News from category ‘Hardware’

According to BGR Apple will released a cheap $350 iPhone this year. They also claim that the price for the iPhone 4 will be reduced too and Apple will unveil a new iPhone 4S/5 in late August.

We just received some new information from an incredibly solid source of ours. According to our source, Apple will indeed be launching a prepaid / lower cost iPhone this year. We are told the handset will retail for no more than $350 without contract. Ready for the really interesting part? It's entirely possible that the low-cost iPhone will in fact be the iPhone 3GS.

BGR also confirmed previous rumors that iPhone 5 will feature a radical new design. It is still unclear whether iPhone 5 or iPhone 4S is to be released next. Source says that new device will be "at least announced by the end of Summer, late August-ish.". And yes, Apple will continue to sell the iPhone 4.

Lot's of rumors lately. We will keep you informed.

iPad is not the only tablet on the market today. CNet specialist Brian Cooley runs down a list of the Top 5 tablets that could be better than an iPad. Let's take a look:

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Taiwanese site Apple.pro republished some photos originally posted to Weibo, a Chinese microblogging service similar to Twitter. The images claim to be a future "iPhone 4GS" test model. While we doubt this is real you can still look at the photos:

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The new MacBook may come with a return of the backlit keyboard. The backlit keyboard was omitted from the October 2010 redesign of the laptops line, as rumored, due to design issues and battery life constrains. The new MacBook Airs will feature the design of 2010 MacBook Airs. A backlit keyboard may be helpful in low-light conditions, and it’s currently implemented in all versions of Apple’s MacBook Pro line. Appleinsider’s sources, who are familiar with the matter, claim that the new laptops will be launched any time this month.

With the release of new models later this month, Apple is set to reinstate a feature to its MacBook Airs that went missing when the company overhauled the ultra-thin notebooks into more cost-affordable products late last year, AppleInsider has learned.

According to people familiar with the matter, backlit keyboards will join the string of hardware enhancements planned for the new 11.6- and 13.3-inch notebooks, which are also expected to adopt high-speed Thunderbolt ports, an upgrade to Intel’s Sandy Bridge architecture, and possibly high-speed 400MBps flash memory.

According to AppleInsider, Apple may be readying to make 1080p movies available in the iTunes Store later this year, based on information from film studios sending films in a new "HD+" format to Apple.

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9to5mac and AppleInsider have received some information from Apple retail employees and store managers that in the next week they will have to hold “overnights” to prepare for the launch of OS X Lion. 9to5mac claims that stores will be preparing for the software launch on July 13, so the Mac OS X Lion will be release on July 14. In the same time Apple is expected to launch new MacBook Airs that may probably come with the new software pre-installed.

This same person also mentioned hearing rumors from colleagues that Apple may formally invite some customers to its retail locations to download the new OS from within the store so that they can receive assistance in becoming familiar with some of Lion’s more prominent enhancements.

Meanwhile, people with ties to Apple’s other operating segments are supporting claims that Apple will make Mac OS X Lion available to the general public sometime next week. They add that long-awaited refreshes to the MacBook Air line will follow the launch closely, possibly the following week.

There have appeared new rumours about a higher-resolution iPad. The iPad HD will be launched later this year and will be sold alongside the iPad 2. The device was developed for pro-users in the video and photo-industries. There will be also launched the iPad-versions of pro-level apps such as Final Cut Pro or Aperture.

Our sources are saying that not only will there be a newly designed iPhone coming in the fall, but there is going to be a new entry into the iPad family as well. As hard as it might be to believe, the new tablet is said to sport a double resolution screen (2048 x 1536), and will be dubbed the "iPad HD." The idea behind the product is apparently that it will be a "pro" device aimed at a higher end market - folks who work in video and photo production possibly - and will be introduced alongside something like an iPad version of Final Cut or Aperture. This product is specifically said to not be the iPad 3, rather a complimentary piece of the iPad 2 line.

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The Wall Street Journal has reported that Apple now is experimenting with new way of charging for the next-generation iPhone set for launch in 2012.

People briefed on Apple's plans said the company is planning a major iPhone revamp then, with one person saying the company has been experimenting with features such as a new way of charging the phone.

As usual it is unclear what charging mechanisms Apple is exploring, but some sources believe that the company could use induction charging or some other wireless system that does not require a cable. It seems that Apple is intending to make its next iPhone a cable-free device.

The Wall Street Journal has also reiterated rumours about a less expensive iPhone, co-called “iPhone nano”,  with an edge-to-edge screen.

Apple has also been working on a less-expensive phone with new features such as an edge-to-edge screen, according to this person.

