How to avoid waiting a week for AT&T to unlock your iPhone

It has now been a little over one week since AT&T announced that it would officially unlock customer’s iPhones if they met certain requirements. The resulting rush overloaded support representatives, with sources inside AT&T telling ExtremeTech that the queue exceeded 10,000 at its highest points last week. Those early adopters as a result waited nearly a week in some cases for the unlock to be authorized.

Why did the queue grow so big, so fast? The unlocking procedure, and AT&T’s rules on eligibility we’re told. While unlocking most phones can be done without the interference of the manufacturer, Apple does it differently. Access to the tool is limited to technical support and members of AT&T’s “unlock” team, so talking to a regular old customer support rep is not going to do you any good.

After verifying you meet the requirements, the technical support representative then enters your IMEI (the phone’s identification number) into the tool provided by Apple, which in turn activates the unlock and sends the confirmation email to the user. If you contact customer support, those representatives can only open a case ticket, which depending on workload could take days to resolve, our source says.

So what’s the quickest route to unlocked bliss? Make sure all your ducks are lined up before attempting to unlock your iPhone. The result is a much less painful process. Based on my own experience and what we’re hearing, here’s how to legally unlock your iPhone in short order:

1. Verify you’re eligible. Check your account to ensure it is paid up-to-date. Make sure the iPhone you are attempting to unlock is not attached to an account that is under contract. That basically means an old iPhone that’s under a plan which is still under contract is likely not eligible. The easiest phones to unlock will be those that are not associated with any account and over two years old, it seems. If you’re ineligible, be prepared to pay the early termination fee to unlock.

2. Make a note of your IMEI. The technical support representative will need this number, so it’s a good idea to jot it down now. The IMEI can be found by tapping Settings, then General, then About, then scrolling to the bottom. The IMEI is a 15-digit number. Write it down and place it to the side.

3. Backup your device now. If you haven’t synced in awhile, now’s the time. The unlock process requires a wipe of the device. Connect the iPhone to iTunes and allow it to back up. If you use iCloud, many of your settings and basic information is likely already backed up to the cloud, but better to be safe than sorry.

4. Call AT&T directly. Call into AT&T’s customer support. Don’t use the company’s online support system, or in-store representatives. Follow the prompts and press “2″ for Technical Support when the options for the main menu is listed. Select option “0″ to speak with a representative. Make clear that you’re attempting to unlock your eligible iPhone. If you’re not, you will need to tell them you agree to pay for the early termination fee for the right to unlock the device.

At this point, the process is in AT&T’s hands. They should process your unlock immediately since you are talking to a representative with direct access to the tool. Wait for the email to confirm the unlock has been processed.

5. Reconnect your iPhone to iTunes. After receiving the email, re-pair your device with iTunes. Under the “Summary” tab and “Version” section, click on Restore. Allow the device to restore as normal. When the restore completes, iTunes will display the message “Congratulations, your iPhone has been unlocked.” If you wish to restore your data, click “Continue,” otherwise it is safe to disconnect.

Please note that if you are taking the iPhone to a different carrier, some settings will need to be changed in order for features like web surfing and picture messaging to work. Although it varies from carrier to carrier, many are happy to provide you with the necessary settings to ensure proper operation. For example, T-Mobile has easy-to-follow directions to set up an iPhone.

Your performance may vary, and on some carriers, it still may be necessary to jailbreak in order for all features to work. For example, iPhone users on T-Mobile experience MMS receipt issues — it appears an fix only available for jailbroken phones will fix that issue according to what we’re seeing.

Either way, good luck and happy unlocking!

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How to spot Android scam and malware apps

Google has gotten better about pulling apps from the Play Store that are demonstrably harmful to your phone. That doesn’t mean, however, that such an app can’t find many hapless victims before it is killed. If you’re going to explore the Play Store in search of the next big app, you need to go in with a healthy dose of skepticism. The shady characters looking to take advantage of users are getting better at projecting a facade of legitimacy all the time. With a little prepping, and just a few seconds, you can make sure you avoid scams.

