The data plan you’ll be working with will be essentially the same as you’d have if you were working with a non-contract month-to-month setup with data from the carrier, the difference here being that you’re attached for two full years instead of none at all. You’ll be able to use this deal on ANY tablet they’ve got in stock from any AT&T company owned store or online at ATT.com – or any selected agents – or any retailer – just so long as you attach that 2-year plan.

Once you decide you want in, you’ll have the choice of several qualifying data plan options including adding a tablet on to your AT&T Mobile Share plan for $10 USD a month. That’s adding on to a Mobile Share plan you’ve already got in-place. You can also choose from one of several “DataConnect” plans, this not requiring sharing with your friends and family as such:

• AT&T Mobile Share: $10 to share between 1 GB and 20GB
• AT&T DataConnect 250MB: $15 for 250MB
• AT&T DataConnect 3GB: $30 for 3GB
• AT&T DataConnect 5GB: $50 for 5GB

The $100 discount applies only to tablets purchased with a 2-year contract attached and one of the data plans listed above. There’s also a two tablet purchase limit per account and a “while promotional supplies last” clause in tiny lettering – don’t miss it! You can pick up your own Pantech Element, Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9, HTC Jetstream, or iPad.

With those supplies we must assume that AT&T is either getting out of the tablet business altogether or will be focusing on Windows 8 in the near future rather than Android. Surely they’d never dump the iPad, right?

Google expects the new support to be used to improve Android phones and tablets in drawing and sketching applications, as well as boosting precision for gestures. Handwriting and shape recognition are also possible, though currently Android lacks a native handwriting recognition engine.

Stylus input, button support, hover events

Android 4.0 includes full support for stylus input events, including tilt and distance axes, pressure, and related motion event properties. To help applications distinguish motion events from different sources, the platform adds distinct tool types for stylus, finger, mouse, and eraser. For improved input from multi-button pointing devices, the platform now provides distinct primary, secondary, and tertiary buttons, as well as back and forward buttons. Hover-enter and hover-exit events are also added, for improved navigation and accessibility. Developers can build on these new input features to add powerful interactions to their apps, such as precise drawing and gesturing, handwriting and shape recognition, improved mouse input, and others.

Google has added a basic painting app, TouchPaint, to its API demo code, allowing developers to get to grips with the different elements of the new functionality.

It remains to be seen what HTC and Samsung will do regarding their own custom APIs, which each firm had been hoping developers would adopt and build on. Samsung released the Galaxy Note source code yesterday, part of its strategy to get third-parties to produce apps for the S Pen stylus, while HTCdev team told us earlier this month that it, too, was prioritizing the Flyer and Jetstream pen API in its developer outreach.

HTC’s eventual goal, the company said, was to see things like stylus APIs integrated into the core Google Android codebase. Whether it expected to see that happen quite so quickly is unclear.

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich demo:

[via NetbookNews]

Dear AT&T, as the first question is posed, please tell us: what is the difference? How will people know what to expect from your 4G network? Segan asked this question in so many words of big blue, to which we find:

“Our advertising makes it clear that “4G” (offered through our HSPA+ network) and “4G LTE” are different things. We are currently advertising 4G LTE only in markets where our 4G LTE service has launched. … 4G LTE offers real-world speeds faster than other mobile broadband technologies. While our HSPA+ network is faster than 3G, 4G LTE enables users to stream video, download apps, and send and receive e-mail even faster. In addition, 4G LTE has lower latency than other mobile broadband technologies, which means more responsive performance for customers when they want it most.” – AT&T

Next a couple of questions are posed on the proposed purchase of T-Mobile by AT&T. One on why AT&T wouldn’t just spend the $39 billion dollars it’ll be sending T-Mobile’s way on towers and cell sites instead, the other on why LTE gets different results in different cities.

Integrating T-Mobile into AT&T’s network brings a whole lot of additional efficiencies and capacity gains that AT&T could not get just by building a lot of new cell sites, which would not be feasible in the same time period. Those include improved network utilization, channel pooling, the elimination of redundant control channels, and other efficiencies that effectively provide the functional equivalent of new spectrum. … There are many things that factor in to wireless network speeds—spectrum, geography, terrain, device, etc. It’s difficult to speculate on what might happen in the future, but our proposed merger with T-Mobile gives us more capacity and spectrum.

We find that AT&T plans to “offer a 4G LTE handset later this year (2011)” [LTE tablets are already popping up -- the HTC Jetstream, for one] and that they are “committed to deploying voice over 4G LTE as [their] 4G LTE footprint is built out further.” Finally, of course, the question (with no answer) everyone’s waiting to hear:

Q: All the major carriers are being criticized for imposing the same data caps on LTE as they do on 3G. Will data caps rise anytime soon, to allow for new higher-bandwidth LTE applications?

A: We can’t speculate on future offerings.

[via PCMag]

There are several factors to consider when taking your first glance at the HTC Jetstream here in the United States. First, HTC makes high quality products. Noone will debate that, or if they do, I’ll call them foolish. What you’ve got here is a nearly entirely metal and glass device with one of the most powerful dual-core processors, the Qualcomm APQ8060 1.5GHz dual-core SoC, that is, on the market. Second, note that the first attempt HTC had at releasing an Android tablet-type device here in the USA was the HTC Flyer, a smaller tablet that your humble narrator did quite like but whose unpopularity caused it to be price chopped at Best Buy (not to the levels Best Buy accidentally reported, but chopped nonetheless.) Will this next effort best the first?

