Archives for June 2010

The iPhone 4 launch was last week and the same day of launch revealed a few problems with the reception whereby if you hold the phone in your left hand, it bridges the gap on two antennae making the signal drop in bad coverage areas.

The Fake Steve Jobs twitter announced that an iPhone 4 recall would probably happen and by doing this the Daily Mail in the UK decided to report that the iPhone 4 was being recalled to fix the reception issues. The problem here is that on Twitter, the Fake Steve Jobs account, AKA ceoSteveJobs is labelled as being a parody account as seen in the Bio in the sidebar…

Bio I don’t care what you think of me. You care what I think of you. Of course this is a parody account.

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Samsung is doing well with getting carriers to sign up to the new Galaxy S class smartphones. Already today we’ve reported that the Samsung Epic 4G (Galaxy S Pro) is headed to Sprint and that the Samsung Vibrant (Galaxy S) is heading to T-Mobile US.

Now Verizon is getting a new Galaxy S class smartphone. On Verizon [VZ] it will be called the Samsung Fascinate and will pack all the same features such as a 1GHz Samsung Hummingbird chip, a Super AMOLED 4 inch display and a 5 megapixel camera capable of capturing video at 720p HD. [Read more…]

The Apple [AAPL] launch of the iPhone 4 appeared to be a huge success last week in terms of how many units were shifted. Over 600,000 pre-orders were taken on day one with Apple stores having large queues of people wanting to collect the new smartphone.

There have been reports of people dropping and smashing the glass on their new phones though, so iFixit has decided to upload a handy repair manual for the iPhone 4 to help users fix their own phone rather than sending it off to Apple (if warranty doesn’t cover the breakages).

iFixit uploaded 10 step-by-step guides which cover the following repairs… [Read more…]

T-Mobile has announced that it will be offering the Samsung Galaxy S. On the T-Mobile network it will be known as the Samsung Vibrant and launched July 21 on to the network.

When launched the Samsung Vibrant will come with Avatar pre-loaded on to the 2GB memory card as well as a collectors edition of a game. Amazon Kindle for Android is also pre-installed on the phone allowing you to easily grab books for reading while on the go.

The technical specs show that the Samsung Vibrant will have a 4 inch Super AMOLED display that has a high resolution. A 1GHz processor is to be found inside also built by Samsung (Cortex A8 Hummingbird Application Processor). Also a six-axis accelerometer can be found inside that detects movement on the phone for games and screen orientation. [Read more…]

The latest Amazon [AMZN] Kindle app for the iPhone and iPad brings embedded video and audio to certain books. The first books that take advantage of using embedded media includes Together We Cannot Fail by Terry Golway amongst a handful of others.

“We are excited to add this functionality to Kindle for iPad and Kindle for iPhone and iPod touch,” said Dorothy Nicholls, director, Amazon Kindle. “Readers will already find some Kindle Editions with audio/video clips in the Kindle Store today–from Rose’s Heavenly Cakes with video tips on preparing the perfect cake to Bird Songs with audio clips that relate the songs and calls to the birds’ appearances. This is just the beginning–we look forward to seeing what authors and publishers create for Kindle customers using the new functionality of the Kindle apps.”

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The HTC HD2 runs Windows Mobile 6.5. That’s a problem because the hardware is amazing but the software just isn’t that good at all when compared to the likes of Android and iOS.

The guys at XDA Developers have been working a while on getting Android OS on to the HTC HD2, but due to incompatibilities and other problems they have been unsuccessful… that is until the last few days where some good progress was made.

Reasons for the problem include the Snapdragon processor and HaRET which is used to boot Linux from Windows CE devices. When HaRET was used in the past, it basically crashed on the HD2 making it impossible to get Android on to the HD2. Patches have been made though which allow HaRET to run without crashing. [Read more…]

It seems like the Samsung Super AMOLED screen is in short supply forcing HTC to start looking at S-LCD screens manufactured by Sony and Samsung in a joint venture.

From what we understand the HTC Desire, HTC Droid Incredible and Google Nexus One will soon be supplied with one or the other type of screen. From the tests HTC performed the company says that there isn’t really any difference that regular users will notice although somehow it seems they will need to notify customers some how to what type of screen is to be found in the phone. [Read more…]

TechnoBuffalo Managed to get hold of a prototype model of the BlackBerry Curve 9300 to give it a quick test. The smartphone it’s self has yet to be announced.

The prototype currently runs BlackBerry OS 5 but will hopefully ship with OS 6 when launched.

Changes on the Curve 9300 show that it has an optical trackpad, flush control buttons as well as media controls on the top. A new volume rocker is also to be found on the side. [Read more…]

Many reports have come out since the launch of the iPhone 4 the other day saying that the device loses or drops most of the signal when holding the phone in a particular way. This is something we have seen ourselves and simply happens when bridging the gap on the bottom left of the device.

The response Apple [AAPL] has provided in the last couple of days ranges from advice to hold your iPhone 4 differently to blaming it on the network carriers side.

Rumours are now indicating that the problem could actually be fixed with a software update that could arrive as early as Monday. Around the internet, the reports seem to blame it on the construction of the antennae which basically use your body to bridge the gap between the two. This bridging the gap might not be the real cause of the problem and more of a symptom of a problem within the software that handles connectivity to networks. [Read more…]

Best Buy has announced that they are now (as of today) offering the Motorola DROID X on pre-order.

The Motorola DROID X became official just a couple of days ago and will be available to buy as of July 15.

“With the buzz we’ve seen around the Android platform, Best Buy is confident that consumers will be thrilled about the Verizon DROID X by Motorola pre-sale,” said Scott Anderson, senior director of merchandising at Best Buy Mobile. “It has been a great summer for smartphones with the HTC EVO and iPhone 4 launches, and the addition of the DROID X adds another strong option for our customers to consider.”

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RIM are launching two new phones before August this year it is believed. One of the two BlackBerry devices will be a slider.

It isn’t know what two devices are launching just yet, but we suspect they will run BlackBerry OS 6.0.

Other information reveals that 11.2 million phones have been shipped according to their latest quarterly financial report. That’s 11.2 million phones in a 3 month period which is 43 percent up from this time last year. [Read more…]