The 60 second check

Unless you were linked to an app by a reputable source, it is good policy to give its listing page a once over. This doesn’t need to be an in-depth analysis that requires you to cancel appointments and ignore your loved ones. Just take 60 seconds to check for a few common red flags that should give you pause.

Your first order of business is the check out the popularity of the app as listed by Google Play. If an app has many, many thousands of downloads and very few reviews, that has scammer written all over it. Pumping up download numbers is a great way to get an app in front of more users. Also be on the lookout for a very large number of 5-star ratings on a new app.

Even if you do see a reasonable number of positive reviews, check to see if they were all posted in a short period of time. If the app is new, figure out if all the reviews came immediately after it arrived in the store. For anything other than Angry Birds Space or a new Kairosoft game, that smacks of a shady developer paying people for reviews. The web-based store has fast one-click sorting, making this easy to discern.

The other thing you want to check out in the reviews is a pattern of similar word use, or grammatical errors. It’s not that the internet at large has excellent grammar, but you should be able to tell at a glance if the written reviews are too similar to be real.

If the ratings and reviews look legitimate, or just aren’t there, move on to the developer’s website. The Play Store should have a link to the app developer’s site for all apps. Follow that link and make sure it pulls up a real web page. An app that is just out to get your data probably won’t be linked to a legitimate site. These links often redirect to an invalid address, or to the Google homepage. As you can probably guess, this is a big red flag.

If everything above looks to be in order, there is one more thing to check. Ideally, this will be the fastest step because most bad apps will have been filtered from your further consideration already. Go to the Permissions page, and make sure the app isn’t overreaching.

Don’t worry about the location permissions — even free apps use this for ads. You might not be crazy about the idea, but asking for your location is not indicative of a scam or malware app. If you’re not interested in location-aware apps for privacy reasons, that’s a completely different matter. You should take note if you see a simple app asking for permission to your browser history, Google accounts, contacts, internet access, or phone identity. Think about the nature of the app, and if the permissions seem off, that’s a red flag as well.

Why is this necessary?

There’s no way around it: You shouldn’t have to exert any effort to scan for bad apps in the Play Store. Granted, once you figure out what to look for you can evaluate an app listing very quickly, but it would be nice to just install things with confidence. The open nature of the Play Store is partially to blame, but it’s the essential nature of the internet that has brought us to this lowly state.

There are enough people floating around the internet now that you can hire someone to do almost anything. That might be signing up for special offers, illicitly decoding Captchas, or downloading and reviewing Android apps without using them. It is this practice that gets malicious developers’ apps in front of so many eyeballs.

Cheating developers can get access to the zombie hoards of the internet through services like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (named after an 18th century fraudulent chess-playing machine), where people are paid a few cents to perform a mundane task of some sort online. Amazon is a fairly reputable company, so these postings are often purged, but some still get through. This same dishonesty was spotted earlier this year when it came out that Amazon merchants sometimes pay people to leave reviews on Amazon. A few years ago, Belkin was also caught paying for positive reviews through the Mechanical Turk.

Even when Amazon pulls a scammer’s job from the Mechanical Turk, there are plenty of similar services online, many of them in other countries. The massive crush of humanity out there looking to make a quick buck means there will always be seedy developers that use despicable means to make an app look legitimate when it is not.

By all means, take just one minute to check out an app before you install it on your phone. It’s unlikely that you’re going to encounter one of those really sleazy SMS Trojan apps, but coming across an app whose sole purpose is to steal your data is plausible. This is going to be a problem for as long as there are people on the internet and Google doesn’t review apps — and neither of those things are likely to change, so you’d do well to know the warning signs.

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The iPhone elite

iPhone users are elitists. It’s one of those things that we’ve always suspected — including iPhone users themselves — but to maintain the status quo and to prevent high tech culture devolving into all out war, we dance around the issue by using euphemistic terms like hipster. The fact is, many iPhone users consider themselves a cut above the rest. They sneer at unresponsive Android devices, laugh derisively at crippled BlackBerrys, and guffaw at Windows Phone 7′s lack of apps. When they buy an iPhone, they’re buying into a way of life and an elevated, entitled echelon of society — the upper class of the technorati, if you will.

