on the 28th (which will likely bring the introduction of Android “M”).
We’re keeping an eye on our phones and the factory image download page as always.
Pre-orders for the LG G4 have just gone live on Best Buy’s website for the AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint variants. Along with guaranteeing you’ll get the phone the day it launches on your carrier, the big-box store is even throwing in a $100 gift card to sweeten the deal.
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After LG announced that its new LG G4 smartphone would begin rolling out this week in certain markets, Sprint today revealed that LG’s new flagship will arrive for its customers on June 5 with a few extra perks.
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Virgin Mobile, which offers a number of prepaid Android devices, is introducing a few new plans for its smartphones sold through Walmart.
Data Done Right Single Line and Multi-line Data Sharing plans are available exclusively at Walmart and are currently available on seven different 4G LTE2 smartphones, including the Samsung Galaxy S5. All phones come pre-loaded with the Virgin Mobile application, which provides data buy-ups and international add-ons with one touch, directly from the device. Every Multi-line plan also comes with a free mobile hotspot feature, making it even easier to share data across Wi-Fi enabled devices.
The new Data Done Right single line plans are reduced by $5 over previous offerings and include 500MB more high-speed data before throttling users. The plans start at $30/month for 300 minutes talk with unlimited text and data, and go up to $40 for unlimited everything.
There are also new multi-line plans that include an extra 2GB of high-speed data and range from $65/month for 2 lines to $115/month for 4 lines with 6GB of shared high-speed data on the low-end plan up to 14GB shared on the $115 plan.
The new plans will become available this Monday, May 18. You can check out the selection of devices here.
Sprint today announced that it’s expanding its free data roaming offer to a number of new countries, bringing its new total up to 22 locations around the globe.
New countries added today include: Colombia, Denmark, Honduras, Ireland, Italy, Paraguay and Sweden.
Those add to the full list of 22 supported countries where Sprint customers can take advantage of the International Value Roaming feature, which allows customers to use data for free when traveling to supported countries abroad.
The full list includes: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Russia, Sweden, South Korea, Spain and United Kingdom.
Sprint today announced a new stylus-equipped Android phablet option for its subscribers, starting with its Boost Mobile customers and coming soon to Sprint Prepaid and Sprint contract customers. The LG G Stylo is now available to purchase for $199 without a credit check or service contract for use with Boost Mobile plans which start $30/month ($35 without auto-renew) and include unlimited talk and text and up to 10GB of data.
LG G Stylo’s affordable price gets you a large 5.7-inch HD display with Gorilla Glass 3, Android 5.0 Lollipop for up-to-date software, an 8MP back camera and a 5MP selfie cam, plus a 1.2GHz quad-core processor and 3,000mAh removable battery…
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Carriers have just begun announcing availability of the newly-unveiled LG G4 flagship, and it looks like the device will start hitting the major carriers sometime during the summer. Sprint says the phone will be available in June, while T-Mobile has launched an early-access sweepstakes (but has yet to announce general availability).
We’ll keep this post updated as more carriers announce their plans for the new phone…
Update: Verizon says that the phone is coming “soon.”
https://twitter.com/VZWnews/status/593083505384493057
It seems as if almost every day another Android device gets updated to Lollipop, and today is no exception. Both the LG G2 from Sprint and the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 from T-Mobile should start receiving the Material Design-filled goodness starting today.
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The Android Lollipop updates just keep rolling in, and today’s no exception. Sprint has just published support pages documenting the release of Android Lollipop for the carrier’s Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy Note Edge smartphones…
Many users are already reporting that the update has hit their device, so you should go check System Update > Update in Settings to see if it’s available for you yet. “Software updates may be released in stages and can take several days for delivery,” Sprint says, though, so don’t get nervous if you don’t see it yet.
Google just yesterday updated its distribution numbers for Android Lollipop, revealing that the mobile OS just recently managed to pass 5% in adoption. Hopefully as more and more Lollipop updates are released (like these), that number will slowly start to make its way up.
It’s almost time for Google I/O, and that means we’re likely approaching the announcement of the next big version of Android. As usual, though, last year’s major iteration is still just now making its way to plenty of handsets. Today we have word (via Sprint) that its Galaxy S5 should be receiving the update imminently, and T-Mobile representative Des has confirmed (via Twitter) that the update is rolling out to the uncarrier’s LG G3 early next week.
#Lollipop Update: @TMobile #LGG3 software update available on 4/7 for download #uncarrier pic.twitter.com/OOqhTe7VaT
— Des (@askdes) April 2, 2015
Lollipop’s adoption has been pretty abysmal, and only early last month hit 3.3%. It’s been about a month since those numbers were released, however, so we’re probably at or beyond 5% at this point. As of the most recent data, KitKat actually saw an increase up to 40.9 percent up from February’s 39.7 percent. It wouldn’t be surprising if we still see the Material-packed software still hitting devices long into the summer months.
T-Mobile and AT&T both announced today that preorders for the HTC One M9 and the Samsung Galaxy S6 will begin tomorrow, and now Sprint has come out to do the same. It seems as if each carrier is using a different tactic to get you to go with their service (what’s new?), and Sprint’s method will be to offer a lease of the Samsung Galaxy S6 for completely free for those willing to sign up for the Sprint Unlimited Plus plan.
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While the new HTC M9 goes on sale tonight unsubsidized for $650, T-Mobile and AT&T have just announced plans to kick off a presale of the device starting tomorrow for $0 down on their usual financing plans.
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Sprint has announced today that Android 5.1 is rolling out to the Nexus 6, marking yet another carrier launch of the latest version of Google’s mobile operating system. Recently, T-Mobile said that the Nexus 4 and the Nexus 5 have already started receiving the update, and now it looks like the first Nexus from Sprint is getting the same…
Sprint this morning has announced that it is rolling out Android 5.0 Lollipop to its Galaxy Note 4 variant. The update carries the build number N910PVPU1BOB7 and includes all of the Lollipop enhancements we’ve come to expect, as well as various bug fixes.
