T-Mobile wants to be more than just your network. | Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile wants you to see it as more than a wireless company, so it’s flattering its customers with status. The company is launching a new program called Magenta Status, which includes a set of new perks for subscribers as well as the benefits already offered by T-Mobile Tuesdays. The company is partnering with Hilton, Hertz, and Live Nation to offer discounts, which can all be managed by the rebranded T-Mobile Tuesdays app, now called T Life. Only T-Mobile’s own subscribers will be eligible for Magenta S ..read more

Comcast can still use “10G” to describe products and services, so long as it’s being used accurately. | Image: Xfinity Creative Comcast has agreed to abandon its “Xfinity 10G network” product branding after advertising watchdogs concluded that it could cause consumers to think they will all experience “significantly faster speeds than are available on 5G networks,” which isn’t true. On Wednesday, the National Advertising Review Board (NARB) ruled that Comcast should discontinue the term “10G” both when describing the Xfinity network and within the name of its Xfinity 10G Network service itself ..read more

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge EchoStar Corporation announced today that it finalized its purchase of Dish Network on the last day of December. Following the merger, which the companies announced in August, Dish is now a “wholly owned subsidiary of EchoStar,” and why? 5G, dear reader. Dish Network was known as EchoStar until 2008 when it renamed itself to Dish and spun its satellite internet business off under the EchoStar name. In recent years, Dish has been pivoting to 5G after buying Boost Mobile and starting Project Genesis, which, in concept, would offer a fourth large network to ..read more

Illustration by Sisi Kim for The Verge Networks spent years telling us that 5G would change everything. But the flashiest use cases are nowhere to be found — and the race to deploy the tech was costly in more ways than one. At CES in 2021, 5G was just about everywhere you looked. It was the future of mobile communications that would propel autonomous vehicles, remote surgery, and AR into reality. The low latency! The capacity! It’ll change everything, we were told. Verizon and AT&T wrote massive checks for new spectrum licenses, and T-Mobile swallowed another network whole because it was v ..read more

Qualcomm names its ARM PC platform Snapdragon X. | Screenshot by Wes Davis / The Verge Qualcomm says it has a new name for the next generation of its ARM PC platform: Snapdragon X. The platform is based on the Oryon CPU tech from its 2021 acquisition of Nuvia, a company founded by former Apple engineers who had previously worked on Apple’s A-series iPhone and iPad chips. Arm has filed a lawsuit against both companies over the deal that is set to go to trial in September 2024. Snapdragon X is a direct salvo aimed at Apple’s M-series chips, which Apple debuted in its MacBook Air in 2020. And if ..read more

AST SpaceMobile used an ordinary Samsung Galaxy S22 to make the call. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge AST SpaceMobile — a cellular satellite company backed by AT&T — has placed a satellite call over 5G, marking the “first ever” 5G connection between an unmodified smartphone and a satellite in space. To conduct the test, AST SpaceMobile used a Galaxy S22. It made the call on September 8th, 2023, from a wireless dead zone in Maui, Hawaii, with its recipient located in Madrid, Spain. AST SpaceMobile got the cell signal to its destination by leveraging its low Earth orbit test satellite ..read more

Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge The iPhone 15 Pro could come with better 5G connectivity. That’s according to data from SpeedSmart (via 9to5Mac), which indicates that the iPhone 15 Pro will offer up to 24 percent faster download 5G speeds when compared to its iPhone 14 Pro predecessor. As shown by the data from SpeedSmart, the biggest jump occurred on Verizon’s network, which showed an average download speed of 195.83Mbps on the iPhone 14 Pro, as opposed to 243.06Mbps on the iPhone 15 Pro. Meanwhile, the iPhone 15 Pro on T-Mobile had the fastest average 5G download speeds at 300.92Mbps, as op ..read more

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile is buying airwaves from Comcast in a deal valued at up to $3.3 billion. In a blog post on Comcast’s site, the company explains that it will sell spectrum in the 600MHz band as it is “unlikely” to need it. Comcast announced plans to build out a 5G network for its Xfinity Mobile service last year using spectrum in the 600MHz band and CBRS — an unlicensed spectrum in the 3.5GHz range that companies can use for free. However, Comcast says 5G field tests with CBRS spectrum “exceeded” its expectations and that it’s “found the band to be highly efficie ..read more

The Huawei Mate 60 Pro supposedly comes with a 5G chip. | Image: Huawei Huawei released the Mate 60 Pro on Wednesday with little fanfare and some missing details — namely, the kind of chip it uses. Any mention of a chip is notably absent from the $960 phone’s product pages despite mentioning “better communication experience” and a “more stable network connection.” That information has only surfaced in unboxing videos and reviews posted online, including this one from the tech outlet Gizmochina, which says that the device comes with the Kirin 9000s to support 5G and satellite calls. This seems ..read more

Autopay with a debit card or be prepared to pay up. | Illustration: The Verge You gotta hand it to carriers: if there’s a way to squeeze an extra few dollars out of their customers, they will find it. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, the latest maneuver is requiring customers — current and new — to switch to a debit card or bank account withdrawal in order to receive the autopay discount on their plan. Verizon has included this requirement on plans for years, but in the past few months, AT&T and T-Mobile have quietly followed suit to cut back on how much they pay for credit card pro ..read more