Thursday 26 September 2013

The next Steve Jobs isn't Jeff Bezos -- or so Bezos says

When you get a personal product walk through from Jeff Bezos, you learn a lot about the new Kindle tablets -- and about the Amazon CEO himself.



Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos isn't comfortable being described as the next Steve Jobs.
"That is a very complimentary thing to say," he responds humbly, "but it's not how I think about it -- that way. I think we have our own approaches and vision. Nobody would ever be the next Steve Jobs. He was a unique guy, and, you know it would be..." His voice trails off as he searches for the right words. Then he says, "That's not how I think about it. But it's often meant as a compliment and I certainly receive it that way. I'm very grateful to that kind of question but that's not how I think about it."

We're sitting in a conference room in Amazon's offices in Seattle and the real topic of conversation isn't Apple or Steve Jobs but Amazon's new Kindle tablets, which Bezos has been briefing us on -- or really demoing some of their key new features. But I couldn't help asking "Jeff," as he's referred to at Amazon, whether he was the next Steve, because it seemed like something you should ask if you only had a few minutes with Jeff Bezos.

This year, instead of doing its typical staged event to unveil the company's next-generation products, Amazon gave several press outlets the opportunity to fly out to Seattle and meet with Amazon executives, followed by a 30-45-minute small-group meeting with "Jeff" himself. I ended up with Mashable's Lance Ulanoff and Consumer Reports' Donna Tapellini.

The meeting started with Bezos going to the whiteboard and describing the new "third leg" of the company's vision in the devices business. He'd laid out the first two pieces at previous Kindle Fire events but he refreshed our memories: 1) Premium products at nonpremium prices. 2) We want to make money when people use our devices.

Same look, small screen, big potential

The good: The iPhone 5S delivers an improved camera, a nifty fingerprint sensor, and a next-gen CPU and motion-tracking chip. Apple throws in the iWork app suite for free. iOS 7 adds some nice step-ups, too, including AirDrop file transfers and the Android-like Control Center.

The bad: External design is identical to that of the iPhone 5, including a 4-inch screen that looks downright tiny next to Android competitors. For now, the fingerprint sensor only works with Apple apps. The 64-bit A7 processor and M7 motion-tracking chip don't have killer apps yet. iOS 7 differences are potentially jarring for longtime iPhone users.
 
The bottom line: The iPhone 5S is not a required upgrade, but it's easily the fastest and most advanced Apple smartphone to date

 I'm tempted to call the iPhone 5S the iPhone 5P, for "potential." This is Apple's half-step year, a rebuilding year. It's telegraphed by the name itself: adding an "S" versus giving the phone a whole new name. The 5S introduces technologies that could transform the future of iOS as a computing platform, and maybe pave the way for future products in 2014. But it doesn't manifest these changes right off the bat. Its promises haven't come to fruition yet.

 
 
Last year's iPhone 5 was the best iPhone we'd ever seen. It met nearly all our wishes and expectations. It added tons of new features. It had LTE. What did Apple do this year as an encore? It added...a few new improvements. Enter the iPhone 5S, which along with the iPhone 5C mark the first time Apple's delivered two new iPhones in one year. But the 5C is really the iPhone 5 in colored plastic. There's really only one new iPhone, and that's the 5S.

We wanted a bigger screen, an improved camera, and better battery life. Apple gave us a fingerprint sensor, an improved camera, and a faster processor. Faster is better, especially when battery life doesn't suffer, but the 5S doesn't feel like a shocking new product.

 
 
Apple does this every other year with iPhones -- see the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4S. It's a common occurrence in iPads and MacBooks, too: take a familiar form, and repeat. But, in a phone landscape dominated by rapid change, it can feel frustrating, even for a product we loved just 12 months ago. Even iOS 7, Apple's graphically overhauled operating system, feels different but not really all that shocking. Even the new colors -- gold and "space gray" -- are subtler than you realize.

