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Latest Free iPhone News & Reviews

New iPhone in 4GB and 32GB

According To: Mirror.co.uk

Another day, another promising new iPhone rumour. At this rate, if Apple doesn’t announce something iPhone shaped next week, thousands of Mac-heads may succumb to lethal amounts of disappointment. The latest speculation comes from a leaked image, belonging to Fido – a Canadian mobile network – which strongly suggests that a 4GB version of the iPhone is on its way.

Furthermore, this coincides neatly with a rumour that Engadget is reporting, namely that the new iPhone will come in 4GB, 8GB, 16GB and 32GB flavours. That’s according to a trusted and obviously anonymous source.

The rumoured 4GB model stands out in particular. With the current iPhone 3G already available in 8GB, and so many other phones adopting 8GB or 16GB as a standard, it would seem odd for Apple to be taking a step back. That, however, has let to further speculation that Apple might be about to launch a lower budget handset.

Other specs visible in the leaked image suggest the 4GB model would only have a 2.0 megapixel camera – a feature Apple is also rumoured to be upgrading for the new iPhone. Could this be the first indication of the oft-speculated iPhone nano then?

1 million downloads for Stanford's free iPhone course

Source: Cnet News

Stanford University on Monday said its free iPhone Application Programming course has been downloaded more than 1 million times since being uploaded to Apple's iTunes U--a learning-focused area of iTunes--seven weeks ago.

The course is a series of classroom videos taken from the live lectures at Stanford. Apple engineers teach the course to students in an auditorium at Stanford's Quad--the videos are uploaded to iTunes U two days after every class, giving the public free access to the material. The university even makes copies of the slides shown during the class available to the public.

Jason Ediger, Apple's director of iTunes U and Mobile Learning, said this is the fastest any course hit the million download mark on iTunes U. Certainly a testament to the amount of interest from would-be iPhone developers.

Apple currently has over 40,000 apps available for download from the App Store, according to numbers from 148 Apps, an enthusiast Web site that monitors the number of apps on the store.

iPhone Application Programming is a 10-week course and can be downloaded free from iTunes U. Only students enrolled in the classroom course will receive credit, according to the university.

What will the next iPhone be called?

From: Counter Notions

Naming any Apple product — much less the iPhone, the most iconic of them all — is no easy task.

Remember all the mindless chatter when Apple risked legal entanglement with Cisco for the right to use the name “iPhone”?

Gizmodo:

Cisco rightfully owns the trademark for iPhone. And Apple can’t sue them or bully them into giving it up. The tech world had taken the title for granted, assumed it to be proper, plastered it over magazine covers, and now the name is lost. Which means Apple’s iPhone, if there even is an iPhone, will have to be named something else. It’s a big deal, if you think about what that name meant.
Apple never designated the original product iPhone 1G or iPhone 2G. Introduced as a convergence device, it was simply called iPhone. The next version last year (twice as fast, at half the price) was named iPhone 3G.

The “3G” part was referencing the speed upgrade from 2.5G/2.75G (EDGE) to 3G (HSPA), not its generational order. Only after the introduction of the iPhone 3G did it make sense to refer to the original as iPhone 2G, but that’s not Apple’s nomenclature.

Give us the name

Beyond simple versioning, however, product names often foretell Apple’s ambitions with a given product. Whatever value theme Apple will wrap around the next iPhone, it will likely be reflected in its name. Let’s consider some possibilities:

• iPhone 3G+   Too nerdy for Apple.

• iPhone 3G II   Apple is not Nokia.

• iPhone 3.5G   No decimals in consumer hardware names.

• iPhone 4G   Four comes after three, to be sure. But in the cellphone industry 4G specifically refers to 4G LTE, the next major evolution in wireless speed and interoperability among mobile phone carriers. Apple’s carrier AT&T has said it would begin to upgrade its 3G network to HSPA+ this year and switch to 4G LTE by mid-2011. So the timing isn’t quite right for 4G.

• iPhone Pro   Assumes minor hardware upgrades to existing iPhone at same/lower price and introduction of a higher-end model at a higher price (like MacBook vs. MacBook Pro). So if Apple is about to expand the “touch platform” horizontally (like the iPod product line), we can expect to see a new mobile “quadrant” segregated by functionality and price among products like iPhone mini, iPhone 3G, iPhone HD, iPhone Pro, iPod touch, iPod touch HD, iPhone Business, etc. Balance that against Apple’s practice of product line simplification though.

• iPhone V (Video) or iPhone M (Media)   If Apple’s acquisition of PA Semi bears early fruit and the iPhone is turned into a multimedia powerhouse with faster CPU (ARM Cortex), multi-core GPU (Imagination PowerVR), parallel graphics processing (OpenCL), Wii-mote like 3D controls, better camera and video recording/conferencing, we can expect to see a long line of third party partners demonstrating the media prowess of the new iPhone at the WWDC. Apple knows that no other smartphone is even close to the iPhone as the mobile gaming platform, but it won’t be called iPhone G (Games) since the name can’t regress from 3G to G and association with “games” won’t help Apple battle RIM and Microsoft among business users.

• iPhone U (Universal)   Apple’s decision to open up the 30-pin port to third party developers was a central part of the new iPhone OS 3.0 SDK. This makes the iPhone a ‘controller’ of a huge range of hardware in all kinds of industries from healthcare to entertainment to transportation. Indeed, the iPhone becomes the universal front-end ‘UI processor’ to the rest of the world, and the hub of a multi-billion dollar ecosystem in the making.

• iPhone X   An opaque name, but nicely ties the iPhone via Snow Leopard (Apple’s upcoming OS, a mobile version of which will also power the touch platform) to the Mac OS X desktop world for the ultimate bi-directional halo effect. The next device in 2010 might then be called iPhone X2 and the one in 2011, iPhone 4G. How would the unwashed non-Mac users pronounce it, though, as “ton” or “eks”?

• iPhone <#noun>   We don’t quite see Apple losing its mind with something like iPhone Storm/Instinct/Chocolate/Rumor/Propel but if there’s in fact a unifying value theme for the next device and a semi-abstract word can capture its soul and purpose, it is certainly a possibility.

• iPhone 09   Should Apple run out of naming ideas, there’s always the introduced-in-the-year standby. However, Apple does this with software (iLife 09, iWork 09) but not with hardware. Otherwise, what would it name the one capable of LTE, iPhone 4G 11?

• iPhone   The ultimate Rorschach inkblot test. A maddening knot in the world of Cupertinology is Apple’s predilection to introduce a market defining product under one name and, over time, introduce several iterations without any name augmentation. That inevitably forces customers and tech support alike to make up names to identify Apple products such as “3G iPod fat nano with video,” “C2D 24-in iMac,” “MBP 15-in late 2008″ and so on. So there’s also a chance that Apple might decide not to add a qualifier to “iPhone” until the appropriate opportunity presents itself, like when 4G LTE is ready for deployment.

The name makes the product?

It would be easier to decipher what the next iPhone version will contain if we could get a glimpse of just the name of the device instead of spec lists and blurry pictures soon to inundate us. The name will tell all. We already know, however, what it won’t be called: “Apple MyPhone P3G-2 Millennium Live Edition 2009,” pre-hyped with a cheesy YouTube video.

Wesabe’s free iPhone app lets users manager their money

According to: IntoMobile

Wesabe is out with a free iPhone application designed to help users manage their money on the go. Users can view all of their bank and credit card accounts in one place; track their spending; edit, categorize and tag purchases; and set up and monitor spending targets. Moreover, the application takes advantage of iPhone’s location capabilities, so when you input a new purchase, it will offer the names of the closest merchants.

Additional features of Wesabe’s app include text-to-graph views, privacy protection via a Wesabe-specific PIN, data protection for lost/stolen phone, pending transactions, and full support for worldwide currencies…

Interested? Got to the AppStore from where you can grab the app free of charge.

Apple iPhone Need Not Fear BlackBerry

According to: PcWorld

Is this the beginning of the end for the iPhone? Relax, analysts say.

The BlackBerry Curve outsold the Apple iPhone in consumer sales in the first quarter of this year, according to research group NPD. The popular iPhone had held the title of top selling consumer smartphone for the last two quarters.

All tallied, the top five best-selling smartphones so far this year: Curve, iPhone, Storm, Pearl and T-Mobile's G1. NPD says the Curve overtook the iPhone thanks to a "buy-one-get-one-free" promotion by Verizon Wireless. Four wireless carriers support the Curve, while the iPhone is tied up in an exclusive contract with AT&T.

Nevertheless, the Curve's iPhone beatdown shocked and confused many mainstream pundits. It was as if the earth's polar magnetic fields suddenly flipped. Among tech analysts, though, cooler heads prevailed.

"I don't think Apple is hell-bent on being the number one smartphone sold," says Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin. "They posted extremely good numbers, are driving significant net adds for AT&T, and their users are heavily engaged with the App Store which drives additional revenue and increases loyalty. There is plenty of room in the market for both Apple and RIM to be successful."

Sure, Apple can grab marketshare if it lowers prices and opens up the iPhone to other carriers. Apple is reportedly in talks with Verizon, although a deal sounds unlikely. Eventually, the iPhone will regain its title over the Curve, says Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney. But Apple couldn't care less, he says.

The smartphone market is bubbling with excitement as Apple readies a new iPhone in the next few months and the Palm Pre is set to launch in the same time frame. "There is plenty of growth for all," Dulaney says. "Apple will introduce their new model in the summer and drive sales that way.

Fandango for IPhone

According to: Pcworld.com

So you just got your unemployment check and have a bit of free time? Let's go to the movies then. What do you want to see? Beats me, too. Let's check what's out.

No, of course I don't have today's paper. Don't make me laugh. I've got my iPhone, though. I've got a couple of movie apps on it. Just downloaded Fandango the other day, as a matter of fact. I used Fandango all the time when my wife and I would go to the movies almost every Friday night. Of course, that was before we had kids. Good Web site, decent service.

The Fandango app for the iPhone and iPod touch is pretty solid, too. It's functional and convenient. I wish it had a few more features, but the app carries out its raison d'être with aplomb.

A movie ticket app really only needs to do two things seamlessly and well: It must let you search for movies near your location; more important, the app must let you buy the tickets with minimum effort. Most movie apps do a good job with the former by taking advantage of the handheld's GPS locator function, but trip over the latter. Fandango does both very well.

When you launch the Fandango app, you'll see a list of movies currently playing in theaters. When you find a movie that interests you, tap the listing and a window will pop up with information about stars, running time, and where the film is playing near you. Most movies will have a trailer that you can watch by tapping the movie's poster.

You can also tap the Theaters button at the bottom of the screen to browse all the features playing at your nearby multiplex. You can save your favorite theaters, which is a nice addition for creatures of habit. The app will show that day's movie times, but you can also look up times days in advance.

The difference between Fandango and, say, Flixster's Movies app ( Macworld rated 3 out of 5 mice ) is that you can enter and save your credit card information in the app itself. Once you've done that, buying tickets is a mere matter of a few taps.

I was generally kind to Flixster's Movies when I reviewed it in October, but I detested the way the app walked you through buying tickets. You ended up in Safari at Movietickets.com, trying to navigate several fields. It's an enormous pain. Fandango's solution is much simpler and more convenient.

There are a couple of clear trade-offs with Fandango's approach, however. First, if you save your credit card information in the app and you happen to lose your phone, somebody could enjoy a night at the movies at your expense. (But that's all--the full credit card number does not display.) Second, Fandango will only let you buy tickets from Regal Entertainment Group theaters and that's about all. Fandango will show you movie times for other chains, but you won't be able to purchase tickets. That might be a deal-breaker for some moviegoers.

Fandango doesn't have the frills and features of some other movie apps. The app doesn't link to news and reviews, show fan ratings or list this week's box office take. (Fandango's Web site does.) You can watch trailers for some current and future releases, but the app only lists attractions coming to theaters in the next week or two. Flixster's app, on the other hand, has trailers for movies months in advance and has a robust DVD section, too.

The bottom line: Lacking the news features of Fandango.com and putting limits on the theaters from which you can buy tickets hampers Fandango's convenience and ease of use. Here's hoping any sequel to this iPhone app turns out to be better.

Fandango is compatible with any iPhone or iPod touch running the iPhone 2.2 software update.

Microsoft Office opening for iPhone

As reported in: The Register

iPhone users will soon be able to view, edit, and share Microsoft Word and Excel files on their Jesus Phones.

Announced at this week's CTIA Wireless 2009 tradeshow and conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, Quickoffice for iPhone promises a broad range of editing and file-management features.

Since at least last October, Dataviz has promised a similar app for the iPhone as part of its Documents to Go line for other handhelds, but it's not yet ready for release, and DataViz didn't immediately answer our query as to when it would appear.

Long-time Mac developer Mariner Software offers an Excel-on-iPhone app, the $9.99 Mariner Calc (iTunes link), but not a Word-editing app.

Quickoffice for free iPhone's Word-document editing capabilities will include font formatting, text selection, bulleting, and cut, copy, and paste within Word documents. Excel-spreadsheet features will include math and stat functions, cell editing, the ability to recalculate entries, and to insert and resize rows and columns.

Quickoffice for iPhone's developer - unsurprisingly named Quickoffice - also publishes a range of productivity apps for Symbian, Android, Blackberry, and Palm devices.

Two of the apps in the Quickoffice for iPhone suite, the $12.99 Quicksheet and $3.99 Quickoffice Files (iTunes links), are already available, and will be joined by Quickword to complete the suite.

Quickoffice said that the suite will be available at an "introductory price" of $19.99. A company spokesperson told The Reg to expect it next week.

After we receive our copy of Quickoffice for iPhone, we'll put it through its paces and let you know if it's worth your twenty bucks.

iPhone users to get Skype service

As reported by: News.bbc.co.uk

Skype has said that iPhone users will be able to use its internet telephony service to make calls, but only using wi-fi and not the mobile network.

The firm's native voice over internet protocol (VoIP) application - Skype for free iPhone - will be available for download from Apple's iTunes store on Tuesday.

The new service will allow users to make free calls to Skype users, but will charge for calls to other numbers.

The UK's first Skype handset was launched by network 3 in 2007.

Rival applications from Fring and TruPhone are already available for the iPhone. On Monday, TruPhone announced a flat rate charge of £25 a month for unlimited Voip calls to mobiles and landlines in 64 countries.

Unlike traditional mobile calls, which are transmitted over a cellular network, Skype turns your voice into data and sends it over the internet.

Some mobile Voip applications allow users to make internet telephone calls over wi-fi and the cellular network.

In the case of Skype, while calling another Skype user will be free, calling an actual phone number via the service will incur a cost.

iphone users will not be able to make Skype calls, either to Skype contacts or to landlines, over the mobile network, something users of Skype on the UK mobile network 3 can do, and have to use a wi-fi hotspot.

Watching the pennies

Many of Skype's other features - such as video conferencing and the ability to receive a second Skype call - have been left out, although the firm did not rule them out in the future.
Apple iPhone
A number of Skype's features have been removed for the iPhone version

"We're considering video carefully but we have a really high bar on the quality," said Skype's chief operating officer Scott Durchslag. "If we do it we will have to do it incredibly well."

Mr Durchslag said he had high hopes for the application.

"The number one request we get from customers is to make Skype available on iPhone," he said.

Skype plan to launch a service for BlackBerry users in May.

Apple iPhone 3.0 software update: a new iPhone for free

According to: Telegraph.co.uk

Improving the iPhone is as simple as pushing a software update to its 17 million users – good job too, because competitors are starting to churn out new handsets that could give the iPhone a run for its money.

Yesterday’s sneak peek at the iPhone 3.0 software update contained little in the way of surprises, but it did serve to underline a key point – when you buy an iPhone, you’re not just buying a piece of kit; you’re buying a platform.

Apple’s strategy seems to be one of constant update and improvement to its flagship device. Rather than attempting to coerce users into a upgrade cycle with the devices themselves, the company instead prefers to push out regular software updates every few months that add new capabilities and functionality to the handset. There are very few other companies that do this as willingly, frequently and conveniently as Apple. In truth, the improvements coming to free iPhone 3.0 are designed to plug some holes in the software that should have been fixed a long time ago – copy and paste is available at long last, as is the ability to send picture messages, to type emails using a landscape keyboard and to get push notifications from many applications. These features, and many more besides, have long been available on numerous other smartphones, and Apple’s decision to belatedly address them perhaps shows that the Californian company is starting to feel the heat from other phone makers, who have had to work hard to develop devices that could get anywhere near the iPhone’s initial promise.

Take the Pre, for instance, a make-or-break device for Palm which is turning out to be one of the most hotly anticipated gadgets of the year. Palm has ripped up the rule book with this one, starting from the ground up to rebuild an operating system around the key tenets of mobile computing and social networking, and all in a sleek, easy to use handset that has the blogosphere salivating in anticipation.

Android, too, the operating system developed in part by Google, is looking increasingly exciting and capable, and the next Android-based handset, HTC’s Magic, will offer many of the iPhone 3.0’s features as standard, straight out the box, and possess some of the ‘cool factor’ that the first Android phone, T-Mobile’s G1, has arguably lacked.

“The new capabilities make the iPhone better as a game machine, as a social networking tool, better as a business tool, and better as a browser,” said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research. “This can only help Apple.”

Significantly, the iPhone 3.0 update enables iPhone and iPod touch owners to wirelessly play games together or share contacts using Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, and to carry out voice chat while playing. It means the iPhone and iPod touch will mount a serious challenge to the dominance of other hand-held gaming devices, such as the Nintendo DS and Sony’s PSP. It will also consolidate the video games market as one of the most profitable for Apple, which takes a 30 per cent share of all sales made through the iTunes Application Store. Game developers will also be able to introduce micropayments into their games, enabling users to pay for extra levels, weapons or features in whatever game they are playing. Likewise other application developers of, say, a guide book, will be able to offer extra cities for download at an additional cost, or extra features not included in the basic version of the application.

