Despite claimed inventory shortages, US Cellular has announced that they will be getting the latest Samsung smartphone come April 30. The Samsung Galaxy S4, originally announced back in March, will be coming to US Cellular. The 16GB version will be available in either black or white for $199, provided you sign a two-year contract.

After being one of two U.S. carriers to offer a presale for the Samsung Galaxy S 4, U.S. Cellular is now one of the first to have the device available for purchase online and in stores.

 

The Samsung Galaxy S 4 will be available for purchase online at uscellular.com on Friday, April 26. Preorders will also begin shipping that same day along with the exclusive, free S View flip covers that were a part of the presale. The device will be available in stores on Tuesday, April 30.

 

U.S. Cellular is offering the 16GB device in White Frost and Black Mist and it is $199.99 with an instant rebate. Customers who buy the 4G LTE Samsung Galaxy S 4 from U.S. Cellular can enjoy a valuable rewards program that recognizes loyalty. Currently, 61 percent of customers have access to a 4G LTE network, and by the end of the year, 87 percent of customers will be covered.

The title doesn't have a typo; The Provo Municipal Council voted Tuesday in a unanimous decision to allow Google to acquire the iProvo fiber network for a total price of $1. Not only is Google getting a steal on the fiber network, the city has agreed to pay approximately $722,000 for equipment to use the gigabit network for government services and $500,000 to determine the exact locations of the buried fiber cables.

Google will, in exchange, take ownership and control of the existing fiber network. They will provide free 5Mbps/1Mbps connections to all of Provo's residents for at least seven years. Additionally, Google will provide free gigabit connections to 25 different public institutions.

Provo, Utah will be the third Google Fiber city. "It gets back to our origins as a company...our customers cared about speed," said Google's director of community affairs.

Earlier today, I turned on my Xbox to watch a bit of Netflix and discovered the homepage featured an advertisement for an upcoming Microsoft event. That's right, Microsoft is advertising an event at which the next generation Xbox will be unveiled. Microsoft is trying to get the #XboxReveal hashtag trending, as seen in the picture below.

We will hopefully be able to feast our eyes on the next-gen Xbox 720 on May 21 at 10am PDT. Interested parties can watch the event on Xbox Live, Xbox.com or Spike TV. We will, of course, have full coverage of the event here in case you miss it. We also figure Microsoft will offer the event for replay.

We've seen a number of rumors about the upcoming Xbox 720. Just which would you like to prove true?

This morning Giada, a company most often associated with their Android based mini-PCs, unveiled a sleek new tablet based on Android. Dubbed the T720, the new tablet is packed with some powerful features.

Featuring Android 4.1 Ice Cream Sandwich, the T720 is a lightweight tablet that is powered by dual-core 1.5GHz ARM Cortex A9 processor, 1GB of RAM and a Mali-400 GPU. This equates to smooth and rich graphics on the 7" 1280x800 IPS display.

The T720 packs in 8GB of onboard storage which can be enlarged by the addition of a microSD card. The tablet features USB 2.0, HDMI and 802.11 B/G/N connectivity as well as Bluetooth 4.0. A 0.3MP front camera and 2MP rear camera are also put to use on the device, while a 4,000mAh battery gives the T720 5-7 hours of continuous use.

Acer has been pretty silent on the smartphone front since January when it launched the Liquid E1. This morning Acer announced its next generation smartphone, the Liquid E2.

The Liquid E2 features a quad-core 1.2GHz ARM Cortex A7 processor, 4.5" qHD IPS display, 1GB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage, which can be augmented by a MicroSD card. Photo capturing task are handled by an 8MP rear camera that can shoot 1080p video at 30FPS. Android 4.2 is the operating system of choice.

The E2 is HSPA+ compatible and is available with a dual SIM card option. It is expected to release mid-May in Belgium, Netherlands, Ukraine, France, followed by Spain, UK, Italy, Germany and Russia, with a suggested retail price of 229 Euros. Dual SIM version pricing has not yet been announced.

The next game in the Call of Duty (COD) series has just been leaked thanks to US retailer Target and UK retailer Tesco. Target let the name slip in an advertisement which offered $10 off any game when you reserve your copy of Call of Duty Ghosts.

Tesco actually leaked box art on their website, which appears to have now been removed from their website. Thankfully, Joystiq managed to grab a screenshot before it was taken down. Each retailer posted a separate release date in the November and December time frame, which is traditionally on par for the series.

Judging by the box art above, the game does appear to be developed by Infinity Ward and Activision.

The US' third largest carrier has just posted its first quarter financial report and things are not looking very good. The company posted a positive operating revenue of $29 million, but that is about all the good news there is.