That doesn't mean there aren't changes, but many of them seem like roadwork for the future; a cleverly ingenious under-the-home-button fingerprint sensor, a clearly better camera, majorly upgraded graphics, a motion-tracking M7 coprocessor, and a new A7 processor capable of 64-bit computing are a lot of under-the-hood tweaks. But, after a week of using the iPhone 5S, it's hard to find situations that currently take advantage of these features, except for the fingerprint sensor and camera.

Check back in two months; after new apps emerge, maybe the iPhone 5S will start seeming like a truly new iPhone. But, for now, it's more of refined improvement. The iPhone 5 has gotten better. How much better depends on how fast apps and services can take advantage of the features...or whether we'll be waiting until iOS 8 to see them truly take shape.
Editors' note: Updated September 20, 2013, with expanded hands-on gaming section, updated charts, and new photos. We will continue to update this review in the coming days, based on subsequent testing. Ratings should be considered tentative, and may evolve as testing continues.

 
 
Design: Take the iPhone 5, and add gold (or 'space gray')
The iPhone 5 was a somewhat subtle but completely thorough redesign of the iPhone, from screen size to headphone placement. It introduced an aluminum frame, a thinner and lighter build, and came in two colors.

 
 
The 5S is a carbon copy, with some new color variations. You can get last year's white/silver color, or "space gray," which matches black glass and a darker gray anodized aluminum. And, yes, there's gold. But it's not like a prop from Liberace's home: it's mellow gold, more a champagne, or a light bronze. Paired with white glass on the back and front, you might have a hard time noticing the gold in the wild unless it was held in the sun. Of the three colors, I liked gray the best: the metal tones might do a better job hiding scratches, too, a problem I saw pop up on last year's all-black iPhone 5.

iPhone 5 and 5S. Can you tell the difference?

A year later, the iPhone 5's design still feels sleek and high-end in the 5S, great in the hand, and more compact than most competitor phones. But, it also has a smaller screen (4 inches) than most of its Android cousins. I love using a more compact phone, but competitors have found a way to make larger-screened 4.7-inch phones with excellent feel, like the Moto X, which has nearly edge-to-edge screen across its face. The iPhone 5S has a lot more bezel framing the display, and I couldn't help wondering if that screen couldn't be just a bit bigger.
 
 
A larger screen would have really helped this year: not because the competition has it, but because Apple's newest features and apps would put it to good use. I found editing and appreciating the improved photos and video recording, and even playing games, to be challenging; the better that graphics and camera quality get, the more you need a larger screen to appreciate them.

Configurations
There's no 128GB iPhone this year; you'll have to once again pick between 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB, at the same $199/$299/$399 prices. In the US, Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon are the three carriers to offer the iPhone 5S under contract; T-Mobile sells the iPhone 5S in an unlocked, contract-free version that costs $649 for 16GB, $749 for 32GB, and $849 for 64GB.
All versions come with the same A7 processor.

 
 
Touch ID: The party-trick tech on the 5S
See that little home button down there? It doesn't have a square on it anymore. It's also flat and recessed, not concave. That's practically the only outward-facing indication the iPhone 5S offers to the world, but lurking under the button is the most interesting piece of iPhone tech in quite some time. Unfortunately, it doesn't do as much right now as I wish it could.
"Touch ID" is Apple's fingerprint sensor, a secret sauce of clever scanning technology that amounts to a home button that's now both capacitive and clickable. The fact it does both can be a little disorienting at first, but the clicking is what the home button normally does, while gently touching the sensor activates the fingerprint scan.

 
 
Touch ID's simple round button works on a simple press, versus a "swipe" gesture on a lot of previous fingerprint readers. The scanning technology, when it registers your fingerprint, encourages you to press from a variety of angles, so your fingerprint can be read even on its side or on an edge. It's fast: a simple click on the button and the phone unlocks, the scan happening invisibly. Most people won't even know it scanned them, but try another finger and you'll see that it worked.