The iPhone 3.0 software update is, on the face of it, simply an attempt by Apple to consolidate its market position and continue to raise the bar for its competitors. But dig a little deeper, and it becomes clear that it’s the next step in an aggressive business and marketing strategy designed to continue stimulating consumer investment in the iPhone without the costly need to develop a sufficiently improved handset to persuade consumers to upgrade, instead encouraging users to splash out on more apps and clever accessories.

Apple has shown that “upgrading” its device is as easy as pushing a software update through iTunes; that’s got to be pretty dispiriting for the chasing pack. Whether it’s enough to see off the burgeoning ambition of the Palm Pre, though, remains to be seen.

iPhone inches closer to China

According to: Theregister.co.uk

It's official: China Unicom chairman Chang Xiaobing has disclosed that his company has indeed been negotiating with Apple to bring the iPhone to China.

We had reported rumors of such talks late last months - but now that chairman Chang has spoken, the talks have been elevated in newsworthiness.

However, according to a Reuters report, Chang didn't go so far as to announce a deal, softening his remarks by saying, "We are in talks with many handset suppliers, including Apple."

Rival China Mobile had also been in talks with Apple, but those negotiations apparently broke down over a year ago.

But even if the iPhone comes to China, don't expect it to be an instant success. Although Apple may be a hot brand in the West, it's no Coca-Cola or McDonald's in China.

Also, Chinese clonemakers have been busy copying it and offering their clone-phones at prices that may very well undercut anything Apple has to offer.

The list of iPhone knock-offs in China is staggering. Here's a sampling: the SciPhone i68, GiPhone F5, HiPhone, ePhone M8, DESAY M888, Cect P168, Meizu M8, and the ever-popular CECT-A380i.

Knowing China's fast-and-loose attitude toward software piracy, we don't expect that any Apple efforts to take these phone makers to Chinese court for hardware piracy would bear much fruit.

China Unicom may be poised to launch the iPhone, but it will be launching it into a sea of clones.

Griffin Clarifi for iPhone 3G review

According to Rosemary Hattersley at PC Advisor :

Griffin Clarifi for Apple iPhone 3G snaps on to your iPhone, and helps you capture close up shots with the Apple phone's camera.

Cameraphones may have come on in leaps and bounds, routinely packing 5Mp or even 8Mp sensors, but the Apple iPhone trails badly behind in the image-capture stakes. While it's adept at snapping bright, crisp photos that look good on its 4in screen, they don't compare with even the lowliest of digital camera shots because of their poor resolution.

Even importing iPhone photos from my recent Arizona jaunt to iPhoto showed up the device's shortcomings. Its 2Mp images were pixellated and edges jagged - it just doesn't capture enough detail.

Visit Mobile Advisor for the latest mobile phone news, reviews, tips & tricks, as well as PC Advisor's unique Apple iPhone 3G Spotlight

Visit Photo Advisor for the latest reviews of digital photography and video hardware and software, cameras and accessories. PLUS: get tips and tricks to improve your photos

Griffin addresses this problem with its Griffin Clarifi snap-on accessory for the iPhone 3G.

The Griffin Clarifi is a shiny black half-case that has a magnifying lens for use with close-up shots. This slides across the iPhone's camera lens when you want to capture a subject in more detail, rather than the whole image appearing flat and closer objects blending in to their surroundings.

Of course, this works best when you've got plenty of contrast between subject and background, good light, a steady hand - there's no getting away from the awkwardness of holding aloft your iPhone handset, using its screen to compose the shot and then pressing an onscreen camera icon to trigger the shutter.

It's also worth noting that while the Griffin Clarifi lens can bring out hitherto uncapturable detail on close-to objects, it can do nothing to improve the overall lack of detail caused by the iPhone's limited megapixel rating.

Specifications

Protective polycarbonate case; rubberised coating; built-in close-up lens; compatible with Apple iPhone 3G

Verdict

As with many iPhone and iPod accessories, the Griffin Clarifi is a one-trick pony, but if you're an inveterate snapper who doesn't want to take a 'proper' camera with them on every occasion and you routinely want to snap close-up objects, it may just be worth spending £20 on the well-built and stylish Griffin Clarifi

 

Store replica pulling in the punters on iPhone

Why use iTunes when there is an easier option?

If you like tinkering with your iPhone or iPod touch but get frustrated at the interface on the iTunes App Store, you now have another option. AppleBeacon has been created to take advantage of Apple's affiliate programme that shares five per cent of the revenue from certain iTunes sales with referring parties.

The interface is fast and certainly better than iTunes, but the fact remains that purchases and installing the software on an iPhone still require iTunes at some point.

Users who don't want to browse in iTunes or who have Linux computers, for which the Apple software is unavailable, can now browse the software through AppBeacon's site instead.

Still, it hs to be good to miss all the ads and you can bookmark applications and permanently ignore others. That has to be a bonus.

By J Mark Lytle - Techradar.com

Lethal iPhone App informs you of fatality likelihood of your neighborhood

According to: Gadgets Boingboing

Lethal is a practical iPhone app for a change: a nice little program that uses your iPhone's built-in location services to gauge where you are, then tell you how likely you are to be maimed, mugged, mauled or otherwise maligned.

Let's say you're walking through my neighborhood back in Berlin. It's Prenzlauer Berg, so it's plenty shady: on one street corner, three filthy, mad-eyed hobos roast a baby on a spit over a burning mattress. The gutters are thick with used needles and coughed-up lung tissue. Madly jactitating mad men wrapped in raincoats stained with genetic filth eye you lasciviously from the shadows, singing to you in German about the orifices they can smell. WIndows explode above you, accompanied by screams and buckshot.

But how dangerous is Prenzlauer Berg really? Well, just load up Lethal and it will tell you: a Wildlife Rating of Zero, Crime and Disease bars maxed, and a Disaster Rating hovering around 80, since God's cursed it and all. Good to know for only $1.99.

Firmware 3.0 may bring multi-core capability to the iPhone?

ZDNet, a leading technology site, reports that the iPhone 3.0 firmware will support quad-core processors in an upcoming iPhone hardware revision.

While Apple has not yet detailed iPhone 3.0 firmware, numerous sites have independently heard from a reliable source of this same multi-core support in the 3.0 firmware which should accompany the next iPhone. This should greatly speed up processing for the iPhone and its applications.

Meanwhile, in related new, Imagination Technologies is announcing a multi-core GPU that could be very suitable for iPhone use. Apple, who happens to be an investor in Imagination Technologies, presently uses a less powerful version of their PowerVR GPU in the free iPhone and free iPod touch.

The likely candidate for the new iPhone’s CPU, however, is a derivative of the ARM Cortex A9 multi-core processor. The ARM Cortex has excellent power efficiency (useful for battery life, one of the iPhone’s main remaining complaints), well ahead of Intel’s Atom offerings. Apple appears to be an ARM architectural licensee and their acquisition of P.A. Semi has brought low-power chip design expertise into the company.

The Best IPhone Apps Not in the App Store

Via: PC World

All this week, Macworld editors have picked their favorite iPhone apps of the past year. And while these apps cover a diverse array of categories--entertainment, creativity, productivity, and so on--they share one common trait: All of them can be downloaded from Apple's App Store.

Alex Sokirynsky's Podcaster was barred from the App Store, but you can still install it on your jailbroken iPhone. Well, before the App Store arrived, bringing Apple-approved applications along with it, there was jailbreaking-the process of busting open the iPhone and iPod touch to allow them to run third-party applications that were definitely not approved by Apple.

While the App Store has enjoyed a great deal of popularity since its July debut, the jailbreaking community lives on and offers some very useful applications that you likely will never see from the App Store. Here are some of our favorites:

Cydia: Jay Freeman's installer application, Cydia, is included when you jailbreak your phone with QuickPwn or the PwnageTool. It's with Cydia that you download third-party applications to your iPhone or first-generation iPod touch. (Included are applications for regular folks as well as developers.

Cycorder: A free application authored by Freeman, Cycorder lets you shoot videos with your free iPhone's camera at frame rates from 6 to 15 frames per second. The resulting movies are encoded with MJPEG compression and are playable on your Mac.

Winterboard: Another Freeman creation, integrated into Cydia, the free Winterboard lets you skin the iPhone and iPod touch's interface with themes also available via Cydia.

Podcaster: This app by Alex Sokirynsky lets you stream and download podcasts directly to your iPhone or iPod touch-no iTunes required. Apple barred the controversial Podcaster from the App Store for allegedly "duplicating" functionality of the iPhone. Not to be denied, Sokirynsky began distributing it through Cydia and asking $5 per copy for his trouble. It's a polished and extremely useful application.

Snapture: If you've ever wished that your iPhone's camera behaved more like a real digital camera and let you shoot in black-and-white and featured digital zoom, timer functions, and burst mode, Snaptured.com's free Snapture is the answer to that wish.

Netatalk: Netatalk is the free iPhone/iPod touch version of the open-source implementation of the AppleTalk networking protocol. With it installed on your iPhone or iPod touch, you can gain access to the device's file system from your computer, just as you can with any other networked device. Having this kind of access is extremely helpful for moving files on and off the iPhone or iPod touch.

OpenSSH: The free OpenSSH, integrated into Cydia, provides another way into your jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch. With it installed, you can use the Secure File Transfer Protocol to get into the guts of your device.

Many of the applications that were available for jailbroken iPhones and iPod touches have disappeared and moved to the App Store now that it's open. But Cydia's catalog grows by the day-customization options, games, media readers, and utilities can be found.

Although jailbreaking your iPhone or iPod touch won't hurt it (you can always restore it to its original condition with iTunes), doing so will void your warranty. In addition, while jailbreaking won't hurt your device now, there's no guarantee that changes made to the iPhone and iPod touch's software in the future won't cause problems with a jailbroken device.

Free iPhone App for Searching Craigslist

Via: Wirelessandmobilenews.com

PheedYou, Inc is offering CraigSearch for free along with updates in the iTunes App Store.

CraigSearch is compatible with the free iPhone and free iPod Touch devices. It enables users to search for anything on Craigslist through an easy to use interface.

The app also allows users to browse the results and refine searches until they find exactly what you're looking for.

PheedYou is working on additional features such as saving searches, alert notifications, ImageFlow for pictures attached to posts, and adding countries and locations.

"We are really excited to have released CraigSearch, and the best stuff is truly yet to come. The goal of releasing now is that we wanted users to help direct where we go from here. Please keep the suggestions flowing," said Chad Marcus.

iPhone Owners Massively Use WiFi Instead Of 3G

According to: itproportal.com

A report published by mobile advertiser AdMob showed that UK advert requests on WiFi during the month of November were more than twice that of August (8% vs 4%) as WiFi enabled devices like the iPod Touch, the iPhone and newer smartphones spearheaded a WiFi renaissance for mobiles.

42 percent of iPhone requests were made from WiFi which compares very favourably with other WiFi-enabled phones which tend to hover around 10-20 percent. Unsurprisingly, WiFi usage happened to spike for iPhone specific websites and applications.

Furthermore, Admob figures showed that worldwide requests from iPhones shot up by 52 percent from October to November reaching a phenomenal 359 million, accounting for one in every 16 requests recorded by Admob.

Apple accounted for 78.5 percent of WiFi requests in the US with 154 million, significantly more than the rest of the all other mobile manufacturers put together.

AdMob's survey only covered its own network but should realistically represent the rest of the mobile advertising market in US and UK. Non Mobile phone devices as well are generating significant traffic on WiFi.

The data also showed that Android generated 15 million requests in November and represented 7 percent of all T-Mobile traffic recorded. In terms of mobile OS traffic in the US, Android accounted for 2 percent.

Nokia N97 launches latest challenge to iPhone

Via: Technology.Timesonline.co.uk

Touchscreen handset with Point and Find software is " world's most advanced mobile computer" accessing the entire internet, Nokia claims

Nokia unveiled its latest challenge to the iPhone today, the N97, as the Finnish mobile giant vowed it would transform the internet.

The touchscreen smartphone, which has a 3.5 inch screen and both a touchscreen and a glide-out Qwerty keyboard, is the latest handset in Nokia's N series. It follows the blockbuster N95, the handset which has so far sold 15 million, and the N96, which was released earlier this year.

The N97 is the latest handset to join an increasingly crowded smartphone market that includes the G1, which runs Google's Android software, the BlackBerry Storm, which went on sale last month, and Sony Ericsson's X1.

Nokia claims the N97, which is due to be released by the middle of next year, is "the world's most advanced mobile computer" and will boast new services that will transform the way people connect to the internet.

The phone comes with 32 GB of memory - more than twice the capacity of the most powerful iPhone on the market - with the option to expand this to 48 GB with a 16 GB memory card. This means it can store thousands more songs, or hours more video, than its rivals (up to 37 hours of music and 4.5 hours of video playback to be precise).

In a gentle dig at Apple, Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia's executive vice president of markets, who unveiled the phone, made the point that the N97 can access "the entire internet, not just piece of it" as, unlike the iPhone, it will be able to play the Flash videos used on many websites.

In another move that makes the N97 more like a mini-computer than a phone, the screen tilts to a 35 degree angle when the keyboard glides out, making it easier to see the screen while typing. It is a nice touch. I tried it out: your forefingers fit snuggly behind the screen making it more stable to hold and therefore easier to type. Unlike other slide-out Qwerty keyboards, as seen on handsets such as the G1 or the HTC Touch Pro, which feel quite clunky as they move into place, the N97 really does glide, or almost pivot, out. It is a very satisfying movement.

Like most of its rivals the N97 will run over HSDPA, the fastest type of mobile broadband, with speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps, and, although this is a feature surprisingly absent in the Storm, the N97 is wifi enabled.

While the hardware is impressive, it is the software that Nokia executives are most excited about and which they say will let users personalise the internet.

The N97 will sport internet widgets that can be moved around with your finger to personalise your home screen and a Nokia Messaging button - a single application that will enable you to access any webmail, e-mail and Instant Messanger accounts you might have.

The N97 also introduces so-called "SoLo", or social location, making it easier to update social networks automatically with real-time information. The phone's integrated A-GPS sensors and an electronic compass means it knows exactly where it is, and, if your friends allow it to, will know where they are too, opening up new possibilities for gaming and applications.

As Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia's chief executive, told journalists at the Nokia World conference today, "By putting together your location, your contacts, you get mashups. I love this idea. Imagine what can happen when we mash up social networking and your location, when your device knows where you are, where your friends are and what they are doing. Your social location, or SoLo will become your here-and-now-identity."

A new, souped up version of Nokia Maps, which will include terrain and satellite maps, will allow users to plan their journey on their PC and then synchronise it straight to their phone. Because your phone knows where you are it can then suggest the best route to take, or, if you use it while driving, help you avoid traffic jams.

"Today, we are at the threshold of another profound change in the way we connect and interact with each other and with our world," Mr Kallasvuo said. "This is a world where you will have the power to tailor and personalise your internet how and when you like, to make your day-to-day life easier and more fulfilling."

The N97 will also sport another new Nokia service: "Point and Find". By using both the phone's camera (a 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens) and its inbuilt virtual compass and GPS, Point and Find means you will be able to point your mobile at a landmark, such as Big Ben, and immediately receive information about it from the internet. "It's combining the real world with the virtual world in real terms," Mr Vanjoki said.

In another dig, this time at Google, Mr Vanjoki said: "There's a company that says they can index the world. We are going to go deeper. We are going to coordinate the world. We are going to coordinate everything on a map. Not just a map that is standard like a Google Map, but a map that is dynamic, driving all the roads of the world, making sure we have coordinates for everything there is."

Nokia was the last major handset maker to launch a fully touchscreen phone and analysts had worried that it would lose out to rivals such as Apple and Samsung, as the N97 enters a crowded marketplace, and that its reliance on low to mid tier phones would weigh on its profit margins.

The N97 is Nokia's second touchscreen phone, following the 5800, also known as the Nokia Tube, which went on sale last month, and the group said today it would now introduce touchscreen phones across its portfolio. Some analysts fear the N97 may not be enough to re-establish Nokia's position in the high-end market.

"[The N97] might give Nokia a little edge," noted Carolina Milanesi, analyst at Gartner, the technology specialists, "but it is six months until this reaches the market."

Ben Wood, CCS Insight's research director, said: "Nokia tried to cram in lots of different technologies such as a touchscreen, full Qwerty keyboard and plenty of memory, but it had to make trade-offs in its size and features. It has ended up with a relatively thick device that lacks some of the benchmark features expected in flagship products in mid-2009."

But other analysts were more upbeat.

"With the N97, Nokia has produced the first phone that will truly challenge, and even transcend, Apple's best," said Robin Landy, of mobile phone review website Omio.com. "Nokia has brought together a lot of common smartphone features, such as GPS, wifi and 3G internet, in one gorgeous device. Crucially though, they've combined the standard stuff with features that really matter to users, but are often missing from rival handsets.

"A proper Qwerty keyboard will make a huge difference to the everyday user experience, and the huge amount of memory means that even people with large music collections can leave their iPods at home. The N97 lacks the in-your-face dazzle of the iPhone, but it does strike a balance between understated good looks and functional practicality."

The N97 wil cost 550 euro, or £470 but is expected to be subsidised by operators.

Apple iPhone 3G 'jailbroken' after software update

Hackers have cracked the Apple iPhone 3G’s latest software 2.2 update, meaning users can “jailbreak” their phones to run any application according to: Telegraph.co.uk

Apple released new software for the iPhone 3G last Friday. The iPhone 2.2 software update adds Street View to the Google Maps application along with better directions when travelling on foot or by car, improved call quality, the ability to download podcasts over the air, and an enhanced Safari web browser with integrated search bar.

But now the iPhone Dev team, a group of coding experts, have found a way to circumvent the security features build into the latest software update, meaning iPhone owners can “hack” their handset to install a wide variety of software and applications to the device that aren’t available through Apple’s approved App Store.

