News from category ‘Hardware’

Latest information from several resources reveals that the third beta of iPhone OS 4 has an ability to capture video at 1280x720 resolution instead of the standard 640x480. That is confirmed with following preset values that were found in new API improvements:

AVCaptureSessionPreset640x480
AVCaptureSessionPreset1280x720

It was long rumored that iPhone 4 will have 5MP camera, LED flash, another front-facing camera for making video conferences. IF the HD resolution will be supported indeed, iPhone's old alias "iPhone HD" will be finally confirmed.

According to a web-resource DigiTimes.com (which in turn cites Chinese newspaper Economic Daily News), panels for the iPhone 4G will be also provided by Chimei Innolux, which will join existing Apple's partners Wintek and TPK Touch Solution who have been supplying some parts for iPhone 3GS. The companies will take 15, 40 and 45 percents of total orders respectively.

All of the assembly responsibilities will be allegedly taken again by FoxConn, a company that has already had the successful similar experience with iPhone 3GS. The company already began receiving components for the iPhone 4G in April, though there is no information yet about the date of assembling it for final products.

The report also reveals that camera modules will be produced by Largan Precision (80%) and Genius Electronic (20%). TXC will continue to produce quartz components and its share will rise from 15% to 40%.

Next-generation iPhone is expected to be announced on Apple's annual WorldWide Developers Conference keynote, which will take place at San Francisco's Moscone West on June 7-11. It is rumored that the iPhone 4G will be available for sale soon after its announce.

According to a report by Marketwatch (which in turn refers to a figures revealed by Strategy Analytics), smartphones now take 18% share on the market of all mobile phones.

"Sales are driven by healthy operator subsidies, competition between vendors, and a rising number of cheaper models built around operating systems such as Google Inc's Android and Nokia Corp's key smartphone platform Symbian."

It is interesting that different smartphone makers sometimes compete on different markets. Strategy Analytics reveals that Nokia shows good results in India and China while Motorola focuses more on US.

As we wrote before, Motorola raised up its profits after producing its Android-based Droid/Milestone, which is frequently called the closest rival to Apple's iPhone.

Nokia's purpose is to gain the leadership on the markets that are only emerging. In the first quarter the company has 21.5 million smartphones sold, but these are mostly cheap models that were shipped primarily to South America and China. North America remains a "problem child" for Nokia. The company's sales make 40% of all the sales in this quarter.

RIM has 10.6 million BlackBerries sold and takes second place with its 19.7% share.

Globally Apple has 16,4% market share in selling smartphones in this quarter and became a mobile vendor number one in the US. The company made record 8.8 million iPhone sales. Among all mobile phone makers Apple hold 3% global market share.

As you already know iPad 3G became available this Friday. Well iFixIt already obtained it and found out what are the differences between its 3g and Wi-fi versions. Here is what they've revealed.

iPad 3G has a black plastic window for better antenna reception. It also changes the way to open the device - you'll need to start separating from the right side and then go to the top and bottom of it.

iPad 3G has five antennas:

1. One antenna is in the plastic window to handle the cell reception.
2. Another antenna is attached to the LCD frame with the same purpose.
3. GPS antenna is also situated in the plastic window.
4. Wi-fi antenna is in the Apple logo.
5. Bluetooth antenna is situated on the left of the dock connector.

To make 3G connections iPad uses the same baseband processor as in iPhone 3GS, and presumably it's the Infineon 337S3754 PMB 8878 X-Gold IC. For GPS connections device has a Broadcom BCM4750UBG Single-Chip AGPS Solution.

More photos of separated iPad 3G are posted below.

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This spring quarter Motorola had reportedly sold 8.5 million phones, which makes it the second biggest US phone maker after Apple that sold 8.8 million iPhones in the same period.

According to a Forbes report, one year ago Motorola had better results - 14,7 million phones sold. But the profit this year is down only by 9% because the company had changed its strategy and now successfully sells more sophisticated smartphones instead of cheap phones.

