A blog all about cell phones!

Poor T-Mobile. The company hasn’t managed to change its status as the industry’s neglected step-child. Recent news shows the mobile carrier is laying off 900 people in a second round of cuts following 10 consecutive quarters of contract user losses. And that’s while competitors like Sprint have been adding users to their customer rolls. Apparently loads of people are fleeing the cold congfines of T-Mobile and heading to what they consider to be warmer, more hospitable climes.

Says the Wall Street Journal piece above, T-Mobile, with around 36,000 employees, announced it would cut 1,900 jobs and close seven call centers to help preserve funds for a $4 billion network upgrade to a high-speed mobile broadband.

Sounds like the chiefs are betting that the upgrade will stave off further losses and make them more attractive to mobile users. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. Regardless, consumers should remember that no matter their choice of carrier, they can add dollars to their budget and maintain high quality communications by buying lightly used cell phones. T-Mobile may save itself or it may not, but used cell phones and their expert refurbishers are here to stay.

AT&T’s networks have become more efficient than they used to be (remember the chaos that ensued when the first few generations of iPhones came out and the network was over-burdened in large cities?), meaning it delivers more bandwidth over the same infrastructure and spectrum.

Even so, as Bloomberg Businessweek points out, they’ve sold so many large data plans to so many consumers that now that people are starting to use the entire allotment of data they’re paying for, the infrastructure is approaching the max-out limit. If you’re unhappy with the network, maybe it’s time to jump ship to Verizon and get used cell phones to offset the cost of breaking the contract.

From the Businessweek story:

AT&T’s first-quarter earnings show that new smartphone customers aren’t the ones straining its data networks. Rather, AT&T’s chickens have come home to roost. Customers are finally starting to consume the big buckets of data AT&T is selling them, taking their fair share of network capacity while not paying more for the privilege. Consequently AT&T is seeing a massive increase in data traffic without a corresponding jump in data revenue.

During AT&T’s Tuesday earnings call, Mobility Chief Executive Ralph de la Vega revealed that AT&T had added a net total of 10 million new smartphones over the past year. The devices now account for nearly 60 percent of its postpaid subscriber base. De la Vega also revealed that AT&T’s wireless data revenue is tracking about $24 billion per year, growing at a steady rate of more than 20 percent per year.

But AT&T has pointed out before that data traffic on its mobile networks is actually doubling each year. So that means a 100 percent annual increase in mobile gigabytes shipped is being driven by a mere 32 percent increase in smartphones. What’s more, AT&T is collecting only a few billion dollars more in revenue to handle that deluge of new data.

We’ve noticed that the people who spent years mocking “gamers” have now succumbed to games’ online cousins: social networking. Even our Aunt Ada, never a fan of anything electronic, can’t wait to get home to check out what’s happening on Facebook, and once she gets the app on her iPhone, watch out! Who knows if she’ll even be able to drive without checking her Wall (ah, the terms that have become part of our dialogue lexicon, from tweet to friending to Wall).

Seems the numbers show there are lots of Aunt Adas burning minutes on their mobile devices these days. Says a piece in Mediapost.com, “Since the dawn of the smartphone, games have dominated consumers’ mobile minutes. In the past year, however, new research shows that social networking has risen to rival gaming on a per-minute basis.”

The proof? Flurry compared the average time smart phone users spent across app categories between the first quarter of 2011 and 2012, and found that gaming dropped by 4% — down to 24 minutes per day — while social networking increased by 60% — up to 24 minutes per day. Peter Farago, the firm’s VP of marketing, told the site, “We take the rise in social networking apps as a signal of maturation for the platform — As game demand may be hitting its saturation point, consumers are also discovering other apps, namely social networking.”

For those of us who peddle phones, this is good news. Because the more popular social networking becomes on smart phones, the more smart phones people will want. And, those of us who happen to sell used cell phones can offer a the Aunt Adas of the world a great deal – a smart phone that’s been lightly used and is Just as adept at calls and apps as a brand new iPhone – at half the price.

We can count on seeing continuing growth based on the current trends. Flurry found huge growth in year-over-year social networking app usage. Time spent increased by 60 percent, and the total time spent on smart phone apps among consumers  went from 68 to 77 minutes, a jump of 13 percent.

On a recent night, a group of friends gathered at a mountain house and celebrated the last weekend of ski season. They were drinking copious amounts of beer, and someone mentioned the necessity of recycling the bottles. Someone else said, “Whatever – I recycle more every day than you guys do in a month.” Far from describing an alarming alcohol addiction that causes him to recycle hundreds of bottles per day, he was referring to his occupation as a dealer of used cell phones. And he was right. Says here, the The Consumer Electronics Association reports that  recycling in the wireless industry surged last year, jumping 53 percent and busting records.

The accomplishment – aimed at reducing the enormous amount of plastic and toxic chemicals that, as part of trashed phones, is constantly piling up in landfills – was the result of the eCycling Leadership Initiative, according to CEA, which says the industry recycled 460 million pounds last year, compared to 300 million pounds the year before:

“In the first year of the eCycling Leadership Initiative, our industry has made significant progress toward its goals due to the hard work of our member companies,” Gary Shapiro, President and CEO of CEA, said as part of the announcement. “We continue to push for a national solution to eCycling that will eliminate the costly and confusing patchwork of state regulations.”

We hope this trend will continue, since the lead and other toxins in non-recycled phones leak into the environment and are harmful to animals, plants and humans. Do you part by making sure that instead of throwing your old phones away, you donate or sell them to someone like our friend, who will repair and resell them.

Sony just announced plans to start issuing Android 4.0 updates to its 2011 Xperia smartphones starting in mid-April, reports Scott Webster, senior editor for AndroidGuys and a blogger for CNET. The first models expected to see “Ice Cream Sandwich” are set to be the Xperia Arc S, Xperia Neo V, and Xperia Ray, he says, with the updates taking around four to six weeks to complete, depending on markets and carriers. In May and June, Sony plans to release Android 4.0 to the remaining models, such as the Xperia Arc, Xperia Play, Xperia Neo, and Xperia Active.

If your Android is on the upgrade list, you can look forward to new features and maybe a few bugs to get worked out while they arrange themselves on your device. If your device is not on the list and you’re dying for the upgrades, one way to get them without spending a large sum on a brand new phone is to take advantage of refurbished cell phones. For a bit less money, you could get a fairly recent model of one of the Androids about to get hit with the new generation of updates. It just so happens that used cell phones and refurbished cell phones vendor CellularTrendz is selling a number of Xperia Plays. They range in price from $129 to $149, which is less than half of what you’d pay for a new one.