Ever since the iPhone was first launched in June 2007, some users have sought to hack their handsets to run whatever programs and software they wanted. But with each new software update from Apple, owners of “jailbroken” iPhones faced the possibility that their hacked iPhone may no longer work. Teams of coders are constantly working on ways to circumvent Apple’s updates to allow jailbroken iPhone owners to continue using their devices.

Apple’s chief executive, Steve Jobs, had hoped that allowing third-party developers to create useful programs for the iPhone and sell them through the official App Store might have put paid to the “cat and mouse game” surrounding attempts to hack the free iPhone operating system. “We try to stay ahead. People will try to break in, and it’s our job to stop them breaking in,” he said.

But some iPhone owners still prefer to hack their handsets in order to access additional features and software not available on non-jailbroken phones, such as the ability to record video through the iPhone’s built-in camera, the ability to copy and paste text between applications, and even to add an external keyboard to the device for easier typing of text messages.

More than 200 million applications have been downloaded from the official Apple application store since it launched in July.

New game brings iPhone into Wiimote territory

According to: Cnet ....

The Social Gaming Network, a company best known for its Facebook Platform apps, has launched a new iPhone app that uses the handset as...a gaming controller.

Called "iFun," the app is a takeoff on the Social Gaming Network's existing sports apps: iGolf, iBowl, iBaseball, and the like. But instead of playing on your iPhone, you use your iPhone or iPod Touch much like the "Wiimote" device for Nintendo's Wii console. (Both gadgets use accelerometer technologies.) It connects via Wi-Fi or cellular network to your PC. You can then play against friends--remotely, and in real time.

Currently, iFun is restricted to a golf game but will soon expand--as well as to other devices with accelerometers in them, like the Android-powered G1. It also uses Facebook Connect for authentication.

Social Gaming Network CEO Shervin Pishevar told CNET News that the company is currently "lining up advertisers" and isound last spring, followed by more funding from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' venture firm.

And--wait for it--here's the recession angle. Playing the free iFun game on an iPod Touch is &quo interested in turning iFun into a platform for external developers to create their own games. The Social Gaming Network raised a $15 million investment rt;significantly cheaper than buying a Wii for Christmas," Pishevar said.

The iPhone beats BlackBerry when it comes to reliability

Source: Infoworld

An online warranty supplier says Apple's iPhone has substantially fewer failures than handsets from BlackBerry and Palm

A study of new mobile phones from an online warranty supplier has suggested that Apple's iPhone has substantially fewer failures than handsets from BlackBerry and Palm.

San Francisco-based SquareTrade sells extended warranties for electronic goods in the United States. At the weekend, it published a report that looked at the failure rates from more than 15,000 new phones within 12 months of ownership.

After the first year of handset use, it found a 5.6 percent malfunction rate reported on the iPhone, which was "significantly lower" than malfunction rate of 11.9 percent for BlackBerry handsets. Palm Treo users suffered the worst, with a malfunction rate of 16.2 percent.

SquareTrade says it measured the failure rates at the one year mark mostly because the iPhone was less than 15 months old when the study was conducted. Also, the secondary reason was that the one year mark is traditionally when the manufacturer warranty expires.

On that basis, it projects "the iPhone will have few malfunctions over the 2 year minimum lifetime of a phone" (the length of most mobile carrier contracts in the US). It projects a failure rate of 11.3 percent for the iPhone over two years, whereas it recorded 14.3 percent for the BlackBerry, and 21 percent for the Treo.

The research also rubbished concerns over the limited battery life of the iPhone, as fewer than 0.5 percent of iPhone users reported a battery problem in the first year. Roughly 1 percent of BlackBerry and Treo handsets reported battery issues during the same period.

But the iPhone does have a weakness it seems, namely its touch screen, with one third (32 percent) of all reported iPhone problems were screen related. The majority of these screen problems were "dead spots", found on some screens.

SquareTrade also examined the cause of accidental damage to the iPhone and found that users found the iPhone quite slippery to hold, making the iPhone the more accident prone than any other handset. The BlackBerry meanwhile seems to have fewer software faults than the other two handsets.

SquareTrade says it examined customer data on 15,000 phones over the last two years. Apparently, it randomly selected 6,678 BlackBerry, 5,651 Treo, and 4,902 iPhone handsets covered by SquareTrade Care Plans between October 2006 and October 2008.

It included all handsets marketed under the iPhone, Treo, and BlackBerry names and purchased brand new. Only malfunctions reported directly to SquareTrade were included in the data. The company also insists it does not have affiliation with any handset manufacturers cited in this study.

Premium iPhone Apps

From: www.pcmag.com

We've shown you a selection of free iPhone apps we've tested out. Now take a peek at some iPhone apps you actually might not mind paying for.

The Apple AppStore is chock-full of free iPhone stuff to download. We've already shown you a few of the coolest free iPhone apps available, but what apps are actually worth paying for? To find out we took five premium iPhone apps for a test drive.

Our favorite of the bunch is Avatron's Air Sharing app. Apple doesn't make it easy to use your iPod to store non-media files, even though the device is perfectly capable of doing so. Air Sharing comes to the rescue with a handy app that turns your iPhone into a networked drive that can wirelessly transfer files to and from your computers, while also letting you view a wide variety of file types on your phone. It works with Mac, Microsoft, and Linux, and it gives you Web access to files on your iPhone. This handy app costs $6.99, but if you're the type who needs access to files on the go, it's well worth the cost.

One bewildering omission is the iPhone's lack of cut-and-paste functionality. TextGuru rectifies this oversight by giving you the ability to cut, copy, and paste in documents you create with the program. In addition, it also lets you view PDF and Microsoft Word files. It's a little rough around the edges, but for $4.99 you can cut and paste on your iPhone to your heart's delight.

While SpeakEasy Voice Recorder isn't the only app out there that can turn your iPhone into a voice recorder, its simple interface and its ability to download files to play in iTunes make it stand out among the crowd. Technical limitations, like the inability to record actual phone calls, detract from the otherwise-perfect SpeakEasy, but, for $1.99, you get a simple app that provides a more foolproof way of downloading your recordings to your computer for archiving or transcribing.

OneTap Movies is a prime example of an app that just isn't worth the cost. It helps you locate a nearby flick when you're on the go, but so can other apps that don't charge you $1.99. Our advice: Save your money for the popcorn.

Another example of an overpriced app is BeejiveIM, which sells for a whopping $16. Of all the apps that let you use your favorite instant-messaging applications on your iPhone, Beejive, so far, is the only one that lets you stay connected to multiple IM services on your iPhone when you close the app. Might be worth the price for IM addicts until Apple finally lets third-party apps run IM apps in the background. Otherwise, we've gotta say it seems too expensive.

Read the short descriptions that follow and decide for yourself whether these premium apps are worth your investment. Also, be sure to check out the full range of phone and PDA apps we've reviewed in our product guide. More are on the way! If you've got a favorite iPhone app you'd like us to consider, tell us about it on this article's discussion thread.

Featured in This Roundup:

Air Sharing for iPhoneAir Sharing

Air Sharing turns your iPhone into a networked drive that can wirelessly transfer files to and from your computers, while also letting you view a wide variety of file types on your phone. At $7, it's not cheap as iPhone apps go, but it's well worth the outlay.

BeejiveIM for iPhoneBeejiveIM

For a whopping $16, BeejiveIM gives you the ability to stay connected to multiple instant-messaging services on your iPhone—even when you close the app.

OneTap Movies for iPhoneOneTap Movies

The OneTap Movies iPhone app can help you locate a nearby flick when you're on the go, but so can other apps that don't charge you $2. Save your money for the popcorn instead.

SpeakEasy Voice RecorderSpeakEasy Voice Recorder

SpeakEasy Voice Recorder stands out among the many voice-recording iPhone apps, thanks to its simple interface and ability to download files to play in iTunes. A few technical limitations keep it from being a perfect solution, however. Still, it's only $2.

TextGuru for iPhoneTextGuru

A full-featured text-editing app, the $5 TextGuru finally adds cutting and pasting to the iPhone. Its implementation isn't ideal, however, and the interface could stand a few additions to make this a standout program.

Eight sweet free iPhone apps we love - and 4 we can't get

Credit to: Gizmag for this excellent article:

The all-conquering free iPhone is a pretty impressive gadget out of the box - but it's the fantastic App Store that really keeps the honeymoon going, giving users access to literally thousands of downloadable third-party applications. From the sublime to the ridiculous, they're only a few taps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taps away - and a large number of them are free. Useful? Sometimes. Perfect? Rarely. Addictive? Hell yes, show me an iPhone user that hasn't thumbed through the app store late at night and I'll show you somebody who should have bought a Nokia. Here's a few of our favorite freebies - and a couple of things we want to know why we can't have!

1. AroundMe Where's the nearest bank? This is a fantastic app that takes your GPS location and shows you what's nearby, from banks, bars and coffee shops, to petrol stations, hotels, parking garages and hospitals - ranked by proximity. Once you decide on a business, you're presented with full contact details, a map and route details if you want them. We're not sure where AroundMe takes its data from, but it does an excellent job, only limited by the database. A must-have app.

2. Thumbtacts One of the many criticisms of the freeiPhone is that its computer-like interface can make it a bit clunky to use as a phone. Finding and calling a contact, for example, can be a frustrating exercise if you've only got one hand free. But hey, who buys a phone to make calls these days anyway right? Thumbtacts offers a creative solution by breaking the contact list down into a series of simple thumb-clickable options that quickly and accurately find the number you're after. Hard to explain but easy to use, Thumbtacts is almost always a quicker way to find and call contacts than the standard contacts list. Nice one!

3. Midomi This one's great for its show-off value... sing, hum or play a tune into the Midomi screen and it'll identify the song, play a preview and take you through to the iTunes itunes-overtakes-wal-mart-in-music-sales Apr-4-2008 store to buy it if you want for your free iPhone. Accuracy is a bit variable, and don't expect to find anything too obscure in the database, but in general it works better than you'd expect. The "wow" factor wears off a bit once you realize how the system works, but the price is right http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Price_Is_Right and it's niftier than Shazam http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shazam , its main competitor.

4. Facebook A cut-down version of facebook on your phone - can be frustrating when you can't see your events or save photos, but provides a much nicer interface for the small screen than the main full-featured Facebook page in Safari. A solid bus-stop timekiller but how much nicer would it be if you could see your events and send them straight to the iCal calendar? We live in hope.

5. Labyrinth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth LE A gaming platform with no buttons poses quite a challenge for game developers - a lot of iPhone games require a finger on the screen at all times, and suffer for it. Labyrinth, however, uses the platform to great advantage, even if gameplay is very simple. Tilt the phone to roll the ball into the goal slot, avoiding the holes along the way. Where it makes up points is in the fantastic audio, which makes your expensive phone feel like a real fifty-cent wooden box. Amazing what technology can do!

6. Free Translator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/translation Like many iPhone apps, this is simply an interface to an online service you could just as easily access via Safari. But Free Translator proves its worth in simplicity and speed. Choose a source language, choose a target language, and type in your word or phrase. The app uses Google's translation tools, so it's just as accurate and with all the usual foibles. Annoyingly, the keyboard autocorrect tries to correct all your foreign words into English, but this would happen if you were using Google Translate online anyway. Still a very handy application, particularly when traveling.

7. Cube Runner Another game that uses the iPhone's accelerometers to great effect, Cube runner simply asks you to tilt the phone to steer yourself through a maze of cubes. On the harder settings it's vaguely reminiscent of the feeling of splitting through freeway traffic on a motorcycle - so this sneaks onto the list by virtue of the fact that many of us here at Gizmag are bike heads.

8. GPS Tracker Does exactly what it says on the tin; it takes regular GPS readings and uploads them to a Web server so you can look back at a plotted map of your trip. It also functions as a laggy but passable GPS speedometer. Works very well but chews battery too fast to be much chop for longer trips without a power cable - and spends a lot of time communicating with the server too, which could mean trouble if you're on a stingy data plan. You can change the accuracy and frequency of GPS readings, but would be handy to be able to touch the screen to set a new waypoint so you could simply upload a marker every time you turned a corner or something. Still a very nifty app.

With all the great applications available, there's still some very notable omissions that would basically bring the iPhone up to speed with other mobile phones that have been available for years. Things like...

1) Bluetooth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth file transfers Sure, there's applications like FliQ that let you send certain files between iPhones that are on the same Wifi network, but why not Bluetooth?

2) Sending vCard contact details via SMS There's numerous (paid) apps that let you send vCard-style information in an email, but what good is that when a friend texts you to ask for somebody else's number? It wouldn't be such an issue if you were able to cut and paste text, but...

3) Cut and Paste 'Nuff said. Surely Apple knows by now that people want this.

4) iPhone modem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem capability Just about every smartphone can be used as a wireless modem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_modem . Why not the iPhone? It seems contractual issues have forced Apple to remove all modem software from the App Store, which is very annoying for owners and no doubt one of the biggest reasons why people are jailbreaking their handsets to use non-approved applications like iPhoneModem.

All these third-party iPhone apps are available at the App Store - just search for them by name.

Software unlock for iPhone 3G coming soon?

Source: CNET

An unlocked iPhone 3G is a little closer to becoming reality, according to the iPhone Dev Team.

An easy way of unlocking your iPhone 3G could hit the Internet relatively soon.

Gizmodo picked up on a video produced by the iPhone Dev Team demonstrating that it has gained access to the baseband processor used by Apple in the iPhone 3G. The baseband chip is what controls the connection between the phone and the mobile phone network, meaning that a software download that could let you use your iPhone 3G on a carrier network other than the ones officially designated by Apple could be released soon.

I'm sure you remember the fuss about the original iPhone and those who sought to unlock it from the four carriers that were Apple's launch partners for the first iPhone. The iPhone 3G has proven a tougher nut to crack, because Apple apparently changed the baseband to make it more difficult to exploit than the baseband used on the original iPhone. You can unlock your iPhone 3G to use it on another carrier by modifying the SIM card, but what the iPhone Dev Team is trying to accomplish is a software-based unlock that you would just download and install.

There hasn't been as much demand for unlocked iPhone 3Gs, given the much greater distribution of that phone around the world. However, there are still some countries like China that don't carry the iPhone, and there are still some users who want to use their iPhones on a different carrier than the one designated for the iPhone in their country.

Downloads transform iPhone into handy tool

iPhone 3G review

Source and credit: http://www.engadget.com/

It's hard to think of any other device that's enjoyed the level of exposure and hype that Apple found in the launch of the first iPhone. Who could forget it? Everyone got to be a gadget nerd for a day; even those completely disinterested in technology seemed to come down with iPhone fever. But the original device was still far from perfect: its limited capabilities (especially in the 3G department), high price of entry, and the small number of countries in which it was available kept many potential buyers sidelined. Until now -- or so Apple hopes.

The wireless industry is a notoriously tough nut to crack, and it's become pretty clear that the first iPhone wasn't about total domination so much as priming the market and making a good first impression with some very dissatisfied cellphone users. With the iPhone 3G, though, Apple's playing for keeps. Not only is this iPhone's Exchange enterprise support aiming straight for the heart of the business market, but the long-awaited 3rd party application support and App Store means it's no longer just a device, but a viable computing platform. And its 3G network compatibility finally makes the iPhone welcome the world over, especially after Cupertino decided to ditch its non-traditional carrier partnerships in favor of dropping the handset price dramatically. $200? We're still a little stunned.

So now that Apple finally stands poised for an all out war on cellphone-makers everywhere, will the free iPhone 3G stand up to the competition -- and higher expectations than ever? Read on for our full review.

The hardware
No one will have any trouble recognizing the new device from its face -- it's essentially identical to the original iPhone. Thankfully, the bright, high quality, high resolution 480 x 320 3.5-inch display that's just so easy to love, hasn't been changed a bit. Unfortunately, it's still every bit as much a magnet for smudges and fingerprints -- in fact, even more so now that the rear of the device has dropped its chic matte aluminum in favor of black (or white, optional on the 16GB model) plastic. Hey, at least now it's more symmetrical.

The move to plastic seemed almost inevitable now that the iPhone has so many radios, frequencies, and antenna needs (GSM, EDGE, HSDPA, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS), but while we do prefer the original aluminum, the plastic does feel pretty solid and not at all flimsy, which is more than we can say for a hell of a lot of handsets. There's no doubt about the fact that we'd have preferred a matte or soft-touch finish to the glossy plastic, but that's all a matter of taste.

The body of the phone is slightly thicker at its center than its predecessor, although the edges are tapered and thinner than before, which is always a good way to make a device feel smaller than it actually is. (Palm learned this a long time ago.) There are a couple downsides to the body shape, though: first, when you're tapping off-center on a hard, flat surface, the phone wobbles (but only a little, oh well).

Second, the new shape means you won't be using it in your original device's dock. This really wouldn't be all that bad if Apple included a dock with the 3G like they did with the first iPhone, but now they want you to buy that separately. Did we mention they're asking $30 for it? Way lame. That absurdly small power adapter kind of makes up for it, but only a little.

One thing Apple was keen to talk up is the vastly improved call quality of the iPhone 3G. Those in the know understand that 3G call quality is often better than regular GSM -- but it turns out Apple made a huge improvement on both sides. iPhone 3G calls made over 3G and GSM both sounded significantly better than calls made on the original iPhone. If you're upgrading your device iPhone you may not necessarily notice it, but on a side by side it was pretty obvious.

Of course, call quality most often depends on coverage, and coverage varies between 3G and GSM networks depending on where you are. 3G calling also requires more battery power. Where are we going with this? Well, despite many of the painstaking measures Apple's taken to preserve battery power, the iPhone 3G doesn't do any real time signal detection to help determine whether you currently have better 3G or GSM voice coverage. If you suspect you might get better coverage either on or off 3G, it's up to you to dig down through a few settings menus to flip the switch. Not a deal breaker by any means, but it'd make for a welcome fix.

