According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Apple is getting ready to fire up production of two new iPhone models: an updated successor to the iPhone 5, and a smaller, cheaper iPhone to be aimed squarely at more cost-conscious users. Details are scarce, though sources tell the Journal the iPhone 5 successor (iPhone 5S?) should start production in the second quarter for a summer launch. The less-expensive iPhone also being produced may come in a variety of colors but will likely use "a different casing from the higher-end iPhone" and possibly come in a variety of colors.

Our friends over at TMONews point out that T-Mobile will be sending out an over-the-air update from Apple that will provide LTE connectivity for unlocked iPhones on T-Mobile's network starting on April 5. According to the leaked internal screenshot, the over-the-air update will also provide those users with other awaited functionality like visual voicemail and MMS.

Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam today stated the company is watching T-Mobile's no contract pricing with great interest, and that Verizon will offer no contract wireless if consumers start clamoring for it. T-Mobile is offering users less expensive data plans but no phone subsidies -- users for example paying $100 down for the iPhone 5 and an additional $20 per month for 24 months.

According to documents obtained by CNET, the DEA is upset because the encryption used by Apple's iMessage foils their ability to snoop on those communications. Even with a warrant (increasingly seen as optional these days by law enforcement and intelligence agencies) and the fact that carriers let the NSA snoop on everything in real time, "it is impossible to intercept iMessages between two Apple devices."

Well not entirely impossible; the memo notes that sometimes interception is possible, but it would require the government to conduct man in the middle attacks using spoofed cell towers, something the feds just got busted for using for years without properly informing Judges.

It was forty years ago today that Martin Cooper (who we often use in the story photo to the upper right) placed the first mobile phone call to a fellow engineer at Motorola. In an older interview with the BBC, Cooper states they knew they had something compelling, but had doubts about massive adoption due to potentially prohibitive costs. As of last year, there were six billion mobile connections globally. "It pleases me no end to have had some small impact on people's lives because these phones do make people's lives better," said Cooper. "They promote productivity, they make people more comfortable, they make them feel safe and all of those things." Let's not forget smartphone fart apps.

In 2010, Google was busted using their Google Street View cars to collect Wi-Fi data from areas they passed through. The company claimed that the effort was a rogue action of one employee running a test project, and the data collected was largely useless (confirmed by subsequent studies) given the collection vehicles flipped channels roughly five times each second.

For some time now rumors have suggested that Verizon was trying to buy out UK wireless carrier Vodafone's 45% stake in Verizon Wireless after talks of a full merger stalled last December. In an interestering twist, anonymous sources tell the Financial Times that Verizon is now working in conjunction with AT&T to buy Vodafone outright.

AT&T has confirmed that their implementation of HD voice will be deployed at the end of 2013 (read: 2014). Speaking to AllThingsD, AT&T senior VP Kris Rinne simply stated that "HD Voice is part of our voice over LTE strategy," though he failed to offer any real specifics. Most carrier deployments of voice over LTE (VoLTE) have been delayed due to the fact that the technology is an incredible battery hog, in some cases reducing overall battery life by 50 percent when placing VoLTE calls. T-Mobile has already deployed HD Voice; their implementation doesn't eat battery life and consumes much less bandwidth (12.65kbps), but doesn't offer quite the same audio fidelity as fully fledged VoLTE will.

According to the FCC, phones sold in the U.S. can't have a specific absorption rate (SAR) higher than 1.6 watts per kilogram.

The ACLU recently uncovered heavy government use of devices known as "stingrays," which allow law enforcement to trick a user's cell phone to connect to a spoofed device instead of a tower for the purposes of data collection. As Wired explores, the Department of Justice is under fire for using these devices without informing Judges about either the devices, or the fact they could collect data from uninvolved third parties.

Sprint and Softbank are promising lawmakers that they won't use network gear from Chinese vendor Huawei as apparent conditions for SoftBank's acquisition of Sprint. According to the New York Times, the companies are promising they'll also avoid using Huawei gear in Clearwire's network as well.

