News tagged ‘smartphone’

Research in Motion's Chief Executive Officers Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie have released an official statement on the Apple's latest press conference, where the company showed the antenna issue on BlackBerry 9700 to prove that such a problem a normal thing for every smartphone. Both of the directors were stunned that Apple mentioned RIM in order to justify their mistake:

"Apple's attempt to draw RIM into Apple's self-made debacle is unacceptable. Apple's claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public's understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple's difficult situation. RIM is a global leader in antenna design and has been successfully designing industry-leading wireless data products with efficient and effective radio performance for over 20 years. During that time, RIM has avoided designs like the one Apple used in the iPhone 4 and instead has used innovative designs which reduce the risk for dropped calls, especially in areas of lower coverage. One thing is for certain, RIM's customers don't need to use a case for their BlackBerry smartphone to maintain proper connectivity. Apple clearly made certain design decisions and it should take responsibility for these decisions rather than trying to draw RIM and others into a situation that relates specifically to Apple."

So yesterday Apple had a press conference in its campus in Cupertino to talk about iPhone 4 antenna issue. It was revealed that every new iPhone user will have an opportunity to order free case for his smartphone through Sept. 30. Because Apple cannot produce enough number of cases at the moment, it will source cases from other vendors and then give customers a choice so they would be able to pick the one they like.

Jobs said that the cases will be available for order on the Apple's site in the end of the next week.

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Yesterday Silicon Alley Insider reported that Palm had a chance to be acquired by Apple, but eventually HP’s bid was higher. Referring to an anonymous source that was familiar with the negotiations, author Dan Frommer wrote:

"Apple was mostly interested in Palm's huge library of intellectual property and patents (450+ patents on file, another 400+ applications on file). And unlike some other bidders, Apple even seemed committed to funding Palm's operations, perhaps to challenge RIM's dominance in the keyboarded segment of the smartphone industry, our source says."

It is reported that Google also wanted to purchase Palm to spite Apple, but the company didn't know whether Apple was actually bidding for Palm, so no moves were made in that direction.

Eventually HP acquired Palm and now has plans to use its webOS in company's future tablet devices that will compete with Apple's iPad.

Here is a video of a guy who tried to reproduce the antenna issue on the iPhone 4 with a latest iOS 4.1 beta. As you see, the smartphone loses two bars when he holds it with a "death grip", so it looks like the problem with antenna wasn’t actually fixed.

According to The Wall Street Journal, last week Chinese Telecommunication Equipment Certification Center approved Wi-Fi enabled iPhone to be put on sale soon in China. The problem is that on the accompanying picture it is clearly seen that the approved device is the iPhone 3G or 3GS, but certainly not the iPhone 4.

Apple’s smartphone went on sale last year, but it was Wi-Fi disabled because technology's standard was temporarily banned by the Chinese government. In May 2009 the ban was relaxed.

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CNet specialists analyzed how bad are modern smartphones. Guess how bad are iPhones. Let's take a look:

Apple has published an official public letter of response to concerns about the iPhone 4 signaling problems. Some would say this is very nice and great. Others would complain this is just a cop out. Well, at least we see that Apple is aware of users' problems. Apple claims, that it's just a software problem of calculating how many bars of signal strength to display. Apple says there is no hardware problem.

Here it the full letter:

Dear iPhone 4 Users,

The iPhone 4 has been the most successful product launch in Apple’s history. It has been judged by reviewers around the world to be the best smartphone ever, and users have told us that they love it. So we were surprised when we read reports of reception problems, and we immediately began investigating them. Here is what we have learned.

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Although it was for the most part overshadowed by the hysteria over the new iPhone 4, Apple had another “new” launch last week – the $99 iPhone 3GS 8GB with iOS 4 support.

Well, obviously it’s “last year’s model”, but just a couple of days ago it was still the best iPhone in the world quite capable of competing with much newer devices. Now with the help of iOS 4 iPhone 3GS supports folders, multitasking, and other cool features, and it’s only for $99.

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When the iPhone 4 was introduced at the WWDC, Apple especially noted the capabilities of the device, putting emphasis on its camera. The company said that, even though the iPhone 4 had only 5 megapixels, while 8 megapixels was beginning to be the norm for the latest smartphones, the iPhone 4 would have a far superior performance thanks to some special features that go far beyond the simple megapixel count.

