Archive for: iPhone 3G
O2 has had the exclusivity for the iPhone since launching in the UK back in November 2007. Now that is set to change with Orange announcing its plans to sell the iPhone very soon.
A news release this morning states:
Orange UK and Apple have reached an agreement to bring iPhone 3G and 3GS to Orange UK customers later this year. Orange globally now offers iPhone in 28 countries and territories.
Orange, which has the largest 3G network covering more people in the UK than any other operator, will sell iPhone in all Orange direct channels including Orange shops, the Orange webshop and Orange telesales channels, as well as selected high street partners.
This is great news for consumers who are interested in getting the iPhone but didnt want to switch to O2. A pre-registration site for customers to register their interest has been launched at www.Orange.co.uk/iPhone. More information on pricing, tariffs and availability dates is set to be released “in due course”.
Reuters reports that ten top mobile phone manufacturers, including Apple, have agreed to adopt the Micro-USB connector standard for smartphone chargers in the European Union. The shift, planned to begin next year, will allow smartphones from the companies, which control 90% of the market, to use the same charging cables. Apple currently uses a proprietary dock connector compatible with both the iPhone and iPod touch.
The chargers will be usable only for data-enabled phones, which have more capability than just standard calls and SMS texts. Data-enabled phones are expected to account for almost half of all new mobile handset purchases in 2010.
The Commission hopes that as people discard their old handsets, within three to four years all data-enabled phones in Europe will be using standardized chargers.
The plan also calls for new phones to be sold with Micro-USB chargers for a period of time before ultimately selling phones and chargers separately in order to allow customers who already own chargers to continue using their existing ones. While the agreement extends only to European phones, it is expected that the standard will make its way into phones around the world as companies attempt to keep their design and manufacturing costs streamlined.
One user on a French forum posted that the overheating is “Unbearable” and the “phone much be shut down” as soon as it switches to EDGE instead of 3G or GPS is in use.
Indeed, it seems like things are heating up over the new iPhone but not in a good way. Reports are springing up all over the internet of people having a scorching hot iPhones in their pockets, seeing red traces around the lithium battery and even fearing the device may catch on fire.
One user said “I have a black 32 GB 3GS and recently I experienced overheating when I was using GPS. Every time I use GPS it somehow overheats, however mild it may be. But in a region where 3G is out of reach and phone switches to Edge, the overheating is unbearable. You must shut down the phone”
For what is now the most well-known smart phone in the world, Apple needs to resolve these complaints about their lead product quickly. When things like this occurred with other manufacturers such as Dell and Toshiba due to overheating caused by Lithium batteries the companies were highly embarrassed, lost sales and had to write checks amounting to tens of millions to fund a gigantic recall of the faulty products in question.
So far, from what I can see it is the GPS, Internet and Battery that are having the blame placed on them. Others are also saying that the root cause of it all (if indeed this is as widespread of a problem as it’s made out to be) is that the new OS on the 3G S has poor power management.
Whatever the cause, Apple better hop to it to smooth this one over quick to either fix the problem or assure customers that no such problem exists. If this catches onto the mainstream consumer radar iPhone 3G S sales may plummet.
One of the most anticipated features in the recent release of iPhone OS 3.0 was the inclusion of push notifications. Apple’s comprimise to not allowing background apps, I think most, myself included, were skeptical at how this would turn out. Well a few days after the OS was officially launched applications started appearing having been updated to take advantage of this new feature.
Tap Tap Revenge was first, however I want to skip past that and move on to 2 apps which will possibly benefit the most from push notifications. AIM andBeeJiveIM.
AIM
Now with Push Notification, AIM® lets you stay even more connected with the people you care about right on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Communicate whenever you want, wherever you are. Connect with friends and family and keep track of status, location, and presence updates in real time
AIM comes in two different flavours: the free, ad support version and the paid, ad free version for $9.99. Now i’m not a big AIM user so I tool the free version for a test drive and with the notable lack of landscape mode in the free version, there wasn’t much of a difference the sponsor ads never got in the way as is often found in ad supported apps which totally winds me up!
