Author Archive: Gareth

O2 May See Up to 30,000 iPhones Returned as Price War Begins

UK wireless carrier O2 is bracing itself for what may be up to 30,000 returned iPhones as recent customers send back their iPhones to wait for better deals from rivals Orange and Vodafone. Per The Telegraph, the 30,000 customers that bought the iPhone from O2 within the last two weeks are therefore entitled to end their contracts. O2 has stated the company is not planning to offer such users a better deal in order to convince them not to cancel their contract.
O2 customers with iPhone 3G handsets are already waiting out the end of their long contracts, and will join the others in a search for the cheapest iPhone 3GS deals.

Paid apps hitting Palm Pre today

The release of webOS 1.2 got all of the stars aligned for a barrage (or, at the very least, a trickle) of paid applications to start hitting the Pre, and the word on the street is that the first of those will be dropping tomorrow, October 2 — for users in the US, anyhow (Canadians apparently need to wait a while longer, a problem that Android users up there are all too acquainted with). The company will smartly be tying purchases to users’ Palm Profiles, meaning you’ll be able to redownload previously bought apps on any device you choose as long as your account is currently tied to it. Of course, the big question is what apps will be available to blow some cash on in the first round of Catalog approvals — what’s everyone hoping for?

[Source Engadget]

Nero Mediasync to work with Motorola Cliq

Are you familiar with NERO? They are the company made famous by their butt-kicking software that burned mix CDs. Fortunately or unfortunately depending on who you are and how old you feel, that was a full decade ago. So what is the company up to now? Creating software for the Motorola CLIQ that helps you sync all your media and other goodies to your PC of course!

In an article I spotted on ArsTechnica they reveal that NERO makes a product for handset manufacturers called MediaSync that allows users to connect their phones to their computers and enjoy an awesome syncing experience. But is it true? Where are their sources? What is this “MediaSync” you speak of? Knowing you would ask me these questions if I just reposted the same stuff, I went straight into the Dragon’s layer (Nero.com).

If you check out the section called “Business Solutions” and drill down to the “OEM” section of that page and scroll alllllllll the way to the bottom you’ll find the following blurb about MediaSync on the Nero website (scroll to the bottom):

iPhone customer satisfaction high, Android lagging behind

It’s hard to gauge customer satisfaction with mobile phones with any real accuracy. There will be lemons among the devices that hit the market and how well the user knows how to use the device will also affect the satisfaction. A new survey from the CFI Group has ranked mobile phones by customer satisfaction.

According the survey the iPhone has the most customer satisfaction at 83% and Android is tied for second with the Palm Pre at 77% satisfaction. The Blackberry sits in third with 73% satisfaction.

Rounding out the list is Palm Treo with only 70% satisfaction and other smartphones OS’ with 66% satisfaction. It’s worth noting that AT&T score lowest in customer satisfaction among the major wireless carriers.

[Original Story: Android Community]

Kind of odd that Windows Mobile must be resigned to the ‘Other’ section unless it’s counted under Palm Treo.

BASIC for iPhone released to app store

Long time ago, back when the coolest thing in store, was a Commodore 64 some games were released in source code of BASIC language. You want to relive it on your iPhone with a legal app from an app store? Now you can:

EyeTV for iPhone by Elgato – released

We are suckers for watching TV on computer. In that way taking screenshots is easy and you don’t have to turn your head too much while working on the computer. Now we are using USB box from Hauppauge Inc to suck on DVB-S signals from Astra 28.2 satellite. However this satellite offers now also DVB-S2, i.e. HD TV, so we were searching for new box and we have found one at Elgato – a company specialized in making TV sticks and boxes for Mac. Fortunately that DVB-S2 box works for Windows (drivers provided) what cannot be said about EyeTV app for iPhone, that just has been released:

… because you need a Mac with Elgato TV stick or box to watch live TV remotely! Too bad. Anywho, here is more information about this app:

SPB Mobile Shell 3.5 review

A welcome update to one of the best enhancement to your Windows Mobile phones arrives today. Pleasingly, the software adds several updates to an already brimming feature list.

SPB Mobile Shell has always been one of the best looking Today Screen replacements for Windows Mobile. The combination of a slick interface and some light, handy shortcuts led for a much more pleasing user experience. Each incarnation improved greatly upon the last and this update is no slacker.

Vodafone all over the iPhone too

After the news that Orange were now in Apple happy little iPhone garden, Vodafone has joined the club too. I can’t imagine there being any too big of a price war but the prices will easily trounce anything else in Orange and Vodafone’s catalogue

We look forward to any for of price war as these developments unfold.

2 billion downloads from Apple app store

It’s app store, stupid! Yeah, iPhone owes its huge success mainly to the existence of app store that offers at this moment (i.e. today) 87 thousand apps – free and commercial ones. However Apple app store is big not only with regard to number of apps offered in it, but also with regard to sales and downloads. Apple writes: