Sprint fires Framily, offers new shared-data plans
Culture
Sprint's new cellphone plans are starting to act like cable plans.
I'm Bridget Carey, and this is your CNet update.
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Sprint is making changes to its plans to better compete in the wireless world.
Sprint is killing the poorly named Framily plan and replacing it with its first ever family share plan.
They call it the family share pack, it works like other family share plans where family gets unlimited texting and calling, but they all share from the same bucket of data.
The key is that Sprint gives twice as much data for the same price as the other networks.
For new customers, Sprint is also tossing in tons of promotions.
But it can a little confusing, so I'll break it down for you.
If you switch, Sprint will pay your cancellation fees up to $350 per line which what T Mobile also offers.
There are several data packages to pick from on the low end at $25.00 a month, it gives you two gigs of data.
But no matter what package you pick, you'll also have to pay a fee for each device you use and the fees are different if you have a two year contract or a financing plan or if it's a tablet.
But if you're a new customer, buying a phone with a financing plan and you go for the $100 monthly package with 20 gigs of data, the device fees are waived and for every member of the family, Sprint will throw in an extra two gigs of data as a bonus.
But there are catches.
You can't get the fees waved with a traditional two year contract, and all these waived fees and discounts go away in 2015, so now your cell phone bill is becoming like a cable bill.
After the promotional period, surprise, you have new fees and your bill just went up.
Not all tech stories today are this complicated.
In fact Roku is making things easier by putting its much loved streaming box technology inside new televisions.
Soon you can order Roku smart tvs made by TCL in four sizes starting at 230 dollars for the 32 inch model.
There are also some coming out in September made by Hisense.
Now after spending a little time with these Roku tvs our editors say that the interface is easier to use.
And the smart TVs you see by Samsung LG and Visio not to mention these broker TVs are priced cheaper.
HTC just debut the HTC one M8 for windows.
The HTC one M8 is one of the top android smart phones out there but not in comes in a windows flavor with the exact same hardware specs.
Verizon is carrying it for 100 dollars with a two year contract.
But if you buy that windows phone, you will not be one of the first to play the sequel to Slappy Bird.
The creator of the viral game Slappy Bird is releasing another app called Swing Copters, which lands on the Android and Apple app stores this Thursday.
Just like before, you tap to fly and avoid obstacles, and if we're lucky, it's probably just as annoying to play.
That's your CNET tech news update from our studios in New York I'm Bridget Cary.