The main issue with AIM is the user interface, it just felt a bit small?! It was hard to read the messages and the navigational menus weren’t asintuitive as they really should have been, but on the flip side the push notifications did exactly what they said on the tin! AIM keeps you signed in forupto 24 hours after exiting the app (you can set the timeout in the prefs , if you can find them!). Should you receive an IM whilst out of the program you get the nice little pop up similar to the text message alert. Although it did show a preview of the IM which I couldn’t find a way of switching off unlike you can with text messages.
Unfortunately for me I know one person who actually uses AIM so after a few messages to them I was bored, now I’m not sure how popular AIM really is for me MSN/Live messenger has always been the IM of choice, which brings us very nicely onto the next app!
BeeJiveIM
Stay connected to all your instant messaging buddies anywhere you go! BeejiveIM (pronounced \bē-hīv\ IM) keeps you in touch with your friends on AIM®/MobileMe®, MSN®/Windows Live®, Yahoo!®, GoogleTalk®, Facebook, MySpace, ICQ® and Jabber… all at the same time, all on your iPhone or iPod Touch.
Like the old saying goes, you get what you pay for! And I have to say this is worth every penny! For only $9.99 this app really does do it’s developers proud. With support for multiple IM protocols and multiple simultaneous accounts this was one of the most impressive things I have seen come out of the App Store since iPint (haha).
It has a really lovely UI fully in keeping with the iPhone OS and has full support for landscape mode which is nice, the chat screen is similar to the iPhone own messaging app although feels like you have a bit more space. I was moving around town shopping and the app seemed to cope rather well dipping from 3G to EDGE to public WiFi and when it did loose connection a handy popup on the screen told me about it.
This I would say is definitely the app to go for if you are looking for a comprehensive IM client for iPhone, and the push notifications seem to be really working! The true test will be if the Apple systems can cope with millions of pointless apps all using push notifcations in the future. The only thing I did notice was a slight decrease in battery life which I mention, but am not entirely sure if is related.
Conclusion?
Is there really one? Push notifications work there is no doubt, but going past IM clients what else can be done with them? I’m holding out for a better push email system, yeah I like my mobile me account but I want push on all my mail! Let’s have a nice Blackberry App for iPhone! Then we will really see what push on the iPhone really can do!
All of us with an iPhone or iTouch know the addiction of downloading applications. For those of us with the 1-click purchase mode have probably found ourselves just clicking away before we realize we’ve spent some major money on what we think are useful applications.
For the rest of us that don’t have that luxury and are happy to play with free apps, perhaps this site is for you. AppGiveaway is a site that offers you promo codes to get iPhone apps for free or at deeply discounted prices. This is a great site to be introduced to apps that perhaps don’t get a lot of press, or get lost in the shuffle. The site introduces its readers to unique games, productivity apps, financial apps, etc.
Give the site a try and explore what they offer. I won’t say every app they offer promos for are worth it, but it’s a matter of introduction and taste, what works for me may not work for you, and vice versa.
Give it a try and let us know what you think!
Previously we have wrote a bit about upgrading and downgrading your Apple products. Today we wanted to run through the steps of downgrading your iPhone 3.0 firmware to 2.2.1.
Connect your iPhone to your Mac or PC and select your iPhone from the list of devices in iTunes. If iTunes does not detect your iPhone then you will need to put it in DFU (Device Firmware Upgrade) mode.
You can follow these steps to put your iPhone in DFU mode (this is required only if iTunes does not recognize your iPhone):
* Connect your iPhone to your computer.
* Turn iPhone off.
* Hold power and home together for 10 seconds (exactly).
* Release power but keep holding home until the computers beeps (observed on a PC) as a USB device is recognized.
* A few seconds later iTunes should detect your iPhone.
Browse the Summary Tab, For Mac user Hold down Option and press the “Restore” button. For Windows user hold down Shift and press the Restore button. Now you will be able to browse the folder where you have the iPhone firmware.Select the firmware & hit the restore button and cross your fingers for 5 minutes.
