AppleInsider has a good breakdown of the pricing differences for wireless service on AT&T and Verizon’s versions of the 3G iPad–as well as fo iPhone tethering, which may be a better deal for many folks.

AT&T confirmed Thursday that it would indeed bring the Personal Hotspot feature included in iOS 4.3 to its iPhone 4 customers. Verizon customers got to enjoy this feature at the launch of the device last month, for a $20 extra charge above the regular data plan.

Verizon users get 2GB of data to use for tethering: AT&T will also give its own users 2GB for the same price. In both cases, the data used in tethering applications is separate from the data used on the phone itself — meaning if you go over on either, you’ll be socked with overage charges in either case.

At least AT&T finally realized it’s not right to take your tethering data out of your regular data plan, yet still charge you an additional fee. Maybe it’s just me, but that seemed like highway robbery. In any case, AT&T’s announcement is sure to begin the debate on whether or not the user has a right to use the data they pay for in the manner they want.

[UPDATE: AT&T has contacted us to clarify: "AT&T counts data used in tethering applications and data used on the phone together," spokesperson Steve Kerns told us. "So a 2GB tethering plan and a 2GB phone data plan would provide 4GB of data that customers can use on the phone or through hotspot use."]

At the moment, I’m walking around with two iPhone 4s in my pocket: my personal AT&T phone, and a Verizon iPhone lent to me by Apple for review. (More thoughts on it coming up.)

As everyone reading this knows by now, the two flavors of iPhone are close to identical. So much so that I keep getting confused about which one is which–at least until I turn them on, whereupon I can check out the carrier identifier in the upper left-hand corner.

Without turning the phones on, I could examine the slightly different placement of the antennas and mute switches. But there’s a more obvious difference that I’ve found quite handy: The Verizon iPhone has way less fine type on its back, and is missing an entire row of regulatory logos.

By happy coincidence, I just read an Ars Technica piece by Casey Johnston that explains the stuff on the back of iPhones, and helped me figure out why there’s so much less of it on the new Verizon model.

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When I heaped lavish praise on Motorola’s Atrix 4G smartphone during CES, those plaudits came with a caveat: For this wacky modular computing concept to work, AT&T needed reasonable pricing for the Atrix’s laptop dock and accompanying data plans.

Unfortunately, that won’t be the case. When Atrix 4G pre-orders begin on February 13, the phone itself will cost $200 like almost every other Android superphone on the market — no problems there.

But the laptop dock, which taps the phone’s processor to run a full version of the Firefox browser, will cost $500 on its own. You can get the phone and dock together for $500, but then you’ll have to include tethering (another $20 per month) in your contract. And even if you don’t take the bundle, the dock will still require tethering to access AT&T’s network.

The laptop dock consists only of a screen, keyboard, mouse and battery, and yet it costs the same on its own as an entire high-powered netbook, processor and all. That alone is a dealbreaker. But the real disappointment is AT&T’s attitude towards the very concept of docking. Even though the dock’s sole functionality is to browse the web — and not perform bandwidth-intensive desktop tasks like online gaming or peer-to-peer file sharing — AT&T still treats it like a full-blown laptop.

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Looks like AT&T has realized that its smartphone tethering plan is a raw deal, because the carrier will soon double the plan’s bandwidth cap while also allowing some phones to act as wireless hotspots.

Currently, AT&T charges $20 per month for tethering on top of its $25 per month smartphone data plan. But AT&T doesn’t provide any extra data for this service, so subscribers are confined to the same 2 GB per month for which they’re already paying.

That’ll change starting February 13, when AT&T starts selling phones equipped with Wi-Fi hotspot capabilities. Both wireless and USB tethering will extend users’ bandwidth caps to 4 GB per month for the same $20 surcharge as before.  Each additional GB cost $10.

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Much ado was made over the hotspot feature of Verizon’s version of the iPhone 4. However, some who may have thought the carrier was going to make this a standard feature may want to think again. A Verizon spokesperson has confirmed to Macworld that the tethering functionality would be an optional, extra-cost feature.

