Author Archive: Gareth

O2 bites the hands that feed it, but not mine!

So after all the excitement of yesterdays iPhone announcements, O2 the exclusive Apple partner for the iPhone in the UK has destroyed the buzz for all current iPhone 3G subscribers. To upgrade my iPhone 3G to the new iPhone 3GS I have to pay the remaining 6 months of my contract off then sign a new 18 month contract and pay a minimum of £175.00 for the 32GB flavour.

So lets do the maths, 6 x £45.00 + £175.00 would give a cost to upgrade of £ 445.00 or at today’s exchange rate $717.00.

I understand that a contract was signed for 18 months but as a loyal O2 customer they could offer a little sweetener to help the early adopters, twitter is awash with complaints aimed squarely at O2’s twitter presence and so far they have patronised us with poor responses.

I have now made my decision and it has been hard to come to, I will not be upgrading to the iPhone 3GS it’s just not worth the money and I cannot bring myself to commit any more of my hard earned money to a network that obviously does not understand it’s customers or the old adage that a new customer costs 3 times more to win than to keep an existing one.

And don’t even get me started on tethering charges, £14.68 for 3 Gig or £29.36 per month for 10 Gig, not bad when your already paying for unlimited data as part of your iPhone contract.

So the iPhone killer never appeared as hardware but actually from one of it’s supposed allies #02Fail

TomTom for iPhone announced at WWDC

Peter-Frans Pauwels, TomTom’s co-founder and CTO, demonstrated TomTom’s navigation software in combination with a specially designed car kit on the iPhone- during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco on June 8th, 2009.

The TomTom solution combines two new TomTom products to provide users with state of the art in-car navigation on their iPhone 3G:

• The TomTom navigation application for iPhone; an Apple version of TomTom’s award-winning turn-by-turn navigation software, including IQ Routes and latest maps from Tele Atlas;
• The TomTom car kit for iPhone; a specially developed car kit for secure docking, enhanced GPS performance, clear voice instructions, hands-free calling and in-car charging.

The TomTom navigation application for iPhone will be available via the Apple iTunes App Store, following the release of Apple’s OS 3.0 operating system. Details regarding pricing and availability for both the application and the TomTom car kit for iPhone will be made available in advance of the products’ launch later this summer. Marketing Video after the break.

iPhone 3GS specifications

Physically the new iPhone 3GS is the same size as the previous iPhone 3G which is a good thing if your planning an upgrade, but it has had a few updates, nothing that mind blowing to be honest but we now have the addition of an auto focus 3.0 megapixel camera with tap to focus, video recording, VGA up to 30 fps with audio, digital compass, data speeds up to 7.2mbps, voice control and increased battery life. Full specifications after the break.

O2 iPhone 3GS pricing announced

And its not very good, especially if you are a current iPhone 3G subscriber your going to get stung. Basically there is no upgrade path and to upgrade you have to pay off the remainder of your current contract before you can upgrade. Then you have to sign up for a further 18 or 24 month contract and pay again for the iPhone 3GS, not a great deal.

Pay as you go pricing comes in at £342.50 for the original iPhone 3G 8Gig, £440.40 for the 16 Gig 3GS and a whopping £538.30 for the 32 Gig.

So are you upgrading ??

Apple Announces the iPhone 3G S, The Fastest, Most Powerful iPhone Yet

SAN FRANCISCO—June 8, 2009—Apple® today introduced the new iPhone™ 3G S, the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet, packed with incredible new features including improved speed and performance—up to twice as fast as iPhone 3G—with longer battery life, a high-quality 3 megapixel autofocus camera, easy to use video recording and hands free voice control. iPhone 3G S includes the new iPhone OS 3.0, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system with over 100 new features such as Cut, Copy and Paste, MMS*, Spotlight Search, landscape keyboard and more. iPhone 3G S customers get access to more than 50,000 applications from Apple’s revolutionary App Store, the largest application store in the world where customers have already downloaded over one billion apps. iPhone 3G S offers twice the capacity for the same price with a 16GB model for just $199 and a new 32GB model for just $299.** And beginning today, iPhone 3G is available at the breakthrough price of just $99 for the 8GB model—a huge milestone for the high end smartphone market.

WWDC come and join us to discuss

Well today is the day that 3 million new iPhones will be announced, well that is if you believe the ridiculous amount of rumours flying around at the moment, but seriously WWDC kicks off in a matter of hours now and all will be revealed, will we get OS 3.0 today, a new iPhone with video or should that be the iPhone 3GS, come and join us in the iPhone Docked chat room at 10am PST to discuss everything as it happens. See you there.

You can also follow the keynote events at any of the following sites who will be live blogging all the details:-

Engadget 

Gizmodo

MacRumors

GDGT

The iPhone Blog

HTC Rosie, TouchFlo 3D for Android

We have heard a few rumours that HTC were developing a version of TouchFlo 3D for their Android handsets and it looks like they were true. Phandroid have uncovered some screenshots of this new UI which is named Rosie and it all points to this being a big part of the HTC announcement on the 24th June.

You can drag your finger along an arc at the bottom of the screen in a similar fashion to TouchFlo 3d. If you look at the images you can see the arc at the bottom with phone in the centre. You will also notice a small button on top which you use to drag to a different screen. Of course you can just swipe as well. The contacts app is almost exactly the same. You can see the contacts emails and sms messages etc. Take a look over at Phandroid for loads more screenshots and thanks to Macs for the info.

Opera Mobile 9.7 beta available for download

Opera Mobile 9.7 beta is now available for download. We first showed Opera Mobile 9.7 at CTIA in late march, but we needed some time to stabilize and test the new Opera Presto 2.2 core version.
The big news in this release is Opera Turbo. Opera Turbo is a server-side compression technology that compresses data up to 80% before it is sent to the mobile phone. Opera Turbo speeds up your browsing experience significantly when you are on a low bandwidth network (like EDGE). You will however not notice such a big effect when you’re connected through WiFi or a high-speed mobile network. You can turn on Opera Turbo in the advanced section in the browser settings. Opera Turbo for Opera Mobile is still a preview feature, and we appreciate all feedback.

Download the browser here.

via Opera Blog Picture via msmobiles

Windows Live Mesh ad shows Windows Mobile 7

Having a browse on Youtube today and I came across this new ad for Windows Live Mesh. Nice system however looking carefully at the video you can see Windows Mobile 7 running on a Touch Dual  style device. Interesting… video after the break.

Review: World Cup Ping Pong Lite for iPhone

Here we are reviewing free version of Ping Pong game for iPhone made by Skyworks – a company established and run by people who established Acitivison. Skyworks is making games with huge attention to detail and maximal realism of playback.