If you don’t consider the price of this tablet – yes, oh my goodness yes, yes indeed. What HTC has done here is to take all the best specs it could find, put them in a container made of metal, then smash them down into a tablet. This is the only tablet on the market, THE ONLY tablet on the market with a decent camera on the back. It’s an 8-megapixel camera capable of 1080p video recording – that’s top notch for smartphones right now, and blows away the rest of the tablet market.

The chassis on this device are superb. It’s not the thinnest or the lightest on the market, but it’s certainly not the fattest of the heaviest either, and unlike SOME tablets out there, the “bulk” of this device is dedicated to making it a magnificent piece of machinery. But I won’t say it’s fantastic quite yet, as I’ve literally only had the device for less than a half a day at this point. Let’s just say that things look good so far.

Have a look at the hands-on video, in it you’ll see a thorough look at the tablet’s hardware as well as the newest version of HTC Sense for tablets, that being “Sense for Tablets 1.1″, aka the first. I’ll jam this monster through some benchmarks for you over the next few days, take some photos, some video, and generally bring it along for a ride that’ll allow me to report back to you on what it means to work with HTC’s vision for a 10-inch Android. Check it out soon!

Also hit up http://device.ac/jetstream-1463/ for all the specs you need for now if I didn’t give you enough to make your pre-review decision on this device yet – they’ve got it all!

BONUS check out Chris Davies’ look at the HTC Jetstream all the way across the ocean and through many, many woods: HTC Jetstream Hands-on (v 1.0)

Neither as thin nor as light as, say, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1, the Jetstream does feel more expensive in the hands thanks to the metal used in its casing. Unfortunately we soon missed the Galaxy Tab’s only minor heft, since one-handed use of the HTC quickly became a chore. On the back is an 8-megapixel camera, which puts the slate at the top of the pack for tablet optics, and HTC’s Photobooth app for mangling your images uses the front-facing webcam.

HTC hasn’t been able to resist reskinning the Jetstream’s Honeycomb OS, and the result is a sometimes curious mixture of smartphone UI and core Android. The five pane desktop – which can be pinched down to a helicopter-view of all of the panes – can be filled with HTC’s phone-style widgets, each roughly the same scale as you’d find on the Sensation’s display, and not really taking advantage of the larger panel on the Jetstream. The Notes app looks good, though, with a cute ripped-paper animation when you start a new page, and there’s support for clipping images, adding audio recordings and making handwritten or text notes.

Unfortunately, Qualcomm didn’t have the special active stylus for the Jetstream, so we weren’t able to check out whether or not the inking experience is better than that of the Flyer. While the 7-inch slate’s pen is enough to jot down a note in a margin or quickly mark-up a screenshot, it’s not precise enough to entirely replace a paper notepad. Hopefully that’s all changed with the Jetstream, since our playtime with the Galaxy Note proved that Samsung is snapping at HTC’s stylus heels.

Connection issues and some other problems meant we weren’t able to benchmark the Jetstream and see exactly how well Qualcomm’s 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor – now found inside the HTC Sensation XE, too – performs. Navigating through the apps was lag-free, and HTC’s often-demanding weather animations were smooth.

We’re expecting a Jetstream review unit any time now, so will be able to run some benchmarks and generally put the tablet through its paces properly.

If, like many, you’d prefer to go contract-free and perhaps use a pre-paid SIM with your tablet, AT&T’s unsubsidized price for the 4G slate is $849.99. In contrast, the iPad 2 WiFi + 3G – with 32GB of storage, just like the Jetstream – is $729 with no data commitment. Over the course of the Jetstream’s two-year contract, then, it’ll cost you $1,539.99.

Lack of competition is part of the problem. AT&T is offering the Jetstream exclusively in the US, which means there’s no inter-carrier price war to help take the edge off the launch day sticker. While it could be paranoia, there’s a sense that AT&T may have picked up the Jetstream more to prevent other carriers from getting it than because of any outright intention to promote it itself.

Still, perhaps we’re not entirely paranoid. AT&T’s product page for the Jetstream makes no mention of the HTC Scribe digital stylus – the 10.1-inch screen gets namechecked, but not the pen – and it’s not included among the list of bundled accessories. The stylus does get a brief word on the “tablets” tab of the “Mobile Broadband Center” but only to say that it’s sold separately. AT&T told us last week that, for a limited period at least, you’d get the Scribe pen bundled with the Jetstream, but we don’t know for how long or how much it will cost after that.

Now, we’ve not properly tested the Jetstream yet: it could be A Bad Tablet. HTC’s inking proved too clunky to allow the Flyer to entirely replace a paper notebook; maybe that’s still the case with this larger model. With a sky-high sticker price, we can’t imagine many buyers will actually take the risk of finding out. Just as Verizon discovered with the XOOM, if you want to take on the iPad then you need to undercut it. AT&T either hasn’t realized that, or simply doesn’t care.

Inside is a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core processor, with support for 1080p HD video playback. AT&T will preload its Family Map and Navigator apps, and there’s HTC Watch and the usual bevy of Android apps. Up front is a 1.3-megapixel camera, while on the back is an 8-megapixel camera with a dual-LED flash.

The battery is a 7,300mAh pack, though HTC isn’t saying how long it will last, and there’s the new version of HTC Sense for tablets and a microSD card slot. The whole thing measures in at 7 x 9.87 x 0.51 inches and weighs 25oz. As on the HTC Flyer there’s Evernote integration with handwriting support.

AT&T will offer the HTC Jetstream with a new $35 data plan for 3GB of data per month. Alternatively there will be two contract-free options – tablet pricing so far unconfirmed – with 250MB for $14.99 or 2GB for $25.