Sprint says that it sold five million smartphones in Q1, which includes 1.5 million Apple iPhone's. Despite these high sales numbers, the company reported an overall net loss of $643 million, on total revenue of $8.79 billion. The company lost about one million subscribers, part of which were the direct result of Sprint beginning to shut down the Nextel network.

Subscribers to Sprint should not worry too much, though. The company is continuing to invest in infrastructure and has rolled out its LTE network in over 88 cities now, 30 of which were launched in Q1. The company says that it plans to continue that roll-out to another 170+ cities in the coming months.

T-Mobile had high hopes to be the first to market with Samsung's highly anticipated Galaxy S4, but it appears that the company will most likely be the third company to offer retail sales of the device in the US market. Late Tuesday night the company issued a statement that said it has been forced to delay the Galaxy S4 launch due to unexpected inventory deliveries.

T-Mobile will now begin offering the Galaxy S4 for sale on Monday April 29th, a full two days after rivals Sprint and AT&T begin selling the device. While to some two days is no big deal, T-Mobile was hoping to cash in on the early adopters who wanted the latest and greatest, but wanted to forgo the annual contract that comes with a new phone.

In a statement T-Mobile said:

We know customers are really looking forward to getting their new Samsung Galaxy S 4 soon. However, due to an unexpected delay with inventory deliveries, the Galaxy S 4 will not be available on http://www.T-Mobile.com as planned on Wednesday, April 24. Instead, online availability is expected to begin on Monday, April 29. We apologize for any inconvenience and are working with Samsung to deliver the device to T-Mobile customers as soon as possible.

For so long, a pre-built gaming PC cost so much more than a DIY rig. The DIY rigs are always down to the components chosen, and the skill of the system builder, but now Digital Storm are going to take not only the headache out of building an awesome gaming PC, but the extra cost of it, too.

Enter the Vanquish line of PCs from Digital Storm, which reduces the gap between DIY and pre-built PCs to between $23 and $58. The Vanquish line of PCs is a "carefully optimized selection of brand name, high-performance components to deliver a fluid smooth game playing experience".

Things are looking pretty middle of the road for gaming giant Nintendo as the company just closed out its financial year with an operational loss, but saw gains in net income.

Nintendo is expected to announce an 18.7 billion dollar loss for the 2012 fiscal year that just ended March 31st. This will be the company's second yearly loss and the red margins can be attributed to weak sales numbers of the Wii U console. Nintendo's CEO Satoru Iwata has predicted the company will post a 100 billion-yen operating profit for the 2013 fiscal year.

"I don't think Nintendo can achieve 100 billion yen," said Yoshikazu Shimada, an analyst at Tachibana Securities Co. "It's hard for Nintendo to meet the target despite the weak yen's tailwind." Hideki Yasuda, a Tokyo-based analyst at Ace Securities Co. also criticized the CEO saying, "Iwata hasn't produced good results in recent years. He can't avoid being criticized."

EA and Maxis has released a 2.0 patch for its popular city builder, SimCity. The patch is said to fix a number of issues, but users internet-wide are reporting that the patch causes more issues than it fixes.

The patch was said to fix things like issues with the transit system, high population building issues, and allowed users to now pump water from nearby rivers. While those things appear to be fixed, a thread on Reddit has popped up that tells a different story.

"This patch has created more bugs than it has fixed", said one Redditor. The list of new issues being reported is quite staggering actually. After the patch, sewage issues seem to run rampant, along with random phantom sounds from objects, buildings get stuck in construction, and even increased random game crashes.

While some say that the feature phone is dead, Nokia feels that there is still a strong market for a budget phone with a keyboard. This morning Nokia unveiled the Asha 210, a feature phone based around social media and the popular WhatsApp messenger.

Sporting full QWERTY keyboard and a dedicated WhatsApp button, the Asha 210 is being billed as "the most social Asha yet." The phone is based around Twitter and Facebook and gives users quick and easy access to WhatsApp. Owners of the device do get WhatsApp free of charge, which ends up saving about $1 per year.

Nokia says that the new Asha 210 will offer about 45 days of battery life on the single SIM version and about half that on the dual SIM model. The company expects to launch the Asha into the retail market in June at a pricing point of just $72.

Our Tweakipedia section has a new post.

Ever wanted to know how to setup an AMD Eyefinity setup? Now you can read through our guide on how to get it setup. It's not that hard, and once you've done it, it's incredibly easy to disable and re-enable if that's what you require. You can read more on the Tweakipedia article right here!

We've seen AMD release their dual-GPU beast, the Radeon HD 7990 today, but NVIDIA don't want the spotlight to be formed directly on their competitor so they've chosen today to release a new set of drivers for their GeForce GPUs.