Apple's numbers on the iPhone 3G's battery life peg it at 10 / 5 hours talk on GSM / 3G (respectively), 5 hours 3G data, 6 hours WiFi, 24 hours music and 7 hours video. Pretty much everything we've found in our testing jibes with Apple's claims, if not exceeds them. (Our early results testing video early on skewed low because we had mistakenly left on push and fetch data, which dropped the battery life by almost 25%. After re-testing, they're back up to spec.)

All our tests were conducted with 3G on, WiFi on (not connected), Bluetooth off, no data fetching enabled (unless specified otherwise). Media tested with stock headphones, medium volume, and medium screen brightness, auto-brightness disabled.

* Music (continuous playback, large library, occasionally turning on screen): 31h 23m
* Video (continuous playback, no push/fetch data): 7h 5m
* Video (continuous playback, with push and 15 minute fetch data): 5h 24m
* Daily data use (browsing, email, and GPS / maps): ~6h 30m

Those numbers definitely are not bad, but if you're anything like us and you kill time on your phone reading feeds and checking email like a fiend, by 3 or 4pm you'll likely be wondering if you'll even make it home with any power left -- especially if you leave on the 3G data. So be warned, because the kind of prolonged usage you used to get away with on the original iPhone probably isn't possible with the iPhone 3G. For some, this may be an issue. Others may never notice.

There have been a number of other fixes to better the device as well. For example, the phone now has two proximity sensors to better detect when it's held to your ear. We also found that while the camera was essentially identical, we were getting images that were ever so slightly sharper and crisper than the original iPhone on 1.1.4 (check it out below). Still, knowing that HTC's Touch Diamond -- which features a 3.2 megapixel sensor and mechanical autofocus -- could pack such a great camera in an even smaller form factor than the iPhone's left us pining for something a bit more than the same 2 megapixels from the first time around.

What we're probably the most excited about, though, is that two of our biggest hardware-related gripes from the original device have finally been addressed: first, the headphone jack is now flush, which means any standard (3.5mm) headphones will work in the iPhone without the need for an adapter. The new jack has a solid, confidence-inspiring feel that won't leave you worrying about damaging the device or your headphones. To this day we still have no clue why Apple pushed the jack in -- it was kind of funny hearing Steve pitch the flush jack as a feature at WWDC. It's the simple things, you know?

Second, the speaker volume has been jacked up significantly, giving your calls (or music) a much more workable volume level if you're not blessed with superhuman hearing. It's not the loudest speaker we've ever heard on a device, and unlike many Nokia Nseries phones, it's still mono. But it's definitely a step up compared to the first iPhone, which was not only quiet, but also seemed to distort at much lower volumes.

What we're probably the most excited about, though, is that two of our biggest hardware-related gripes from the original device have finally been addressed: first, the headphone jack is now flush, which means any standard (3.5mm) headphones will work in the iPhone without the need for an adapter. The new jack has a solid, confidence-inspiring feel that won't leave you worrying about damaging the device or your headphones. To this day we still have no clue why Apple pushed the jack in -- it was kind of funny hearing Steve pitch the flush jack as a feature at WWDC. It's the simple things, you know?

Speed and location
At the end of the day, it's the 3G data that's important enough to become part of the new iPhone's namesake. Speed testing the iPhone 3G hasn't been disappointing in the slightest. We've seen speeds between 300 - 500Kbps in the US (roughly equivalent of other HSDPA devices we've tested), and in networks abroad where the data rates are even faster, we've gotten consistent data rates of over 700-800Kbps. It's pretty clear the iPhone 3G isn't hitting hardware limits right now, so much of what you can prepare to see in terms of speed in the US will depend directly on reception with AT&T's network -- which doesn't have the most outstanding reputation, nor the broadest 3G rollout.

Interestingly, in one test, our iPhone 3G had worse reception on AT&T than a Nokia N78, yet managed speeds of over 100Kbps faster. So ultimately, where 3G coverage is decent, you should be seeing speeds that will no longer have you tearing your eyes out, as was so often the case with little mister sometimes-takes-minutes-to-load-a-small-page first-gen iPhone.

GPS acquisition has also been surprisingly fast for a cellphone. AGPS devices use traditional GPS receivers, but help speed up location acquisition and accuracy by using cellphone towers to triangulate. As far as we know, the iPhone 3G is the only device out right now that not only has AGPS, but takes advantage of Skyhook's proprietary WiFi-based location system, giving it a total of three ways to help find where you're at. We were able to acquire GPS in as little as a second or two, although depending on your location and reception, you might see that take longer. It's important to note, though, that the iPhone's was clearly intended to be a location-aware smartphone -- not a dedicated GPS device. There's a big difference.

That said, there's an enormous amount of interest by people hoping they can add one more to the pile of devices their iPhone has taken over for. It's pretty clear why people might want the iPhone 3G to replace their car's dedicated GPS nav, too. It's not just a location-aware device with a large, bright screen -- it's also connected (with service you're already paying for), thus able to get traffic updates, routing information, and so on. The Google Maps app doesn't provide turn by turn route guidance, though, so while it does provide directions, you can only use it as a stand-in -- and not as a full replacement -- for a proper GPS device. This problem might be solved later by some intrepid 3rd party developer (like, say, TomTom or Telenav), but there's been some confusion as to whether this might actually happen, and what Apple's official stance on GPS nav actually is. And even if this GPS software does eventually come out, the speaker on the iPhone 3G simply won't be loud enough to be heard over most road noise, so you'd also have to make use of a line-out. In other words, don't sell your GPS device just yet, okay?

The software
Anyone that's used the original iPhone knows what a delight the device can be to use -- except when using the old mail app -- but the hardware is only one part of that. An accurate capacitive touchscreen and well optimized mobile processors form the basis of that experience, but the iPhone continues to derives its real power in usability. The iPhone 3G and the second release of mobile OS X have given the device numerous useful new features while keeping in line with expectations that they not slow down the experience, nor overwhelm new or experienced users. So far, so good.

Easily the most significant addition to the iPhone 3G (as well as the original iPhone and iPod touch) is the App Store, which finally enables users to trick out their phone with whatever programs make it through Apple's rigorous developer screening and software testing process. We've got as many mixed feelings about that closed-but-open model as we do about many of the programs that launched with the device -- especially the AIM client, which we were most excited about, but that kind of flopped. (Disclosure: Engadget is owned by AOL / TimeWarner. Sorry gang!)

Although the App Store isn't open to any developer, it's worth noting that Apple's implementation wrests all control from its carrier partners, which typically expect 3rd party applications to be either side-loaded (i.e. more for the power user set), or simply want complete control of sales through their own walled garden. It's easy to argue that the App Store just trades one walled garden for another, but what the hell, we'll happily take Apple's over AT&T's.

The applications themselves vary in price, and are purchased after you've logged in with your iTunes account. (Yeah, you'll need one even if you're only downloading free programs.) Apps under 10MB download over the air, and are immediately deposited in your first available slot, where they can be moved (or removed) as you see fit. As new versions of the apps become available, the App Store notifies you of updates and manages the downloads. Yes, it's a new kind of walled garden, but the App Store is also a category-redefining experience. We've already heard a radically open version will be making its way to Android, and we hope it will eventually find its way to platforms like Windows Mobile and Symbian as well.

Another new addition is character recognition support for logographic-based languages, such as Traditional Chinese, as well as localized keyboards for nearly two dozen languages and markets worldwide. But the touchscreen keyboard can still be a major sticking point for some -- ourselves enthusiastically included -- and Apple hasn't given any more of its default programs (like SMS) the increased ease of typing that comes with using the keyboard in landscape mode. There's simply no question that in terms of efficiency, on an iPhone we're nowhere close to where we can get on a spacious (or even not so spacious) QWERTY keypad. To their credit, though, Apple's made a few tweaks over the last year that have made typing a little faster and easier (like letting you pre-type the next letter before your first finger has lifted). But the fact is this defining feature of the iPhone remains one of its biggest drawbacks.

After nearly a week of testing MobileMe, we still haven't really had a positive experience with it among our editorial team. One editor, who had fewer issues than anyone else, still had difficulty syncing his 1,300+ contacts. MobileMe would choke on sync and require disabling / re-enabling to keep that sync moving. Another problem we saw was that email deletes weren't synced to other devices, requiring the same message be deleted in multiple locations. In some cases, a deleted email that wasn't properly synced would actually repropagate to back out other devices. Nothing better than zombie email.

Another thing we (and a lot of people noticed) is that MobileMe on the desktop is faux-push -- it only gets updates every 15 minutes because it's actually pulling them, unlike the iPhone's proper push. (We're, like, totally sure someone's going to sue.) You can edit a certain .pref file (details here) to make it fetch every minute -- but fetching every minute isn't push, now is it? Apple has since acknowledged this issue (among others). We also noticed on the phone that if you have synced MobileMe calendars, your calendar subscriptions (like, say, shared iCal or Gcal or what have you) are disabled.

All in all, as of the time of this writing, our feeling is that MobileMe still feels like it's in beta -- when it's up -- and is generally falling way short of what was promised by Apple. We believe they're earnest when they say they're trying to get it all up and running to fulfill their commitments, but for the time being we think it's best to steer clear until they work out the kinks.

On the other hand, we found the Exchange support to be simple enough to set up and use that you may not have to bug your IT dude. Some hardcore enterprise users will miss the full Exchange suite, including synced notes and tasks, but the core functionality (email, calendar, contacts) work very well, and if you need to take your iPhone into the locked-down office, we tested and confirmed that it will play fine with your company's WPA Enterprise / 802.1x with PEAP network. But our biggest gripe with Exchange isn't small: the system is unable to let enterprise contacts and calendars coexist on the same device with personal contacts and calendars. (Personal and corp email get along just fine, though.)

When you turn on Exchange-synced contacts and calendars, you're notified that it's a one or the other kind of a situation, and your personal data will be removed from the phone. Though that data isn't purged from your host machine, of course, you do immediately lose the ability to change contact or calendar sync settings. This effectively means that your device can only serve as an enterprise device OR a personal device, but not both at once. Kind of defeats the purpose of convincing your boss to get you an iPhone in the first place, you know? Can't all our calendars and contact lists just play together on the same device? We think they can (and should).

Some other new and noteworthy features:

* As mentioned, Google Maps now shows a pinging blue locator that can track your movement. As of right now there's no way to convert this to KML or anything usable for geocaching.
* The camera will also now ask you permission to use GPS to geotag photos with your current location. Once you grant that permission, it will add the necessary standard EXIF data to your photos. Trés useful, but you can't refer back to those geotags to bring up a location in Google Maps.
* Side note: there's now an option to reset location notifications, if you accidentally granted permission to an app you don't want knowing where you are.
* The iPhone can now read PowerPoint, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote documents. It's still incapable of editing or creating new documents, however, and outside of sending yourself these files via email, there's no accessible file storage.
* You can now save images from the web to your camera roll by tapping and holding.
* The calculator goes into scientific mode when the device is tilted sideways.
* Entering passwords is a little easier -- the last character you entered is temporarily shown at the end of the string. Keeps things safe but makes sure you know if you mistyped.
* One of the very first things we ever requested the iPhone see fixed is finally fixed: calendar colors are now supported, meaning you can finally visually tell your appointments apart based on calendar.
* You can now control email, contact, and calendar fetching from system settings, giving you granular control over push and pull data on your various accounts.
* You can also enable parental controls if you got the device for your kids. Or you just want to curb temptation to constantly watch Charlie the Unicorn on YouTube or buy Lil Wayne tracks on the WiFi Store, weirdo.
* Screen captures can be taken by holding home, then pressing sleep. They're dropped in the camera roll.
* Doing a hard reset now fully purges the device's memory, thereby making it much more difficult to recover the kind of data you don't want someone else recovering. (More on that here.)

We'd also be remiss if we didn't namecheck a few of the things missing from the device, some likely to be inconveniences, others outright dealbreakers:

* Easily-replaceable battery -- especially being that 3G is much more demanding on battery power than EDGE data. We haven't popped the back off, but even if replacing the battery were as simple as unscrewing the two screws at the bottom (and it's not), that's still not what we'd call easily replaceable.
* Copy / paste. As if we even needed to mention this.
* MMS. Ditto.
* Expandable memory still isn't in the cards (har). 8 and 16GB capacities are very decent, but the ability to go further with microSDHC would be welcomed by many. As would be a 32GB model.
* A2DP (stereo Bluetooth). If this was an unlikely addition before, it's all but written off now. A2DP is a notorious battery hog on devices like cellphones, and the iPhone is already pushing the limits on power conservation and efficiency. It pains us to say it, but we just don't see A2DP happening any time soon.
* Push Gmail. Hey, if Helio can have it on the Ocean, and Samsung on the Instinct, why is Apple stuck with only push Yahoo mail?
* Service-independent device to machine wireless syncing. Exchange and MobileMe are nice, but even nicer would be a way to easily sync data directly to your machine without having to pay or have some kind of service.
* Tethered data. Hey, you're paying $30 a month for data (likely more if you're using it outside the US), your laptop should be able to use some of it too.
* No way to open a link in a new tab in mobile Safari. We also wish the browser was still a bit better about caching data, too -- it'd be nice not to have to do so many reloads when switching between tabs or moving back and forward through history.

And for the enterprise users in the audience, the shortlist of ActiveSync / Exchange bits that didn't make the cut:

* Folder management
* Opening links in email to documents stored on Sharepoint
* Task sync
* Setting an out of office autoreply
* Creating meeting invitations
* Flagging messages for followup

Wrap-up
If you're an avid Symbian, BlackBerry, or Windows Mobile / Exchange user, chances are you might think the iPhone 3G is Apple playing catch-up -- and you're not wrong. 3G, GPS, third party apps, enterprise messaging, these are all old hat. But even the would-be iPhone killers being churned out weekly haven't yet found a way to counter the iPhone's usability and seamless integration of service and software, desktop and mobile, and media and internet.

There are always things that could be improved, features to be added, fixes that should be applied -- but from first to second gen, from year one to year two, Apple has proven itself a relentless upstart in the mobile space, and is showing no signs of slowing down. All those new features give the iPhone even more appeal than ever, but the price is what really seals the deal.

For our money, you're going to have a hard time finding a better device for two hundred bucks -- or maybe even for any price. But that doesn't mean you ought to toss your original iPhone, either. With the release of iPhone 2.0, Apple's given early adopters every possible new feature for free, meaning the iPhone 3G's biggest roadblock to adoption in the US may be its still very worthy predecessor. But as Steve says, "If anybody is going to cannibalize us, I want it to be us." As for the rest of the world? Things are about to get interesting.

iPhone Round Up: 3G Available Unlocked, App Reviews Require Ownership, Apple Lowers Output

According to: http://www.informationweek.com

A whole lot has been happening in iPhone land lately. The 3G iPhone is now available unlocked...in China. If you want to write a nasty note about an iPhone Application, you're going to have to pay for it first. Lastly, Apple has lowered the number of iPhones it will manufacture this year, but has raised the number it thinks it will sell.

3G Unlocked iPhone

If you want an unlocked iPhone, get ready to shell out some cold, hard cash. The Apple iPhone 3G is available unlocked in China for a sum of $700 for the 8GB version and $800 for the 16GB version. The Apple Web site says that the iPhone 3G purchased at the Apple Online Store can be activated with any wireless carrier. It doesn't specify if that means any carrier in China or any carrier in the world.

Alternately, you can buy one here at the subsidized price of $200 or $300 and unlock it yourself for free. Of course, there's that pesky two-year contract to consider...

iPhone App Reviews

Here's a nice little PR move. One of the great things about the iPhone Apps Store are the user reviews. They give you the real deal, not marketing lingo, so you know what you're in store for if you choose to buy an application. Well, before this weekend, you could write a review of an application even if you hadn't downloaded it. That is no longer the case. In order to write a review of an application, you must have downloaded it and installed it on the iPhone.

This is a good move, if you ask me. Any reviewer who writes a review even if he/she hasn't even used the application is wasting my time.

iPhone Output

According to analysts, Apple has cut the production of 3G iPhones from 18 million units to 14 or 15 million units during the third and fourth quarter of this year. The Register reports that, "[Pacific Crest Securities] reckons Apple will sell 11m iPhones during H2 2008, up from its previous forecast of 8m. Accounting for the apparent discrepancy - increased sales yet reduced production - PCS noted that cutting back on manufacturing costs gives Apple 'sustainable pricing power', implying the Mac maker could reduce the handset's price over the period."

Apple and analysts think the company will sell all of the iPhones that it makes.

The iPhone Is Better Than The BlackBerry

According to: http://www.informationweek.com

The war of words between AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ) sees its latest salvo from the AT&T camp. A document was caught circulating the Interwebs that spells out "talking points" for AT&T retail reps to mention if a potential iPhone customer mentions the BlackBerry Storm.

This is really cracking me up. Verizon representatives have been taking potshots at the iPhone's troubles all summer via Twitter and Facebook. At the same time, it is using Twitter, Facebook and its own Web site to build buzz about the BlackBerry Storm, the highly-anticipated smartphone from RIM (NSDQ: RIMM).

Well, it seems that AT&T doesn't want any potential iPhone customers lured away by the luster of the Storm. There's a flier with AT&T branding all over it that reads:

The RIM BlackBerry Storm is anticipated to Launch on Verizon in October of November 2008, prior to the holiday selling season. The BlackBerry Storm is RIM's first touch screen device. Verizon is positioning the Storm as a direct competitor to the iPhone since it has a touchscreen and BlackBerry's popular email service.

The document then spells out the many advantages the iPhone has over the BlackBerry Storm. The Storm won't have a multitouch interface, but the iPhone does. The Storm won't have Wi-Fi, though the iPhone does. The Storm doesn't have access to anything like Apple's iPhone Apps Store. The Storm doesn't have tri-band HSDPA for roaming 3G networks in Europe. The Storm's browser won't compare to the iPhone's browser. And on and on.

