iPhone

Estin has a friend who lives in a rural area and cell service is spotty at best. The only provider that has any coverage is US Cellular, and he is wondering if it's possible to get an unlocked iPhone for use on that network. Leo says since that network is CDMA, it won't be possible to do it. If he was in a GSM carrier's area, he could get an unlocked iPhone, put in the SIM card for that carrier, and he could use the phone. But since CDMA phones don't take SIM cards, they need to be programmed for use with the carrier. It's not even possible to get an unlocked CDMA phone anyway.

Yes, it should work fine. She'll want to use Google for her calendar, contacts and Google Voice for voicemail. If she isn't syncing with Google now, she can go into the Contacts and Calendar in OS X Mountain Lion and choose to sync with her Google account.

The buzzing sounds like it's a ground loop, and the high pitched squealing is noise getting into the transmitter from the engine itself. He should check his grounding from the buzzing noise. For the higher pitched noise, he should get some noise suppression in. This is why it's a good idea to get car stereos professionally installed because these two issues are very common.

Drew is about to go away to school and is torn between the Samsung Galaxy S III and the iPhone. Leo says there's likely going to be a new iPhone in the Fall, so he may want to wait.

Yes, there is a significant difference between the two. The Samsung Galaxy S III is an LTE phone so if he's on Verizon or AT&T it'll have a faster data connection. Since he's on Sprint, the LTE won't make any difference in that respect. The Galaxy S III is much faster, has a bigger 4.8" screen with a higher resolution of 1280x800, and most importantly -- it comes with Android Ice Cream Sandwich. The latest version of Android, "Jelly Bean", just came out but no one will have that for awhile.

No, there isn't. Many accents, like Scottish, give Siri a hard time. Leo says the UK Siri may have a better time picking up his accent. But at the end of the day, Siri is far from perfect. In fact, it's only accurate about 62% of the time.

No, Apple doesn't allow this. She could jailbreak the phone and use a third party app from Cydia, but that will make the phone less secure and more unstable.

Leo’s not much a fan of spying on kids, but he has used Find My iPhone to make sure his kids are where they say they are. But he believes that talking to your kids, being plugged in, and letting them know you can access their phone at any moment is a better way to go.

The iPhone also has pretty good parental controls, so that’s another way to make sure your kids aren’t going where they shouldn’t online.

Since he's not seeing these spam messages are showing up in his phone's messages app, they probably are not text messages. They are most likely notifications from an app he has installed. Deleting the app those messages are associated with should stop the spam notifications. He also might want to look at his phone's settings and revoke notification privileges from apps there.

There's a known piece of malware that made it into the Google Play and Apple App Store called "Find and Call". It has been removed from both app stores, though.

Marilyn is thinking of getting a Samsung Galaxy S III, which Leo thinks is a great phone, but we don't know enough about the next iPhone to really compare it. The rumors suggest that the next iPhone's screen will be larger, and it may only be taller than the current phone. But it won't be out until September so we don't know.