Americans are upgrading their GT-I9300 smartphones as carriers launch new programs-Priceangels.com

Both T-Mobile and AT&T announced programs to encourage more frequent smartphone upgrades, at a premium price. According to data reported in this Wall Street Journal article, Americans are upgrading their devices less often as innovation slows and current smartphones are more than adequate for their needs.

Since I cover GT-I9300 smartphones here, I tend to upgrade more often than regular consumers. However, I have indeed noticed a slowdown in smartphone purchases that I have made over the past year and am regularly keeping phones for more than six months and sometimes up to a year.

James requested reader feedback in his next big thing in smartphones post and it is tough to come up with the next big "wow" factor that will have people upgrading more often. Most all smartphones have great displays, decent cameras, ability to run thousands of apps and cool designs.

US carriers, other than T-Mobile, heavily subsidize phones, so they haven't made it easy to upgrade in the past. The new AT&T program, when compared to T-Mobile, charges the customer for the price of the phone while also essentially charging the customer the subsidy as well (it is rolled into the higher monthly plan fees). In order for people to jump on this plan, there have to be devices that encourage more frequent upgrades.

My situation was that I went with the HTC 8X, which I was happy with overall, on Verizon. But I really wanted a solid Nokia. The 928 came out, my daughter is old enough for a phone and she picked WP8 over iPhone (daddy's girl, what can I say?) so she got the 8X and I got the 928. A win for everyone. And I'll likely go to the latest 8.1 hardware when it comes out since I still have an upgrade floating about. Do I NEED more than what my phone currently has? Not really. Do I WANT it? Absolutely.sdM6Scfs

The most popular GT-I9500 S4 phone pushed by the carriers - the plasticky Samsung Galaxies - have removable batteries, and it's a lot easier to get batteries now that everyone buys the same 1 or 2 phones in America. The carriers shot themselves in the foot with their greedy lack of diversity and kowtowing to Samsung.PA i9500 S4 1:1 MTK6589 Quad Core Smartphone Android 4.2.9 Dual Mode Single Standby With Dual Camera/Wi-Fi/GPS/RAM 1G/ROM 4G/4.7" HD Screen(White)
Plus, yes, phones are already good enough. The galaxy iv was no real upgrade, and the sequel to the Note came out way too soon.The truth is that the iPhone jump started the whole smartphone revolution: and the smartphone has actually been the fastest adopted technology of all time. Greater market penetration more quickly than anything anyone has ever invented before. Which is and was great: but now that market is maturing and things only get more difficult and more boringly normal from here on in.

Assuming Dediu's estimates are accurate, that means the mobile industry will snare more than 13 million smartphone users in the U.S. before 2013 ends. Almost 60 percent of the U.S. population owns a N7100+ Note 3 smartphone, according to Pew Internet and ComScore. And despite concerns about saturation, the rate of adoption is actually growing, Dediu said.

Around 2.5 million more people began using a smartphone during the three months ending in May as compared with the three months that ended in April, Dediu added.

Samsung offers LoJack, kill switch for GT-I9300 smartphone-Priceangels.com

For $30 a year, owners of the Samsung GT-I9300 smartphone can either track it or render it useless if it's lost or stolen.Because the new anti-theft LoJack feature is nearly impossible for a thief to shut off, it's considered far superior to apps that offer tracking and remote-wipe services. The S4 is the first smartphone to carry the technology for consumers.


The LoJack service from Absolute Software has long been available for laptops, and more recently for tablets. But with smartphone theft becoming common and deadly, the company wanted to give consumers a stronger option to recover stolen or lost mobile devices.

Prosecutors and law enforcement officials nationwide have been demanding that smartphone makers embed strong theft-deterrence technologies in phones. And Samsung’s move with its 3-month-old Galaxy S4 is being applauded as a step in the right direction.Smartphone major BlackBerry today unveiled its latest touch and type handset Samsung at a price of Rs 24,990, which will be available in the market from July 20.

"The BlackBerry Samsung smartphone offers the full BlackBerry 10 functionality as well as access to the growing catalog of BlackBerry 10 apps. With its physical QWERTY keyboard and touchscreen, it gives customers the best of both worlds," Managing Director for India at BlackBerry, Sunil Lalvani said.