The document closes with, "Overall, free iPhone offers ease of use, from how you make a phone call with the tap of a finger, to viewing email and attachments to browsing Web pages with Safari - the best browser on a mobile device."

This set of "talking points" from AT&T comes barely a week after Verizon circulated its own "talking points" about how great the Storm is.

Fun stuff, AT&T and Verizon. Keep it up, because the blogosphere is enjoying the shoot-out.

Apple recalls millions of free iPhone 3G power adapters

Apple Inc. today recalled all power adapters it packaged with iPhone 3G phones sold since mid-July in the U.S., Japan, Canada, Mexico and several Central and South American countries.

The number of affected users will be in the millions. Recent analyst estimates have pegged iPhone 3G sales as high as 6 million since its July debut, with the U.S. market remaining Apple's largest. Apple has not stated its quarterly iPhone 3G sales, but CEO Steve Jobs said the company had sold more than 1 million in its first weekend of availability.

The adapters, a redesign from the bulkier version included with the first generation iPhone, pose a shock hazard, said Apple in a release Friday afternoon. The company will exchange all eligible adapters free of charge through mail-in or walk-in programs at its own retail stores starting Oct. 10.

"Under certain conditions the new ultracompact Apple USB power adapter's metal prongs can break off and remain in a power outlet, creating a risk of electric shock," said Apple, which said that although it had received reports of broken prongs, no injuries had been reported.

Apple told users to immediately stop using the small adaptors, which are about the size of the plug end of an extension cord.

In lieu of the adapters, and until replacements are received, users should charge their iPhone 3G phones by connecting them to their Mac or PC with the USB cable that came with their iPhone, Apple said. Alternately, users can turn to third-party adapters designed for the iPhone -- such as car chargers -- or the larger-sized USB adapter that Apple sells for $29. Ultracompact adapters purchased separately by customers may also be eligible for replacement.

Adapters identified by a green dot on the bottom, however, are replacements that are said to be safe to use. Adapters sold with the first-generation free iPhone PAYG , and those packaged or sold separately with iPhone 3G phones in other countries, are also not affected.

iPhone 3G owners can order a PS3 replacement online starting today, or by taking their current adapter to an Apple retail store starting Oct. 10. Online orders, however, won't begin shipping until Oct. 10. Owners will need to provide Apple with a mailing address as well as their iPhone 3G's serial number if ordering a replacement online; those who ask for a replacement at an Apple store starting next month must also bring in their iPhone 3G.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission did not issue an accompanying alert, as it sometimes does when companies recall defective products.

Apple last launched a major safety recall in August 2006 when it recalled some 1.8 million lithium-ion batteries made by Sony Corp. that had been sold with its iBook and PowerBook notebooks. Last month, Apple's Japanese subsidiary offered to replace iPod nano batteries because of overheating issues.

This is the first recall for the iPhone, which Apple launched in June 2007 and then relaunched in its current 3G form on July 11 of this year.

 

No Firefox for the iPhone/iPod touch … D’oh!

Source: Zdnet.com

Mozilla CEO John Lilly confirms that there will be no Firefox iPhone/iPod touch. D’oh!

Wired: Are you going to develop a version of Firefox for the iPhone?

Lilly: No. Apple makes it too hard. They say it’s because of technical issues — they don’t want outsiders to disrupt the user experience. That’s a business argument masquerading as a technological argument. We’re focusing on more important stuff. The iPhone has been influential, but there’s not that many of them. We’re part of the LiMo Foundation — Linux on Mobile. The Razr V2 is a LiMo phone, and you’ll see more in the next year or so.

D’oh!

I had been hoping that Firefox would make it to the iPhone/iPod touch, but kinda assumed that it wouldn’t because Apple has unrealistic aspirations for Safari. Shame.

Roll on LiMo. My next cellphone will, without a doubt, be a LiMo.

Apple gets iPhone 3G right for business

July 24, 2008, 05:11 PM — InfoWorld reports:

With the iPhone 3G's banner opening weekend and newsstands looking like a rack of brochures for the device, a review of the iPhone 3G at this point might be pro forma, except for one thing: Much of the iPhone 3G and the new iPhone 2.0 software remains an enigma to professionals and enterprises, users set apart by, among other things, their tendency to use punctuation in their e-mail. These users demand more from a handset than a cellular browser and YouTube.

With mature and well-established QWERTY devices from HTC, Motorola, Nokia, Palm, and Research in Motion known to be capable of handling the needs of serious users, the iPhone 3G needs to be weighed against alternatives using existing professional and enterprise-targeted handsets to set the bar. As you may recall, I judged the original 2007 iPhone to fall far short of professional standards. The iPhone was too expensive to be missing so much.

This time around, there are two new products under discussion. One is the iPhone 3G, Apple's pair of new 8GB and 16GB phone models (which cost US$199 and $299, respectively, for AT&T customers who agree to a two-year contract) that deliver ActiveSync, Assisted GPS (A-GPS), and 1Mbps 3G cellular data. The other product is the iPhone 2.0 software, Apple's new iPhone firmware and related apps. iTunes 7.7 or later will update existing iPhones and iPod Touches to the 2.0 for free. After that's done, you'll end up with a device that is, except for GPS and 3G, functionally identical to the iPhone 3G. The iPod Touch is also upgradable to iPhone 2.0 firmware for $9.95.

I've taken to referring to first-gen iPhone and iPhone 3G running iPhone 2.0 software as iPhone, which now identifies a consistently implemented platform in the same manner that Mac covers all Apple client computers. Wherever I refer to iPhone 3G, you'll know that I'm making specific reference to Apple's new handset.

Second time's the charm
Apple has turned iPhone into a mobile platform that I can recommend to professional and enterprise users. I make that recommendation with fair confidence, based on my testing of the iPhone 3G against Apple's claims. Those tests continue, and will for some time. It's my opinion that final judgment about the worthiness of a mobile device can't be rendered until you've trusted your digital identity to it.

Clearly, I haven't had time to carry it that far, but the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 2.0 software meet the expectations set by Apple, and Apple's design and engineering produced a mobile device and platform that hold their own against the likes of Nokia E-Series, RIM BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile 6. In areas where Apple chose to focus its innovation, the iPhone 3G exceeds the capabilities of other devices by a margin that makes it hard to imagine competitors closing the gap.

I judge the iPhone 3G to be among the QWERTY class of messaging/PDA devices because these are professional- and enterprise-targeted handsets, and because whenever input is required, iPhone pops up as close to a full GUI keyboard as will fit on the display. iPhone is, by my lights, a QWERTY device.

Zero squint factor
For professionals, the PDA features of a handset may be the decider. iPhone's calendar and address book are absolute tops for ease of use, fast access, and readability. The use of spinning slot-machine-like dials to set the time of an appointment is more intuitive than arrows, and it's quicker than typing. Appointments can be separated out by category (for example, "personal" and "office") or pulled together into a single view, in which case the category is reflected in the color of the entry.

Apple makes great use of the tall display and Mac OS X's crisp text rendering. All of the calendar views use the largest type that will fit while still packing as much information onto a single page as possible.

Contacts are listed in a massive bold font. A new search field at the top of the list displays only matching entries, and for rapid scrolling through a large list, there is an alphabetical index tab down the right edge of the screen. Each contact can be assigned its own ring tone and avatar, and you can add custom fields to each entry.

Calendar lacks a key ability: to send calendar invitations via e-mail. But anyone who has permission to do it can place an event on your calendar, and when they do, your iPhone will be updated over the air. If you're linked to Exchange Server, new appointments are sent to you via ActiveSync push, and you can accept or reject an invitation. But you can't send one from iPhone. That's a major flaw.

In the plus category, big time, is a new rich attachment viewer that displays Office, iWork '08 (Apple's productivity suite), PDF, and many flavors of still images inside the Mail app. Using pinch (shrink), spread (zoom), and flick (scroll) gestures, documents that are too large to fit on the display are easier to navigate than on most other devices, and iPhone is surprisingly quick with the document conversion.

A colleague pointed out the shortcoming that non-image attachments can't be saved, sent, or transferred (except in forwarded messages). I'll add that there is no way to create rich documents on iPhone, no equivalent to the mobile office suites on Nokia E-series and Windows Mobile devices. But I expect to see third-party document editors appearing on App Store, Apple's on-line custom iPhone software catalog, soon.

Over-the-air sync
iPhone is a wireless device. You should look at its USB cord as being for charging, backups, firmware updates, and iPod content. For professionals and enterprises, wires will just get in the way.

The Contacts and Calendar apps can sync over the air to several servers including Exchange Server, Apple's MobileMe, Google, and Yahoo. iPhone will sync, through iTunes, to Mac and Windows desktops (Outlook or Outlook Express for Windows, iCal for Mac), but users report mixed experiences with this. I'm not surprised. Doing tethered sync with a device that's optimized to do it over the air -- that's a major win in iPhone 2.0 -- is counterproductive. Sync efforts tend to pull up a lot of false conflicts that must be sorted out manually. It's better to take new events, contacts, and messages as they are posted. The servers that dispatch them are more reliable sources than your desktop.

Apple's MobileMe is billed as "Exchange Server for the rest of us." That's a bit rich, but it does keep multiple iPhone, iPod, and Mac clients in sync, and the AJAX front-ends to the Mail, Calendar, and Address Book are slick. MobileMe syncs Safari browser bookmarks as well. (I haven't tested MobileMe's sync features against Windows.) I wouldn't make MobileMe my sole e-mail server for business use, but I think that the service, which costs $99 per year, is a necessity for iPhone users.

Apple equipped iPhone to tap into a proprietary infrastructure, not unlike the one RIM uses for BlackBerry, that pushes mail and PDA updates to iPhone over the air. "Push" is a relative term that's entirely dependent on your software.

iPhone being a consumer device, it typically will be used with low-end mail and scheduling clients that hit the server at timed intervals, or over a hotel or conference center wireless LAN could be using an SMTP proxy that delays delivery. It takes as long as 15 minutes for iTunes to pull an update or message from Outlook or Entourage to Apple's cloud, at which point it finds you within a few seconds. But in an enterprise using Exchange Server and iPhone, push can be taken for granted. Pushing desktop-sized messages is best handled with the iPhone 3G.

Most of what iPhone can do over the cellular network, it can do over Wi-Fi. You can run both networks simultaneously on an iPhone, and the iPod Touch with the iPhone 2.0 firmware makes a great on-campus PDA (too bad that microphones like the Griffin iTalk won't work on it; that'd give you some voice capability when on Wi-Fi networks).

The iPhone 3G is world-compatible, supporting four varieties of GSM and three flavors of UMTS. If you have a contract with a carrier that supports roaming, you can now hop on a plane and expect your iPhone 3G to connect for you when you land.

One drawback with iPhone's Exchange Server support is that each device only supports one user profile. Multiple users wouldn't be sharing one iPhone, but one user might set up different profiles for the various projects he or she is working on. It is possible to add multiple non-Exchange profiles pointing to POP or IMAP servers; I used that technique to work around the single profile issue by creating a secondary IMAP profile for my Exchange Server.

iPhone 3G additions
E-mail with rich attachments that used to be impractical over the AT&T EDGE network are now workable with the iPhone 3G -- provided you're within range of a UMTS tower and your coverage plan includes HSDPA high-speed data. In my metro-area tests, downloads reached as high as around 1 Mbps, and rarely dropped below 700 Kbps. The iPhone 3G will automatically fall back to EDGE when 3G isn't available. You don't lose data access. It just slows down, and if HSDPA comes back into view, it speeds up.

There are catches here: Consumers who expect to stream low-res movies and listen to streaming radio all day will bump into AT&T contract provisions that put limits on unlimited data plans. Apple had to rebrand iTunes for iPhone to a more explicit "iTunes for Wi-Fi," making it plain that AT&T has no interest in having Apple send you movie rentals over its cell network.

For professional users, the sticky wicket is cellular data's horrible latency. During my speed tests, I measured 3G network latency at between 270 and an astonishing 1,100 milliseconds. You'll notice that some pages render faster than others, and that Web sites with lots of little AJAX image buttons can load slowly the first time. Apple's marketing of iPhone as a cellular browser should be taken with a bit of salt. Test Web applications carefully before deployment, and be sure to test the iPhone 3G in an area served only by EDGE. (If you're in EDGE territory, you may be better off with an original iPhone upgraded to the 2.0 software, since you'll pay $10 less per month to AT&T.)

I am very impressed with Apple's radiolocation. It contracted Skyhook for the original iPhone, and I never gave that solution its due. To oversimplify, Skyhook war-drives around and captures signatures of surrounding Wi-Fi and cellular networks. Phones without GPS can mark their location by matching the radio signature where you're standing with Skyhook's database. In city limits, Google Maps can do a surprisingly good job of finding you without GPS.

Of course, iPhone 3G adds GPS, and the result is a three-radio location scheme called A-GPS. Apple pulls in Skyhook Wi-Fi and cell tower signatures, overlaps GPS data, and decides which of these sources is most trustworthy before passing your location to Google Maps, your browser, or a custom application. It's brilliant.

Not of one cloth
In most regards, comparing iPhone to QWERTY devices built for professionals is not an overlapping-feature-set affair. There is a lot of give and take, good news and bad news, for each device. For example, BlackBerry is the crown prince of push messaging, working just like a pager. iPhone can't live up to BlackBerry's definition of "push," measured in milliseconds, but BlackBerry is lousy at dealing with big messages and rich attachments. Apple's push strategy for iPhone users not running Exchange Server is still feeling its way, but Apple's got the rich-attachment thing down cold.

RIM is working on rich attachments, just like Apple's working on push, but if you had to choose a device based on present features (and that's how it works), you'd have to decide whether you want the first fragment of your e-mail message instantly or it's worth a potential 15-minute wait to read a rich attachment. I can come up with a nearly endless list of trade-offs.

Another excellent give and take example is found in the browser: Apple wins hands down for readability and controls, but iPhone lacks, and likely will always lack, Java and Flash. On the other hand, no mobile device can touch iPhone for AJAX content. iPhone was made for AJAX, and the Safari browser evolves faster than others.

Who comes out on top? It likely depends on whether you're dependent on existing Java MIDP software. If you have the option of fresh development, the iPhone SDK might have an answer, or it might not. I can't say, because the iPhone SDK is under complete non-disclosure. I was quoted in the public portion of the Worldwide Developer Conference keynote, so I'll stretch my neck out and tell you that there isn't a better mobile development platform, toolset, or documentation set than iPhone's. It's foolish of Apple to keep people from writing about it.

Stay tuned
I'll continue to work with my iPhone 3G and report on my experiences in my Enterprise Mac blog. But for now, I'll say that the iPhone 3G is probably the best $199 smartphone on the market. It shines in rich documents, over-the-air sync, direct connectivity with Exchange Server, and AJAX applications. iPhone's trump card is usability. You can drop an iPhone on the desk of a person who's never seen one before, and they'll be working it within the hour. The typing takes getting used to, but it is leagues better in iPhone 2.0 than on the original iPhone. Most of all, you can actually read the thing. Text and graphics are as clear as on any desktop, and Apple always fills the screen.

I suppose I'd be remiss if I failed to mention that an iPhone is also an iPod. AT&T may not want you to hit iTunes with the iPhone 3G, but podcasts, video clips, and PowerPoint decks are within easy reach. But I wouldn't advise downloading such files over the air if you're not on a business rate plan. AT&T will charge consumers with per-kilobyte overages or flip them into metered data plans if they exceed unspecified transfer limits. Surprise! Business customers are more likely to get a call from their rep if volume becomes a problem.

If you have existing mobile applications that rely on Java, Flash, or .Net, or if you have server-side applications that use BlackBerry Enterprise Server, iPhone's not for you. There's no way to get from any of these to iPhone. Whatever custom mobile solution you have now would have to be reconceived as AJAX or iPhone-native software, or as a client/server solution with an AJAX front end.

But if you're not constrained by your currently deployed mobile software, give the iPhone 3G a trial run. I was pleasantly surprised to find that, on the whole, the iPhone 3G clears the bar for professional and enterprise use, and in some ways, sets a higher one.

Shoppers in clamour for 3G iPhone

According to FT.com .....

Excited customers queued in cities around the world for the global launch of Apple's 3G iPhone yesterday, undeterred by concerns that there might not be enough handsets.

With a co-ordinated launch in 22 countries, some analysts were worried that the limited initial stock, estimated at 1.5m handsets, would be insufficient.

Some Japanese iPhone fans had queued since Tuesday with collapsable chairs and energy drinks.

Their reward was a place near the front of a queue of more than 1,500 people.

SoftBank started sales of the iPhone 3g at 7am at its Omote Sando store in central Tokyo.

While the iPhone lacks some of the functions such as television reception and e-payment that are popular in Japan, the phone is likely to be popular among Mac fans and customers drawn to the touch screen and pc-like internet usage.

The first free 3G iPhone customer was in New Zealand, where Jonny Gladwell, 22, a student, waited for 60 hours in freezing temperatures. "I'm going to put this on charge and have a nice long sleep," he said.

In the UK about 100 people queued at the flagship Apple store on London's Regent Street. Many had queued overnight, but were kept waiting inside the store by delays in activating the phones.

At the front of the queue was David Suen, from Australia, who bought his place on online auction site Ebay for "less than £50" to avoid waiting. The second-placed person had queued since 2pm on Thursday.

Some customers said that they were looking forward to ditching their BlackBerrys. One technology consultant called his BlackBerry "damned ugly" and said that having a 3G iPhone would be beneficial with clients.

In New York the queue began forming outside the flagship Apple store on Fifth Avenue before midnight. Most people were young adults who said they believed the new 3G iPhone was the best device on the market for accessing the mobile internet.