If you get error message like 1011, 1013, 1015, just ignore them(Actually the firmware 2.2 is already successfully installed). Fire Quickpwn 2.2.1 and jailbreak your iPhone use this guide
But if you encountered with error message like 1601, 1602, 1600 or anything else then try putting the iPhone into DFU mode and try again.
If you have an Unlocked iPhone then use pwnage tool to make a custom firmware then enter DFU and restore / downgrade to 2.2.1 if not works in first time done it again n again.
Apple has announced today that they have reached the 500 million download mark for iPhone / iPod Touch applications from their appstore.
It has been reported by Mashable and TheNextWeb that the 300 million download happened on December 5th, thus more than 200 million downloads have happened in the last 5 weeks. For Apple these are some very impressive stats and it just shows their push just within iTunes. Currently their are approximately 15,000 apps available in the Apple App Store, and im sure this will rise very quickly. Compare the App Store success to iTunes when it first began, because iTunes took almost two years to hit the 500 million download mark.
Image via CrunchBase
Users of the iPhone have long been looking for ways to utilize their powerful mobile phone as a portal to access internet from their laptops. Most cell phone by the major providers make it it possible to tap into the phone’s network and access it through the user’s laptop. Unfortunately the iPhone was never given such an ability so it fell to the development community to create their own applications.
It was not long that homebrew applications were created to tether the iPhone to a laptop, but Apple heavy handedly shut down the application and refused to support such an application, more because of the contract with AT&T rather then outright unhappiness of what the application did. Still, when the iPhone was “jail broken” tethering became an option and users were frantically trying to share the information with the masses and get them on board in support of jail breaking the iPhone. Apple turned around and said that no Apple store or mail location would support an iPhone out of service due to a botched jail break attempt. Such attempts would be consider a breach of agreement and null and void any support from Apple.
Until now most non-tech savvy users were unawares of jail breaking an iPhone and simply settled for the inability to link up service with their mobile computers. Until now…
The Announcement
On Thursday Nov. 6th, AT&T Mobility Chief, Ralph de la Vega announced that users of the iPhone 3G would be able to tether their phones to their laptops and use them as modems for internet service. The remarkable service will not be available until 2009, but users were left wondering just how it would be implemented, and how much it was going to cost.
Reports state that AT&T was afraid to offer tethering believing that the major influx of users would bring down the network, and thus frustrate customers from purchasing an iPhone. What they failed to realize is that customers were finding work arounds, and even while Apple was shutting applications like NetShare down for providing modem compatibility, AT&T remained deaf to user’s needs.
Information on Apple’s and AT&T’s tethering option became available six days later with costs of $30/month and a 5GB cap on data usage being the key release information. Already users of iPhone with bloated bills are complaining about the cost saying that applications like NetShare are offering their services free of charge. Why would you pay $30 if you know a tried and true app can provide you the same service for free? That seems to be a question AT&T won’t answer for now, but the real question is if tethering is now legitimate, will NetShare be allowed to offer its alternative on Apple’s App Store?
Still, to AT&T’s benefit, after acquiring Wi-Fi provider Wayport, the network is boasting another 20,000 locations to access the network. Could AT&T become successful in having iPhone users pay the monthly fee for the benefit of tethering. With so many access points now added to the already expansive network, only time will tell.
Some hot news for those of us that have with held buying an iPhone (all 2 of you). Word on the street is that Apple has had an excellent 4th Quarter, and with sales of iPhones surpassing previous estimations, there is some wiggle room when it comes to price.
The iPhone which currently resides in an exclusive contract with AT&T, sells for $199 with contract. Millions and millions of people jumped on board with the first iPhone came out, and the second generation was just as popular. With over 15 million iPhone sold worldwide, it has dominated the mobile market. Outstanding sales have given Apple a cushion in case the current economic downtown starts to effect sales, they can afford to drop the price of the iPhone to $99.
