Even with all the hype surrounding every iPhone release and the recent hubub over the Samsung Galaxy S4, we can’t forget another company that makes some pretty great smartphones. That company? HTC.

With the recent announcement of the new HTC One, the company is poised to make a comback in a big way. The device looks great and will be available soon. How soon?

Well, for AT&T at least, the mystery is gone as this morning the company announced both pre-order and in-store dates for the One. The 32GB version of the One will arrive on April 19th for $199 with the 64GB version at $299, both with a new, two-year agreement, of course.

Pre-orders officially start on April 4 at 1:00 PM CT, which is this Thursday. For those who pre-order, AT&T is including a free HTC Media Link HD wireless HDMI adaptor. The phone will come in both black or white.

For more on this new, awesome device, check out the video after the break.

Now that the new hotness from Samsung, in the form of the Galaxy S4, is out of the proverbial bag, the waiting has begun in earnest. And as everyone knows, the waiting is, indeed, the hardest part.

Fortunately, those of you who want to order a Galaxy S4 and don’t mind using AT&T’s network, don’t have to wait quite as long as the rest of the population. That’s right, starting on April 16th, AT&T will be taking pre-orders for the Galaxy S4.

No, you can’t actually buy one and have it in your hands on the 16th, you can only pre-order it. The best part? AT&T has not given an actual release date for the device yet. Huh.

It was bound to happen. And this is why we can’t have nice things. Five of the largest ISP’s in the U.S., including Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner, AT&T and Cablevision, have finally decided enough is enough with these damn pirates.

That’s right, the infamous “Six Strikes” anti-piracy program, also known as the Copyright Alert System (CMCSA), is going live on an Internets near you. Among the five ISP’s who think this is a good idea and will have some effect on limiting online piracy, Comcast is first out of the gate with the launch of its system today.

The rest are expected to follow suit later this week. According to those who support it, the new system is designed to “educate” users of the consequences of copyright infringement. Yes, because education has done such a great job so far.

Don’t worry, though, the new program won’t allow ISP’s to completely cut off your service if they happen to think you might be a pirate. It does, however, allow them to temporarily reduce your internet speed or block popular websites after “repeat offenses.”

When I left Apple and AT&T for Verizon several years ago, the VZ iPhone had yet to be announced. So, my first Verizon experience was with an HTC Droid Incredible.

In short, I really liked it and from that moment on, I was a fan of HTC and their products. In fact, they continue to be my favorite Android smartphone manufacturer. Sorry Samsung.

So, good news for me (and the rest of you HTC fans out there) because this morning the new hotness known as the HTC One was finally unveiled. The device comes with a 4.7 inch Full HD 1080p display at 468 PPI, is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 1.7GHz quad-core processor, an UltraPixel camera, Sense 5.0, 2GB of RAM, NFC, and a 2,300mAh battery.

Sounds great, right? The only downside for me, so far, is the list of potential carriers. At this point it looks like T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint will have the One, but no Verizon. Not that I was planning on switching to an HTC One from the iPhone 5, but it’s nice to have options.

Check out the full press release from HTC after the break as well as a shiny video that tells you more about this cool device.

Even though some may think the new iPhone 5 isn’t a revolutionary device or a “must” upgrade, others obviously feel (and think) differently. That’s right, after only a short time being available, pre-order stock of the iPhone 5 has sold out at Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint.

The devices went on sale this morning at 3:01 AM Eastern, 12:01 AM Pacific and shortly thereafter the company’s initial stock of iPhone 5s was exhausted for all three carriers. Shipping time for new orders placed on Apple’s website reportedly slipped to two weeks just before 4:00 AM Eastern, where it now sits.

For those of you lucky enough to get your order in early, all three carriers are reportedly quoting launch-day delivery, at least for any orders placed as of 8:15 AM Eastern Friday morning.

So, were you one of the lucky ones to get an order in before they ran out? Or, are you gonna wait and see how things go before you jump in?

