Sprint’s WiMAX Network Getting The Axe By End Of 2015

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It would appear that Sprint’s WiMAX network doesn’t have much time left. The company has revealed through an SEC filing that it will pull the plug on the network by the end of 2015, which falls in line with previous statements Sprint has made about the future of WiMAX. Now that we know WiMAX will soon be a thing of the past, Sprint has unsurprisingly shifted its focus to bolstering its Spark LTE service, which we imagine will make a fair few Sprint customers happy.

The company should have Spark LTE available in 100 new markets by the time 2016 rolls around, which should help offset the loss of 4G coverage in some areas with the shutdown of WiMAX. Dropping WiMAX means that the company will be decommissioning approximately 6,000 towers it has identified as redundant. As FireceWireless points out, however, that number could grow as the demise of WiMAX draws closer. In a previous SEC filing concerning the shutdown of its WiMAX network, Sprint said it planned on decommissioning 4,300 towers, which means the number has grown by around 1,700 in the time between then and now.

Sprint may have 55,000 towers at its disposal, but any way you slice it, 6,000 is still a lot to lose. The company plans to keep that number sitting around 55,000 though, bringing new towers online as it shuts down old ones. Hopefully that helps keep the impact of WiMAX’s departure to minimum. Turning off that many towers is expected to cost the company somewhere in the range of $50 to $100 million.

Customers who currently rely on WiMAX service will be given “reasonable advanced notice” before the service becomes unavailable in their area, and once that happens, they’ll get to pick from three options. They can simply carry on with the wireless plan they have without WiMAX functionality, deactivate their service without worrying about paying an early termination fee, or choose to be upgraded to Sprint’s LTE network, which will net them a “free standard LTE-capable” device. These options sound fairly reasonable in terms of minimizing the number of people impacted, but we’re sure there’ll be at least a few who will be upset to see WiMAX go. Stay tuned.

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Google Partners With Hotel Booking Startup Room 77 For Better Search Listings

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Room 77, a new hotel booking start-up has apparently partnered up with Google to provide a better search results experience for users who are looking for Hotel accommodations through the search engine. You can currently use Google to search for Hotels and flights, but it’s not as easy of a task as using something like Kayak or Priceline. When you use one of those search sites dedicated to serving up results for Hotel rooms and booking information, you get a tailored experience that is meant solely for what you’re seeking. Google seems ready to improve the experience for users with this reported deal and hopefully we’ll see it come to fruition sooner than later.

Right now Room 77 can be utilized via the web or through a mobile browser on your smartphone or tablet, or via the Room 77 app that’s available on the play store. Since we already use Google for plenty of things anyway, it just makes sense to have an updated and more robust user experience for when we want to search for a place to stay when we’re out of town. Google already has Hotel information built into Google Now cards, so once this deal with Room 77 is all said and done and usable by consumers, we might even get to have relevant information pop up through Google Now, at least it would seem like a good idea.

The partnership between Room 77 and Google should see the start-ups Co-founder and a good number of the staff joining on with Google to make this dream become a reality, although Room 77 will still maintain and control all of its patents and services which include their apps, website, and brand name. With this deal in place, soon travelers and jet setters will be able to easily and quickly find rooms and places to book an overnight stay(or three) while on the go. This could also make booking a hotel room easier through the use of Google’s voice search function, making finding a place to sleep not only a simpler experience, but hands free as well. Have any of you ever used Room 77 before?

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Knock Lock Lets You Put Your Phone To Sleep Using Taps

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LG’s new Knock Code feature is one cool way to lock and unlock your device if you’re using one of the compatible LG devices that has it built in. For the rest of us though that don’t have one of those phones there is an alternative to at least locking your device with a similar function, by using an app called Knock Lock. It’s still quite a bit different than Knock Code, as you can only use it to lock your device and you get no similarities other than that, but it’s still pretty useful as locking your phone from the display in this manner just seems more natural.

