FCC taking a look a Verizon’s $2 “convenience fee”

The FCC, who has been busy dealing with plenty of cellphone carriers business as of late is now apparently looking into another pressing matter. Verizon’s recently announced $2 convenience fee has caught the FCC’s attention and they are now looking into the new plan and hopefully will report back.

According to Reuters the telecommunications regulators at the FCC are looking into a fee for such conveniences and this is what they had to say:

“On behalf of American consumers, we’re concerned about Verizon’s actions and are looking into the matter”

Basically not a lot, but enough to make us report the news and wonder if we’ll see anything become of it. I know many friends and readers alike weren’t happy with the news that Verizon would start charging us for a simple task such as paying your bill online — so we’ll see.

This new fee for Verizon Wireless customers is set to take effect on January 15th 2012 so we’ll have to wait and see if anything comes from this FCC report. We wont be seeing much but hopefully they can change Big Red’s mind. Other carriers have been charging for similar things for years so the chance this gets dropped is doubtful — but it’s really anyone’s guess at this point.

LTE Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 receives update, brings TouchWiz and other fixes with it

If you have been patiently waiting for your Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 LTE model to receive theTouchWiz update you will be pleased to know the update is now rolling out. The update brings a mini apps tray, a quick panel for easy access to things like screen brightness, wifi, auto rotation and more. In addition to adding TouchWiz to the device they have also enhanced the wifi connectivity, fixed issues with emails not marking themselves as read, added a photo editor, memo application and much more. For full details be sure to hit the source, and if you take the upgrade be sure to let us know in the forums how it works out for you!

Richard's most-used Android apps of 2011

Over the course of the last 12 months, I've lost count of the sheer amount of applications that I've downloaded, tried, deleted, and in some cases tried again. When all is said and done though, there's a select group of apps which I use a whole lot more than others to the point that they've become part of everyday life. Here's a little list of what's been getting me through the week.

1. Pocket Casts

This is without a doubt one of the most used applications I have ever downloaded. Literally every morning begins by opening Pocket Casts, refreshing and downloading the latest podcasts to listen to on my long and endless car journeys around the UK in search of a paycheck. I used to be a Google Listen fan like so many of our readers, but Pocket Casts was good enough to tear me away and not look back. The UI is a lot nicer than Google Listen, and recently got an update to make it look just that bit sweeter on my new Galaxy Nexus. It has never crashed on me, but the most important thing of all is it's listings. I can't remember the last time I had to enter a URL for a podcast feed, whereas Google Listen this became far too frequent. And of course the icing on the cake, the worlds greatest Android podcast is in there ready to roll. 

2. Google Reader

Many would argue that there are better RSS readers out there, and said many may well be correct. But again, daily life consists of a lot of checking Google Reader throughout the day wherever I may be, which is never in front of a computer. It does what it needs to which is the most important thing, and it looks real nice in its ICS style. 

3. Wind Up Knight

We love Wind Up Knight here at Android Central, that's no secret. But there's not one game I've enjoyed playing more, and more to the point not one game I've wanted to complete more than this. It's so simple in execution, looks absolutely amazing and is most importantly great fun to play. Some may not favour its in-app purchasing model, but just for the record; I spent about $3 completing the game. 

4. Spotify

In the UK we've been using Spotify for some time now, and it still doesn't have much competition over here. Coupled with an unlimited data plan, there is almost no need to carry music on the actual phone anymore. Spotifys catalogue is so vast that anytime, anywhere, I can listen to pretty much anything that takes my fancy. 

5. HDR Camera+

I was so impressed with the effects produced by this app, that it actually became for a long time a total replacement for the stock camera app. My phone is always my go to camera if i need a quick snap, but I often feel like the images lack depth and vibrancy. It's not perfect but this app has accounted for about 75% of all the photos taken on my phone this year. 

6. Alf for LOVEFiLM (UK only)

Amazon owned LOVEFiLM is pretty much unique in the UK, offering both a streaming and postal rental subscription service for DVD's, Bluray's and games. As with a lot of my day to day online operations I basically rely upon my phone 100% for managing this. Alf is the solution to this. The official LOVEFiLM app isn't a patch on this. 

7. Swiftkey X

Without question my personal favourite keyboard. I've tried others, and there are indeed many excellent ones to choose from. But I always go back to Swiftkey X. It's predictions are first rate and apparently I'm 30% more efficient from using it. For me that's a whole lot more efficient.

8. Google Maps

I drive approximately 40,000 miles every year, up and down the length and breadth of the United Kingdom in my dayjob. I used to use a £250 TomTom Navigator to get me about, but that has been pretty much completely replaced by Google Maps Navigation. It has it's flaws I agree, how I long for offline maps. But it's always there when I need it, and its route planning is as good if not better at times than the TomTom ever was. 

9. TuneIn Radio Pro

The biggest reason for going for the pro version of TuneIn Radio, was for the recording capability. There are some radio shows which I really love listening to, but don't usually have the time to listen live. This lets me set it going in the background, and record to listen to at my leisure. The catalogue is superb, the UI is really nice and above all, it lets me tune into a quality radio station that kept me sane in the desert of Arizona! 