As expected, at an event in San Francisco today, Apple VP Tim Schiller took the wraps off the company’s newest mobile device: the iPhone 5. In addition, the company announced a new version of iTunes, an update to its mobile iOS software, dubbed iOS 6, and more.

But really, the more isn’t that important. What people are really interested in is the new iPhone. So, here’s what we know:

The iPhone 5 is 18% thinner than the iPhone 4/4S. It is also 20% lighter than the previous model. It’s made of all aluminum and glass. Since the display is taller, with a 1136 x 640 resolution (aka 16:9 like your HD TV), there’s an extra row of icons and the pixels per inch are 326.

All of Apple’s apps are updated to support the larger resolution, and apps that aren’t yet updated will simply run at normal resolution with small black bars surrounding them. In other words, letterboxed.

The iPhone 5 supports almost every cellular and Wi-Fi band in the world including GSM/GPRS/EDGE/CDMA/EV-DO/HSPA/LTE and Wi-FI a,b,g,n with dual-band. It also features a new Apple A6 processor that’s twice as fast as before, and offers twice the graphics performance with 22% less physical footprint.

The new device will also sport an 8 megapixel camera with improved low light, color processing and lens, and, panorama mode. As for battery life, Apple claims better performance than the iPhone 4S, which is actually pretty good. It remains to be seen how that will stack up during real world tests with 4G LTE on all the time, however.

Pricing for the device, which will be available in both black and white, starts at $199 for the 16GB version, $299 for the 32 GB and $399 for the 64GB model. You will be able to use it with Verizon, AT&T or Sprint in the U.S.

iOS 6, the latest version of Apple’s mobile software, will be available on September 19th for current iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users.

Late last night Samsung finally announced what many in the Android-loving community have been waiting for: carriers, pricing and availability dates for the Galaxy SIII. Well, wonder no more because the flagship smartphone will launch on Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile starting in June.

“The U.S. launch of the Galaxy S III is the most anticipated launch of the year. As promised, we are delivering the ‘next big thing’ for U.S. customers and across all major carriers,” president of Samsung America Dale Sohn said in a statement. “Galaxy S III introduces new technological innovation and takes sharing to the next level.”

For Verizon, preorder availability will begin on June 6th with the device priced at $199.99 for the 16GB model. The 32GB model will cost $249.99 with a two-year contract, and both models will be available in either white or blue. T-Mobile confirmed that it will launch its version of the Galaxy S III on June 21 but no pricing was given.

Sprint will offer the device starting on June 21st, with preorders beginning Tuesday, June 5th. It will come in two versions, a 16GB model for $199.99 and a 32GB model for $249.99. Sprint is also the only U.S. carrier to preload Google Wallet on the device.

Nothing from AT&T yet but we expect that announcement to come soon. In the meantime, Samsung’s full press release is after the break.

As with all cutting edge technology, something else comes along to displace the “new hot thing” very shortly after the new hot thing comes out. Case in point this time around is the flagship Android smartphone known as the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

Today, the contract-free price for the device has dropped to $399.00, down a hundred bucks. It’s now available from Google’s online Google Play Store for that price.

In case you haven’t been following the rise of this particular device, it was originally released last October and launched on Verizon Wireless in mid-December. But even though it’s been around for several months, it’s still got some very good specs.

Some of these specs include a 4.65-inch 720p Super AMOLED display, a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, 16GB of internal storage, 1GB of RAM, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and GSM/HSPA compatibility with both AT&T and T-Mobile.

The best part is that this phone is unlocked and you can take advantage of some pretty good SIM only deals from AT&T or T-Mobile. At this price, it’s pretty tempting indeed.

Call it an Easter miracle, or whatever else you want, but it would appear, at least according to the folks at Engadget and BGR, that AT&T will indeed unlock user’s iPhones beginning this Sunday. Now before you go and get too excited, there’s a couple things to be aware of.

