Oh boy, if you had plans on picking up one of this year’s top flagship devices from either Samsung or HTC, this might change everything. /s A new press render has leaked from the ever-so-reliable @evleaks Twitter account, showing Verizon’s upcoming Casio Commando 4G LTE. As a recap, we have seen this device pictured a few times when it made a stop at the FCC. As far as we know, the device does in fact support 4G LTE, but past that not much is known in terms of specs. We know it will definitely be water and dust resistant, but probably won’t beat out any notable devices in a benchmark. But hey, that’s not the point. 

Verizon’s new Father’s Day commercial that popped up over the weekend is a fine reminder that Google Voice Search is there to help you in times of need. When your child adopts a dangerous pet, baseballs are thrown through windows, a kid puts the wrong dish soap in the dishwasher, superglue is used to help someone palm a basketball, or when your daughter gets her little heart crushed by a boy, you can search for help.

I can’t tell you how many times recently that I’ve pulled out Google Voice Search to find things. If my friends and I can’t remember anything from an actor’s name to movies they were in to how many different NBA teams Dr. J played for, Google Search can get you there quicker than any other method. I forget to use it every so often, but lately it has become a part of my everyday life.

Oh, the ad was also to show off the current “Free” deal that VZW is running for the RAZR M in blue, should you be interested.

Are you using Voice Search regularly or do you forget about it?

This beautiful Sunday afternoon, AT&T announced that they are joining Verizon by tweaking their upgrade policy to match the length of contract periods. Back in early April, we broke news on Verizon’s change from 20-month upgrade cycles to 24-month cycles – AT&T will now follow the same time frame. This new policy “applies to any customer whose agreement expires in March 2014 or later.” So if your contract ends prior to next March, you’ll actually still be able to upgrade at the 20th month mark. Should your contract end next March or thereafter, you’ll have to wait an additional four months. 

After word snuck out yesterday morning of a government program called PRISM, which allegedly allows the NSA and FBI to have back-door access to information from some of the world’s leading internet companies, we have seen leaders from both Facebook and Apple come out to deny that they have any knowledge of such a program. But what about Google? Any chance they have joined this super secret PRISM program and are handing over your life to the government? According to CEO Larry Page and CLO David Drummond, that is not the case at all. In fact, in a post through the official Google blog that went up moments ago, Larry Page started off the conversation with, “What the…?” 

Thanks to all of the hard work that developers have been pumping into the CDMA version of the Galaxy S4 from Samsung, root lovers and hackers alike can now flash the biggest name in custom recoveries, ClockworkMod Recovery right through ROM Manager. 

In a court order obtained and then published last night by the Guardian, we now know that Verizon has been asked to hand over millions of phone records on a daily and ongoing basis to the NSA (National Security Agency). As you can imagine after reading that first sentence, people are not exactly excited about their information being handed out in secret, without their knowledge. As that report gained steam, the Obama administration went ahead and issued a statement this morning to try and calm the public outcry, though I’m not sure it will help at this point. 

The Samsung Galaxy S4 may be all the rage these days, but last year’s mega-phone, the Galaxy Note 2, is still quite the prize should you be in the market for an oversized device. Some time in the last couple of days, Verizon dropped their variant to $199.99 on 2-year contract, down from what has been a launch price of $299. And actually, this is as good of a deal as you’d get from Amazon while using an upgrade, something that rarely happens in the mobile industry. If you are a new customer, it’ll only run you $79.99.

Keep in mind though, that Samsung will likely release a Galaxy Note 3 at some point towards the end of this year. Most of the details on it at this point are still rumors, but you can imagine that it will be the holiday device to own outside of a new Nexus. However, the current Note 2 is still a beast and will easily get you through a contract.

Via:  Verizon

Cheers @Mannyyyfresh!

Galaxy S4 owners on Verizon who have already rooted and hacked their device can now get the latest and greatest builds of CyanogenMod onto their phones. The CM team are now pumping out nightly builds for the GS4 on Verizon, US Cellular, as well as Sprint, so getting that heavily modified version of vanilla Android is just a flash away.