Verizon will charge an additional $20 per month, which will give the user 2GB of data to use (additional usage is charged at $20 per 1GB). This will be a separate data plan altogether, and follows pricing for tethering on other smart phones on the network that have the capability. While the charge may dampen the enthusiasm a bit, it’s better than AT&T’s tethering offering, which also costs $20 a month, but takes data of your iPhone data plan. That means you only have 2GB to use overall before you’re socked with overage charges.

I wonder if AT&T will respond by changing its own tethering plan, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

[Note: This post republished with permission from our pals at Macworld.]

Has the flame fizzled out of your relationship with AT&T? Was it originally love at first sight, but now you’ve caught yourself eyeing that new iPhone Verizon just announced? Don’t worry, our love affairs with gadgets and wireless carriers are often fleeting, and the only thing at risk of getting hurt is your wallet. If you’re looking to switch from AT&T for Verizon’s new iPhone 4, here’s how you can do it.

I’ll try to answer a few general questions before we get into details. First, you should be able to bring your current phone number to Verizon if you’re switching from AT&T. It’s the law. You might even be able to bring your home phone number, too.

Also, as with all wireless carriers, if you signed a contract to get your phone for cheaper than its full retail price, AT&T charges an early termination fee (ETF) if you want to break that contract early. But whether you’re going to cut the AT&T chord or you’re a free spirit with no obligations, let’s start preparing you for a Verizon iPhone.
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On my way home from Verizon’s iPhone event in New York–I returned to the John F. Kennedy International Airport seven hours after I left it–I wanted to sit down for a moment at the international terminal. Once again, the most convenient place to perch was at a fancy online-enabled pay phone from 1991 which I discovered during a trip last August. Back then, the phone had AT&T signage, was missing most of its keys, and didn’t work. I wasn’t sure if it had been in operational condition anytime this millennium, in fact.

This time, the phone showed signs that it wasn’t an orphan. The AT&T branding was gone, replaced by that of GTL (a company which appears to specialize in providing phones to prisons). And the keyboard had been repaired (mostly: the “3″ and “5″ keys were missing)

But the phone still didn’t work–no display, no dial tone, no nothing. I wonder when anyone wanted to use it–at least for a purpose other than making a voice call–and was frustrated by its sad condition?

I’m hanging out at a Starbucks across from the Verizon event until I can begin my live coverage (11am ET/8am PT). Let’s kill time with a silly little poll on how the existence of a Verizon iPhone would affect AT&T’s currently-thriving iPhone business:

HTC Shift 4G

HTC chose CES as the launchpad for three new Android 2.2-enabled smartphones for 4G networks. One of these phones, the EVO Shift 4G, is a slider that will complement HTC’s original EVO and Samung’s Epic 4G on Sprint’s WiMax network. Rounding out the trio are the Inspire 4G for AT&T and the ThunderBolt, one of 10 new phones and other devices from various vendors now announced for release for Verizon’s 4G network.

At 5.8 ounces, the new Shift is a bit lighter in weight than the original EVO 4G, HTC’s existing Sprint phone. The Shift also adds a slideout keyboard, said HTC officials, speaking with me at the show here in Las Vegas.

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Not to get all gushy or anything, but I think one of Harry’s best opinion columns here was the one from March 2009 about how smartphones are destined to replace the PC, and how the comforts of full-sized computing — keyboard, mouse, monitor — will become dumb shells for our powerful handsets.

Motorola’s Atrix 4G is an indication that he’s right. The phone itself marks a technological leap, as one of several new Android handsets with dual-core processors, but the real revolution is an optional dock that acts like a laptop when the phone is plugged in. There’s also a separate HD dock for televisions and external monitors, with USB ports for full-sized keyboards and mouses. Ladies and gentlemen: your dumb shells.

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When tech politics and cupcakes collide.

“Watching TV is supposed to be fun, right?” asked AT&T’s Michael Johnston. In a press event at the AT&T Labs in New York City, Johnston and other researchers showed off  iRemote, Talkalytics, and dozens of other projects now under way for using AT&T’s long-time Watson speech recognition together with search, gestures, and Twitter analysis.