Motorola had best selling results four years ago when it was selling Razr model. In 2006 it was releasing 46 million phones per quarter. But these days mobile providers push companies to deliver cheap phones and because of it Motorola's profits are falling down.

The company  had big plans on its Milestone/Droid device which ships with Android OS. It was heavily promoted by Motorola and Verizon as the best Android phone available, but the company sold only 2.3 million devices in the spring quarter, which is only 27% of the total phones sold.

As you remember, this Thursday Steve Jobs wrote a letter about his thoughts on Flash. In responce to such a public attack Adobe decided to give its employees mobile phones running on Android OS which support Flash.

CNet reports it has information from three sources close to Adobe that the company is going to give Android phones, but the exact model is not specified yet (though HTC phones and Google Nexus One were mentioned). There is also no information about whether Adobe is going to give devices to all 8,600 employees or just to developers.

Flash 10.1 will be presented in May at Google's I/O conference. Every its attendee will receive Motorola Droid or Nexus One from Google.

Several web-resources including Gizmodo and TechCrunch confirmed that HP stops working on its "HP Slate" tablet device. The decision is caused by this week's deal that will end soon with acquiring Palm. Now Hewlett-Packard is rumored to integrate Palm's WebOS instead Microsoft WIndows in their tablet (which can take a year or more) and reconsider using Intel-based hardware in it because of its excessive power requirements.

So now it looks like HP changes it course and is going to convert webOS to a tablet OS and compete with Google's Android and Chrome on the market of operational systems.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has also cancelled working on its own booklet-style tablet device called "Courier". Gizmodo sources say the project will be no longer supported. Anyway, the device had never been publicly announced, though it could be very interesting with its two touch-sensitive screens in a foldable format and handwriting recognition input.

This week's sensation was a Steve Jobs' letter published officially on Apple's site. If you didn't read it or want to remind it to yourself, here are its main tent poles:

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Wired.com finally figured out that 21-year-old Brian J. Hogan from Redwood City, California, is a person who found an iPhone 4G prototype and sold it to Gizmodo. The resource identified him by following clues on different social networks and then confirmed the information from a source who involved in the investigation around the device.

Brian regrets that he didn't try harder to return the iPhone to its owner, according to his attorney. He is willing to cooperate with authorities to avoid any consequences.

The story of iPhone's revealing is very similar to the Gizmodo's one. Brian got the device from one of his friends in the bar. When he didn't find its owner he took it home. There he used Facebook, but then the phone shut down. Sometime later Brian removed a fake cover and understood that it must be a prototype of iPhone 4G. He tried to call Apple Care but this didn't take effect.

Then Brian offered several journalists to take a look at the device. But he believes that Gizmodo's payment was for allowing it exclusive access for reviewing the phone, but not for purchasing it.

The bar owners say Hogan didn't come to the public house in attempts to find the device's owner. Grey Powell returned several times and asked about any information on his iPhone.

Brian has recently transferred schools and will continue studying in the autumn. Before that he was giving swimming lessons to children and also volunteered at a Chinese orphanage when he was enrolled in a study-abroad program.

As you remember, last Friday the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team searched the house of Gizmodo's editor who reportedly had iPhone 4G prototype. Well now we have information from MarketWatch that the steering committee which oversees the REACT team consists of Apple, Google, Adobe and other companies. This data was taken from California's High Technology Crime Advisory Committee's annual report dated 2008.

Moreover, it is reported that the steering committee doesn't have "defined membership" and its meetings can be visited by all of the company representatives. Apple representatives did not visit any recent meeting, but the company is currently listed amongst companies that have open investigations to attend. That means that Apple may be a director of a Friday episode with Jason Chen.

But today's news reveals that is not the end of the story.

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According to the report revealed by Chosun resource 5MP camera sensors for iPhone 4G will be supplied by LG Innotek.

"The electronics component maker began producing the sophisticated cameras at its plant in Gumi this month and will mass produce them starting in the second half of this year."

So the rumors about OmniVision going to supply cameras for a new generation of iPhones that appeared in December 2009 are incorrect.

iPhone 4G is expected to have not only 5.0-megapixels capera, but also a camera flash (probably based on Philips' LUXEON LED techonogy). The functions for flash are already implemented in iPhone OS 4.0.