Some of those still queuing complained that the in-store activation process mandated by AT&T and Apple appeared to be slow.

In San Francisco, the scene outside the local Apple store was reminiscent of free iPhone's original US launch last year, as an eclectic early-morning crowd drank coffee and ate doughnuts from a local bakery in a queue that stretched for two blocks or a free Playstation 3.

Apple iPhone 3G price does not add up: costs $173 to make, $199 to buy

Now this is all about happy news and weird news rolled into one, the good news is that the Apple iPhone 3G is relatively cheap at only $199, but reports are showing that the phone only costs $173 to make, work that one out.

The iPhone 3G is cheap really when you think about it and many consumers are happy with the pricing of the new device but market researchers iSuppli seem to have found the answer to this $173 to make, $199 to buy scenario. iSuppli has reported that the iPhone 3G only costs $173 to make which is very strange indeed considering the 8GB version of this phone will only cost you $199 (£99 in UK), ok this is a great selling point for Apple which could mean major competitors finding it pretty hard to compete with such a low price. For example the $785 HTC Touch Diamond is obviously much more expensive for everyday consumers and the $855 Nokia N96 smartphone is expensive also, how can these firms compete against the iPhone 3G. Nokia and HTC will still sell by the millions we are not doubting that but it seems there is strong favour for the cheap iPhone.

iSuppli say that the iPhone 3G price is cheap because of the materials used to make it, and of course those providers who have to subsidize the handsets by giving Apple around $300 per free iPhone, and before you question the quality the iPhone 3G is off top quality so no suffering when it comes to the quality, Apple are smart people (Well most of the time anyway) and they use the right components to do the job. Apple are pretty successful in giving us what we want considering if you look back on last year the iPhone version one cost $226 to make and that did not have 3G nor did it include GPS.

Source:http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/

 

Free iPhone 3G firmware has FM radio support

Reports from users in possession of the latest free iPhone 3G firmware indicate that the device will have support for both FM radio and FOTA (firmware over the air).

FM radio support means that the free iPhone 3G may be able to make use of devices like Apple’s own “iPod Radio Remote,” which includes an FM tuner and allows users to listen to FM radio stations. Current free iPhone and free iPod touch models are incompatible with the radio remote.

Firmware over the air support means that Apple will theoretically be able to deliver software and firmware updates over the free iphone 3g cellular network connection, potentially allowing re-locking of unlocked devices and feature enhancements that do not require connection to a host computer.

Source: http://www.iphoneatlas.com

 

3G iPhone announced by Apple

Thinner iPhone on show at WWDC

Source: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk

Apple boss Steve Jobs has officially announced the free 3g iPhone at the Worldwide Developers' Conference (WWDC). The free 3g iPhone will be available for $199 in the US, is thinner at the edges than the first generation iPhone, features sold metal buttons and the same screen as the original.

Jobs said the free 3G iPhone is "amazingly zippy", claiming that download speeds approach those that can be achieved with Wi-Fi. Two other smartphones were used to demonstrate the iPhone's speed superiority - the Nokia N95 and Treo 750, and Apple claimed the iPhone is 36 percent faster than them.

And the 3G capabilities won't hurt battery life, Apple claims. The 3G iPhone will last for 300 hours of standby time, while 2G talk time is up to 10 hours (from 8 hours). On 3G talk time, while other phones have 3-3.5 hours, the iPhone has 5 hours of 3G talk time, Apple claims.

"That's actually a very large amount of 3G talk time. We're very proud of this," said Jobs.

Meanwhile, the 3G iPhone is capable of up to 5-6 hours of high-speed browsing, 7 hours of video and 24 hours of audio.

The 3G iPhone, which also features built-in GPS support, will be available in 22 countries, starting from July 11.

The iPhone first went on sale in the US last summer, and Jobs claimed today at WWDC that "it's widely believed that this is the phone that has changed phones forever." Apple sold 6 million iPhones in the first year

A thinner iPhone with 3G, double the memory and better battery life

Source: http://venturebeat.com

How badly do you want a free 3G iPhone? How badly do you want one that is 22 percent thinner, with double the memory, GPS and better battery life?

That could the case if a tip Cult of Mac (a Wired Network Blog) received is to be believed.

We’re a week away from Apple chief executive Steve Jobs’ keynote at the the WWDC event where it is widely believed that he will announce the free 3G iPhone. Naturally the amount of rumors is going to increase as we draw closer, but one is supposedly coming from a programmer at a “major software publisher.”

Of note here is that all of these rumors have been reported before. And significantly, this is also the first time that the AT&T subsidizing the free 3g iPhone in the United States rumor has been backed up by another source.

Also included in this tip is word that Apple is the one seeking to subsidize the phone to compete with the price of RIM’s Blackberry device. Previous reports had suggested that it was AT&T who had hope to put a price cut on the device.

This iPhone/Blackberry rivalry appears to be heating up as the 3G iPhone draws near. In late April, word came out that RIM was looking for developers with Apple experience, presumably to help with a next-generation Blackberry. Then, last month RIM launched a new $150 million application developers fund to compete with Kleiner Perkins and Apple’s $100 million iFund. (Also see our Q&A on the RIM-Blackberry fund.)

If Apple launches a free 3G iPhone that is thinner, with double the memory and has a better battery life — while being available for $199, the pace at which it sells could be frightening. Blackberry will need some kind of answer.

Apple 3G iPhone pictures in the flesh

What will the new Apple free 3g iPhone look like? Well who knows but if they look like this we will be in heaven because they look hot. There are obviously many pictures floating around but none compare to these.

The free 3g iPhone is without a doubt going to be the hottest phone on the market and is already much favored by millions around the world as the sexiest thing and these pictures shown here just makes the whole process so much the better. There have been pictures on the internet showing the iPhone 3g free to be black or white, slim and even curvy and of course so many rumours flying around of what it will look like, come on we are only human.

Now these pictures shown here are master class in the way of ingenious edited photos, ok so these are not the 3g iPhone but just say for a minute they are, you know you would fall in love with them because I have already and I really want this design. Judging by the pictures they say the free iPhone 3g will come in either red, white or black, personally I am loving the red one. If you have any pictures of the Apple 2.0 3G iPhone then please do email them to us, we only have a couple off week’s people.

Source: http://www.iphonehellas.gr

3G iPhone Will Be Able to Handle 42Mbps Wireless Speeds

PC World says:

An executive at Australian mobile service provider, Telstra, said that the 3G iPhone will be capable of handling data at speeds up to 42Mbps on his company's network by Christmas of this year. In an interview with Channel News, the executive said the following:

"We know what is coming, we have seen the new device and it will be available on our network as soon as it is launched in the USA. By Xmas this phone will be capable of 42mb[p]s which will make it faster than a lot of broadband offerings and the fastest iPhone on any network in the world."

Many find the claim dubious at best and say the Telstra executive is full of hot air.

Will U.S. Be Stuck in free iPhone Wireless Slow Lane?

The new iPhone is widely believed to be announced on June 9th at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) and then released shortly thereafter. Telstra's high speed data network, called Next G, is currently capable of 14.4Mbps and plans are in the works to bump speeds up to 21Mbps in the near future and then bump it up again to 42Mbps by the end of 2008, the company claims.

So what does that mean for those of us here in the US? Well, for starters, Computerworld just pitted Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T's data networks against each other and found AT&T's current 3G network to be the fastest of the three. However, it was only capable of peak download speeds of 1.6Mbps. Telstra's current claims are almost ten times that amount.

Wireless Speeds Faster Than a Cable Modem

AT&T is, however, planning on upgrading its 3G iPhone data network to 20Mbps by 2009, according to recent report by Apple Insider. That will still be roughly half the speed of the Telstra network, but about double the speed of what I currently get with my Comcast high speed Internet connection here in my home, for instance.

These massive speed increases (if we are to believe companies), regardless of the network, won't matter much if providers keep these 5GB caps in place, though. AT&T and Verizon both have a 5GB limit on wireless data and Sprint's cap goes into effect in the end of July. Telstra's data plans, too, only top out at 3GB per month.

So sure, wireless data speeds will be exponentially faster, but that'll just make it that much easier to blow through your data usage earlier in the month.

What's even more unsettling, though, is that these wireless networks are about to reach speeds that would allow you to ditch your cable or DSL provider and use wireless data for your home network, with the added convenience of being able to take your data with you anywhere else in the country for close to the same, or marginally more than you're paying right now. That'll never happen, though, if you're limited to 5GB per month, so be wary of all the "we have the fastest network" pitches you'll be flooded with over the coming months for more than one reason.

Bottom line: Speed means nothing when the amount you're allowed to consume is limited. Second bottom line: Speed claims mean nothing - I'll wait for the independent test results before I get too worked up.

O2: 3G iPhone Only Weeks Away

Macobserver says:

O2's parent company, Telefonica Europe, may have dropped a hint at Apple's free iPhone plans when CEO Matthew Key said that his company will be making a joint free iPhone announcement with Apple in "the coming weeks." The revelation came after O2's first quarter earnings announcement on Wednesday, according to the Guardian.

In response a question about when Apple's 3G iPhone would ship, Mr. Key said "That's more of a question for Apple... but over the coming weeks we will do a joint announcement with Apple as Telefonica Group."

Analysts are expecting Apple to announce a new version of the free Apple iPhone at its World Wide Developer Conference in June that supports the faster 3G wireless network standard. The combination free iPod and smart phone has already been listed as unavailable at Apple's online stores in the U.S. and the U.K., and O2 and Carphone Warehouse have run out of stock, too.

Apple has not said when it will release its second generation free iPhone, but some analysts are predicting that will happen at the end of June because AT&T issued employees a memo blocking vacations during that time frame because of "an exiting Summer Promotional Launch."

Several cell carriers have also announced free Apple iPhone deals with Apple. Details on those deals have been slim and refer only to launches before the end of 2008.

The free iPhone rumor mill has churned out reports that the new free 3G iPhone will include faster 3G wireless data networking, video chat support, streaming movie support, a built-in GPS, and more. Apple is sticking by its standard policy and is not commenting on new free iPhone features.

How do you use your free iPhone?

Source: http://www.macworld.com

Recently, I read an interesting report regarding free iPhone use. Market research firm iSuppli found that many people use free iPhones in ways that differ markedly from other phones, especially in categories that until recently weren’t that important to most users.

We don’t use it as often for phone calls as other cell phone owners.

And while we text message about as often as those who own other phones, we’re much more likely to be checking e-mail, surfing the Web, watching videos or YouTube clips, or viewing photos.

What surprised me the most out of all of iSuppli’s statistics is that free iPhone owners spent less than half the time actually making calls—46.5 percent—compared to 71.7 percent of the time people use other phones for calls. At first, I had a fleeting moment of defensiveness; I wondered if they were insinuating that the free iPhone isn’t good for voice calls. I hadn’t noticed any problems with either my 8GB phone, or the newer 16GB model I replaced it with earlier this year.

It turns out voice quality isn’t the issue. “This usage pattern shows Apple has succeeded in producing a true convergence product that consumers like to use for multiple purposes,” said Greg Sheppard, chief development officer at iSuppli. “Apple has come as close as anyone to achieving a balanced convergence in mobile handset features and usage.”

My curiosity piqued by the report’s findings, so I set out to document how much I use my free iPhone.

How it was B.I. (Before free iPhone)

Before the free iPhone was released, I lived in what I call the “Dark Time.” As a former Motorola Razr user, the only time I felt anywhere near comfortable using my phone was when I made calls. That was it. To me, the Razr was just a phone. Because of either bad software design or the limitations inherent to static, button-based hardware—or a combination of both—the Razr’s functions were poorly implemented.

For example, accessing the Internet felt less like information gathering and more like I had lost a bet. The experience was flat-out unpleasant. First, the software was terribly slow, even though the Razr browser was rendering mostly text. Second, the mobile Web it offered up looked nothing like the Internet. I’ve seen the Internet and that’s not it. WAP browsing may have been a compromise, but its execution in software is slow, cumbersome and inefficient.

Since I had to navigate my way through a maze of vague commands and menus, I avoided the Internet on my Razr. The contacts and calendar applications were useless, too, given the hoops I had to jump through to keep them synced with my Mac. The same was true of e-mail, directions and the other functions the Razr could theoretically offer. No wonder I used it mostly for phone calls; I couldn’t do anything else very easily.

I’ve started paying attention to my free iPhone use, and I’ve found that similar to the findings in the report, I use my free iPhone to make calls about half the time. The other half I spend browsing the Web, checking personal and company e-mail, playing games and using most of the available features—and then some. (Yes, my free iPhone unlocked so I can add unofficial apps, and it will remain so until Apple releases a newer version of free iPhone software in June.)

What surprised me even more than how accurately the report reflected my usage is the amount of time I spend on the device itself. After a few days of focusing on how often I use my free iPhone, I’ve realized that not only am I using it more for calls than I did with the Razr, I’ve found that I also used it much more overall than any other portable device I’ve ever owned, free iPod included. Until this report made me step back and take a good look, I never fully realized how free iPhone-dependent I have become.
A day in the life

To illustrate, a typical day goes something like this: When the free iPhone alarm wakes me up each morning, a swipe of the screen silences the alarm and brings up the Weather widget. With one gesture, I have enough information to plan my wardrobe and departure time, all before I’m even sitting up. Because the free iPhone remembers the last-used application before it locks itself, any app can be used in this way.

Next, I click on the Home button to get to E-mail and the Calendar so I can prepare for the day mentally. Once I’m out of the house, the free iPhone is linked into my car stereo, so it’s always on as an free iPod. And because my free iPhone is also how I keep in touch, I never miss an e-mail, a text message or a phone call because of loud music—the music mutes automatically when a call comes in. Since I commute daily from Orlando to Tampa, Google Maps lets me know what kind of traffic I’m facing, which helps me plan my routes.

Once at work, most of my day is spent staring numbly at progress bars, waiting for software to install. For those idle moments, dynamic content by way of the free iPhone’s mobile Safari browser and YouTube access is a godsend. The free iPhone’s media capabilities and its always-on cloud connectivity break the monotony, and since it’s also my communications device, it keeps me always accessible. That’s a downside, too: I’m always accessible.

Focusing on my free iPhone use startled me into realizing that if my free iPhone broke, or if Apple suddenly stopped making it and I had to use another brand, I’d be lost. I wouldn’t know which device suited me, despite all of the competition in phones out there, because, in one way or the other, they’re all wrong for me.

I felt that way before the free iPhone’s release, but now that I’ve used Apple’s design and have grown accustomed to it, how can I go back? I tried to figure out why that was and realized that Apple made a few key design decisions early on in the free iPhone design process that just happened to evolve into exactly what I was looking for.
Compatibility, multitouch nailed it for me

Obviously, based on your own needs and wants, your mileage may vary, but I was always specific about exactly what I wanted in a phone: one that comes with Mac software, easy connectivity and no hassles. So right off the bat, Apple nailed it for me by making the free iPhone automatically Mac compatible, seamlessly importing my contact and calendar information. Of course, Apple didn’t stop with Mac users; the free iPhone works on various flavors of Windows as well, meaning it offers out-of-the-box cross-platform support. Who else does this?

Advantage two for the free iPhone is multitouch. Everyone seems to be doing flat screens now. There were a couple of touch-screen devices on the market before the free iPhone, but their interfaces were tacked on to existing mobile operating systems, which seem to be programmed to spite users. Plus, rival touch screens were the opposite of responsive, giving those awful bank ATM touch screens a run for their money. Not surprisingly, the design never caught on except with the most forgiving—or masochistic—early adopters.

It is because of this experience with touch panels that the mainstream media, consumers and cynics watched with curiosity when Apple first presented the ground-up redesign of OS X and its apps for mobile devices. The fact that the entire interaction lived and died by the intelligence and responsiveness of the touch screen was instant debate material, and every competitor was quick to dismiss the technology. Flash forward a year later and everyone who had dogged the idea now has their own touch-screen “free iPhone killers.”

But only Apple has multitouch matched to a user interface that’s clever, intuitive and slick enough to take advantage of the technology. The lack of intuitive multifinger interaction alone makes any so-called free iPhone killers merely free iPhone wannabes, relegated to an audience comprising those that who can’t or won’t buy an Apple product for whatever reason.

With the free iPhone, the simplicity introduced in the free iPod remains, and the multitouch interface make all functions equally accessible, regardless of what feature they offer access to. From purchasing music to finding the nearest gas station to navigating through songs, free iPhone’s multitouch capabilities and Mobile OS X make things easy. The free iPhone actually feels more like what must have been the original concept for the free iPod in the literal sense: my entire life in my hands, with the ability to instantly sync with my computer, though no longer bound to it.
More missed points

Detractors are quick to play up the limitations of the free iPhone, which are set by Apple itself. Some limitations, such as third-party application installs and enterprise support, will be taken care of with the June software release. And the long-rumored 3G free iPhone is apparently just around the corner.

But there are other limitations that won’t be as quickly remedied. Although the free iPhone and free iPod lines support the most popular music store in the world, the fact that that store just happens to belong to Apple and offers support for only a limited amount of available codecs doesn’t sit well with some. But Apple would rather support specific codecs—and support them well—than spread itself thin supporting too many options poorly. It’s the same philosophy Apple applies to its computers and operating system. What you leave out is as important as what you add in when it comes to ease of use.

As new free iPhone features and support for enterprise use become available, the free iPhone’s reach into dyed-in-the-wool geeks resistant to Apple will expand. For those looking for a multifunction device that is actually useful in everyday life, I can say this: The free iPhone remains the most user-friendly device I’ve ever had. Others agree.

Perhaps the most telling of all statistics comes from a March ChangeWave survey in which 79 percent of free iPhone users said they’re very satisfied with their devices. The next highest percentage of happy owners came from BlackBerry users (54 percent are very satisfied), and LG and Sanyo owners (40 percent who said they’re are very satisfied). The statistics speak for themselves.