First, this has not been 100% confirmed by AT&T. Even though one spokesman did email a confirmation to BGR. So, take it with a big grain of salt until you see it actually happening. Second, if it turns out to be true, it won’t apply to every iPhone customer using AT&T.

Here’s the rules: A customer’s “account must be in good standing, their device cannot be associated with a current and active term commitment on an AT&T customer account, and they need to have fulfilled their contract term, upgraded under one of our upgrade policies or paid an early termination fee.”

So, there you go. If you meet the above criteria and have always wanted to jump ship from AT&T to another GSM carrier that can support the Micro SIM and has the same frequencies as AT&T (T-Moblie, for example), now’s your chance. Maybe.

I’ll believe it when I see it. Of course, there’s also other alternatives.

Well, this is a bit disappointing. Granted, it will probably only affect a small percentage of you out there, but it’s still kinda lame.

According to reports, even if you have Apple’s shiny new iPad and want to engage in a little FaceTime with a, um, friend, you won’t be able to do it, even if you have super fast 4G LTE. It will only work over Wi-Fi.

If you try, you will be prompted to connect to an available Wi-Fi network. Curiously, if you are using your iPad as a Wi-Fi hotspot, which you can with the Verizon version, FaceTime will work if you initiate a call using an supported iPhone or iPod.

Apple has so far been moot on this issue but you can be sure people are going to be asking about it. After all, in many cases 4G LTE is as fast (or faster) than available Wi-Fi networks so the fact that FaceTime isn’t supported is difficult to understand.

Again, this isn’t a critical point for most of you, we just found it interesting as it gives a bit of insight into how Apple deals with wireless carriers. Of course, it could be a decision on Apple’s part. . . but we kinda doubt it.

If you have a shiny new iPhone 4S as some of us do here at The Flickcast and you’ve experienced less-than-stellar battery life, this will be of interest to you. There’s been a few reports around the Internets, and elsewhere, that the iPhone 4S’s battery life leaves something to be desired.

Sure, it could have to do with the fact that it features a faster processor or that Siri is a bit power hungry. Or, as was postulated by the folks at iDownloadBlog, it could be the iPhone 4S’s Time Zone service that’s causing the problem.

Reportedly, a bug in iOS 5 (which ships on all iPhone 4S units) forces its location tracking feature to remain active much more than necessary which drains the phone’s battery far more quickly. Users can manually turn off the automatic time zone setting by going to Settings > General > Date & Time. Once there, toggling “Set Automatically” to “Off.”

We’ve tried this “fix” on a couple of our own devices and so far it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. That said, and this is in no way scientific, we tend to get pretty much the advertised battery life on our iPhone 4S units. So, maybe it’s actually a hardware problem on some units and not software after all? Or, perhaps it’s a carrier issue as our iPhone 4S units are all using Verizon and not AT&T?

Whatever the issue, Apple is usually pretty fast to issue a fix for these problems so expect to see one sooner rather than later. In the meantime, let us know if you try this “fix” and what your results are, if any.

Now that we know Apple will be announcing something next week on October 4th, the speculation can continue as to what that will be. And here’s one for today.

Mac Rumors reports that a China Unicom executive apparently confirmed during a presentation at this week’s Macworld Asia that the “iPhone 5” set to be announced next week will support HSPA+, which is sometimes called “4G.” This technology  offers a maximum theoretical data speed of 21 Mbps.

They’ve even got a photo of a slide presented during the talk that seems to support the assertion. According to the report, research vice president of China Unicom, Huan Wenliang, said the iPhone 5 “will support W-CDMA based high-speed data transfer standard HSPA Evolution” (aka HSPA+) during a keynote speech at the event.

T-Mobile and AT&T both offer 21Mbps HSPA+ in the United States and market the networks as “4G,” although it really should be thought of as more “3.5G” if anything, based on the speed. Apple is reportedly testing a true 4G LTE iPhone but we probably won’t see that being announced next week.