Recently Сhitika estimated the number of iPads sold by making a study based on its own online advertising network. The report reveals than Apple has sold more than 1 million of their tablets. The exact number is being refreshed every second so you can check it out here. And this is a current scale of iPad's popularity in some U.S. cities:

• California - 19,12%
• New York - 8,3%
• Texas - 8%
• Florida - 5,88%
• Illinois - 3,84%
• Wyoming - 0,03%

The report also has information than an average iPad has approximately 2,33 different IP addresses. Necessary data was received by tracking browser cookies.

Earlier Apple has also revealed that at the end of the first week there were sold more 500,000 iPads. The company claims it's very surprised with a level of initial demand.

Another report made by Nikkei reveals that most of the Japanese online electronic stores stopped selling iMacs, iPods and other products because of an Apple's request. At the moment Yodobashi Camera Co., Kojima Co., Bic Camera Inc. and Yamada Deni Co. Web sites point that Apple products were totally sold out or they are not for sale and may be available only in retail stores. Though Joshin Denki Co. and Amazon.com's Japanese store are continuing to sell iDevices.

There is also information from China Business News that China Unicom carrier will reduce the iPhone price from 6,999 yuan (~1050$) to 1,000 yuan (~150$). The company hopes that the smartphone will help it to boost its 3G network. Now China Unicom also considers making reduced rates for those of the subscribers who already have 3G devices to advance the growth of its data network.

Yesterday Apple closed a deal of acquiring Intrisity, a small company in Austin, Texas, that specializes on mobile computer chips producing.

This is a second time for the last two years when Apple buys a small chip company to have the facilities for making fast and power efficient processors. In 2008 Apple purchased P.A. Semi for $278 million, but with the lapse of time many chip maker employees had left company because of inadequate compensation (by the way, some of them are now in Agnilux, another company that was recently acquired by Google).

Well-known chip analyst Tom R. Halfhill has information from his sources that Apple paid $121 million for Intrinsity, but company’s representative Steve Dowling didn't comment on this information.

Such a deal isn't expensive for Apple at all, thinks Tom Halfhill:

“The purchase price is like pocket change to Apple, and they get a lot of benefit”.

It is widely speculated that iPad's A4 chip is based on Intrinsity technology that improved its processing power from 650 MHz to 1 GHz without increasing the battery consumption. With acquiring this chip making company Apple will be able to increase that 350 MHz by itself. Moreover, the company seems to be looking forward for creating its own version of ARM chip. Some other companies like Qualcomm, Marvell and Nvidia had the same experience and spent millions of dollars to gain a satisfactory result.

It is interesting that rumors about this deal started when some people saw that a significant number of Intrinsity employees changed their employer section to Apple in LinkedIn.

Also Apple's desire to create its own mobile chip contradicts to its strategy of purchasing Intel chips for computers.

Today mobile ad firm AdMob has released another Mobile Metrics report that consists of information about the software and hardware that had been used by Apple's handsets owners in March.

The study reveals that only 2% of all Apple devices with iPhone OS are first-gen iPhones. But it is important to notice that since the first sale of iPhone OS-based device Apple sold over 85 million of its worldwide. If we'll take the period between June 2007 and July 2008 (time when iPhone 3G was shipped), then it turns out that company sold 6.1 million of iPhone 2G, which is approximately 7% of the total sum of handsets that were sold.

Fortune Brainstorm Tech journalist Philip Elmer-Dewitt continues to count and then sums up:

"If 7% of those iPhone 1Gs are driving 2% of AdMob's traffic that suggests that nearly one in three is still ticking - and visiting the Web."

Obviously, the popularity of the first-generation iPhones will be further reducing without iPhone OS 4.0 support.

AdMob also found that the most popular iPhone in March 2010 was iPhone 3GS, which generated 39% of all traffic. This is much higher result than 9% in September 2009.

Other information can be seen above on the graphs.