4g

Kent German joins us to explain what the heck 3G and 4G are and what the difference between them in.

Based on recent leaks, a pair of HTC handsets, the Supersonic and Incredible, appear all but ready to ship. The Google Android smartphones have appeared in the wild and they look like final products.

A handful of pictures of the Incredible trickled out early last week from a Twitter user known as DevDroid. As you can see in the image, the handset is black with red accents. Though the color scheme doesn't resemble anything else HTC has done lately, it does have an air of Verizon Wireless about it. According to rumors, the Incredible runs Android 2.1 with … Read more

A Verizon Wireless executive said its first 4G wireless handset could be available by mid-2011, according to an article in Thursday's Wall Street Journal.

Anthony Melone, chief technology officer at Verizon Wireless, told the newspaper he expects Verizon to be able to offer mobile handsets with 4G capability within three to six months after it launches its commercial 4G network. This is about six months sooner than had previously been expected.

At the GSMA's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February, Dick Lynch, an executive vice president and CTO for Verizon Communications, said Verizon Wireless is on track to launch its service in 25 to 30 markets … Read more

The day the iPhone 3GS launched, I wrote a column entitled "364 days and counting to iPhone 4G." Since then, thanks to Google, I've gotten a lot of e-mails from folks wondering just when the fourth-generation iPhone will come out, whether other carriers besides AT&T will offer it, whether it will actually work on 4G networks, and just what features it might have.

Until I hear otherwise, I'm sticking to my guns and saying the iPhone 4G--or whatever Apple chooses to call its next iPhone--will arrive almost a year to the day from when … Read more

On Call runs every two weeks, alternating between answering reader questions and discussing hot topics in the cell phone world.

It wasn't so long ago that the cell phone world was just transitioning to 3G technology. But now, just as we're getting settled, the ever-restless industry is moving on again. Fourth-generation technology, or 4G, is gaining traction and carriers are promising even faster data speeds.

So what is 4G? To start, think of wireless technology as a family that gets faster with each generation. Second-generation (2G) networks were faster than the original first-generation wireless technology; third-generation (3G) is faster than 2G; and 4G is faster than 3G. Speed is important for data transmission (not so much for voice) because a faster network lets you do more with your phone. The 3G networks that we use today allow us to stream video, download music tracks and other large files, and surf the Web on full HTML browsers. Think of it like moving from a dial-up Internet connection to cable or DSL--suddenly you could do more with your computer and do it faster.

That's why it's easiest to think of 4G not in terms of what it is, but rather in terms of what it can do. While 3G offers data speeds of about 1.5 to 2 megabits per second (Mbps), 4G will double that--and it could go even faster. It's important to remember, however, that promises are just that. As any iPhone user can tell you, 3G speeds can vary widely in everyday use, so 4G performance won't always be perfect.… Read more

Editors' note: Sprint also advertises on CNET.

We've always followed Sprint's television ads with interest, primarily because they've been a roller coaster ride. We were never fans of the black-and-white spots with CEO Dan Hesse, but we liked the most recent campaign that tried to demonstrate what users could do on the carrier's network at that given moment.

Now Hesse is back, and frankly his claws are out. On Monday, Sprint announced a new commercial that will focus on its "Any Mobile, Anytime" calling plan. In the TV spot, Hesse informs viewers that unlike … Read more

Last week we told you that Sprint was being cagey about the future of its WiMax devices. The carrier isn't saying when it will offer 4G phones, but we're betting that the summer timeframe isn't so far-fetched.

Indeed, the carrier is doing its best to keep WiMax in the news. On Wednesday, Sprint announced that it would expanded 4G to additional markets in 2010 and it sent us an invitation for a media event featuring CEO Dan Hesse at CTIA next month.

The invitation doesn't say much, but it promises that the event will be all … Read more

It was a fantasy trip on Buzz Out Loud today, wherein fairy dust and unicorns are the new power generators of the future (Bloom Box), Mothra wants to eat your children ("looming spectrum crisis"), and we've got to save the beer-foam-measurement blogs (Web archiving policies in the UK). We've got a way with dry news. --Molly

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Clearwire saw a huge uptick in 4G wireless subscribers in the fourth quarter, which helped the company narrow its losses.

The company, which is building a nationwide 4G wireless network, added 87,000 new subscribers in the fourth quarter, it reported Wednesday. This is up from the 5,000 it signed up in the fourth quarter of 2008. Clearwire ended the year with a total of 688,000 customers.

These subscribers also included wholesale customers, which use the Clearwire service through one of its partners, such as Sprint, Comcast, or Time Warner Cable. Clearwire said that its wholesale subscribers jumped … Read more