News tagged ‘iPhone 4G’

Along with a special press conference, dedicated to iPhone 4 antenna issue, Apple published a special page about the problem (here = http://www.apple.com/antenna/). You may remember we wrote about a series of videos posted on this page, where the company tried to convince everybody that almost every smartphone has an antenna issue. RIM's BlackBerry Bold 9700, Samsung's Omnia II, HTC's Droid Eris and Nokia's N97 were taken as examples. Now these videos are deleted from the Apple's site, though they are still available at the company's official YouTube channel.

After the press conference Apple's competitors claimed that their phones do not experience signal attenuation as much as the iPhone 4 and were dissatisfied by Apple's way of solving the antenna issue.

Recently tech journalist Stephen Fenech wrote an interesting iPhone 4 review for Australian Daily Telegraph. Besides saying that iPhone 4 is "a massive jump" in the smartphone industry, Fenech also tried to reproduce the antenna issue. To make sure his results are correct he used his phone on 6 different Australian carriers - Optus, Telstra, Vodafone and 3 other networks in different parts of Sydney. Here is his conclusion:

"I tried the 'death grip' on the bottom left while making test calls in areas I knew to have weaker reception and the times I did manage to reduce the signal bars... my calls were still not affected. The worst thing that happened was a web page I was loading timed out but after refreshing it came up fine. I even managed to watch a YouTube video over 3G while in the 'death grip.'"

Fenech also added that the "death grip" is unnatural and iPhone 4 call quality was significantly improved in comparison to iPhone 3GS.

Invent the newest gadget and the porn industry will find a way to cash in. Associated Press reports:

When Apple Inc. launched the iPhone 4 and its FaceTime video conference feature, it didn't take long for adult-entertainment companies to develop video-sex chat services and start hiring workers through Craigslist.

On the photograph above, taken July 21, 2010, adult film star Teagan Presley poses with her iPhone 4 in Atlanta. Presley is experimenting with Apple's FaceTime feature.

We all remember how Steve Jobs talked about iPhone's and iPad's "freedom from porn" in email conversation. It looks like in real life FaceTime and new iPhone 4 will push forward porn industry.

This morning Apple starts to sell iPhone 4 in many more countries. Here's a video from the Hong Kong launch:

The main topic of the new Macworld will be iPhone 4. That's why the image of the new iPhone 4 was photographed and post-processed entirely on another iPhone 4. This was done by Peter Belanger.

Shooting and editing only on the iPhone had its challenges. Normally Peter shoots Macworld covers with a Phase One P65+ digital camera, which offers 12 times the resolution of the iPhone 4’s camera. That meant getting an image as close to the size of the Macworld cover as possible, because any cropping would reduce the resolution of the image even further.

For post-processing Peter used two iPhone apps - PhotoForge ($3) to remove green cast and the Resize-Photo ($1) to increase the resolution from 216 dpi to 290 dpi to meet the printing requirements.

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After using two iPhones 4 for six weeks Wall Mossberg finally reviewed the newest Apple’s handset.

So, one phone was obtained by Mossberg personally, while the second was provided by Apple. Walt found that iPhone 4 works better than iPhone 3GS in those areas where there is a "strong AT&T coverage", but when it comes to weak coverage areas iPhone 3GS performs better, because it drops less calls and 'no service' status can be seen rarer. That became a reason for Mossberg to not recommend iPhone 4 with its limited AT&T data plans to people who "live, work or travel" in areas with poor reception signal.

Walt also found that the 'death-grip' issue is not a problem as it causes signal bars to fluctuate only and even to rise in some cases.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple started to investigate the compatibility problems of iOS4 and iPhone 3G. The company's spokesman explained that such a decision was made because of numerous user reports, which reveal that after installing iOS4 on iPhone 3G the latter started to work more slowly, became overheated and its battery life had significantly decreased.