No where is this feeling of entitlement and privilege more apparent than with the recent release of Instagram for Android. For the last 18 months, Instagram has been an iOS exclusive, racking up 30 million users in the process — not bad, when you consider that only 180 million iPhones have been sold. Instagram for Android, in less than 24 hours of availability, has been downloaded one million times. This has resulted in iPhone users tweeting some truly deranged utterances. Here’s a sample:

“Bummed to see Instagram is coming soon to Android. I like the exclusivity of iPhone users only.” – @matthewtpain

“Don’t follow me on Instagram if you got an Android. Only iPhone users following this way. I’m blocking Android users. This is war.” – @iFollowBlindPpl

“I’m absolutely #outraged that Instagram is on Android now. Now it’s gonna be populated by people who are poor and can’t afford an iPhone.” – @Chino_Wanker

While the last one is hopefully a joke, there arehundreds of other examples of iPhone users who are upset at this loss of exclusivity. It is patently clear that, at least for some iPhone users, Android users belong to a lower class of citizenry — that the Android ecosystem is some kind of ghetto where poor, underprivileged humans fight tooth and claw for their smartphone fix.

But are iPhone users actually at fault for entertaining such delusions of grandeur? There are certainly people out there who intentionally buy iPhones as a social statement — to stand out of the crowd — but the problem, if you can call it that, really stems from Apple itself.

At this point, Apple’s reputation and brand recognition is so high that, really, anything it touches turns to gold. After more than a decade of runaway success that begun with the iPod, excellent advertising campaigns, and the cult of personality that surrounded Steve Jobs, there is an implicit agreement that when you walk into an Apple Store, you will walk away with a device that is recognized the world over as being best-in-class.

This is the fundamental reason for the semi-religious fanaticism that surrounds Apple. iPhone buyers might not know why the iPhone is better than the rest, they just know that it is. This isn’t to detract from the iPhone’s actual strengths — it’s an excellent phone — but if you asked those iOS users whythey hate the idea of Instagram for Android, I don’t think many rational responses would be forthcoming. They just know that it feels wrong — that, for some reason, Android is stealing a sip of Apple’s secret sauce. Your iPhone — which you might’ve saved up for, or begged daddy for — suddenly doesn’t seem quite as exceptional. The gap between you and the ghetto has narrowed significantly, and that’s a horrible feeling.

Likewise, if you ask an Apple user why their iPhone or MacBook Pro is better than the Android or Windows equivalent, you will nearly always get some kind of rote response: “It just works,” “Windows sucks,” “I’m a Mac/hipster/artist/bourgeois.” This is because their Apple zealotry isn’t predicated on fact — it’s based on Apple’s incredibly well-cultivated (and well-deserved) reality distortion field.

Now just to be clear, even the staunchest fan of Windows or Android would admit that Apple’s smartphones, tablets, and laptops are good devices. Many (presumably objective) power users choose Apple laptops and smartphones because they are actually good — they’re not just a machination of hype and dream. Apple wouldn’t be the most profitable company in the world if its devices sucked.

Using an iPhone does not elevate you to a higher rung, though — no more than using a Galaxy Nexus, HTC Evo 4G LTE, or an ultrabook. As the saying goes — you are special, just like everyone else. You have access to a delightfully maintained walled garden, but so does everyone else. Your Apple device might have a cool, unique feature — but so do other, non-Apple devices.

By all means be proud of your iPhone, and please, encourage your friends and family to join the smartphone party — but don’t for one second think that spending a few hundred dollars on one phone instead of another somehow makes you a better person.

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Verizon gets it: We want data freedom, and don’t want to be gouged for it

Apple’s inclusion of a mobile hotspot on thenew iPad is pretty exciting. Like the iPhone, we can now use the tablet as a hotspot to share the data connection with our other wireless devices. But Verizon’s move is even better: you don’t pay extra for it.