Given the dramatic evolution of thefree iPodsince its introduction in 2001, it’s easy to see how, over time, the free iPhone could spearhead the next major computing platform. Just in the next few months, we have the expected arrival of faster—and possibly redesigned—3G free iPhones, along with the release of a software development kit that should result in a slew of new apps.

Given that I couldn’t resist moving from the 8GB model to the 16GB model when it came out, I see little chance that I’ll be able to hold off from getting the next model when it finally appears. By then, I expect third-party applications for the free iPhone to make it the Star Trek device I always thought it could be.

iPhone to go down by £100

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk

The cost of Apple's free iPhone handset is being cut to attract new customers.

The mobile phone operator O2 and retailer Carphone Warehouse are cutting the price of the standard handset by £100 to £169, in what O2 says will make the free iPhone an "unbeatable proposition".

The offer for the 8GB model lasts until 1 June only, while the price of the more advanced 16GB handset remains unchanged at £329.

O2, which is the exclusive network contract holder, says the free iPhone, launched last November, is its fastest-selling handset. However, some experts believe the price cut reflects a slowdown in sales.

An O2 spokesman said: "The free iPhone has been very successful, but we want to expand it even further and price is a very good way to do that."

The price cut follows a similar move in Germany, where T-Mobile reduced the retail price of the 8GB free iPhone version to as little as €99 (£78).

Live location tracking coming to free iPhone

Source: http://travel.latimes.com/

Have you ever been lost in a big city and too lazy or stubborn to buy a map or ask for directions?

Just last month I was walking in downtown Chicago trying to meet a friend at a restaurant. I was following the concierge’s directions and knew I was very close, but I was walking without a map and got to the point where I didn’t know exactly how much farther I needed to walk to get to the restaurant. Even though I was within two blocks, I was late and stopped in a shop to ask for more directions. Ugh. To my excitement, DIY concierge skills are nearly complete (Zagat mobile is already here).

Live location tracking is in beta and coming to free iPhone Maps. Free iPhone OS 2.0 will bring a little blue, pulsing ball that tracks your movement on a map. “This makes the free iPhone’s “Locate Me” function feel much more like a real GPS,” says free iPhone Atlas.

I’m tired of coming up with excuses why I don’t have an free iPhone. It’s really past time to go get one. When live location tracking comes out, I’ll probably give in.

3G free iPhone coming within 60 days

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/

There has been a lot of speculation on when the 3G version of the free iPhone would be coming, but today Walt Mossberg appeared to let the cat out of the bag in a video where he states that the 3G free iPhone will be released within 60 days.

This news makes sense since the free iPhone 2.0 update will be coming in a couple of months as well and the launch of a new device to go along with the new software is a natural assumption. I am pretty happy with my free iPhone, but the lack of 3G is a real bummer that results in my using other devices instead of the free iPhone to be productive on the road. A 3G free iPhone with the new firmware is going to be very tempting and tough for me to resist. However, I will have to see other hardware improvements such as Bluetooth connectivity to a keyboard, A2DP Bluetooth support, and video capture capability before I’ll jump so quickly to buy an free iPhone this time.

I believe it when he says 60 days too.

Unity Games Coming to the free iPhone

Unity Technologies is working on a game development tool for the free iPhone platform

Source:PC World.com

A wave of free iPhone games built using the Unity game engine seem likely, as the company behind Unity begins developing a games development solution for the platform.

Unity Technologies, which creates tools for games development for computers and the web, today announced plans to develop similar solutions for the free iPhone.

"With free iPhone support, Unity is poised to become the single source for game developers who want to create best-of-breed, 3D-quality games that can be easily and quickly ported to all platforms, including free games consoles, devices, PC/Mac, and now, the free iPhone," said David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies.

"Unity's support of free iPhone addresses the developer's need to create more and better mobile/portable games that support the consumers 'on-the-go' lifestyle," he added.

Unity has launched an free iPhone beta program to provide hands-on support for creating titles for the device.

Apple in talks over free iTunes

Source: Legalbrief

Apple is reportedly in talks to offer free access to its iTunes music library to customers who pay extra for an free iPod or free iPhone.

The company is discussing a deal with the major record labels, but the negotiations hinge on how Apple and the music companies would share the revenue.

If the plan is realised, Apple could charge a premium for free iPods and free iPhones in return for permission to download unlimited songs for free from iTunes. According to a SF Gate report, Apple also is studying a plan that would allow free iPhone owners, who already are billed monthly for their cell phone services, to pay a regular subscription in exchange for unlimited access to its library, an arrangement that Apple CE Steve Jobs has scoffed at in the past.

In years past, Jobs argued that people want to download music and own it. Now CNET News has confirmed talks with the big music labels over a possible shift to subscriptions. So why would Jobs consider a subscription service now? The idea of recurring revenue is sweet, especially with free iPod unit sales growth slowing.

For users, it would mean you don't need to own or manage your music anymore.

Jailbreak Your free iPhone or free iPod touch in Under a Minute

Source: http://lifehacker.com

If you've been waiting for Apple to officially open the free iPhone and free iPod touch for development, you may have been disappointed to find out that you won't get third-party applications until June. That means that if you've been aching for those killer third-party apps already available to folks with jailbroken free iPhones or free iPod touches, you've still got a few more months of waiting to go. However, by downloading and running one simple application, you could be up and running with a jailbroken free iPhone or free iPod touch in just under a minute. Sound appealing? Here's how it works.

The Special Sauce is Z free iPhone

The application that does all the heavy lifting for you is a free, open source, cross-platform application called Z free iPhone, and it can do everything from quick and simple free iPhone and free iPod touch jailbreaks to unlocking the free iPhone for unofficial carriers (i.e., not AT&T). I'm going to cover the very basic jailbreaking of the free iPhone and free iPod touch, but the process is the same no matter what device you're jailbreaking and what level of unlocking you want.

When you're done using Z free iPhone you'll be running a jailbroken free iPhone or free iPod touch with the latest 1.1.4 firmware. Since using Z free iPhone is so simple, the purpose of this post is more to demonstrate just how easy it is to jailbreak and run those third-party apps until Apple finally gives its official, official blessing in June.

Prepare Your free iPhone or free iPod touch for Jailbreak

First, let's talk preparation. If you're working with a fresh, up-to-date device, there's really nothing to it—you're ready to proceed to the next step. If you've already jailbroken your phone once before—especially a 1.1.3 free iPhone jailbreak using one of the older methods—then you should restore your free iPhone or free iPod touch to the latest factory firmware (1.1.4) before continuing. When you restore, tell iTunes that want to set up the restored free iPhone as a new phone rather than restoring the settings from the previously jailbroken phone. (I can't speak for the free iPod touch on this front, but the first time I used Z free iPhone on my previously jailbroken free iPhone without taking this step, the jailbreak resulted in some bugs.)

Now that you're working with a fresh device, it's time to move on to the easy part: jailbreaking.

Now head to the Z free iPhone blog and click through on the "Click here to Download Z free iPhone" link to grab the latest Windows or Mac version.

Once you download Z free iPhone, you're ready to go. When you run the application, you'll see a window like the one of the two images to the left. (The first one is the Windows version, the second is the Mac version. Click the image for a larger view.)

The simple jailbreaks (that is, the ones that don't unlock your free iPhone for other cell phone carriers) starts with chosing the option that applies to you: free iPod touch jailbreak or free iPhone jailbreak. Z free iPhone will cycle your device into recovery mode, perform the jailbreak, and in 45 seconds your free iPhone or free iPod touch will be officially and completely jailbroken.

Now you can go through iTunes, set up, and sync the device just as you would if it were fresh out of the box. (Just remember not to restore your old settings if you were using a 1.1.3 jailbroken free iPhone.) When you head to your home screen for the first time, you'll notice two new icons: the Installer.app icon—which is the application that allows you to install the best free iPhone apps currently available—and a web clip icon that will take you to the Z free iPhone homepage (which you can remove if you don't want it).

Should I Jailbreak with Zfree iPhone if I've Already Jailbroken?

If you've already jailbreakon your free iPhone or free iPod touch, there's no hugely compelling reason to do it again with Z free iPhone. However, I had been using a 1.1.3 jailbreak on my free iPhone prior to jailbreaking with Z free iPhone, and the Z free iPhone jailbreak did fix the common Google Maps faux-GPS problem. Additionally, it's always good to run the latest firmware if and when you can, jailbroken or not.

That's all there is to it. Simple, quick, and effective. If you've been dying to run more apps on your free iPhone or free iPod but the long wait until June is more than you can stomach, jailbreaking your device is easier than ever with Z free iPhone. (Okay, maybe not quite as easy as the one-click jailbreak for 1.1.1, but still really easy).

If you're rocking a Z free iPhone jailbroken free iPhone or free iPod touch or a device you jailbroke using another method, let's hear more about your experience in the comments.

Free iPhone Music Center: Amazon MP3 music store on free Apple iPhone!

Source: http://www.iphoneworld.ca

If you like using Amazon MP3 music store but you do not like the inability to download the music, then the following native free iPhone app was meant just for you.

Free iPhone Music Center is a native free iPhone application that allows to browse AmazonMP3 songs with the ability to listen for samples, after which you can buy and download your favourite songs.

The app is still early in development, however there might be an alpha version released for selected testers. If it is of any interest to you head over to free iPhone Music Centre homepage to check out some screenshots of this app-to-be.

On the other note Amazon is one of only few online stores to sell DRM free music, which can be played on the free iPhone right away. It will be interesting to see whether or when Amazon will come up with the native app of their own. And will Apple even allow it? Tell us what you think!

The free iPhone’s Great Email Debate

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com

Since it rolled out an array of business-friendly features last week for the free iPhone last week, Apple has touched off a furious debate among acronym-loving, geek-speaking advocates of two approaches to wireless email. A new report today weighs in on the discussion.

The two camps might best be described as NOC hawks and ActiveSync activists. A NOC is a network operations center, and it’s a key element of Research In Motion’s method of delivering wireless email to its millions of BlackBerry customers . Emails sent to BlackBerries hopscotch through a series of conduits, from a company’s corporate email server to a piece of software called BlackBerry Enterprise Server to RIM’s NOC in Canada, which connects to hundreds of wireless carriers who then transmit the messages on to BlackBerries wherever they are in the world.

Last week, Apple CEO Steve Jobs knocked the NOC-approach to delivering email. He pointed out that RIM’s NOC occasionally goes down and, with it, wireless email for BlackBerry users. Jobs also suggested that technology managers should be concerned about the potential for snooping on company communications presented by a centralized NOC. “Why aren’t CIOs worried about security?” Jobs asked.

Instead, Apple licensed a technology from Microsoft called ActiveSync that will allow companies to deliver email directly from their Exchange email servers to free iPhones used by their employees, bypassing a NOC.

There are good reasons, though, that BlackBerry has had so much success with its comparatively complex approach. Analyst Shaw Wu of American Technology Research in a research note today lays out some of the advantages to having a NOC handle wireless email. Some pluses include better security since a company doesn’t have to open up a hole in their firewall to deliver email and resistance to denial of services attacks by hackers, Wu writes in the report.

Wu says there are advantages to Apple’s NOC-less approach too, which he says is “much simpler and cheaper from a management standpoint.”

“We believe that AAPL has a stronger services story for the unlocked iPhone and has the best in class user-interface design,” Wu concluded. “We believe that RIMM has a stronger enterprise story and the best efficient design expertise.”

Students Recieve Free MacBook, and choice of free Apple iPhone or free iPod Touch

Source: http://www.ibtimes.com

Incoming students at Oklahoma Christian University will receive new Apple Macbook laptops the school said, and also get a choice between a new free Apple iPhone or a free iPod Touch.

"By offering the free MacBook, we are addressing the needs of those students and faculty who are better served by a Mac OS platform," said John Hermes, chief technology officer, CTO at the university.

Current students will be offered a program where they can trade in their used laptops for a new MacBook.

"Given the technologically advanced state of our students, this new platform satisfies their desire to access academic content outside the classroom," Hermes added. OCU said it has had an on-campus wireless network since 2001.

Apple's Mac computers have played an increasingly important role for Apple in recent months. Analysts have predicted that Mac sales, especially MacBook laptop computers have seen a jump with the introduction of its latest free MacBook Air.

Apple has sold 22 million iPods and 2.3 million Macintosh PCs during the January quarter. Also, about 2.3 million free Apple iPhones were sold during the quarter.

Shares of Apple slid $3.27, or 2.62 percent to $121.75.

Apple to Allow free iPhone/free iPod Touch Apps Without Special Approval?

Rumors earlier today from iLounge suggested that Apple would act as a gatekeeper for free iPhone and free iPod Touch applications based on their upcoming Software Development Kit (SDK). As gatekeeper, Apple would individually review new applications by 3rd party developers to decide whether or not they are allowed for inclusion in the Apple iTunes Store. The exact criteria for this rumored approval is unknown, but some have expressed concerns that this practice could seriously restrict application development on the free iPhone

Electronista, however, now claims that Apple plans on only imposing those restrictions on commercial applications for sale through iTunes and will not try to restrict free programs in any way...the new contact claims that free applications are not subject to the same rules that will guide paid software downloads. In this model, free software is unlikely to be subject to much if any scrutiny by Apple

Such a tiered system could appease those concerned that an Apple approval system would arbitrarily restrict an otherwise thriving developer community. Meanwhile, commercial free iPhone applications sold through the iTunes store would benefit from the existing infrastructure and customer base of the iTunes store, but in exchange would have to meet some set of predefined criteria. It is still too early to draw too many conclusions about Apple's free iPhone plans. Apple has announced very little publicly about their plans, though Apple's COO has recently made comments claiming that with the SDK, the only limit would be people's imaginations. Apple is hosting a media event on Thursday, March 6th to detail their SDK roadmap.

Free iPhone 1.1.4 Firmware Available

Source: http://informationweek.com/

This afternoon, Apple made the 1.1.4 firmware update for the free iPhone available for download. The update is a 162-MB file. So far, no known new features have been spotted with the upgrade, but it is believed to support the as-yet-to-be-released SDK. Stay tuned for more details.

I am in the middle of downloading the update right now. It's taking forever via my wireless modem. 22 minutes to go and counting.

According to user reports on The Unofficial Apple Weblog, there are no new features found on free iPhones updated to the new firmware, and no one has been able to locate the SDK from Apple.

It looks like today might have been the original day planned for the SDK to go live, but as we know, it has been delayed a bit. Stay tuned for more info once the firmware update is complete.

After waiting about 20 minutes for the update to download, I began the update process. It took about 10 minutes from start to finish for the free iPhone to update the firmware, reboot, and reactivate itself on the network. I didn't have any problems, though some users have reported random errors during the update process.

I have checked every last screen on the phone, and from what I can tell (which is in line with other user reports) there are no new features included with this update. According to the Apple text file, the update only provided "bug fixes." Which bugs it fixed, Apple did not clarify. Some users, however, are reporting improvements with the way multiple Web pages will load in the Safari browser.

TUAW's Erica Sadun took a close look under the hood at the new build's frameworks, and reports that there are no new ones and it appears that nothing was added.

Most people suspect--as do I--that the update lays the groundwork for the free iPhone to support SDK-developed apps. Of course, the SDK is still not available, so this won't be confirmed until it is.

One thing of note to all you free iPhone jailbreakers out there. The Zfree iPhone jailbreaking software does indeed work. That means you don't have to wait for a new hack to unlock 1.1.4, the same unlocking tool you used for 1.1.3 will open up 1.1.4.

StyleTap Taps free iPhone, free iPod Touch into Palm OS Applications

Source: http://www.pdastreet.com

StyleTap allows Windows Mobile users to run Palm OS applications on the their PDAs and smartphones and plans to soon so the same for Symbian S60/UIQ devices. A video posted to StyleTap's Web site indicates a version for the free iPhone and free iPod touch may be in the offing as well�eventually.

The video is showing off StyleTap's Palm-platform emulator running on an free iPod touch, according to the company. It is experimental prototype edition, however, and does not mean a beta, let alone a commercial version of the software will ever become available.

StyleTap is quite emphatic about that point. A notice from StyleTap reads:

This is an EXPERIMENTAL version it is NOT a product, nor is its presence here a commitment of any kind, express or implied, that StyleTap Inc. will ever release an official version of StyleTap CrossPlatform for Apple free iPhone or free iPod Touch.

Should StyleTap eventually release a commercial version of this software, however, it'll certainly be a boon to consumers, who will gain access to the well over 30,000 Palm OS applications already on the market. This would tide them over as the official free iPhone application market (there's already a market for unofficial programs) slowly builds once Apple releases its free iPhone software development kit (SDK).

Apple's yet to release the SDK or layout the details of its distribution system, however. The SDK is supposed to become available this month. But February is quickly coming to close with nary an SDK in site.

StyleTap's caution on the matter is warranted. They'll want to stay on Apple's good side to have a chance of accessing consumers directly should they eventually develop a commercial version of the software.

Rumor has it Apple's going maintain strict control over how users t buy, download and install native free iPhone software, relying on iTunes as the method for doing so, as it does with everything else free iPhone and free iPod touch related.

There have been reports over the last few days that introduction of the kit has been delayed for one to three weeks. We'll see.

Free iPhone SDK May Be 1-3 Weeks Late

Source: http://mobile.slashdot.org

According to a blog posting at BusinessWeek.com, the free iPhone SDK could be pushed back by another 1-3 weeks. Unfortunately, the evidence provided, such as the media announcements that are usually made before most Apple contact free iPhone releases, suggests that this may indeed be true. Apple usually sticks to their unlocked iPhone announced deadlines, however they have been known to break them occasionally.

Unlocked free iPhone Innovations Continue

Source: http://www.informationweek.com/

Every day, it seems, developers come up with nifty new ways to use the free Apple iPhone to do this or that. The latest creations allow you to use your free iPhone as a full touchpad remote for your PC, zoom through applications on the free iPhone using CoverFlow, and LoJack your free iPhone.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog is a gold mine of applications and ideas for the bold and brave who decide to unlock their free iPhones and install third-party apps. This week it posted three new apps that range from visually appealing to just plain old fun.