Knock Lock as stated above will only lock your device, it will not unlock it right now but that doesn’t mean that it wont become an included feature down the line. The app is pretty easy to use and it’s simple and straightforward. All you have to do is install Knock Lock which is completely free, than once installed open it up and set your parameters,(first you should be prompted to allow the app administrator rights) then you can set how big the transparent overlay box is(width and length) and where the box is placed on screen. For me personally it feels the most natural more towards the bottom right side of the display as I hold my phone in my right hand and that is within the area my thumb travels on the screen.

For those worried if this will effect battery life, the apps developers say that it shouldn’t effect battery life to a noticeable extent-only affecting about 0.1% as it sits in the backgroud- which is good news for anyone who may have poor battery life as it is. Knock Lock is simple, easy, and understated, and we expect this to be a fairly popular app in no time. Once everything is set in place, you can knock the designated spot to put your phone to sleep. It seems to provide a lag free experience and put the phone to sleep immediately, so all around it feels no different than if you lock your phones display with the power key.

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OnePlus One Gets Teaser “Unboxing”

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OnePlus has teased the OnePlus One yet again. The new company is due to announce their first smartphone on April 23rd. Since we first started hearing about the device, OnePlus has been teasing it like there’s no tomorrow. We’ve seen comparisons between the HTC One M8 and the OnePlus One, and we’ve also heard a lot of information about the process that the company went through when they began designing the device. Now we’re seeing yet another teaser in the form of an unboxing.

The unboxing video itself is just 40 seconds long and consists of Steve Kondik opening the box and taking out some instruction manuals, a charger and then a smaller box that has the actual device in it. The only thing we’re missing in this unboxing is the actual phone. When Kondik goes to open the phone, all we see is golden light on his face. The box of the device does look pretty cool, though. I really like how everything is individually boxed up. It’s not clear as to whether the box will look like this when the device is officially available, but if it is, prepare for some interesting unboxings.

It appears as though OnePlus is having a blast hyping up and teasing this product. The OnePlus One is supposed to have about 90% of what consumers want in a flagship phone, as well as a really good price. We recently learned that in Europe, the OnePlus One will be going for less than 350€. We haven’t heard a whole lot about pricing here in the US, but Kondik did state that we can expect the phone at a decent price. The OnePlus One is also supposed to feature a 3100 mAh battery, a 5.5-inch screen and a 13-megapixel rear facing camera.

The teasers and pranks will keep coming until the day of the announcement, it appears. People seem to be a lot more accepting of this kind of teasing. OnePlus seems to be having a grand old time with it as well. They’ve been extremely honest about what to expect with their device, and when comparing the OnePlus One to the HTC One M8, it looked like they really think they’ve figured out how to make a good flagship. We’ll have to wait, though. In a little over two weeks, we’ll see just what OnePlus has to offer and if their device is as good as they’ve hyped it up to be. In the meantime, take a look at Steve Kondik’s “unboxing” below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Transfer Photos And Videos Over Local WiFi Using PhotoSync

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Transferring photos has become ten times easier over the years, with flash drives, and microSD cards, Bluetooth, NFC, and cloud storage options like Dropbox, Google Drive, and Box just to name a few. While moving photos through the cloud is likely the easiest option of everything so far up to this point, initiating the transfer of those photos not only requires you to have a cloud storage account set up for whatever service you’re using, but you’ll have to at least keep those photos in your storage for a time while you get them to where you wanted them during the transfer.

If you wanted an easier way to transfer photos to multiple devices though there’s now a way to do that. With an app/service called PhotoSync. PhotoSync basically transfers your photos over your local wifi network, instead of through the cloud and syncing those photos to your cloud storage account. The photos send quickly and easily over the wireless network, and all you need to take advantage of this is the android app if your transferring to and from android devices, and either the companion app for the desktop, or a browser that supports the transfer of the service. The best part is that photos and videos that you transfer with PhotoSync are transferred with all metadata in tact, and at full resolution, so no quality is lost in the transfer.