A few previous smartphones have added fingerprint sensors before, like the Motorola Atrix, but those were more awkward bars that needed finger-swiping. The Touch ID-enabled home button feels invisible; it works with a tap, can recognize your finger from many angles, and feels like it has less of a fail rate than fingerprint sensors I've used on laptops. It's impressive tech. It worked on all my fingers, and even my toe (I was curious).

Its only limitation, really, is how little Apple has employed Touch ID into the iPhone experience at the moment. Scanning your finger takes the place of entering a passcode in most instances, or entering a password every time you purchase something from the App Store or iTunes. But, that's all Touch ID does for now: it doesn't remember your other passwords on various cloud services, or link to your credit card, or pay for movie tickets via Fandango.

In fact, you'd better remember whatever passcode you used to lock your phone, because Touch ID isn't a pure replacement. If you restart your iPhone, or turn it off and on, or don't use it for 48 hours, it'll ask for your passcode again before allowing fingerprint recognition. That's potentially useful as an extra deterrent for would-be fingerprint thieves, but it proved a little quirky over a week of use. I never knew when the 5S might insist I enter my passcode again.

 
 
Worried about a kid pressing his finger down over and over and erasing your phone's memory? Never fear. Touch ID cleverly defaults to asking for a passcode after three fingerprint attempts, and after five bad tries, it requires it. Then you still have 10 passcode attempts before any "erase contents after 10 passcode failures" setting you've possibly enabled kicks in.

How much time does it save? A little, especially since this process skips the "swipe to unlock" gesture. You'll also save a few seconds over entering a passcode. But, in terms of convenience, I really only appreciated it during the day, in those little moments when I quickly needed to hop on my phone.

I have a bigger dream for Touch ID, of its fingerprint scan acting as a password replacement for third-party apps or even a way to make payments, or check in to flights. It could be a mobile wallet killer app, and a companion to Apple's somewhat dormant PassBook app that launched with iOS 6. But those extra features won't be coming anytime soon. Apple currently intends Touch ID and your fingerprint -- which gets encrypted as mathematical data, according to Apple, not an image -- to stay on the A7 chip of the iPhone 5S, out of reach of third-party apps or cloud services. That could be good for added security, but it means Touch ID isn't a magic remember-every-password savior or credit card replacement yet.

That being said, I expect Touch ID to make its way onto every Apple device: iPads next, and eventually Macs. Why not? It's easy to use.

 
 
Camera
Touch ID may be getting all the headlines lately, but the iPhone 5S' improved camera is probably its biggest selling point. Cameras are no longer afterthoughts on smartphones: they're becoming the most important feature, for many, as they slowly but surely replace point-and-shoot cameras.
If you're getting a new iPhone for its camera, get the 5S. A suite of new and useful upgrades help make the already-good iPhone 5 camera into something even better...but, in a landscape riddled with increasingly impressive phone cameras, the iPhone stands out a little less than before.
Unlike many megapixel-packing smartphones (41-megapixel Lumia 1020, I'm looking at you), the iPhone 5S camera stays at 8 megapixels, the same on paper as last year and even the year before. The sensor, as Apple will proclaim, however, is 15 percent larger: the pixels are physically bigger (1.5 microns), even if there are the same number of them. The camera's aperture is larger (f/2.2). All of these elements add up to better low-light exposure.


Newer A7-driven processing also enables true burst-mode shooting: hold down the shutter button and you'll snag as many shots as you desire. The iPhone 5 could take multiple shots with quick taps, but the iPhone 5S can capture rapid-motion activities like sports events (or, in my household, random baby tricks). Instead of spamming your Camera Roll with identical-looking images, the new iOS 7 camera app cleverly bundles them in a subfolder, and even autopicks what it considers the best shots. This decision is based on image crispness and other factors; sometimes it's on the money, but I also saw it pick a blurry image of my 7-month-old over a sullen but crisp side profile. You can pick your own favorites easily, and delete the rest at the touch of a button.

Nice frog.

I took a bunch of shots in a ton of conditions, from indoor photos in a zoo's reptile house to still-lifes of flowers and colorful kitchen accessories. Close-up photos show off pretty incredible detail and a shallower depth-of-field effect, which feels more "SLR-like." See this rug picture, for instance.


