AutoBot app tracks your car if it tries to roll without you
We smell a Hasbro lawsuit coming with this one, but for now AutoBot is a funky name for a potentially great iPhone and Android app. Working in concert with a Bluetooth OBD-II dongle (not unlike the Superchips Vivid ), it lets you diagnose engine troubles, keep track of maintenance, and locate your car via GPS coordinates -- useful for when some Decepticon tries to make off with your ride or when you're simply running low on energon and can't remember where you parked
Categories: Android, Mobile Phone Tags: ads, apple, bluetooth, ces, ces2011, coordinates, diagnose-engine, fee, funky, iphone, obdii, pop, shop, sun
AT&T bumping its smartphone early upgrade price to $200
While the basics have stayed the same for a while -- $200 for an annual iPhone sweetened by a slowly descending overall plan price -- carriers like AT&T of course have a lot of maneuvering to do in the periphery to make sure they're still getting their margins. Hefty ETFs have of course been the most egregious element of this, and now AT&T is bumping its smartphone early upgrade exception price from $75 to $200, which means if you lost or smashed your iPhone and decided to go Torch instead (we don't know why, it's AT&T's suggestion), that Torch would cost you $400 instead of the $500 unsubsidized price or the $275 tag you could've gotten away with a week ago. This new price only applies only to smartphones, and only non-Apple ones at that, and of course there's always the potential for flex based on how long you've been a customer and how far you are into your contract
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: att, contract, early upgrade, fee, iphone, lost-or-smashed, margins, price, stayed-the-same, still-getting, the-periphery, upgrade fee, upgradeexception
Palm retroactively refunding $50 webOS app submission fee — each and every one
Palm's made a few half-baked attempts at wooing developers in the past, like that time in October when it waived the fees and review process for open-source apps (but not App Catalog entries) or when it provided discounted handsets that happened to carry a large carrier-specific ball and chain. This week, Palm's decided to be a bit more generous -- it's eliminating the $50 App Catalog submission fee entirely and putting every last cent back where it came from. With only 2,684 apps in the store, that's just $134,200 in total, but symbolically it's a very welcome gesture, no?
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: app catalog, app-submission, appdistribution, appstore, developers, entries, fee, half, handsets, palm, source, webos
FCC offers ‘simple’ ‘tips’ for avoiding pesky early termination fees
The government is just about the last place we'd look for helpful pointers on much of anything, much less when shopping for a new phone -- but that didn't stop the FCC's Consumer Task Force from whipping up a PDF of things you can to do prevent yourself from getting burned with a multi-hundred dollar early termination fee when buying the handset of your wildest dreams. There's nothing in here that isn't obvious to a seasoned phone buyer -- buy the phone at full price instead, ask about a trial period, look into proration, and so on -- but it goes without saying that these are the kinds of tidbits average consumers should know before setting foot in the store.
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: consumers, dreams, etf, fcc, feds, fee, pdf, phone-at-full, pointers, stink-it-made, takes-advantage, tidbits-average, trial, wildest
Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Google all respond to FCC’s ETF inquiry
All of the players roped into the FCC's early termination fee inquiry -- T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, and Google -- have met the Fed's February 23 deadline for responding, and needless to say, you could destroy a small forest with the amount of paperwork that's been sent back to Washington. The majority of the inquiry focused on carriers' ETF pricing structure and whether there are different ETFs involved based on the device a customer chooses, and the subtleties in the differences between answers from different carriers are pretty fascinating. T-Mobile seems resolute that a single $200 ETF is the way to go and emphasizes that its customers can avoid the fee altogether by going with an Even More Plus plan, while Sprint says that it "continue[s] to evaluate the market" with regard to a multiple ETF setup.
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: avoid-the-fee, early termination fee, earlyterminationfee, entry, etf, fcc, fee, remind-the-fcc, surprising-move, verizon, verizon-wireless, verizonwireless, vzw
Google imposes $350 early termination fee for subsidized Nexus One in addition to carrier’s own ETF
Here's another reason to consider going the unlocked route with the Nexus One , in addition to having the AT&T (non-3G) and international GSM option. As a number of people have noticed, Google's got its own Early Termination Fee (ETF) equivalent, here called the Equipment Recovery Fee, in the terms of sale, to the tune of $350 if you cancel within the first 120 days. Sound familiar?
Categories: Android, Mobile Phone, nexus one, Other Tags: another-reason, before-the-new, consider-going, early termination fee, earlyterminationfee, equipment, equipment recovery fee, fee, phone, problem-on-its, result, trial-period