Some people are annoyed and disappointed because of the situation:

“This phone has gone from being a dream to constantly annoying me. Not a way to make friends. I would upgrade to an iPhone4, but I’m feeling pretty angry that Apple has forced my hand by making my 3G unusable”.

iOS4 version for iPhone 3G does not support multitasking and Bluetooth keyboards, which was disabled because of RAM requirements, according to Apple.

iPhone 3G and iPod Touch 2G work a bit slow with iOS 4. The video below shows a nice trick that will put the speed back in your device. You need to go do Settings and deselect Spotlight.

On iPod Touch 2G go to Settings - General - Home Button - Spotlight Search. On iPhone 3G go to Settings - General - Spotlight Search. Then uncheck all the searches that you don't use. This will increase the speed of your device.

This also works on iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, however the speed increase is very small there.

Watch the video:

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Apple’s iPhone 4 handset is scheduled to hit Canadian stores this Friday. According to a recent report by CBC, Canadian customers will have the option of buying the phone unlocked, directly from Apple:

Unlocked iPhone 4 is not going to be cheap.

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This Friday iPhone 4 will become available in 17 more countries, but South Korea will not be among them. Steve Jobs explained why:

"It's going to take us a little longer to get government approval there".

Korean government and people were discomfited by these words. According to The Wall Street journal, there is nothing to approve yet.

"The main communications regulator said last week that neither Apple nor KT [local iPhone carrier] had yet submitted the iPhone 4 for approval here".

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Here is an interesting video demonstrating an iPhone speed test across all four generations of the smartphone (iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4).

It’s fantastic to see how far the speed of the iPhone has advanced. As you’d expect, the iPhone 4 is obviously the fastest, closely followed by the iPhone 3GS. Interestingly, the difference between the 3GS and 3G is pretty big, as is the difference between the iPhone 3G and the first-gen handset.

Watch the video:

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MuscleNerd, hacker from DevTeam, commented via twitter on recent rumors that universal jailbreak (all iPhones and all firmwares, including iPhone 4 and iOS 4.0.1) will be released today. The basic answer is no, there will be no jailbreak today.

Not to make it a daily thing, but since somehow people thought it would be today: the new JB+unlock won't be out today

(there are issues with important apps like Facetime that need to be figured out...no sense releasing a half-broken JB)

Jay Freeman, better known as Saurik, the creator of Cydia, was interviewed by the home radio Make It Work. He speaks about the history and the future of the iPhone jailbreak.

Saurik describes the origins of Jailbreak and Unlock for the very first model of the iPhone. Jay explains that initially there were two important things to do with the iPhone 2G - to use other carrier than AT&T and to install any application.

He continues discussing the main applications from Cydia. Cycorder was the first to allow video recording, and Winterboard was the only one that allowed users to change the graphical interface of the iPhone. He also speaks about Comex, the hacker who is currently working with the Dev Team for releasing and Unlock for the iPhone 4. According to Saurik the tool is still not ready to be released to the public due to severe bugs in the code. Here the second part:

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This week developers started receiving Microsoft’s test units, which will allow them to test the performance of their apps for WP7 instead of using an emulator. The test smartphones are produced by Samsung and LG and have a Technical Preview version of Windows Phone 7, and guys at NewsGeek decided to compare its browser speed with iPhone 3GS' that runs on iOS 4.

Since the difference in speed is so huge it is noted that both of the phones used 3G network (not Wi-Fi) and iPhone 3GS is a completely finished product, while Samsung's test unit is a prototype with an unfinished OS that is still in development.

Newsgeek also found Internet Explorer in the Windows Phone 7 to be "surprisingly competent and quick" though it was mostly built off of IE7's desktop version.

And here is another Apple's video to prove that almost every mobile phone in the world has an antenna issue similar to iPhone 4's. This time Motorola’s Droid X is the victim, which drops from three to zero bars after the "death grip".

Now doesn't it look like Apple is overreacting on the antenna problem?