News from category ‘Hardware’

Yesterday DigiTimes published a report where it is said that an earthquake and tsunami in Japan had seriously affected the country's supply chain.

Because of the disaster Apple was only forced to order iPad 2 connectors at Taiwan's Cvilux.  Its previous partner in Japan, namely Hirose Electric, became unable to meet demand for Apple because of a power brownout policy in the country. Now Cvilux's business is expected to become more profitable.

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Yesterday The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published the filing of another Apple's patent entitled "Touch Screen RFID Tag Reader". It describes "the efficient incorporation of RFID circuitry with touch sensor panel circuitry".

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Today Reuters reported that the next-gen iPhone will be released in September. The publication cited three people familiar with the matter, who told that the device will get a faster CPU but will look much like the iPhone 4. No further details have been revealed.

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Today Bloomberg reported Chimei Innolux Corp. will become a third supplier of displays and touch panel sensors for Apple's iPad 2. Current makers Wintek Corp. and TPK Holding Corp. will remain "key suppliers" of touchscreens, though they cannot satisfy the demand for a new device without another manufacturer.

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Research firm Avian Securities claims that Apple won’t start production of the iPhone 5 until September and that the next generation iPhone won't be released until the end of the year or even early next. Avian cites "key component suppliers" as the source of the information. They also revive the possibility of a cheaper or lower cost iPhone also in the works, but no new details.

Supporting out comments over the last month, conversations with yet another key component supplier indicates that production for iPhone-5 will begin in September. In addition, our conversations also indicate the existence of a lower-spec/lower-priced iPhone in Apple’s roadmap. However, while our contacts have seen the placeholder in the Apple roadmap, they do not yet have insight into specs or production timing. This leads us to believe that any launch is likely a very late 2011 or more likely a 2012 event.

Apple has continued exploring the idea of smart bezel having filed a new patent related to use of a bezel as a secondary display built around a printed segmented electroluminescence technology (e-link technology). An electronic device could include a primary display (for example, LCD screen) and a secondary display (printed segmented electroluminescence display). The primary display could be used to convey visual content to a user, and the secondary display could be used to guide a user providing inputs to the device.

Apple intends to use the secondary display to introduce a set of new illuminated indicators that are able morph into various controls for work and play. Illuminated gaming and productivity controls could be built into the face-side of the bezel and/or selected back-side areas of iOS devices like the iPad.

StorageNewsletter.com reports that Apple has placed a order for about 12 petabytes of storage from Isilon Systems. According to an inside source, the company will use this storage to support iTunes video downloaded by its customers. This order will make Apple the largest Isilon’s customer.

A petabyte of data is a huge amount of data; it's 1024 terabytes. Consumer hard drives nowadays top out at 3 TB. If you tried to store a petabyte of data on dual-layer Blu-ray discs (50 GB each), it would take almost 21,000 discs to fit it all... and Apple just bought 12 of those. It'll be interesting to see what they do with all of that storage

Taiwanese site Apple.pro reports that the seventh-generation iPod nano presumably set for introduction later this year may retain its current smaller form factor but still add a rear-facing camera once again. The photo above claimed to be the rear case for the next-generation iPod nano with a camera hole in an upper right corner.  The camera seems to take up some space occupied by the battery, so the new device may use a smaller battery or its components could be shifted to accommodate the camera.

Yesterday, on April 3 the Apple’s iPad celebrated its first anniversary. 365 days ago the original iPad went on sale in the United States. The Apple’s “magical device” that was smaller than a laptop but bigger than a smartphone, was exactly what many people had been looking for. Moreover, the iPad created a new market of devices without physical keyboard with large Multitouch screen.  iPad for Apple was a terrific commercial success. The company sold more than 15 million devices, and over 75, 000 native applications via the App Store. The iPad became an iconic device, and now there are long lines around the globe to get the chance of buying an iPad 2.

iPad 2 antenna: GSM (top), CDMA (middle), and Wi-Fi (bottom)

iFixit announced that they completed the teardowns of the GSM and CDMA models of iPad 2. Wi-Fi version of the iPad 2 was torn down on launch day. The GSM model has the micro-SIM card slot along the upper left edge to provide the device with subscriber information. On the CDMA version such information stores directly on the WWAN board inside. The CDMA iPad offer slightly different antenna configurations, it has an additional antenna and an integrated GPS receiver. What’s really curious is that the 3G version of iPad 2 has the older Infineon 337Se833 baseband chip rather than a dual-mode Gobi chip found inside the CDMA iPad 2. Maybe it was a supply issue or an engineering decision designed to cut costs a bit.

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Apple has released another TV ad as part of their latest "If you don’t have an iPhone" campaign. The new ad showcases the high-resolution Retina Display that can be found on iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4G.

It turns out that the iPad 2 glass is stronger that iPad 1 generation. It is also a bit more flexible so it has more bending tolerances. This information is great, since the iPad 2 glass was about 27% thinner than iPad 1. Here is a proof video from iFixyouri:

Tomorrow is a great day for Apple fans - the start of worldwide Apple iPad 2. Here's a very nice comparison table with international prices for iPad 2. Best deals are in the USA and Australia. The highest prices are in Norway and Sweden. Take a look:

Digitimes claims that Apple is willing to pay more in order to have a constant flow of touch panel supply after Japanese earthquakes and tsunami that had bad impact on Japanese manufacturers of iPad 2 components. Apple may reconsider the amount of money for pre-production deals with companies in China and Taiwan. Recently appeared some report saying that Apple may be affected by the Japanese disaster and experiencing problems with tablet shipments from Asia manufactures. Apple is clearly looking ahead. Now company is taking 60% of the current touch panel market, and a deal to pay manufacturers more to ensure availability sound very reasonable.

Today we have received a video, that shows that recently discovered Gevey hardware unlock for iPhone 4 works fine with the latest iOS 4.3 and 04.10.01 baseband.

Take a look:

This method of unlocking is not recommended due to the legal issues in certain countries.