B&H lists HTC One M9 with March 25th release date, quickly removes date from website

HTC was only comfortable sharing a “mid-March” release window for the HTC One M9 during their Mobile World Congress unveiling last week, but one retailer might have shed some light on a more pointed release date ahead of time.

B&H prematurely listed the device with a March 25th sale date and a price tag (an expected price tag, mind you) of 9.99. And for what it’s worth they’ve since updated their website to remove any mentions of price or release dates.

So is March 25th the big day? It could be, but it’s important to remember that information through retailers isn’t always accurate. There are a couple of different possibilities you should consider:

• If March 25th is accurate, it might only be accurate for B&H. There’s a chance that the HTC One M9’s release date could be sooner or later elsewhere.


• Retailers often use placeholder information when they don’t have a clear idea, so the March 25th date could have been a bold shot in the dark by B&H.


• The sale date isn’t necessarily the same as the shipping date, so even if  B&H begin taking orders on March 25th that doesn’t mean the device will ship that same day.

Whatever the case may be, B&H certainly didn’t want us to know this information and they’re probably chastising the person who made the mistake of putting it out there this early. We’ll still have to keep our eye out for official release information from HTC and the world’s carriers, but this early sighting lets us know that the company’s ambitious mid-March deadline might not be hard to meet.

[via PhoneArena]

Sprint quickly backs down on ridiculous 600kbps video throttling

Yesterday, many of you expressed disdain for Sprint’s All-In plan. Not because the plan was bad or anything (it’s not terrible, we’ll put it that way), but because this plan seemed to enforce a special throttling clause that didn’t previously apply to any other Sprint plans.

That clause was that video streaming would be limited to 600 kilobytes per second at all times. To be clear, Sprint has always been upfront about having to throttle data usage, but the company’s previous policy was that this would only happen during periods of network congestion, a common tactic among all major wireless carriers.

Now, Sprint has decided against it. The company came forward with a blog post today saying they heard your cries and will no longer go through with plans to permanently limit video streaming speeds, though they were quick to note that they still may “manage the network” in times where things are clogged up.

The move comes at a time where the FCC is cracking down on companies for questionable practices that violate the net neutrality rules that were recently put in place (and more coming into effect down the line). Those rules don’t completely forbid Sprint from limiting speeds in situations where they deem it necessary to maintain network quality, but they do state that the company has to be upfront about it.

And, in defense of the Now Network, they actually were upfront. But they probably thought about that huge 0 million fine AT&T got slapped with not too long ago and thought it best to just avoid getting on the FCC’s bad side altogether.