Close-up of fabric, coming right up.

Kid photos in lower light conditions were less blurry when magnified. Blurriness is a common problem I've seen on many of my iPhone 5 photos taken in lower light that look good enough on-phone, but don't hold up quite as well via Apple TV on a 59-inch display. These 5S pictures looked a lot better, and more consistently so.

Local garden photo

Apple credits this to a new image signal processor (ISP) on the iPhone 5S' A7 processor. It does result in quicker autofocus, faster snapshots, and less blur all around. Considering how shaky the average person's hand is when taking casual phone shots, it's a necessary improvement.

 
 
Apple has made a big change to the built-in LED flash, too, doubling its size and creating an intelligent "True Tone" flash that senses the photo environment and serves up the appropriate flash tone from separate white and amber LEDs.
It's a splashy endeavor, but the results do look significantly better, and warmer, than the iPhone 5's flash pics. I avoid flash on my smartphone whenever humanly possible, but this year's improvements may have changed my opinion.
The 1080p video recording also gains a little more digital stabilization, 3x digital zoom thanks to iOS 7, and there's a new Slo-Mo recording mode, which is separately toggled in the camera app. The iPhone records 720p video at 120 frames per second, and applies the slow-motion effect afterward, playing at 30 frames per second

Samsung offers gold finish on Galaxy S4

The company's social feeds are showcasing a Gold Pink and Gold Brown Galaxy S4, days after Apple unveiled a gold-colored iPhone.

The Samsung Gold Brown and Gold Pink Galaxy S4.

Apple's iPhone 5S won't be the only flagship handset featuring a gold finish.
Samsung's Middle East social feeds on Wednesday announced the Gold Pink and Gold Brown Galaxy S4 units. The pink and brown phones come with a gold-colored backplate and feature the same design and internal components as the Galaxy S4.

Samsung has not disclosed information on pricing or availability. It also appears that, for now, the handsets will only be available to customers in the Middle East.

Samsung's announcement comes days after Apple launched its gold iPhone. That device, which has a champagne-like finish, is the first flagship handset from Apple that hasn't come in black or white colors.

Samsung to unveil smartphone with curved glass in October

South Korean electronics giant reveals planned debut during an event for the Galaxy Note 3 but little else about the device.



Samsung showed off a prototype flexible AMOLED screen at CES back in 2011, though it's unclear whether this is what the company will be using in the upcoming device.

Samsung plans to introduce a smartphone with a curved glass display next month, the company announced at a media event Wednesday in Seoul.

"We plan to introduce a smartphone with a curved display in South Korea in October," D.J. Lee, Samsung's mobile business head of strategic marketing, said at an event launching the Galaxy Note 3 smartphone, according to a Reuters account of the event.

No other details on the handset were revealed. It's unknown whether by "curved display" Lee is referring to a much rumored smartphone with a flexible display. Samsung, which overtook Apple as the world's most profitable smartphone maker in July, first showed off a prototype flexible AMOLED screen at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2011.

Samsung's Nexus S was the first smartphone to offer a "Contour Display" that was designed to fit more comfortably in your palm.

Samsung is not alone in exploring curved displays. Earlier this year it was reported that Apple was experimenting with wristwatch-like iOS devices that sport curved glass.

First carbon nanotube computer to help extend Moore's Law?

Stanford researchers have created a basic system that shuns silicon in favor of imperfect lines of carbon atoms that could one day deliver even more performance and efficiency than current technology.



Silicon Valley may soon require a name change to avoid the risk of sounding like a relic from a generation of bygone tech, thanks to new computer system created -- where else -- in Silicon Valley.

