There are a lot of financial deterrents this year keeping people from planning summer vacations, but T-Mobile is determined to help subscribers take the vacations they’ve been dreaming of with its newly announced Coverage Beyond initiative. In short, Coverage Beyond aims to reduce the cost of traveling for T-Mobile’s most popular coverage plans by giving subscribers three great perks: free 5G data abroad, free streaming while on flights, and a handful of other travel perks like reduced gas prices.
Some of T-Mobile’s previous connection efforts gave its customers limited free low-speed data and free texting while abroad. This was a good way to reduce the stress of being out of the country for a short period, but Coverage Abroad ups the ante by offering 5GB of high-speed data to all Magenta Max and Business Unlimited Ultimate plan owners in 210 countries. In countries where it’s available, that “high-speed” data may even be 5G. Magenta and most other business plan owners can also count on free high-speed international data, but only in 11 select European countries.
In addition to free data while abroad, T-Mobile customers are also getting free in-flight Wi-Fi on select flights with Delta Airlines, Alaska Airlines, and American Airlines starting on June 21 (the first day of summer). The connection won’t be on all flights from the airlines mentioned above, but T-Mobile expects wider coverage for more flights to be coming soon — alongside coverage for United Airlines flights as well. Furthermore, that free Wi-Fi connection will be fast enough to support video streaming from Netflix, Paramount+, and other services.
Lastly, T-Mobile is boosting its gas discounts with T-Mobile Tuesdays. Subscribers can get $0.25 off every gallon of gas purchased at Shell stations this summer — an increase over the $0.05 or $0.10 discounts T-Mobile usually offers. As gas prices have continued to skyrocket, many usually affordable road trip vacations have become too expensive. As such, any extra savings here will be greatly appreciated. And even those who aren’t traveling for vacations can still make use of the perk to save on their daily commute.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.
Samsung’s scandal over its Game Optimizing Service, or GOS, has returned with a bill attached. South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission has tentatively fined the company 20.1 billion won, or about $15.1 million, over gaming claims made for the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S22, and Tab S8.
The regulator says Samsung promoted the devices as gaming powerhouses without disclosing that GOS placed preset CPU and GPU limits on certain demanding games. Samsung disputes that conclusion, calling GOS a legitimate way to manage heat.