Now the iPhone 4 is finally on the market, and so are samples of the new Droid X from Motoralla introduced on Wednesday. This made camera tests possible and this is what Macworld did in their series of tests aimed to compare 4 devices: the iPhone 4, it’s predecessor 3GS, the Droid X, the HTC EVO 4G, Samsung HZ35W and Galaxy, as well as basic Sony and Samsung point-and-shoot cameras. For the video test, the devices were also compared to the Flip Video M2120.

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The prices for the iPhone 4, Droid Incredible, Evo 4G and Nexus One are very similar. But in this chart you can see how much you’ll have to spend on each of the devices during a 2-year period.

The results for the iPhone 4 are quite encouraging, especially in the Minimum Plan Total Cost category. However, you should remember that nowadays AT&T is the only carrier that offers tiered data. This means that for $2,000 you can only enjoy 200 MB a month, which doesn’t exactly compare to the unlimited plans of the other 3 devices. With the “unlimited” plan you’ll be able to use 2GB, which is enough in most cases. If it isn’t, be ready to spill out an extra $10 per 1GB each month.

Still, the performances of all the 4 devices are really very close, so you can do some research while waiting for the iPhone 4 to come into the market.

Using a popular BlackBerry and iPhone messenger WhatsApp you can now make use of its new ability to forward individual messages or delete them.

WhatsApp is a smartphone to smartphone messenger and it currently runs on BlackBerry and iPhone. With the help of push notifications utilized by this application you can instantly receive messages from your colleagues, friends and family. It’s a great alternative to SMS because WhatsApp allows you to send and get messages, audio notes, pictures and video messages without having to spend a cent. All WhatsApp features are included in the base price and you won’t need to make any extra purchases for the application.

The new version of WhatsApp features:

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When Gizmodo showed new iPhone's prototype most of us stopped expecting from Jobs anything shocking on WWDC 2010. But he amazed us, and not only with new display's resolution, FaceTime function and 802.11n support, but also with gyroscope. Many developers instantly realized - this is a new breakthrough.

While conventional accelerometer measures linear acceleration as a change of direction apart a change in velocity, a gyroscope measures angular acceleration, or in other words, a change in both direction and velocity at the same time. Thus the device can sense its rotation while ignoring hand jitters and linear movements, which is impossible for accelerometer.

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Today Best Buy announced that as of Tuesday, June 15, every customer will have an ability to visit one of its retail stores (including  Best Buy Mobile standalone stores) to make an order for a new iPhone 4 and then take it on June 24. Both 16GB and 32GB models will be available for reserve.

President of Best Buy Mobile Shawn Score is glad to propose customers pre-order feature:

- Adding the iPhone 4 to our stores alongside other great smartphones like the HTC EVO from Sprint and HTC Incredible on Verizon, gives customers a great opportunity to view each side-by-side and get the mobile phone that works best for them.

Best Buy will become the second iPhone 4 retailer after Radioshack, which confirmed last week that it was authorized by Apple too.

As we wrote before, on June 24 iPhone 4 will also be available at Wal-Mart locations, but the company will not take pre-orders on the device.

AT&T, which will also sell new handsets, didn’t give any information on taking pre-orders.

New reports made by Mac Stories and PadGadget reveal new data on App Store. Here are the most interesting facts:

1. Over 2,100 titles in the Apple's App Store are iPad games;
2. 78% of all iPad apps are paid (which is almost equal to 80% value of previous Moblix report);
3. Almost 75% of all 225,000 iPhone apps are also paid;
4. 2,5 months needed for iPad apps library to reach the 10,000 milestone (For comparison, it took five months for iPhone apps and 11 months for Google's Android Market to get the same result).
5. Currently iPad apps store is the third biggest after iPhone and official Android apps store.
6. RIM's BlackBerry App World, Nokia's Symbian platform and HP's Palm/webOS have less than 7,000 apps.

It is important to note that Google currently forbids putting Android Market on non-smartphone devices, so there is no opportunity to compare the actual numbers of Android and iPad apps.

In previous post we talked about new glass cover on iPhone 4. This time our attention was attracted by its new "Retina" display, which became a target of criticism for different industry watchers and rivals.

This Monday Steve Jobs claimed on his keynote that new iPhone’s display has a resolution higher than "the limit of the human retina", which he specified as 300 ppi for 10-12 inches distance between the phone and user's eyes. But display expert and DisplayMate Technologies president Dr. Raymond Soneira is ensured that the distinguishable resolution of the human retina is actually 477 ppi for 12 inches distance. That means the new iPhone's display may be retina display if only it was created to be held at 18 inches distance from the eye.

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