You aren’t limited to using Photosync with your local wifi network either, as you can also use it with a personal mobile hotspot which makes it easy to use on the go if you need to transfer photos from your smartphone to your tablet, or laptop. Since things transfer over your local wifi connection or a mobile hotspot, they never leave your local network or go over the internet which makes for more of a secure use. The app is free to use for the most basic features, but a pro version list of features is available through an IAP, which allows for a more full featured experience with things like quick quick transfer, built in web browser to access all your photos/videos, an integrated viewer, and support for RAW files. If you want to go pro with PhotoSync it’ll only set you back a mere $1.49.

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HP Offers Up Enhanced Slate Pro Android Tablet For Business At Just $349

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If you’re looking for an affordable option for a new android operated business tablet, you may want to consider HP’s new offering that comes packed running Android 4.4 Kit Kat right out of the box. This new tablet which they launched just recently, comes in with a price tag of just $349.99, which actually makes it a decent offering for what you get. This isn’t a completely brand new tablet, but more of a refresh of one they launched late last year, the Slate 8 Pro which was aimed at consumers. The new Slate 8 Pro business tablet only costs about $20 more than the consumer model, and it adds in NFC support which last years version didn’t have.

Among the slightly higher price, newer Android build and the NFC support, the HP Slate 8 Pro comes powered by an Nvidia Tegra 4 processor with an ARM Cortex A15 chip setup, an 8-inch screen which you probably could have guessed by the name, that comes with a resolution 1,600 x 1,200 pixels. While the Tegra 4 chipset is nice, it only has 1GB of RAM which is probably one of the reasons why HP was able to sell the device for as cheap as it is. Stepping up to 2GB of RAM would have been a bit more powerful, but that’s the sacrifice that had to be made for a lower cost we suppose.

The 1GB of RAM can be overlooked however, as the device is still a well rounded option for the price. You’ll have 16GB of storage space at your disposal for all sorts of files and business related things,(and the occasional game, cause all work and no play makes everyone dull)but should that amount of space not be enough you can easily add more through the microSD card slot. The HP Slate 8 Pro uses micro USB for charging, but it also comes with a micro HDMI port in case you need to mirror the display to a bigger screen for presentations and such. It also comes with an 8MP camera on the back, which is actually one of the better cameras we’ve seen from a tablet with a lower cost, and the front camera is listed as 720p which is obviously geared more towards the aspect of video chat usage than photos. The standard wifi support along with Bluetooth 4.0, and miracast in case you won’t have a micro HDMI cable handy round out the specs.

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Registration for Google I/O 2014 Begins Tomorrow

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Google’s developer conference always seems to sell out pretty quickly. With a lot of people not getting a chance to go. This year, Google – as well as Apple with their own Developers’ conference, WWDC – are trying something new. They are essentially doing a lottery. Where Google is opening doors Tomorrow, April 7th from 5am PT to April 10th at 5pm PT, where you can register interest to attend Google I/O, and Google is going to essentially pull your name from a hat to see if you get to go. So it’s good that you don’t have to sit at your computer hitting that F5 button over and over to refresh the page so you can order your ticket, but then again it sucks for those that won’t be able to go. I’m expecting a lot of backlash here. Apple is actually doing the exact same thing with their Developer Conference, WWDC, which they announced last week. It’s going to be interesting to see how this works out for both companies though.

This year Google I/O has been cut down to just two days, and they will be jam packed – not that the three-day Google I/O’s weren’t before. Google I/O is taking place on June 25th and 26th at the Moscone West as it is every year. Remember that tickets are $900 for everyone, and students are $300. You’ll also need a Google+ account and a Google Wallet account to sign up and then order your ticket, if you are chosen. Additionally, if you do get a ticket they cannot be resold or given to someone else. For those that may not be able to go, say something came up at the last minute, you have until June 1st to get your refund. Which you’re probably going to want. Finally, Photo ID is mandatory for picking up your badge at Moscone West when you arrive for Google I/O.

So, how many of our readers are going to register interest for Google I/O this year?

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