On June 23rd, the day the Apple iPhone 4 started to get delivered and see criticisms of antenna problems, Apple [AAPL] posted three jobs on their website asking for Antenna Engineers for the iPhone and iPad.

It isn’t clear if Apple posted the job openings in response to the criticisms received, or if they just happened to be posted the same day issues were found. [Read more…]

One of the new features of the iPhone 4 is the built in gyroscope that brings a new level of control to the phone. iFixit along with Chipworks have decided to open up the iPhone 4 and look at the gyroscope in detail. As the gyroscope is digital, it’s a little different than the 3-axis spinning disc that you might have seen in the past.

The gyroscope inside the iPhone 4 is described as having superb accuracy. They work by vibration and when movement is detected the vibration is translated electronically and passed to the iPhone 4. [Read more…]

HTC EVO 4G owners yesterday started receiving an OTA update for their smartphone that fixed a few issues. Issues fixed seem to be related to screen performance, battery performance and wireless connectivity performance. However, in some cases some users were seeing their EVO 4G being bricked… ie, dead.

Some of the people updating had modified their phones which can sometimes cause a problem. However, owners of unmodified EVO 4G’s were also seeing problems with their handsets being dead after the update was performed.

The update has now been pulled off line and wont be back till the problems are identified and the update is safe to re launch. [Read more…]

For those who have an iPhone 4, the biggest worry is dropping it. Due to the tension on the back sheet of glass and no real protection it easily shatters. Gresso has created a luxury back cover for the iPhone 4 that is made of 200 year old African Blackwood along with 18K gold detailing. The back cover aims to make your iPhone 4 look a little different although it isn’t clear if the wood used is a replacement or cover for the current glass used.

Either way, it should add a little bit of protection to your iPhone 4.

Two versions are being created. The first is for women and contains an Apple logo in 18K gold along with Swarovski crystals. This version costs $3500, so dropping it really isn’t an option anyway. [Read more…]

The iPhone 4 has quite an amazing camera for a smartphone. It’s both responsive and can capture HD video at 720p. Mixed with iMovie, you have an amazing HD video editing package.

The movie below was captured and edited with only an iPhone 4 for the camera and editing tools. The video is captured in HD 720p and was edited and uploaded to Vimeo in HD.

Many people have been skeptical of this, and whilst the iPhone 4²s video camera feature seems pretty good, we didn’t think it would be capable of shooting and editing a movie in good enough quality until we saw this short film by Michael Koerbel called ˜Apple of My Eye An iPhone 4 film.

[Read more…]

Just a few weeks back when Apple [AAPL] announced the iPhone 4 the Apple website made mention of iWork for the iPhone. This information was quickly pulled and replaced with iBooks. Rumours started at that point hinting that we might see the iWork Suite hit the iPhone.

When visiting the iPhone UK site now and pre-ordering an iPhone 4 you are presented with several options to add to your purchase. One of those is for Apple care and when you click on the Learn More link, you are presented with the screenshot found below which indicates iWork for iPhone 4 is indeed coming. [Read more…]

Google [GOOG] just rolled out Android 2.2 Froyo to the Nexus One yesterday. HTC are now working on launching Android 2.2 Froyo on to the HTC Desire, Legend and Wildfire although it appears the update wont be available till Q3 this year.

“We are working hard with our partners to update the HTC Sense experience on Froyo [2.2] and distribute it to our customers as fast as possible. We expect to release updates for several of our 2010 models including Desire, Legend and Wildfire beginning in Q3.”

[Read more…]

When Apple [AAPL] announced iMovie, it was released as an iPhone 4 only application. If trying to install the official version on the the iPhone 3GS or any other iOS 4 (other than the iPhone 4) device it simply doesn’t work.

If you have a jailbroken iPhone 3GS though, you can now actually get it to run by making a modification to the info.plist file. There are two changes that can be made to get it working on a 3GS. The first is to make a change to the front facing camera and simply set it to false. This allows it to work on iOS 4 on the 3GS. The other option to get it working on iOS 3 is to change the minimum system version to 3.0.0 which also forces it to work.

According to those who have tried it appears that it works fine despite the lower amount of RAM available. Something to note is that it does not work on the iPad if making these modifications which could be related to having no camera at all possibly. [Read more…]

After a few false starts it appears that the Google Nexus One is finally getting the Android 2.2 FroYo update OTA. Google [GOOG] made the official announcement yesterday.

The announcement mentions that Nexus One users will start getting the update as of yesterday as an OTA (over the air) update which can be downloaded and installed while on the move.

New features include the ability to run Adobe Flash 10.1, use your Nexus One as a wireless hotspot as well as benefiting from some performance increases. [Read more…]

According to iSuppli, the company who estimate the build prices of smartphones and other devices, estimate that the iPhone 4 16GB model costs $187.51 to built. This puts the build price at more than the DROID and more than the previous iPhone 3GS model. The screen is believed to increase the costs a little.

It is expected that the 3.5 inch Retina display costs $28.50 per unit with the A4 processor built by Samsung costing $10.75. The new Gyro chip costs $2.60.

Of course iSuppli wont know the full details of how much each screen costs as huge bulk orders need to be taken in to consideration and Apple [AAPL] will have worked with the suppliers to figure out a price. [Read more…]

For those using the HTC Hero in the UK, you should now be getting a notification that a new update is available for your Android smartphone. The update hitting the HTC Hero is Android 2.1 from Google [GOOG] which ends months of waiting for it to arrive.

The update is 79.88MB in size and it is recommended that you use WiFi to grab the update. If you haven’t received notification just yet then check out the system updates screen and perform a manual check for the update.

Coolsmartphone points out that the update seems to pause at around 75% but don’t worry as it soon after carries on after a short wait… so don’t attempt to reboot mid update if this happens to you. [Read more…]

Amazon has launched Amazon Kindle for Android OS based smartphones. To run Kindle on your Android device you need to be running at least Android 1.6.

Features on the Android version of Kindle are similar to those of the other devices in that the app syncs up to your Amazon account and allows you to sync books, bookmarks, annotations etc… so that reading a book on your Android phone and then switching to an iPad Kindle App will let you carry on reading from where you left off. [Read more…]