Category: AT&T

AT&T has announced that the latest update to the DirecTV app for Android (coming soon) and iOS, you will be able to stream content from the AT&T owned satellite television provider to your mobile devices on AT&T without incurring any data usage or charges.

Even better, you can stream video via your DIRECTV or U-verse App without using your mobile data when you’re on the go with Data Free TV on the AT&T mobile wireless network. It’s easy and automatic after registering and it doesn’t count against your AT&T mobile data allotment.

It is great news for those who have both services as you can watch your favorite show, game or movie on your devices over LTE without having to worry about eating up your data plan for the month.

As a general rule, I try not to pick on any one particular carrier or device because whichever they happen to be, meets the need for some of the Android faithful.  But seriously AT&T, you need to get your act together.  Yesterday the carrier began rolling out the Android Marshmallow update for the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and the Note Edge on their network.  That is nearly three months after the last carrier in the US (T-Mobile) updated the device on their network, six months after the first updates were done by Sprint and yes, a year after Marshmallow was released by Google.  AT&T is notoriously slow at getting updates out to their devices (which isn’t helped in this case as Samsung is slow as well) and this may well be one of the best cases.

Okay, enough complaining.  It’s here and that’s the good news.

Back in May I posted that Samsung had released their Android Marshmallow update for the Galaxy S5.  AT&T, it seems, just now got around to releasing it.  During the same week that Google released Nougat, the US carrier released Marshmallow for the S5 and S5 Active on their network.  That’s a full three months after Samsung released and just shy of three months since Verizon released it for S5’s on their network.

Come on AT&T, get with the program.

If you have a Galaxy S5 or S5 Active, you should be seeing the update come to you via an OTA update.  The update is about 940MB so you will certainly want to be on Wi-Fi to download it.  Once you have it downloaded, the install including reboots should take about 30 minutes.  So all in, likely 45 minute to an hour to upgrade completely.

As expected, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 has become available as a pre-order from the four major carriers here in the United States this morning.  AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon all have the phone available to order today through various payment options with delivery of the device expected to start happening on August 19th, the day the device becomes generally available.  Generally speaking, if you want to buy it outright, it is going to be at least $850 regardless of the carrier you go with but many are offering accessories when you pre-order your Note 7 (subject to availability).

AT&T

Outright, the Note 7 is $879 from the carrier or you can do one of the AT&T Next programs.  The 30 payment option is $29.34 while the 24 payment option is $36.67.  Along with this, the carrier is offering a $695 in credits when you buy one Note 7 and want to get a second one.  It’s pretty close to BOGO.  Or, if you sign up for a 2-year contract with the carrier, they will give you a free Samsung Gear S2.  Lastly, you can pick up a Galaxy Tab 3 for .99 Cents with the purchase of a Galaxy Note 7.

Readers who own the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 on the AT&T network have a nice surprise waiting for them this morning.  The carrier has rolled out the July 1st Android Security Update to the device in what must be record time.  The update, a 22.6MB sized download, will give your Note 5 all of the security fixes and improvements from the first security patch released this month by the Android team.  Remember that there were two patches this month, one dated July 1 and the other July 5.  In the Release Notes, according to the Kernel version, this patch was compiled on July 4 so it will not have any of the fixes or driver updates that were in the 2nd patch.  Those, likely, will be rolled up into an August update for the Galaxy Note 5 on the carrier’s network.

Good news this morning for those of you who have the Samsung Galaxy S6 Active from AT&T.  The U.S. carrier has released the Android Marshmallow update for the device and it is rolling out now.  The update is build MMB29K.G890AUCU3CPE4 for those keeping score at home and it weighs in at a hefty 1.44GB.  That means you will most certainly want to download this via Wi-Fi which, depending on your network, could take 20-30 minutes to download.  Once you have it downloaded, the installation of the update will take another 20-30 minutes and will require a phone restart.  Make sure you have any local files (docs, photos, etc) backed up to your favorite cloud service just in case things so pear shaped.