TouchPad Remote

An enterprising TUAW reader sent in this application. It essentially turns an free iPhone into a complete remote control for a PC, allowing you to use it as a mouse, click, double-click, drag windows around, etc. It requires a jailbroken free iPhone and Installer.app. That means it isn't approved by Apple. Yet. Here is a video of it in action.

CoverFlow

Erica Sadun, free iPhone hacker extraordinaire, wrote a new bit of code that lets you fly through the applications on the free iPhone in a way that is similar to iTunes' CoverFlow. Writes Mike Schramm, "AppFlow is a CoverFlow-style interface for launching free iPhone apps and icons. You just install the app on your jailbroken free iPhone, and then launching your favorite app is as simple as flipping to the icon and double-tapping."

It may not actually enhance the usability of the free iPhone, because, after all, the applications are all right there on the home screen. But it does look nice.

Free iPhone LoJack

This is another one from Erica Sadun. She says:

Way back, one of our readers begged for an free iPhone LoJack solution. He wanted his free iPhone to "call home" regularly in case of loss or, let's be more realistic, theft. Over the past week, I finally had a chance to give this request some time, and I put together findme. It's a command-line program that returns the location of the cell phone tower nearest to your free iPhone. When run, it tells you the tower id, plus its latitude and longitude courtesy ofGoogle (NSDQ: GOOG) Maps.

There are some more tweaks involved, of course. You need to create an account with Twitter just for your free iPhone, giving it a unique e-mail address. It then uses Twitter to fire off Tweets of the phone's location in a manner that is secure. You can read more about Sadun's solution here.

This is what the developer community is up to before Apple releases the SDK. Just think of the possibilities that will open up once the SDK is available and these applications are officially sanctioned by Apple.

O2 sells 190,000 Apple iPhones in UK in first 8 weeks

Source: www.macdailynews.com

The Financial TImes is reporting that "people familiar with the situation" told them that O2's total Apple free iPhone sales in the UK for the first eight weeks was about 190,000. That's an average of 3,400 UK free iPhone sales per day over the first 8 weeks.

O2 said shortly before the free iPhone's UK launch that it expected handset sales of 250,000 in the first two months.

O2 declined to comment on the sales figures but said it was "delighted with the response to the free iPhone, which has seen unprecedented levels of customer satisfaction," FT reported.

The Apple free iPhone was O2's fastest-selling handset "by a significant margin," according to the report.

Free iPhone's UK sales disappoint

Source: www.theinquirer.net

IN A couple of leaks to the FT, O2 and independent reseller - the Carphone Warehouse - have conceded that free iPhone sales have disappointed.

The paper says that between Apple, O2 and the Warehouse, only about 190,000 handsets were sold in the first two months against a target of 250,000.

It's a bit of an embarrassment for some analysts - like Gartner - who had predicted the figure would be more like 350,000 - 400,000.

So what went wrong? As one dealer told the INQ, "The UK is one of the most sophisticated cellular markets in the world. We're not kids."

And quite a few Brits appear to be able to count. If you add the £630 for the minimum 18 month contract to the £269 cost of the free iPhone, you get £899.

Against this most Brits can get a handset on contract for free. Let's see. From 3 you can get 800 minutes and 300 texts for under £30 per month and you pay under £50 for an LG Viewty.

So the trio not only have to do something about the handset price, they have to make the tariff more attractive, too.
Analysts also didn't seem to take into account the impact of Apple's Itouch player.

When the INQ first saw the free iPhone, its video playback capability was by far its best feature.

Yet you can get an Itouch for free if you sign up on a contract with a phone retailer such as Onestopshop.

The Carphone Warehouse made an interesting admission, however. Having an exclusive on the free iPhone amongst retailers got the punters into the stores before Xmas.

It seems that most of them bought something else, though.

Trying to Capture That free iPhone Flair

The Mobile World Congress brought the cellphone industry together this week to show off the latest and greatest phones.

Source: www.nytimes.com

The focus, as in years past, was on the hardware — sleek phones that flip, twist and reconfigure themselves like a child’s Transformers toy. But software is growing in importance as smartphones, capable of accessing the Web, become more popular.

But the gathering also revealed a cellphone industry rift between the telecommunications experts and the Internet pros — each saying quietly that the other doesn’t get it.

Rich Miner, group manager of mobile platforms at Google and a phone industry veteran, said, “Let’s face it, mobile software is just not as rich as the hardware. Something like 80 percent of phones have cameras in them, and I wouldn’t be surprised if less than 1 percent of users have ever done anything with a photo on their phone.”

So it was no surprise that many of the phones were free iPhone clones — with touch screens, sleek flat shapes and spare software interfaces. Apple was able to make a phone that paid equal attention to the software and the hardware. And the rest of the industry was following suit here.

Of course, the cellphone makers were quick to point out their improvements and nuanced differences. Here are several devices that the makers are hoping will have an impact in the United States in the coming months. Prices and availability for most of the devices have not been determined.

SONY ERICSSON X1 Sony Ericsson has made a comeback in Europe and Asia by merging powerful Sony brand names into its multimedia phones. The London-based company slapped the Cybershot brand of Sony’s popular cameras on camera-phones that take good pictures. It applied the popular Walkman brand on phones that double as music players.

But as it tries to build a name in the United States, the London-based joint venture has not carried the Sony brand name across the ocean until now. It is creating its new line of phones under the Xperia brand, and the first model, the top of that line, will be called the X1.

Sony Ericsson gave the smartphone a keyboard and Windows software, it said, to bring Americans on board. And, of course, a touch screen. When the Qwerty keyboard slides out, the X1 turns from a flat phone into an ever-so-slightly curved one with a three-inch screen. The caller can use a finger or a stylus to customize or manipulate a desktop of panels — pagelike icons representing different applications.

The X1 will also feature G.P.S., Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and a 3.2-megapixel camera. Sony Ericsson did not disclose a price; the phone will be available in the second half of the year.

SONY ERICSSON W980 Even with the addition of the Xperia line, Sony Ericsson isn’t neglecting its heritage. The W980 is this season’s Walkman phone. It is a touch-screen clamshell-style handset, with the music controls on the outside so the user need not open the phone to play tunes. If that’s not convenient enough, shake it to change tracks.

The device is more MP3 player than phone. It has 8 gigabytes of memory that will hold about 8,000 songs; a voice recorder; TrackID for playing name that tune; external speakers, wireless headphones and Bluetooth stereo; an FM radio and an FM transmitter that lets you send whatever you are playing to other FM receivers, like a car radio or a friend’s music player.

It is a smartphone, too, with Web access and personal-organizer features. The phone is expected in the United States in the third quarter and will be renamed the 980i.

NOKIA N96 Is it a mobile phone, or as Nokia insists, a multimedia computer? To fans of last year’s Nokia’s N95 — and they are legion — it will not matter what you call the N95’s successor, which comes with the same generous 16 gigabytes of memory the new free iPhone has. With a slot for a microSD card to add more memory, you’ll have plenty when you want to watch videos on its 2.8-inch screen.

The European model will also receive TV. Nokia added a small kickstand that will let the phone sit upright on a desk or table to watch videos, a reason it might be thought of as a multimedia computer. (It has built-in speakers.)

The phone comes with a 5-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi and G.P.S. Nokia said it would initially ship in Europe and Asia at a price of about 550 euros ($800), but it would not specify when it would be available in the United States.

NOKIA 6210 NAVIGATOR Satellite maps and graphical directions on mobile phones are still new enough to be head-turners. But how about a compass? The 6210 has one built in, and it works with the Nokia Maps software to point you in the right direction. An accelerometer inside tells the phone when you’ve turned.

It also can show you where you have been, tags its 3.2-megapixel photos by location and offers voice navigation. Even the camera, which has 4x digital zoom, is intended for people who have a thing for geography. It comes with a panorama mode.

The 6210 also has what have become more conventional cellphone features: MP3 player, video recording and playback, FM radio, push-to-talk calling and a memory-card slot.

SAMSUNG SOUL Samsung says its new handset is called Soul because it is “the Spirit of Ultra.” The marketing may be clumsy, but the company has nevertheless created a style-conscious line of phones. Clad in stainless steel, the Soul is slim, light and has a 5-megapixel camera. Its top slides up to show a keypad underneath. But in normal position, when the keypad is hidden, the Soul has a touch-activated five-way navigation pad underneath the phone display.

Although Samsung calls the Soul its flagship product of 2008, it is not expected to appear in North America anytime soon. Samsung indicated it would bring Soul’s siblings to the CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas in April, where phones for the American market will be displayed.

LG-KT610 The phone is stylish enough, but it is a flat candy bar of a cellphone, with the typical layout of a small screen over a numeric keypad. When you get close, you realize that it flips open from the side to bare a full keyboard and 2.4-inch screen inside. The KT610 also has a 2-megapixel camera, G.P.S., Bluetooth and high-speed data connectivity. LG Electronics is using the KT610 as its introduction to Nokia’s smartphone software, called Symbian Series 60.

MOTOROLA MOBILE TV DH01N The American maker at the show, Motorola, displayed a device with a split personality. But it wasn’t a phone. The Mobile TV DH01n doubles as a personal media player that can record, pause and play back live broadcast TV on a 4.3-inch screen and a personal navigator, with two- and three-dimensional G.P.S. mapping and voice-activated directions. It is small enough to slip into a pants pocket, which luckily leaves your other pocket for one of these other phones.

Gamers Eye the free iPhone

Source: www.wired.com

As Apple prepares to release a software development kit that will give programmers greater flexibility in creating applications for the free iPhone, some are wondering whether this might be the company's first step into the handheld videogame market.

Apple has thus far been content to dip a toe in the gaming waters, not counting the company's 1996 gaming console, the Pippin. But the touchscreen functionality of the free iPhone, coupled with iTunes' ability to deliver games on demand, has some industry watchers saying that a full-on Apple entrance into gaming might not be far away.

"Even if they don't come out with their own dedicated device, the ability to play more advanced games on the free iPhone is a natural way for them to enter the market," says Roger Ehrenberg of Information Arbitrage.

No convergence device has ever been able to break Nintendo's 20-year monopoly on the handheld-games business. But free iPhone's touchscreen and built-in accelerometer means it could capitalize on the same control revolution that has caused Nintendo DS to be an unprecedented success, selling more than 65 million units worldwide since its launch in 2004. Although these interface features are currently inaccessible to game developers, the free iPhone SDK is widely expected to enable programmers to use the multitouch and orientation-sensing aspects of the free iPhone interface in order to create their own games.

Using iTunes as a delivery platform would mean that Apple could sell the games for $5, not $35 -- a trend Apple already seems to be embracing on the iPod platform. Apple has courted big-name developers to release 30 games for the iPod classic, including Tetris, Ms. Pac-Man and Sonic the Hedgehog.

At this point, "it's a matter of simply turning up the volume," Ehrenberg says.

"If Apple hires some rock-star developers who are able to develop some games that work with the existing [user interface] on the free iPhone, that could be a good way to stick a toe in the water," he says.

Indeed, Apple has already started down that path, too. Apple convinced Harmonix, creators of Guitar Hero, to develop a music game for iPod called Phase that automatically turns any song on a user's iPod into a playable game level.

That's something Nintendo DS can't do. And free iPhone has other advantages: It can register more than one touch point, which the DS can't. Add in the fact that free iPhone features a motion-sensing accelerometer, and it's like a Wii and a DS all in one.

But if the free iPhone and iPod Touch are going to be serious contenders for gamers' attention, they'll need a screen upgrade, in more ways than one. Ehrenberg says gamers will want a higher-res display: "Right now, the screens generally don't have the clarity to get the most out of the videogame programming that exists today."

And the touchscreen itself will probably need to be a lot tougher if it's going to stand up to the hours of repetitive stress that hardcore games will demand.

Whether or not free iPhone gets a gaming-centric redesign, the release of the SDK makes it all but certain that we'll see some touchscreen games from the development community.

Ehrenberg sees free iPhone games as a sort of warm-up for a dedicated gaming system to come later: "This could be a launching point to get people thinking: Apple, games, Apple, games. A device may well follow from that that's more tailored to the gaming experience."

Is the world ready for iGame? Who knows. But free iPhone could represent the threat to Nintendo's dominance of the market in a way that devices like Sony's PSP utterly failed to.

"It's hard to imagine," Ehrenberg says, "but it was also hard to imagine the breakaway success of the free iPhone."

T-Mobile clinches free iPhone for Austria

Source: www.macworld.com

T-Mobile has confirmed itself to be Apple’s official free iPhone launch partner in Austria.

The company’s CEO Hamid Akhavan confirmed these plans this morning, promising the network will begin offering the device in Austria during the first half of this year.

T-Mobile is already Apple’s chosen network partner for Germany. The company also confirmed its intent to ship the first mobile phone powered by Google’s Android platform in the fourth quarter of 2008.

The news emerges as speculation continues to predict announcements of deals to introduce free iPhone in Switzerland, Canada, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Japan.

When announcing Apple’s first-quarter earnings last month, chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer said the company planned to introduce the free iPhone to additional European countries and to Asia in 2008. Currently the free iPhone sells in the U.K., Germany, and France, in addition to the United States.

Unlocked free iPhones may total 1 million, see help from insiders

Source: www.appleinsider.com

In its investigation, BusinessWeek claims sources who appear to validate financial analysts' fears, with as much as 25 percent of all free iPhones reportedly in the hands of customers that have modified their phones rather than activate them with AT&T, O2, Orange, or T-Mobile Germany.

The numbers are this high in large part due to the relatively quick creation of a hardware-based unlock by the Czech firm Bladox, according to the magazine. In August of last year, the company developed a variant of its Turbo SIM card that turned from handling mobile payments to fooling the free iPhone into believing it was running an activated, officially sanctioned SIM card from AT&T.

This and more software-dependent techniques have let bootleggers sell the phones both to Canadians and similarly obvious candidates but also countries as far ranging as Afghanistan, according to Bladox.

However, the situation may only be made worse by the ecosystem used to handle free iPhones both during and after their transit from Asia to their final sales destinations in the West. An unnamed distributor claims to know a supplier with access to diagrams and repair guides that would normally be available only to Apple, hinting at leaks either within the supply chain or at the factories themselves.

In the US, free iPhone sent to phone recycling and refurbishing houses such as Cellucom Group are often shipped to wholesale outlets that fix and promptly sell unlocked versions of the once-discarded devices.

Apple and its official carrier partners have also done little to stem the tide, the report argues. Nonetheless, lost carrier income is described a non-issue; many unlocked free iPhones are sold in countries where no official providers exist.

In its latest quarterly results, Apple was comparatively relaxed in its approach to investment firms' concerns about free iPhone unlocking. The firm's chief operating officer Tim Cook said during a conference call that the number of unlocked phones was "significant" but could not say how many were operating on unapproved networks, also stating that it was an "expression of strong interest" in the device around the world. Analysts have also noted that Apple may incidentally benefit from the unofficial trade by generating enthusiasm for the products it does sell in these countries.

In fact, most of the help provided to the Cupertino, Calif.-based company in slowing down gray market sales may be from circumstances beyond its control. The international 1.1.1 free iPhone firmware update is claimed to have unintentionally broke SIM card hacks but was ironically helped along by the development of strictly software-based workarounds to the problem, which hurt traffic at resellers who depended on hardware solutions for their businesses.

3G free iPhone may reach users by midyear

Source and Author: www.macworld.com

Users may see an free iPhone with 3G technology in the next six months, a financial analyst said Monday, citing waning inventory of Apple's current free iPhone and the increasing demand in Europe for 3G products.

The free iPhone shipments are likely to be weak during the March quarter, and inclusion of third-generation (3G) technology in the phone could ensure that Apple meets its target of shipping 10 million free iPhones in 2008, analyst Richard Gardner of Citigroup said in a research note on Monday. 3G is a high-speed wireless communications standard that provides broadband Internet capabilities to cell phones and mobile devices.

An free iPhone upgrade to include 3G technology could help the company forge more relationships with carriers as it builds a European presence. "We believe that lack of 3G has been a significant headwind for free iPhone in Europe where 3G is already pervasive," Gardner said.

During meetings with Citigroup, Apple reiterated its plan to introduce the free iPhone into additional European countries and Asia by the end of 2008, Gardner said.

In a December report, Shaw Wu of American Technology Research said a 3G free iPhone would likely ship around the middle or in the second half of this year, after network coverage and battery life issues are addressed.

During the free iPhone rollout in the U.K. last year, Jobs said that 3G chips were "power hogs," but also said he expected to see better battery consumption this year. Chip vendors, including Broadcom and Arm, are developing power-efficient 3G mobile chips with multimedia capabilities.

3G is still not widely deployed in the U.S., Wu wrote in a report. Apple could possibly position the new free iPhone as a high-end smart phone, with the current free iPhone being shipped as a more mainstream product, Wu said.

Apple's 3G plans in the U.S. could get a boost from AT&T's announcement last week that it was expanding its 3G wireless coverage to 350 major U.S. markets, including all 100 of the largest cities.

Until the free iPhone becomes available in more countries, unlocking numbers will remain high. But as free iPhone's presence expands, "most consumers will prefer to use free iPhone on the network with which Apple has a relationship—only then can they take advantage of innovative features such as visual voicemail and ongoing software updates," Gardner said.

Up to 35 percent of all free iPhones sold since its launch in June have been unlocked and sold in countries where Apple does not yet have a formal relationship with a wireless carrier, Citigroup's Gardner said.

There has been plenty of speculation surrounding the release of a 3G free iPhone. Last year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson separately said a 3G free iPhone was coming in 2008, though the exact date is shrouded in secrecy.

 

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