10. Alphascope (Socialscope)

First things first, this isn't available in the Market. For anyone not familiar, Socialscope is a social networking application that is currently in private beta that requires an invitation to join. Thanks to one of the exceptionally good people over at the Crackberry Forums I managed to snag myself an invite and their current Android offering has quickly become my go to Twitter and Facebook client. While there are naturally bugs and bits and pieces that don't work quite as well as they should yet, what there is at present suits me better than Tweetdeck of which I was a long time user. Keep your eyes out for this one, and if you can snag an invite from someone give it a whirl. When it's finished it could well become a big player.

And there we have it. The improvement in the offering in the Android Market during 2011 has been quite remarkable. Long may it continue in 2012. 

Ice Cream Sandwich ROMs for the Nexus S 4G [from the forums]

   

Google may not have officially pumped out Ice Cream Sandwich for the Nexus S 4G yet, but that won't stop you from having it.  We've got two custom ROMs in the forums that are dripping with ICS goodness.  If you're a fan of the stock Android experience, you can get a fully working AOSP 4.0.3 ROM for your 4G, with just enough changes from standard to make everything work well from Beezy.  It's like having a smaller Galaxy Nexus in your pocket, with face lock, beam, and everything else you've seen in videos and reviews.

If you want something a little different, fergie716 has ported over the latest ICS MIUI ROM to the Sprint Nexus, with everything good to go except for Wimax (which you'll never see working on MIUI).  It's also Android 4.0.3 under all the candy, and offers a very different experience that everyone should try for themselves at least once.  It's subtle, beautiful, and a nice change of pace.

Of course, nobody here will blame you if you just want to wait for Google to get the official 4.0.3 build pushed to you.  But if you like to tinker around, there's no need to wait.  Check 'em out

Verizon Wireless axes $2 convenience fee — that was fast

’ve tried not to use this word too many times but for this one we can say #winning. This is a score for all of us — the good guys. After Verizon announced they’d start charging a ridiculous $2.00 fee as a “convenience fee” for customers paying their bill online and a few various other methods there was a huge backlash and plenty of bad PR that surrounded it. It appears that Verizon has listened because today they’ve already axed that plan.

Verizon announced this new and super lame fee earlier this week and even this morning we reported the FCC was taking a look at said fee’s. Between the backlash from customers and blogs, to the FCC comments its safe to say they got a little scared because today have released this statement:

“At Verizon, we take great care to listen to our customers. Based on their input, we believe the best path forward is to encourage customers to take advantage of the best and most efficient options, eliminating the need to institute the fee at this time,” said Dan Mead, president and chief executive officer of Verizon Wireless.

While I’ve seen countless tweets and G+ comments of users saying they’ll leave Verizon over the fee — I felt that was a bit extreme. Now we don’t need to worry about it because just a few short days after the idea it is now officially dead in the water. As of now we’ll all be $2 dollars richer for all of 2012 — spend it wisely guys.

Verizon axes $2 convenience fee upon possible FCC probe

Verizon recently confirmed that it plans to charge its wireless customers a $2 convenience fee for certain methods of credit card payments, news that sparked immediate criticism from consumers. It has even caught the attention of the FCC, which now intends to take a closer look into Verizon’s actions. And that was enough for Verizon to retreat on the plan altogether.


In a statement issued today and published by the NY Times, the FCC expressed concern over the matter and said it will be looking into the proposed $2 convenience fee that Verizon has scheduled to take effect starting January 15.
“On behalf of American consumers, we’re concerned about Verizon’s actions and are looking into the matter,” said the FCC in the statement.
The $2 fee would be applied to any one-time credit card payments made online or via telephone. The fee can be avoided if payments were made by electronic checks or auto-pay plans. Gift cards, in-store, and mail-in payments would also be exempt.
Fortunately, following the FCC statement, Verizon has quickly axed its plans to institute the new convenience fee. The carrier attributed the change of mind to customer feedback.

“At Verizon, we take great care to listen to our customers. Based on their input, we believe the best path forward is to encourage customers to take advantage of the best and most efficient options, eliminating the need to institute the fee at this time,” said Dan Mead, president and chief executive officer of Verizon Wireless.

Samsung smartphones leading in India

Though the popularity of Nokia is declining, it has played a key role in introducing the Indian terrain to mobile phones. The Finnish player has now been taken over by Samsung in India. According to TOI, in November the volume market share and value share were 38 percent and 35.2 percent for Samsung as per GfK research firm. It is for the first time that it has exceeded these figures to overtake Nokia.

Sneaky Samsung

Samsung Mobile and IT country head, Ranjit Yadav said, "At Samsung, we believe in offering our consumers innovative smart mobile devices across different operating systems and different price points, and giving them more choice. This has helped Samsung emerge as the preferred brand in the smartphone market in India."

Samsung witnessed the highest share in October in value, while Nokia was leading in terms of volume. In India, we saw a surge in the market as the month of November contributed 6 percent of the overall phones of the year. Reportedly, CyberMedia Research claims that smartphone shipments reached 7.9 million units from January to September in 2011. It also says that Samsung appears as the market leader with larger value share in September. Nokia has been striving to bounce back and this year we saw it put forth the Lumia range.