A cover story for the journal Nature, out Wednesday, details the efforts of a team based at Stanford to create the first basic computer built around carbon nanotubes rather than silicon chips.
"People have been talking about a new era of carbon nanotube electronics moving beyond silicon," Stanford professor Subhasish Mitra said in a release from the university. "But there have been few demonstrations of complete digital systems using this exciting technology. Here is the proof."
If you're the type of user who's much more concerned with what your computer or device can do rather than how it does it or what type of semiconductor material inside is making the magic happen, here's the skinny on why you should pay attention to the nerdy details at least this once

For decades now, the exponential acceleration of technology -- which has taken us from room-size computers run by punched paper cards to insanely more powerful devices in our pockets -- has depended on shrinking silicon transistors to jam ever more onto a chip.
The result of this miniaturizing march has been devices that are becoming ever smaller, more powerful, and cheaper. In fact, transistor density has doubled pretty reliably about every 18 months or so since the dawn of the information age -- you might know this as "Moore's Law."
But many think silicon's long run as the king of computing could be nearing an end. That's because continually jamming more tiny transistors on a chip has become more difficult, expensive, and inefficient, not to mention the inevitable physical limitations -- you can't keep shrinking transistors forever.

Carbon nanotubes -- long chains of carbon atoms thousands of times thinner than a human hair -- have the potential to be more energy-efficient and "take us at least an order of magnitude in performance beyond where you can project silicon could take us," according to H.S. Philip Wong, another member of the Stanford team.

Problem is, carbon nanotubes aren't perfect either. They don't always grow in perfectly straight lines, and a fraction of the tubes grown aren't able to "switch off" like a regular transistor.
The Stanford team used a technique of "burning" off some of the imperfect carbon nanotubes while also working their way around other imperfections by using a complex algorithm. The final design consists of a very basic computer with 178 transistors that can do tasks like counting and number sorting and switch between functions.

The computer's limited power is due in part to the facilities available to the team, which did not have access to industrial fabrication tools.
So what we have now is basically a proof of concept for the first carbon nanotube computer, which is about as powerful as Intel's 4004, the first single-chip silicon microprocessor released in 1971. But if this technology turns out to be a worthy successor, we'll likely see devices that can not only compete with, but greatly exceed, the potential of silicon systems.
More importantly, it could mean that Moore's Law will continue for at least a little while longer.
Today, a carbon nanotube computer that can count its own transistors; tomorrow, perhaps the power of a human brain captured in strands thinner than a human hair.

Hacker video shows how to thwart Apple's Touch ID



One of the hackers who recently tricked Apple's fingerprint sensor now has a video out showing just how he does it.

Earlier this week, a group of hackers in Germany, known as the Chaos Computer Club, took credit for bypassing the biometric security on the Touch ID fingerprint scanner. That hack was accomplished by scanning someone's fingerprint and ultimately using that to gain access to that person's iPhone 5S.

Posted on Vimeo by one of the hackers known as Starbug, the video takes us through the entire process from the initial scan to the actual fingerprint trickery. The hacker scans an iPhone 5S that already has someone's fingerprint. He then tweaks the scan to perfect the image of the fingerprint.
The scan is printed to paper and then to a circuit board, which undergoes a chemical bath. A dummy print eventually emerges, which is used to fool the security of the Touch ID, thus giving the hacker entry into the iPhone.

Starbug told Ars Technica that the hack posed no challenge. He said he expected the process to take a week or two. Instead, it chewed up around 30 hours from start to finish. With better preparation, he claims it would've taken only half an hour.

Despite Starbug's boasts, the procedure shown in the video seems exact and intricate, requiring manipulated scans, chemical baths, and printed circuit boards. And through it all, the hacker would need to hang onto your iPhone 5S. A process that can mimic your fingerprint certainly raises alarm bells, but this particular hack isn't something your average iPhone thief would be able to pull off.

Hackers crack major data firms, sell info to ID thieves, says report

An illegal, hacker-helmed identity-theft service called SSNDOB -- as in Social Security Number and date of birth -- compromises servers at several major US data brokers, according to a report.



An illegal service that sells personal data "on any U.S. resident" -- which can then be used for identity theft -- hacked into servers at several major data aggregators including LexisNexis and Dun & Bradstreet, according to a report.