DigiTimes today reports that Apple has placed an order for 15 million iPhone 5 devices with Pegatron Technology and those devices will start shipping in September 2011.

The sources pointed out that as the iPhone 5, which does not seem to have any major update from iPhone 4, is already set for shipment in September, they are already started supplying components to Pegatron with Pegatron's plants in Shanghai, China also recently started hiring for manpower.

DigiTime is a quite reliable source. They already predicted that Pegatron received an order for the CDMA iPhone 4. Moreover, Apple this year does not follow its yearly upgrade cycle, not making any announcement concerning iPhone 5 at this year's WWDC.

The Japanese website Macotakara claims that the new MacBook Air will include SSD drive with adopted a new Toggle DDR 2.0 type of NAND Flash Memory.

Current SSD device Blade X-gale supporting SATA 2.6 will be abolished and new 19nm flash memory will be packaged into smaller chip and will be soldered on base circuit directly.

The new Flash chips will be built directly in the MacBook Air's motherboard; they support speeds of 400Mb/s, and will allow future controllers to run faster than today’s SSDs with "half the number of channels, providing both a cost and space savings", and could improve battery life for an hour or more.

The resulting power throttling capability enables the drive’s high-performance levels without any increase in power consumption over a 40nm-class 16Gb NAND-based 256GB SSD. The controller also analyzes frequency of use and preferences of the user to automatically activate a low-power mode that can extend a notebook’s battery life for an hour or more.

Asian sources claim that touch panels for the iPad 2 that do not meet Apple quality requirements are used for production of iPad clones. In second quarter of this year 12-15 million of 9.7-inch IPS panels were manufactured by LG Display and Samsung Electronics, but Apple produces only 7-9 million iPad 2s. So it seems that the rest of panels that don't pass Apple's quality standards was sold to China-based white-box vendors.

Today Apple controls approximately 60 percent of the world's touch panel capacity and actively obtaining components that are in short supply. Now Apple has booked up much of the available production capacity, so other manufactures experience problems with release of their own tablets. For example, Amazon that could face difficulty with display orders for its LCD tablet.

DigiTimes reports that iPhone 5 и iPad 3 components suppliers are preparing materials for production of the rumoured devices expected to debut in September and to be launched officially in October.

DigiTimes sources claim that production of the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 will begin in August. They predict that in third quarter 6-7 million units of the iPhone 5 will be produced.

Upstream component makers including Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry), which is in charge of assembling the devices; Simplo Technologies and Dynapack International Technology, in charge of manufacturing batteries; TPK Holding and Wintek, in charge of touch panel modules; Catcher, in charge of chassis; and Largan Precision, in charge of webcams, are all expected to benefit from the orders.

MIC Gadget has posted an article that tells us about some details of the upcoming Mac Pro update that may come out in August. MIC Gadget also posted a screenshot of the App Store that shows a Mac Pro with Promise Thunderbolt RAID system. The current generation of the Mac Pro doesn’t support Thunderbolt technology. Of course, that image could be just an error of the graphics department, but if it doesn’t, we should expect Mac Pro with Thunderbolt that is slowly being rolled out onto every Mac.  The MacBook Pro, iMac already received Thunderbolt input/output ports, and recent rumors claim that the MacBook Air refresh will similarly get Thunderbolt capability. The image also shows that the Mac Pro design won’t be changed. MIC Gadget also believes that the Mac Pro will feature an 8 core CPU that will be ‘exclusive’ to Apple for a few months before other PC manufacturers can have access to it in Q4 of this year.

Our sources indicate Apple is making headway with access to this technology, and they are investing heavily into the Mac Pro. Sandy Bridge will be integrated with the new Mac Pro CPU as well, but issues remain with the heat being produced by such powerful CPUs.

Arstechnica and iFixIt claim that Apple’s new Tunderbolt cable is actually a "smart" cable that contains circuitry and firmware. iFixIt have already torn down the cable, having found inside two Gennum GN2033 chips in the connector that works as a transceiver to enable “reliable data transfer at cutting-edge speeds over low cost, thin-gauge copper cables.” There were also found additional support chips and resistors, so the total number of chips inside the Thunderbolt connector is 12, of course not including multiply smaller electronic components.

Quite interesting that the current Thunderbolt ports found in iMac and MacBook Pro are planned to be compatible with future Thunderbolt cables, bringing a significant speed improvement. But the current generation of such ports works on the traditional wiring.

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Michal Bonikowski recently created one of the best iPhone 5 conceps we have ever seen. Photos talk for themselves. Take a look:

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