With all the hundreds of TV channels available today, it can be harder than ever to figure out what to watch, Johnston observed. But through a new iRemote app currently in development, you can speak voice commands into a smartphone to get an immediate list of “all reality shows on Thursday night”–and other categories of TV programs small enough to easily digest — on your TV screen.

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T-Mobile runs mean (if funny) anti-AT&T ad, decides its souped-up 3G network is a 4G network after all.

I spent this morning liveblogging Microsoft’s official Windows Phone 7 kickoff here in New York. Even though there wasn’t a lot of brand-new news–Microsoft started showing off the OS months ago, and some of the hardware news had leaked–there was still lots to chew on. Herewith, a few early impressions based on experiencing the keynote and spending twenty minutes fiddling with the phones on display here.

How’s the interface?

We already knew that Windows Phone 7 was an inventive approach to mobile interfaces that owed little either to earlier versions of Windows or the iPhone. (It is, however, reminiscent of the Zune HD and certain aspects of Xbox 360 and Windows Media Center.) It features Tiles (big icons that can display constantly-updated information in a widgety fashion), screens that slide to the left to reveal more stuff (like the iPhone and Android desktops, but inside apps as well), and other distinctive ideas. Judging from the time I spent with some phones this morning, the level of overall polish and fluidity is very good.

It’s not an iPhone-style great leap forward,, but I can certainly imagine some folks actively preferring it to the iPhone interface. And given that Android’s interface remains so-so and the future of HP/Palm’s WebOS on phones is somewhat murky, Windows Phone 7 could end up being the iPhone’s most serious competitor from a usability standpoint.

Any other unique benefits?

Windows Phone 7 has built-in Office apps with editing (although I need more time with them to judge whether they’re better than third-party suites for other phones). It lets you subscribe to music using Microsoft’s Zune Pass service; solid subscription music services are available for other platforms, but they’re not integrated into the OS. Speaking of integration, the music player has an API that permits third-party services such as Slacker to show up–Microsoft’s demo this morning mentioned this feature but didn’t really show how it works.

Window Phone 7 also has lots of hooks into Facebook, Windows Live, and other social networks–it grabs and melds information from them, lets you issue updates and upload photos, aims to make it as easy to browse photos on Facebook as it is to view ones on the phone, etc., etc. This social stuff is ambitious for sure, but I want to live with it for a while before deciding whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing. (I’m instinctively skeptical of phones that aim to support social networks through built-in features rather than excellent stand-alone apps–the disaster known as Microsoft Kin shows how hard it is to pull that off.)

What’s that image at the top of this post?

During this morning’s presentation, Steve Ballmer and company reported all the catch phrases on that slide so often that I almost began chanting along. To some degree, they’re just marketingspeak–no company is going to say that its new product is occasionally delightful, adequately mine, and a sluggish hassle. But Windows Phone 7 is the first evidence I’ve ever seen that Microsoft understands how to make a pleasant, efficient, modern mobile operating system–which has absolutely nothing to do with cramming the Windows interface onto a tiny screen.

What’s missing?

Let’s see. Multitasking for third-party apps; cut and paste (which is coming early in 2011); massive quantities of great apps; the assumption that virtually every new app will be available for your phone; a movie/TV service as comprehensive as iTunes; an ecosystem of accessories to rival the iPhone. I also didn’t see any way to swap out Bing as the default search engine in favor of anything else. (To be fair, the Bing services–including voice search and Maps–look good.) None of these omissions render the operating system DOA, but they need to get fixed, and Microsoft has little time to dawdle. Windows Phone 7 2.0 or Windows Phone 8 or whatever the next version is called needs to fill in most of the obvious holes.

What about big-name third party apps?

Microsoft had surprisingly little to say about that today. It demoed eBay and IMdB, plus a couple of games (including The Sims). The phones that attendees could try out had a few other name-brand apps, including Twitter (which looks similar to the Android version) and Fandango. But I didn’t see Facebook or Foursquare or Bejeweled or other apps that I try to install on a new phone as soon as I get it. (Foursquare has been demoed in the past.)

