Author Archive: Gareth

Little iPhone pic that made me smile

iPhone 4 Bumper Giveaway to Cost $175 million

To sort out the antenna problem with the iPhone 4, Apple is giving away free bumpers to all iPhone 4 owners. But as they don’t just appear out of thin air, Apple is going to set aside $175 million of iPhone 4 revenue in the September quarter, according to Apple’s CFO Peter Oppenheimer during the Q3 earnings conference call. But as in the same conference call they reveiled that they earned over $15 billion, shelling out $175 million for iPhone cases, won’t be too much of a catastrophe for Apple.

The $175 million might seem a huge amount for normal people like us, but compered the $1.5 billion Apple would have to pay for a full recall of the iPhone 4 as some industry analysts are predicting, giving away free cases is a much better option for Apple.

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You Can No Longer Buy a Nexus One :(

A couple of days ago, Google announced that they had just received the last shipment of Nexus One’s. But today, Google has just sold out of Nexus One’s on it’s online store. The Nexus One was the official Google developer phone and was wildly known as one of the best handsets out there, even though it did not catch on outside of the geek community.

However, as we said a couple of days ago, the Nexus One will still be available through Vodafone in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and here in the UK with a contract of course. So you can get the Nexus One if you really want it from Vodafone, but you better hurry, as they will stop selling them when they run out of stock.

There is only one thing to say. Nexus One, we will miss you.

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The Kin is Now Totally Dead

Nobody can say that they’re particularly surprised about this one. As the US carrier Verizon, has just confirmed that they are no longer going to sell both Kin phones and they are going to be returning them back to Microsoft. Who themselves just threw in the towel on the Kin project at the end of last month. We are told that all existing Kin’s will work as Microsoft is keeping the back-end services running. But as so few Kin’s were sold, I wonder how long this will continue to happen. This phone was meant to be released here in the UK later this year, but because of this monumental fail by Microsoft, it is safe to say that we will never see it coming across the pond.

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HTC Desire HD specs rumoured

Sadly no photos of the elusive beast as of yet (that’s the original Desire pictured above), but the guys over at SuperETrader have some rumoured specs to go along with a rumoured October launch date in the UK for the HTC Desire HD (previously known as the HTC Ace). Just have a look at these specs and it’s a logical set for HTC to capitalise on the Desire’s success.

• 4.3 inch WVGA Touch Screen
• 8 Megapixel Camera
• 1 GHZ Qualcomm Processor
• Android 2.2 OS
• HD 720p Video Capture
• Xvid Video Playback
• SRS Surround Sound
• Automatic Face Tracking
• Adobe Flash 10.1 Support
• 4GB Internal Memory (up to 32GB)
• E-book Reader Feature
• Unibody Aluminium Design

HTC Fights Back to Apple’s Claims

At Apple’s press conference on Friday, Steve Jobs showed 3 phones that had the same antenna problems as the iPhone 4. This made Nokia and RIM retaliate to what Steve Jobs said about their phones. (Read here) But the third phone shown was the Droid Eris, and this had the most drastic drop of signal. It went straight from 4 bars all the way down to 0 bars.

HTC have not acted like Nokia and RIM to Apple’s claims, but they have given a percentage of the people calling technical suport about the Droid Eris’s antenna problem. Apple claimed that 0.55% of customers called AppleCare about the antenna issue but HTC is claiming that the Droid Eris technical support line received only 0.016% of people calling about the antenna issue. About thirty-four times lower than Apple’s claim.

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RIM and Nokia Not Happy with Apple

At yesterday’s press conference, Steve Jobs defended it’s iPhone 4 antenna issue by saying that all smartphones had this problem and by showing several devices from Nokia, HTC and RIM having the same problem. Now as you can expect, you wouldn’t be very happy if Steve Jobs bashes your device on stage, so RIM and Nokia have retaliated to what Steve said yesterday and they are not happy.

RIM:

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

R.I.P Nexus One

Widely believed  to be the best phone among the geek community, the Nexus One is coming the end of its life. As Google is no longer going to make its own Android handset and they have just received its last shipment of handsets. The Nexus One never really caught on outside of the android and geek community, even though it is a great handset and probably the one of the best phones available at the moment.

However, Google will keep selling them in the UK through Vodafone, and through KI in Korea. But in N.America, it will no longer be available unless you are a registered Google developer, then you can get it through Google’s partners. It will still be the official Google developer phone and it will still get the latest Android OS before any other phone.

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Apple Offers Free Cases!

Today, at Apple’s press conference about the iPhone 4 antenna problem, Steve Jobs explained everything that was wrong with the iPhone 4.

Steve began the keynote by saying that their phones aren’t perfect. But then continued saying that the iPhone 4 was the biggest phone launch ever and that the iPhone 4 has the highest customer satisfaction rating of any any smartphone.