Verizon has confirmed to several sites that its 4G plans will include the option to tether at no additional cost. Verizon’s iPad 4G plans include 1GB of data for $20, 2GB for $30, and 5GB for $50. This is completely different from smartphone plans, where the “right to tether” can set you back as much as $20 per month, in addition to the normal fees.

AT&T hasn’t specified whether it will follow a similar route, although a tweet provides little hope. In fact, it suggests AT&T will not offer tethering at all — a move none of us should finding shocking considering the company’s past history. Remember when tethering was first introduced in 2009? It took the company a full year to support the feature.

At least one carrier seems to be listening. Despite the industry’s protestations, we pay a set amount every month for a set amount of data. There shouldn’t be an additional charge for the right to use the data in another way, as long as we stay within those limits. No matter whether the data’s being used by the device itself or a device tethered to it, I can think of no valid reason why such a right should incur an additional charge. It’s price gouging, plain and simple.

Verizon seems to have figured this out. Its olive branch to those who want to tether devices to the iPad in order to use the data they have already paid for is a solid business move. It separates them from the competition (for now), and hopefully is the beginning of the end of a crappy, consumer-hostile practice.

Will this signal the end of the tethering tax on smartphones, too? I’ve argued previously, regarding AT&T’s data throttling strategies, that you can’t have two sets of rules. In the end, customer pressure won the day and the carrier relented. If we really want to end the surcharge for hotspot use, we’re going to have to apply pressure to the companies in the same manner to get what we want, and frankly what is right.

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iPad 3 to have a low-res Retina display

A few months ago we tackled the the popular rumor that the next iteration of Apple’s iPad would have a full Retina display. At the time, I predicted that we were still about a year out from seeing such a device due to the fact that no semiconductor foundry had the capability to mass-produce the amount of high-res screens necessary to fill Cupertino’s needs. What seemed more likely was that Apple would release an iPad 3 (or iPad 2S) with a resolution of 2048×1536, which would be 264 PPI, just shy of the 326 PPI that iPhone Retina displays have. The marketing personnel at Apple would still place the Retina tag on it though, because of the fact that the increased viewing distance (arm’s length, rather than up close) would allow the company to “cheat” a bit with the resolution requirements. Now, thanks to the emergence of some high-res images included in yesterday’s release of iBooks 2, it seems our suspicions have been confirmed.

It turns out that the set of images that actually started the whole iPad-3-Retina-display rumor mill — some high-res assets found in iBooks 1 — have turned up again in iBooks 2. Sources claiming to have knowledge of the situation have said that the inclusion of the below images in iBooks 1 was a mistake by the development team, but the fact that they are still in iBooks 2 is intentional, because the iPad 3 will indeed have a Retina display.

The images pictured above are made to display correctly at a resolution of 2048×1536, with a PPI of 264. If indeed they were created for use on an iPad, that would give the next version of the device double the resolution of the iPad 2, but well under the Retina quality of the iPhone 4S.

You have to take all rumors and leaks like this with a grain of salt. The person who leaked the info may just be speaking to hear themselves talk, but we do know that what they’re saying would fall in line with the current bleeding edge of LCD display production. We shouldn’t have long to wait to find out what the real deal is, anyway: The iPad 3, if it’s called that, is expected to be released in March.

Read more at The Next Web

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Why you should sell your iPhone 4 and buy a Galaxy Nexus

Unless you’ve just awoken from a coma, you’re probably aware that the Galaxy Nexusis now available in the US. Like the Nexus One and Nexus S before it, the Galaxy Nexus represents the purest Android experience, straight from Google’s teat. There’s noCarrier IQ, no custom skin, no locked-down features, and of course, as Google’s flagship developer phone, a bootloader that’s easier to open than a courtesan’s corset.

But, I know what you’re thinking, iPhone 4 and 4S owners: You already own the best smartphone ever made, so why bother upgrading? Well, get this: At he risk of sounding like a hyperbolic, superlative-abusing idiot, the Galaxy Nexus is even better. That’s right: It’s bestest.