The GeForce 320.00 drivers arrive in beta form, and offer the usual performance improvements and bug fixes over the previous GeForce 314.22 WHQL drivers. There is some interesting support baked in, too, for the GeForce 800 series. If you have the latest GPU from NVIDIA, there's a 20% improvement for Dirt: Showdown and Tomb Raider.

A 6% to 7% improvement is offered for StarCraft II, Sniper Elite V2, Far Cry 3, F1 2012, and Metro 2033. The new GeForce 320.00 beta drivers also note "This is the GeForce Game Ready driver for Dead Island: Riptide, Neverwinter, and Star Trek". You can get the new GeForce 320.00 beta drivers here.

Swype seems to have come out of the rock that was shaped like the word beta, and has now reached the point of being called Swype 1.5 for Android. The latest version of the keyboard replacement for Android is now available on the Google Play Store.

Version 1.5 adds a quick shortcut to Dragon Mobile Assistant for those who have it installed, expands Living Language to 20 dialects, adds two new themes and refines both Smart Touch and Smart Reselect. The biggest change, is that it is available directly from the Google Play Store, and not from the Swype website.

Nuance is charging just 99 cents for Swype 1.5 on Google Play, but for a "limited time" only.

eBay for Android has been updated today, with the latest version receiving a face lift in both the visual and function side of things. eBay for Android has now reached version 2.2.

The departments that receive a fresh new look include Home, Cart and Checkout areas, with users in the US and UK get a Shopping Chart that will synchronize across all devices that use eBay. This way, the items in your cart on one device, transition over to another device. The option to pay for multiple items at the same time under a single checkout is now available, too.

The item search section of eBay for Android has been updated, and now includes the ability of inline search suggestions, autocorrect, and expanded international results when few to no results are returned. You can grab eBay for Android here.

US carrier AT&T have released their earnings for Q1 2013, which includes both their wireless and wireline businesses. Revenues were strong, with a total of $16.7 billion taken in for the three-month period, up 3.4% year-over-year.

$4.7 billion of operating income was recorded, a number that is up 4.1% year-over-year. AT&T took in an additional 296,000 postpaid net customers, with postpaid churn improved by 1.04%. 1.2 new million smartphone subscribers were added in the three-month period, with postpaid data ARPU up 18%.

Currently, AT&T cover 200 million POPs with their LTE network, which is running ahead of schedule. Before the end of the year, AT&T plan to reach 90% of their goal, which is to have 300 million POPs covered - a 50% increase. AT&T have also said that 60% of their customers have a 4G (which is HSPA+ or better) device, with over half of those being LTE-capable.

Most gamers know about Razer, but the news of them launching their new Comms platform might have missed their eyes and ears. Razer's Comms platform is an all-in-one communications solution, combining a VoiP client, instant messaging and IRC chat features.

All of this is wrapped into Comms, which can let players chat to their fellow gamers without having to alt-tab to another application to do so. Comms' in-game overlay seamlessly integrated with PC games, and can be used to display as a small window, or a smaller ticket that shows who is speaking at the time.

Razer have also promised an ultra-fast server infrastructure and complex audio algorithms that will reduce noise and echo cancellation in order to give gamers the most precise, crisp and clear communications with no time-outs or lag spikes.

Apple may have had a great day at their earnings call earlier, but we have also reported that we shouldn't expect any new iDevices between now and Q4 of this year. Why? Well, maybe because "demand for iPhone and iPad screens weakened amid concerns that Apple was losing its luster in the mobile device market".

This is from Reuters, who reports that LG Display, who are an iPhone and iPad screen supplier, have posted a drop of 74% in quarterly earnings. With Apple devices accounting for around 30% of LG Display's overall revenues, their drop in earnings could at least be tied to the lackluster iPhone sales.

Could this be another reason we won't see another iPhone anytime soon? Have Apple needed to go back to the drawing board with the increased competition from Samsung and co? Maybe an iPhone 5S isn't enough to inject sales of the iPhone for Apple.

Today is the day for Apple news, isn't it? We've just seen the iPhone makers earnings report for Q2 2013, and had news to not expect a bigger iPhone anytime soon, but now we shouldn't expect any new products between now and Q4 2013.

This isn't a rumor or another site rustling around the dark for some traffic, but from CEO Tim Cook himself who hinted that new products would come out during the fourth fiscal quarter of the year, continuing throughout fiscal 2014. This means that we shouldn't see many products unveiled between now and Q4, or around the holidays this year.

Personally, I think Apple are behind the ball and will have to come out with something that truly deserves the title of 'magical' and 'revolutionary' this time around. Google, LG, Samsung, Sony, HTC and more all have great products out and many more to come between now and Q4.