What would a $99 iPhone do to the market? For starters, with such a low barrier to entry, the iPhone will clearly bleed further into the consumer market, even those on the fence would be tempted to purchase, and the market dominance would only leave true niche mobile companies like Blackberry able to withstand the onslaught.
Conjecture? Possibly, but only time will tell. Get those Christmas wish lists ready and stay tuned for more info!
It’s a known fact that mobile devices in Japan are just better, plain and simple. Doubt me? Mobile devices in Japan have been proven to be years advanced their stateside counterparts. For years now mobile devices, especially cell phones, have been able to receive TV, music, take photos, etc. Just as we attempt to close the gap, the Japanese take their phones to another level of increasing the quality of picture and audio, but also increasing the use of these devices. Phone overseas have been able to scan items for pricing for years already, and they’ve also been used as debit cards and train passes.
So what does Apple and Steve Jobs plan to provide for their customers in the Land of the Rising Sun? Well…nothing. While units were expected to hit sales of 1 million units, when all is said and done they will be lucky to have sold 500,000. Not good. Apple’s offerings with the iPhone just don’t compete with the already existing high end phones that are available to both the consumer and professional market.
Released just over three months ago, the iPhone which saw explosive sales the first few weeks of release has taken a drastic nosedive. Selling out immediately on July 11th, with lines of people ready to purchase is the complete opposite of the sites now, where sellers stock their windows with iPhones, promoting specials, and looking for ways to move the inventory with little to no luck.
Since Apple could not wow them with their song and dance, what will it take for Apple to break into the Japanese market? We saw similar experiences when Microsoft released the first iteration of the X-box, which impressive sales at first, but then falling off the charts. Steve and Co. might need to go back to the drawing board for our eastern friends and think of a plan to counter an already established market.
Apple fans generally sit on the edge of their seats days before Apple makes announcements regarding new products, new updates, or a new direction. More often than not Apple never fails to wow the crowds in taking the lead with innovation and design, but for some reason a large number of reports are saying that today’s announcements at the “Let’s Rock” event were nothing more than a yawner.
Personally I feel that fans have become accustomed to drastic announcements, or for lack of a better word, world changing technology, but sometimes its the little things that make what we already have just that much better. Here’s a run down of the announcements from today:
- For starters the iTunes application received a nice upgrade. The biggest is the addition of the Apple Genius. No, not the guy at the Apple store, but rather back end programming that serves as a personal DJ for your iPod. Genius uses data loaded on the Apple server and in turn working with the iTunes on your computer to find great matches to your already expanding playlist. Let Genius do the audio matching and see how accurate to your taste it really is.
- Apple has also made up with NBC, and now the two are best friends…for now. NBC is re-releasing their material for now with hits like The Office and 30 Rock available in HD for only $2.99 per episode. Other shows and networks will soon follow, but having HD quality on the iPod is an interesting addition, better get those lines ready for downloading overload!
- The iPod Touch got a much needed update along with a decent price drop. Sleek, new design, similar to the iPhone 3G now makes the iPod Touch more curvy and easier to handle. It’s new thinner design makes it easy to carry and comes with built in Nike+ software for the runner in you. The pricing for the new iPod Touch is as follows, $229 (8GB), $299 (16GB), and $399 (32GB)
- Finally the Nano got a new design. I admit when the Nano went short and squat I did not think I would be a fan of that version, and when I got my wife one I found myself using it more than her. The design grew on me and I became accustomed to it. I’m not sure what happened behind the scenes, but apparently there was enough of an uprising that the Nano has gone back to it’s long narrower design, but kept the same screen real estate. Like it’s larger counterpart, the new Nano comes with it’s own built-in accelerometer. They also come in much more bolder colors which reminds me of a pack of Now or Laters.
According to reports stock fell just over 3% after the announcements were over providing support that investors as a whole were underwhelmed by Apple’s announcements. Sad really, while expecting ground breaking news, Apple delivered some solid additions to iTunes, and price drops and re-designs for other products. I think this holiday season will see an increase in iPod Touch sales, and don’t be surprised when you see those brightly colored Nanos flying around either.
Photo Credit, Apple, Inc.
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