The service's customers have, the report said, "spent hundreds of thousands of dollars looking up SSNs, birthdays, driver's license records, and obtaining unauthorized credit and background reports on more than 4 million Americans."

In an article Wednesday, former Washington Post reporter Brian Krebs, who now writes the KrebsOnSecurity blog, outlined how a site called Expose.su managed earlier this year to post financial information on celebrities and government officials.

The site's activities triggered an FBI investigation, in part because Expose.su managed to publish the Social Security Number, address, and a credit report of then-FBI Director Robert Mueller.
According to Krebs, Expose.su (think "exposes you") got its info from another site, ssndob.ms, or SSNDOB (think "Social Security Number" and "date of birth"), which got the data by way of a small botnet it operates. The botnet appears to have access to compromised servers at several large data brokers in the United States, including LexisNexis, Dun & Bradstreet, and Kroll Background America. (And, in regard to the bot program installed on the hacked servers, Krebs reported that "none of the 46 top antimalware tools on the market today detected it as malicious.")
LexisNexis maintains one of the world's biggest electronic databases for legal and public-records related information; Dun & Bradstreet licenses info on businesses for use in credit decisions; and Kroll -- now a part of HireRight -- provides services related to employment background, drug, and health screenings, Krebs noted.

"All three victim companies said they are working with federal authorities and third-party forensics firms in the early stages of determining how far the breaches extend, and whether indeed any sensitive information was accessed and exfiltrated from their networks," Krebs said.
Krebs, who got his hands on a copy of SSNDOB's database, reported that a closer examination of it indicates that since SSNDOB came on the scene early last year, the service has sold more than 1.02 million unique SSNs and nearly 3.1 million date of birth records.SSNDOB markets itself on underground cybercrime forums, Krebs said, and sells data at prices that "range from 50 cents to $2.50 per record, and from $5 to $15 for credit and background checks.

Customers pay for their subscriptions using largely unregulated and anonymous virtual currencies, such as Bitcoin and WebMoney." Krebs also said SSNDOB appears "to have licensed its system for use by at least a dozen high-volume users" and that there's some evidence these users "are operating third-party identity theft services."

The FBI confirmed that a bureau investigation into the SSNDOB server hacks is ongoing, Krebs reported, adding that a spokesperson wouldn't provide any details.

T-Mobile vs. Sprint: Who offers a better early upgrade?

CNET breaks down the two early upgrade plans to see which offers the most bang for the buck.



There's finally some competition in the early phone upgrade program, and that's good news for you.
T-Mobile might have kicked off the trend to let consumers swap out their phones more frequently with "Jump," but it certainly wasn't the last. With Sprint introducing "One Up" last week, there's finally a legitimate alternative out there.

As the No. 3 and No. 4 national carriers, respectively, it's clear why Sprint and T-Mobile are offering up such a good deal: both are eager to pick off customers from larger Verizon Wireless and AT&T. Verizon and AT&T also offer upgrade programs, but as previously explained here, don't really offer a great deal.

The upgrade programs generally work the same way: customers pay for the device themselves under a monthly installment plan. After a year (or six months, under T-Mobile), customers can trade in their device for a new one, and continue their monthly payments. As always, the devil's in the details, and there are many nuances to consider.

T-Mobile executive Andrew Sherrard, for instance, calls Sprint's One Up "misleading and confusing," noting the seemingly temporary nature to many of the details of the plan.
A Sprint representative responded by reaffirming the company's commitment on the program itself.
So which program is better for you? As always, there's never a clear-cut answer. But CNET breaks it down so you can make an informed decision.

Price

T-Mobile's program, Jump, cost an additional $10 a month. The program applies to all of its plans, which range between $50 a month for the 500 megabytes of high-speed service (which will be throttled after hitting that threshold) and $70 for unlimited data with no throttling.
Jump enables a customer to upgrade their phone twice a year after the first six months. T-Mobile's program also requires an upfront payment on some of its higher end phones. For the purposes of an easy comparison, we'll use the iPhone 5S. The iPhone 5S costs $99 up front, and customers pay $22.91 a month for the next two years. If the customer decides to upgrade, they pay the next upfront payment and continue with the monthly installments for the next phone. It's important to note that the $99 upfront payment that T-Mobile is offering is a promotion, and is likely to go up in the next few weeks.








