While police must have a warrant to search someone’s phone in the U.S. — even after that person has been arrested — what can law enforcement do with gadgets seized at the border? For one thing, U.S. Customs and Border Protection says its officers are limited to searching phone content that is saved directly to the device, and not on the cloud — including social media. [More]
mobile phones
Sprint Accidentally Credits $139,000 To Customer’s Account
By 7.5.17
What would you do if you received a bill credit that you didn’t deserve? How about if you received a bill credit that’s enough to buy you a modest house in most of the country? Just ask the Ohio Sprint customer who opened his wireless bill and saw a credit for $139,419.89. [More]
Unlocking Mobile Phones Is Theoretically Easier Than It Used To Be
By 11.22.16
It happened: you took advantage of holiday season sales to buy yourself a new smartphone. Now it’s time to sell your old one or hand it down to a relative, but they use a different carrier. How do you make that happen? In some cases, you don’t have to do anything at all. [More]
GameStop Acquires 507 New AT&T Dealer Stores, Keeps Diversifying Away From Games
By 8.3.16
As the market for physical discs or cartridges with games on them goes away, that leaves mall retailer GameStop without much of anything to sell. Fortunately, the company was able to see this change coming, and is pursuing business in two directions that are related to gaming in indirect ways: selling the mobile phones and tablets where most people play games, and selling geeky merchandise that often features video game characters. Now the company is expanding its mobile empire even farther. [More]
T-Mobile Will Provide Customers Unlimited Pokémon Go Data Until Fad Dies, Or August 2017
By 7.14.16
While the suddenly popular mobile game Pokemon Go doesn’t gobble data in the same way as streaming music or video, it does use more data than just wandering around not hunting for imaginary creatures. That’s why T-Mobile is joining the party and giving Pokémon trainers unlimited data within the app for more than a year as its next promotion for T-Mobile Tuesdays. [More]
Americans Using Incredible Volume Of Mobile Data, Don’t Look To Be Slowing Down Any Time Soon
By 5.24.16
When businesses, consumer advocates, and government reports all say that the use of mobile data is skyrocketing, they aren’t kidding. An annual survey of the wireless industry shows that we are using more mobile everything, all the time, everywhere — and that the trend shows no signs of slowing down. [More]
5 Things We Learned About Pay Phones & Why They Continue To Exist
By 4.26.16
When was the last time you used a pay phone? Given that just about every American old enough to say “hello” now has a cellphone, you’d be forgiven for thinking these once-vital telecom totems had gone the way of the telegraph. But there are still hundreds of thousands of pay phones out there, waiting to be used by people without any other options available. [More]
Subway Launches New Mobile Payment, Ordering Options
By 7.29.15
Now that nearly every American has a smartphone permanently fixed to their hand, a long list of restaurants including Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, Taco Bell and Dominos have upped their mobile presence by way of ordering and payment apps, and now one of the largest chains in the country is joining the ever-growing list: Subway. [More]
Verizon’s Go90 Mobile Streaming TV Service To Launch With Tiny Beta Test
By 7.28.15
It’s been almost a year since Verizon first announced it would launch a streaming TV service and the company is just now getting around to naming it — Go90 — and providing details on its eventual launch.
[More]
Starbucks Ditches Square, Will Cease Accepting Wallet Mobile Payments In Coming Months
By 12.19.14
The two-year long partnership between Starbucks and mobile payment system Square is coming to an end, as the coffee company had decided to ditch the mobile payment company’s upcoming new system in favor of its own mobile ordering solution. [More]
Shoppers Would Rather Stare At Their Phones Than Talk To A Salesperson
By 12.3.14
When you’re shopping at a store in the real world, would you rather have a conversation with a sales associate or look up information on your own mobile phone? The results of a study by the Consumer Electronics Association will shock nobody who has ever received inaccurate or misleading information from a salesperson, or had to get away from an aggressive salesperson who wants nothing more than to close a sale. [More]
Widow Brings Husband’s Cremains To T-Mobile Store, Still Can’t Get Account Canceled
By 11.17.14
T-Mobile just doesn’t want to let its customers go. We’ve shared stories of customers whose survivors couldn’t get a line shut down after they died, and survivors asked to keep a phone line open so they could hear a loved one’s voice. This isn’t a problem unique to T-Mobile USA, apparently: a widow in Cardiff, Wales brought her late husband’s ashes to the store after they refused to close out her husband’s line. [More]
Mobile Ads Overtake Porn As Most Likely Way To Get Malware On Your Phone
By 3.5.14
While malware dressed in pornography’s clothing used to be the most tempting for smartphone users, it’s been overtaken recently by mobile ads, says one online security company in its latest report. Which means that either our big clumsy figures are accidentally hitting things or we’d rather look at ads than naked body parts. [More]
TV Reporter Drops iPhone In Toilet, Runs It Over With Car, And It Still Works
By 11.7.13
Smartphones are tiny devices filled with delicate electronics, and ought to be coddled and shielded to ensure their safety…right? As part of a story about third-party mobile phone warranties, a TV reporter in Houston trashed an iPhone by dropping it in water and running it over with a car. These things rendered it completely unusable, right? Nope. [More]
Our Phone Service Disappears Entirely, Sprint Is Completely Helpless
By 6.24.13 — Updated: 6.25.13
Jay has tried everything that he can think of to get through to Sprint. After being a customer for more than a decade and living in the same house for four years with no phone reception issues, suddenly they started dropping calls at home. Their phones have been pretty much unusable for two months now. Since they don’t have a landline and phone access is kind of what they’re paying Sprint for, they’re just sad and tired and discouraged. They want help. They want to make some phone calls. [More]
The First Mobile Phone Call Was Made 40 Years Ago Today
By 4.3.13
You talk to it everyday, stroke it, keep it close by when you sleep and use it to share your world with those close to you. Cell phones are as ubiquitous today as well, we can’t really think of any other product consumers cherish so universally. And it all started 40 years ago with the first public call made from a mobile phone. [More]
Verizon Thinks My Wife Spent 10-Hour Roaming Call Talking To Co-Worker’s Voice Mail
By 3.15.13
RL isn’t arguing that his wife made a roaming call to a co-worker from a hotel in Venice, Italy. His dispute with Verizon wireless is regarding how long that call was. His wife says that it was ten minutes long. Verizon counters that it was ten hours and nine minutes. Considering that the call was to a voice mail box, that must have been an epic, almost close to the the actual meaning of the word “epic,” voicemail. [More]
Anthony Clark Is Calling From My Virgin Mobile Phone. I Am Not.
By 3.14.13
Who is Anthony Clark? Steve doesn’t know him, but for some reason, that’s what the Caller ID on his mobile phone says when he places calls. His clients don’t know who Anthony is, so they won’t pick up the phone when his name on Caller ID. Virgin Mobile doesn’t know how the name got there, who Anthony is, or how to make him go away. [More]