BlackBerry Samsung launch price is closest to Chinese firm Huawei's Ascend Mate smartphone which was launched around a month back with 4050 mAh (milliampere-hour) battery. Blackberry Samsung has 2180 mAH non-removable battery. BlackBerry Samsung GT-I9500 S4 has 3.1 inch screen, comes with 8 Gigabyte of in-built storage, 5 megapixel rear camera with auto focus and flash, 2 MP front camera. The phone has 1.2 Ghz dual core processor. fg342GFD

The past one month has seen a series of smartphone launches in India by players including Micromax and LG, which has reworked its strategy to revive mobile phone business.BlackBerry Samsung is among highest priced phone, after LG Optimus G Pro, that had been launched in India within last one month. Micromax launched it Canvas 4 phone for Rs 17,999.BlackBerry Samsung, however, is priced at half of its most expensive model - Q10.

Without a Jump plan, the only way to upgrade is to pay off the full price of the phone every time. The actual amount you pay at the time of upgrading depends on how many months have passed, but no matter what, you’ll end up paying upwards of $600 for a new phone, every time. (The Galaxy S4, for instance, costs $630 at full price.)

If you’re only upgrading once a year, or less often, avoid T-Mobile Jump. With the N7100+ Note 3, you’d pay $1,260 over two years. That’s $90 more than with Jump, but don’t forget you can keep your original phone, or trade it in to a site like Gazelle to make up the price difference. And unlike Jump, you’re not throwing money away if you decide not to upgrade immediately at the one year mark.

The GT-I9300 smartphone launch event-Priceangels.com

In February, agents from the FBI, the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raided Wireless Buybacks' warehouse in Elkridge, Md., and found the facility was being used to store stolen phones, according to Sprint. Law enforcement declined to comment about the raid, citing an ongoing investigation.

In court documents, Wireless Buybacks said it "does not knowingly transact business with anyone involved in burglaries or armed robberies" and conducts "a rigorous screening process" to ensure it doesn't buy stolen phones.Kevin Lowe, co-founder of Wireless Buybacks, has said that his company supplies GT-I9300 phones to "some of the largest retailers in the country." The company generates most of its revenue from a contract to supply cell phones to Best Buy worth about $45 million each year, the company said in court documents.

Best Buy has no plans to cut ties with Wireless Buybacks. "At this point, these are accusations that haven't been substantiated," a company spokesman said.But Baldinger, Sprint's attorney, said the lawsuit reveals how many U.S. consumers are unwittingly buying stolen phones."There are lots of consumers walking around with phones they think they got legitimately from a national retailer," he said, "when in fact the phones were stolen during armed robberies."The middlemen at the center of the global trade in stolen smartphones organize themselves into distinct roles.

Many hire hackers who use special software to "unlock" the devices, enabling them to connect with wireless networks around the world, according to Lt. Ed Santos of the San Francisco Police Department, which has created a special task force focused on combating smartphone thefts. Then, they erase the data on the handsets, often within an hour after the device is stolen.fd23QD23rs

"They completely erase them so the phones can't be identified by who they belong to," Santos told HuffPost. "They want to sell a clean phone that can't be traced."Traffickers later repackage GT-I9500 S4 phones in boxes with the manufacturer's logo, power chargers and instruction manuals in the native language of their destinations, according to Sprint.


Finally, they ship them overseas, mostly to Hong Kong, where they are distributed across Southeast Asia, said Baldinger, Sprint's attorney. Many phones are also shipped to Dubai, Israel and Latin America.In 2011, Ace Wholesale shipped dozens of iPhones and Samsung Nexus phones to Go Telecom HK and Mobile Planet HK, according to invoices obtained by Sprint. These two companies listed addresses in Kowloon, a district of Hong Kong that is thick with electronics merchants.

Most traffickers ship phones in large cardboard boxes via FedEx and UPS, according to Deaven, the Homeland Security agent. The destination of stolen N7100+ Note 3 phones often depends on the provenance of the traffickers."Here in San Francisco, a lot of people have ties to Mexico," San Francisco police Sgt. Josh Kumli said. "A lot of phones are going to Mexico because that is where they have contacts."