I do feel hopeful that Microsoft will get one thing right that Google has failed to do so far: doing everything in its power to ensure that third-party apps have a look and feel that’s consistent with the overall interface. All the ones I’ve seen so far, such as eBay, truly feel like Windows Phone 7 programs.

How’s the hardware?

I think it’s a smart move that Windows Phone 7 will be on three AT&T handsets, each based on a 1-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU and a five-megapixel camera, and each going for $199.99 on contract–but each with its own personality and none resembling the iPhone all that closely. The LG Quantum has a physical keyboard; the HTC Surround has slide-out Dolby Mobile/SRS speakers; the Samsung Focus has a 4.3″ Super AMOLED display. The Focus goes on sale on November 8th, and the other two will follow within a few weeks.

A couple of early hands-on impressions: The Focus feels like a cousin of Samsung’s Galaxy S phones, with an impressively thin case and a display that delivers very, very vivid colors. (Whether they’re too vivid compared to a good LCD is a matter of opinion.) The Quantum’s slide-out landscape keyboard felt pretty good by slide-out landscape keyboard standards, but the slider mechanism was oddly stiff. (This may have been due to interference from the bracket for the cable that fastened the phone to the demo station.)

What’s the deal with AT&T?

It seems to be more serious about Windows Phone 7 than it’s been about Android to date–it’s Microsoft’s “Premier” wireless company for now, and the initial lineup of handsets looks decent. It also looks like AT&T has integrated some of its own stuff (including an app for its U-Verse TV service that’s available both to subscribers and non-subscribers) without munging up the Windows Phone 7 experience. Here at the event, I spoke with David Christopher, Chief Marketing Officer of AT&T’s wireless unit, and he seemed genuinely enthusiastic about Windows Phone 7. Would it surprise you to hear that he cheerfully refused to answer direct questions relating to AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity and whether the new Microsoft phones will help the carrier prepare for the era of the Verizon iPhone?

What are Windows Phone 7′s chances?

Ooh, I was afraid you’d ask that. It’s unknowable at this point, really. Microsoft let Apple build up an unimaginably gigantic lead in the market for next-generation smartphones, and now it has to catch up with Android, too. It’s incredibly daunting, and these phones–which are version 1.0 products despite the “7″ in the name–aren’t going to get Microsoft anywhere close to parity. On the other hand, I’m impressed with Windows Phone 7 overall–and I can’t think of a different strategy that the one Microsoft seems to be following that would have a better shot at success. This is going to be fun to watch…

After years of promises, it looks like the Xbox 360 will finally be able to act as a television set-top box for AT&T U-Verse subscribers, starting next month.

The news isn’t official, but Engadget got some leaked documents that spell out the deal. AT&T will release a U-Verse update on October 17, and will switch on the Xbox 360 compatibility on November 7. Just a couple gotchas: U-Verse subscribers will still need at least one AT&T set-top box or DVR in the home, and the Xbox 360 needs to have a hard drive.

The main benefit to using an Xbox 360 is cost savings. One of the documents says “No MRC for Xbox receiver,” which I think refers to monthly rental cost. Additional U-Verse receivers cost $7 per month, so subscribers could save $84 per year by using an Xbox 360 instead. Juggling fewer set-top boxes and remote controls is also a plus.

Microsoft first touted the Xbox 360′s IPTV capabilities in 2007, at the Consumer Electronics Show. Microsoft’s Mediaroom television software, which is used by more than two dozen television providers worldwide, can technically run on the Xbox 360, but until now, few providers have actually done it. In the United Kingdom, BT started supporting the Xbox 360 in 2008, but could not actually send live television to the console. In Canada, Telus switched on Xbox 360 support in August, becoming the first provider in North America to do so.

U-Verse’s arrival will be better late than never. But if the IPTV feature was available three years ago, Xbox 360s acting as second receivers would’ve almost paid for themselves by now.