Ice Cream Sandwich

If you’re holding off on buying a Galaxy Nexus because of a bad experience with an earlier Android 1 or 2 phone, then please forget any preconceptions and at least try out Android 4, Ice Cream Sandwich, at your local Verizon store. Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) is so different from its previous incarnations: It’s faster, it’s smoother, it’s more user-friendly, and most importantly it makes more sense.

It would be inaccurate to say that ICS is easier to use than the iPhone’s iOS, but that’s because Android simply isn’t about ease of use. Android is about power and flexibility — and with ICS, you still get that, but with an additional layer of gloss that has always been sorely needed.

We’ve covered Ice Cream Sandwich exhaustively here on ExtremeTech, but here’s a quick list of the features that iOS simply can’t match: Face Unlock, Data Usage (soft and hard limits on data usage), Android Beam (NFC contact sharing), and panorama camera mode.

That massive screen

Despite what you may have heard about the Galaxy Nexus and its huge, 4.6-inch screen, it’s actually just a millimeter wider than the Galaxy S II — and about 9mm (0.35 inches) wider than the iPhone 4. There’s no denying that it’s a wide phone, but it is lighter and thinner than the iPhone, too.

The main thing, though, is the display itself: a wondrous, 1280×720 (720p) Super AMOLED unit that really has no comparison — except, perhaps, the iPhone’s Retina display. We won’t go as far as to say that it’s better than Apple’s offering, but it’s damn close. If you watch a lot of video content on your phone, perhaps while traveling or commuting, the Nexus is blatantly the better choice — unless you have small hands, in which case you should stick with the iPhone.

NFC, 4G, more memory, and other hardware perks

While it’s hard to draw comparisons between two different processors on two different operating systems — you should never trust a benchmark that tries to do this — I can safely say that the Galaxy Nexus is by far the fastest Android phone on the market. While it does have a fast CPU — a 1.2GHz OMAP4460 — its alacrity mainly comes down to the fact that Ice Cream Sandwich has been designed and compiled specifically for this piece of hardware; much in the same way that the iPhone 4S, A5 SoC, and iOS are perfectly married. If you’ve tried an Android phone before and found it sluggish, I urge you yet again to at least try out the Galaxy Nexus; you’ll be impressed.

The Galaxy Nexus also has twice the RAM of the iPhone 4 and 4S, NFC, and the option of 4G connectivity if you’re lucky enough to have coverage in your area. The one area that the Nexus falls slightly flat, at least when compared to the iPhone 4S, is that its rear-facing camera only packs five megapixels. The general consensus amongst reviewers is that the Nexus is still a very capable point-and-shoot replacement, but if you’re after the finest image quality a smartphone can offer, get the iPhone.

Flexibility

Beyond all else, though, the main reason to buy a Galaxy Nexus is the flexibility to do whatever you want with it. You might be completely satisfied with what your iPhone can do, but this is just a classic case of eyes wide shut, or the inability to want something if you don’t know it exists. You’re an American damnit, you want choices — and that’s exactly what Google’s flagship phone gives you.

With the Galaxy Nexus, unlocking the bootloader and jailbreaking your Galaxy Nexus is a given; Google wants you to jailbreak it. On the iPhone, the last thing Apple wants you to do is jailbreak it,and an untethered jailbreak for iOS 5 is yet to emerge.

A Galaxy Nexus, even without being jailbroken, offers you a changeable (and upgradeable) battery, the option of installing an alternative keyboard, new home screens/app launchers, and complete device automation with apps like Tasker. Jailbroken, you can install new ROMs (perhaps to remove that Verizon bloatware that was sneakily snuck onto the Nexus), overclock (or underclock) the processor, and more.

Just bought a Galaxy Nexus? Read our Galaxy Nexus tips and tricks.

If you’re switching from an iPhone to the Galaxy Nexus, let us know why in the comments.

[Image credit: Fraser Ntukula, laihiu]

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