In addition to T-Mobile's "uncarrier" moves announced yesterday, the company says they're also considering an "anytime upgrade club" which, after a "very small" fee, would allow users to upgrade their handset twice a year. Details were scarce, and it's unclear if this would even be worth it for users under T-Mobile's new contract-free pricing. For example, T-Mobile will now be offering users the iPhone 5 for $99 plus monthly payments of $20 for the next 24 months (the phone remains locked until you pay it off). If you're already locked into those payments, it's unclear how a "very small" fee would magically get you out of the balance owed unless you're willing to pay off multiple phones simultaneously, and T-Mobile has yet to offer more detail.

While carriers already now give real-time access to all network data, the FBI says that real-time wiretapping of Gmail is their top priority in 2013. Speaking last week at the American Bar Association, FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann argued once again that the agency wants to revamp the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act to allow for real-time surveillance of e-mail, cloud storage services, and social networking websites.

A new report by OpenSignal investigates just how much bigger screens (increasingly the rage as Android phones get continually larger) impact data usage. According to the firm, each additional square inch of screen area leads to 75 MB of additional data downloaded per month over a cellular connection. Over Wi-Fi, each additional square inch of screen area leads to 288 MB of additional data consumed per month. Specifically, the firm found that the bigger the screen is -- the more likely you are to use it for entertainment or your primary computing device, leading to more data consumption. The study was based on 9,962 data usage patterns collected from 9,962 mobile devices.

Despite being BFFs just a year ago, T-Mobile and AT&T have grown increasingly chirpy toward one another over the last few months as they've started competing more intensely. That competition is precisely why regulators blocked the deal, and at T-Mobile's LTE network launch presentation today much of the company's PR ire was directed at AT&T. T-Mobile CEO John Legere pointed out repeatedly that T-Mobile's new plans will save users $1,000 over AT&T during the year, also going so far as to call competitor pricing a "crock of shit," singling out AT&T in particular as a company that is "vaguely sinister." AT&T's unified response to media outlets like CNET and AllThingsD looking for a quote on T-Mobile's new plans? "Whatever."

As expected, T-Mobile today took the wraps off of their LTE network and new no-contract pricing, even though most of the details were already leaked yesterday. At an event in New York City, T-Mobile formally announced that their shiny new LTE network has gone live in Baltimore; Houston; Kansas City; Las Vegas; Phoenix; San Jose, Calif.; and Washington, D.C.

Everyone in the mobile ecosystem, from app developers to your carrier, is now collecting every shred of mobile location data that isn't nailed down and are busily selling that data to whoever wants to buy it, from civil engineers to marketing agencies. Consumer privacy protections here are virtually nonexistent, and the companies making billions off of your daily life have been busy arguing that there are no need for new protections because the data they collect is anonymized.

However, a new study by MIT and the Catholic University of Louvain studied fifteen months' worth of "anonymized" collected data from 1.5 million people, and found that people's routines are unique and predictable enough that ferreting out their identity is incredibly easy using just for location logs:If that location data is poorly secured, combining it with other databases creates unique and new privacy violation possibilities the researchers say we haven't really even fully started to fathom yet. The scientists tell the BBC they're not advocating that we stop collecting this data, though they do suggest we need to stop pretending it's truly anonymous, and consider additional privacy protections.

The FCC's sixteenth annual report on the wireless industry (pdf) provides a myriad of data (as required by Congress), but once again refuses to directly state whether or not the wireless industry is actually competitive. That's becoming a sort of annual tradition, as the FCC tries not to offend the wireless industry.

Google today announced that the company is conducting a new trial of white space broadband technology in Cape Town, South Africa. The trial will use three base stations to ten local schools, in the process both proving that interference concerns have been dramatically over-stated by opponents of the technology (read: carriers, broadcasters), while also testing Google's new white spaces database. Google is one of several companies tasked with maintaining a database that will allow white space broadband powered devices to detect and avoid nearby potential unlicensed spectrum interference. Microsoft is currently conducting a similar trial in Kenya we discussed at length last month.

Reports continue to emerge that suggest Vodafone is getting very close to selling its 45% ownership stake in Verizon Wireless. A report earlier this month claimed that talks between the two companies concerning a full merger stalled last December, and Vodafone has been looking to sell their stake ever since. Now the UK's Sunday Times confirms those stalled merger talks and the fact that Vodafone is looking to make a very profitable exit from the United States wireless industry as quickly as possible. The report claims that Vodafone could stand to make as much as $135 billion from a sale of their share of Verizon Wireless.