Remember back in the day when Apple and Google were all chummy? Back when the original iPhone was released in 2007, and Google wasn’t in the smartphone business? That all changed once Google betrayed Apple’s trust and launched the Android operating system, and ever since then Google has held the stance that they never copied the iPhone. It’s hard to prove that a company wasn’t thinking about something, but newly released designs of Google’s original concept phone from 2006 show that Google wasn’t even considering the creation of a touchscreen smartphone back when the iPhone was unveiled, so they stole Apple’s designs instead once they saw them.

AT&T is finally unlocking iPhones at the end of a completed contract, but if you bought the new iPhone 4S you’re going to be waiting another 18 months or so until your phone is eligible for an official carrier unlock. What if you want to use your iPhone on T-Mobile, or maybe go overseas and use a local carrier rather than pay for some crazy out of coverage fees? Fortunately, hacker Loktar_Sun has discovered an incredibly easy way to unlock your iPhone 4S or any other iPhone. The process is super easy – all you need is a jailbroken iPhone, and these 13 easy-to-follow steps.

Just about every major carrier seems to boast the “fastest network speeds,” while bombarding us with acronyms like LTE and buzzwords such as “lightning fast.” When it’s all said and done, we’re left confused and none the closer to the truth of which network actually has the fastest speeds. So how do we find out the truth? Well, it’s not as simple as we’d like it to be and there are near infinite variables to the equation, but one way to get a general idea of how fast a network’s speeds will be in a real-world environment is to test them out.

Stolen phones could soon be a thing of the past thanks to a collaboration between the U.S government and the four biggest mobile carriers. The new scheme will use a central database of stolen handsets, and the carriers will use this to block their reactivation.

The idea is that it will reduce cellphone theft by making stolen phones virtually useless.

On Friday AT&T made an announcement that surprised many of us who had given up waiting: customers with an out-of-contract iPhone can unlock it to work with any other GSM SIM — like from T-Mobile. Now the official unlock is here, and the process is actually pretty simple.

Before you attempt to unlock you need to make sure your account isn’t in a longterm contract, your iPhone isn’t on a contract, and that your account is in good standing with AT&T. After that, the process is pretty straightforward. 

Those of you who have purchased your iPhone off-contract, aka for the full price, will be happy to hear that AT&T will begin unlocking iPhones at customers’ request this Sunday. Carrier unlocking will allow customers “in good standing” to switch out the AT&T SIM for a SIM on another network, as long as the bands are supported. This is great for customers who want to travel with their AT&T iPhone internationally. 

Our awesome Twitter follower @presstopher was one of the first to get iOS 5.1 downloaded on his iPhone and noticed an odd update – his AT&T iPhone 4S (that runs on the 3G network) is now lying, claiming that it is running on a 4G network. iOS 5.1 changes AT&T iPhone 4S to show that they are using a 4G network. It’s complete malarkey and we’re stunned that Apple and AT&T have made this move.

No one likes to be throttled — just ask Shep Smith — so when AT&T started sending throttling warnings to “unlimited” customers they considered to be the “Top 5%” data hogs, outrage and confusion ensued. After multiple complaints and an online petition, AT&T was forced to clarify their throttling policy and what it means to be in the “Top 5%.”

One of the big trends at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona has been announcements regarding NFC. While NFC has been supported in a handful of Android phones and BlackBerry models, till now there haven’t been many real-world applications for it. With several announcements around NFC, the technology’s time may be finally be coming.

Despite rumors, Apple has never shown an interest in adopting NFC in the iPhone or iPad.  Could Apple’s lack of NFC support could stick out like a sore thumb despite the fact that it managed to upstage every company at MWC with yesterday’s iPad 3 event announcement.

Despite RIM’s reassurances to developers at this week’s Mobile World Congress, the mass exodus of its government customers continued as another U.S. federal agency announced that it would ditch BlackBerry in favor of the iPhone. The agency in question is The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which announced that it will be abandoning the BlackBerry and RIM services beginning this month.

As the agency revealed its plans, RIM attempted to cast a softer light on the situation by playing up it’s overall standing with the U.S. government.