Sprint's One Up program doesn't cost anything, but requires that you sign up for its Unlimited, My Way plan or its $110 My All-In plan, which includes 5 gigabytes of hot-spot data. The individual My Way plan costs $80, but the One Up program includes a $15 discount, bringing the monthly cost down to $65.

For the time being, One Up is offered up with no money down, so a customer can walk in and take an iPhone 5S home without paying anything (assuming you can find one). Instead, the customer pays a higher monthly payment of $27. One Up only offers one upgrade each year, but in theory, customers should be able to trade in the device at no cost, and continue on with their monthly payments. Once the customer pays off the device, presumably after 24 months, the $15 discount disappears unless they re-enroll. But Sprint has presented the no-money-down option as a temporary option, and a representative declined to say when it would end. When looking at comparable unlimited plans, a customer pays a total of $1,192 over the first 12 months for Sprint, according to its own sales material (which includes activation fee and 8 percent sales tax for the $650 iPhone 5S), which claims that T-Mobile's unlimited plan costs $1,420. But if a customer were to take the cheaper $50 T-Mobile plan, that total would drop down to $1,180.

Features

T-Mobile argues that its program still offers a better deal because of the features it packs into its plan. Besides an early upgrade program, Jump also acts as insurance for the phone.

In addition, T-Mobile's unlimited plan also includes 2GB of tethering on a smartphone.

 
 
T-Mobile has its own take on the comparison. Unsurprisingly, it comes out looking a lot better.

Under Sprint's plan, insurance would cost an additional $11 a month, while 2GB of hot-spot data tacked on to its unlimited plan would cost another $20. There's also a 1GB option for $10 a month.
It's up to you on whether you need either of these features. But if you tack on insurance and the 2GB of hotspot data, as T-Mobile wants you to do, the 12-month cost of a Sprint plan is $1,512, compared with $1,344 for T-Mobile, according to a T-Mobile document (the numbers are slightly different because T-Mobile omitted the sales tax on the device).
Network

Price, of course, isn't everything. What good are savings and a new phone if that device can't even get a decent signal?It's a neck-and-neck race, but Sprint for now has the lead in terms of LTE coverage. The company said earlier this month that it has reached 185 markets with its faster cellular network. Just a few days earlier, T-Mobile said it had reached 154 markets.

But numbers don't mean a thing if you're not one of the cities benefiting from either of their LTE networks. T-Mobile appears to have the advantage in big cities such as New York and San Francisco. Check out its full list here.Sprint, meanwhile, has struggled with bigger cities. Notably, it has only managed to cover the majority of the Bronx and Brooklyn, and is still working on the rest of New York. It does have other bigger cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and Dallas, but its work has been largely in smaller markets. You can check out the full city list here.

Because their respective LTE networks aren't yet ubiquitous, the fallback network is important. It's here that T-Mobile has a bigger advantage. If LTE isn't there, customers end up on the HSPA+ network, which is itself fairly speedy.

Sprint's fallback network is the slower CDMA-powered service, which offers a significant drop in speed. The company dropped its use of an older 4G technology, called WiMax, a few years ago, forcing its customers to stay on the slower network as it deploys its next-generation network. Its current upgrade plans are supposed to improve speed and coverage for both its 3G and 4G networks, but it will take time.
 
Bottom Line

Both carriers offer competitive plans, and which plan is the right one depends on how you use your phone. If you need insurance and tethering, T-Mobile offers a good deal. If you only care about unlimited data for your phone, and happen to be in a market with LTE, Sprint is attractive. As always, coverage varies greatly, and both have their share of neighborhoods with great and poor coverage.
There are, as always, a lot of questions to ask when committing to a carrier. Hopefully, CNET has provided a few answers for you.