Phones

iPad delayed till end of May outside of US.

Apple have just sent out an apology to international iPad wanters stating that the availability has slipped from the end of April now to the end of May.

They are blaming the high popularity and demand in the US for the lack of stock causing this delay, I for one am not happy.

On a brighter note, hot on the heels of this news is that the iPad will not be sim locked and the three carriers in the UK that currently have the iPhone on their books will be offering micro Sim cards and dedicated data plans for the iPad, thats O2, Vodafone and Orange.

No details on pricing yet but they will be announcing more on the 10th May when you can actually pre-order the iPad.

Apple has approved the Opera Mini web browser for the iPhone

Stop the presses, something huge just happened in the App Store; Apple has approved a 3rd party web browser and added it to the virtual shelves of their all conquering app store! That’s right, the Opera Mini for iPhone app has been approved by Steve Jobs and co. and is now ready to be downloaded free in the app store!

We’ve been covering this story for some time, ever since we first caught glimpses of the Opera browser playing nicely with Apple’s iPhone back in February at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona. The browser, just like it’s various other incarnations for the various operating systems and Java enabled feature phones, compresses web pages by up to 90% offering lightening quick load times for web pages.

This compression not only drastically improves loading times but also lowers data costs as well, something that will come in handy for those who have switched their contracts to pay as you go in the run up to the inevitable launch of the iPhone 4G/ HD.

Palm seeing the error of it’s ways?

Given that O2 has sold the Palm Pre as successfully as you would a knife in the chest it’s nice to see Palm releasing the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus on dual networks in Germanland. Vodafone will hopefully give the little phones some much needed attention and will hopefully shift a few more than you could expect from O2.

One can only hope for a similar release in the UK and more Palm in more … paws. Honestly, I walked past the O2 store yesterday and there was a short queue of 3 at the Palm stand. On the other side of the stop was one person looking at the iPhone and two sales representatives explaining the great many things the iPhone could do. Never before was there a more glaring example of O2 dedication to the little Palm Underdog.

Motorola’s Android update calendar

Good news for all you rocking Motorola Android device’s, you can get an idea of just when to expect your 2.1 update. The European Dext might be the only one that will cause some growls, provided someone bought one. Did anyone?

The low-down on Project Pink

Microsoft today unveiled its "Project Pink" phones which are aimed at the growing social networking scene. The new phones are now known as the Kin One and the Kin Two.

The new Kin phones are based on a Windows CE core, sharing similar design themes, but not the full-fledged general purpose operating system capabilities of the upcoming Windows Phone 7 smartphone operating system.

The Kin phones will also naturally integrate with the Zune Marketplace which will serve up and music and video content — music can be streamed to the Zin One and Kin Two over Wi-Fi or 3G. However, if you’re looking for Xbox Live gaming — as seen in Windows Phone 7 — you’ll need to look elsewhere. And just in case you were wondering, there’s no support for third-party apps, Silverlight, or the ubiquitous Adobe Flash.

The Kin Spot, which is invoked by a green button on the keyboard, brings up a little green dot on the screen. You can drag status updates, photos, videos, and events to the Kin Spot and instantly share it with your friends via Facebook, email, MMS, etc.

The Kin Studio allows you to see your phone on the internet using any browser. Your contacts, photos, videos, text messages, and calendar events are all web accessible using a simple user interface. It also serves as a huge online backup database for your phone — so if your phone is lost, everything is easily restored from an online backup. Microsoft also sees the web as an extension of your user storage, so the 4GB or 8G of storage on the Kin One and Kin Two respectively shouldn’t really matter all that much to the end user.

The Kin One is a tiny phone with an equally tiny QWERTY keyboard that slides out from the bottom (portrait view). The Kin One features 4GB of internal storage, a 5MP camera (with LED flash), a mono speaker, and a QVGA screen. The Kin Two is a larger phone with a more traditionally-sized smartphone screen and a landscape keyboard. It features 8GB of internal storage, an 8MP digital camera, stereo speakers, and an HVGA display.

Both the Kin One and Kin Two feature 3G radios, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth connectivity. Verizon will be the exclusive carrier for both phone in the U.S. when they launch later this May. Pricing is not yet available.

Microsoft definitely thinks that it has an audience with these phones, but we can’t help but think that these two phones will end up being snapped up mostly by tweens and teenagers who’ll be texting away in class. That being said, it seems as though young adults (as pictured in all of Microsoft’s press materials and Kin video footage) would want a more full-featured phone like a Motorola Droid, iPhone, or Windows Phone 7 smartphone to carry around with them instead of something that is just geared towards social media

St John Ambulance launches First Aid iPhone App

St John Ambulance today officially launches a first aid iPhone app that could be the difference between life and death.  St John Ambulance research – also out today as part of a hard-hitting campaign to encourage more people to learn vital first aid skills – reveals that up to 150,000 people a year could be given a chance to live if more people knew first aid.

A simple application with a clear, attractive and intuitive graphic interface, St John Ambulance’s first aid app covers key major and minor emergencies and contains additional guidance on treating infants. The app provides advice on emergency situations such as choking, severe bleeding and heart attacks. It’s available for iPod Touch users too.

Press releases on the app and the research are after the break:-

The big Palm Job

There are still rumours running rampant that Palm is going to be taken over. First it was Lenovo, now its HTC. The latest rumours mention those two companies as potential suitors for Palm. According to Reuters, Palm’s stock soared earlier this week as investors covered short positions on renewed speculation that the smartphone maker might be an acquisition target.

HTC making Dual screen tablet

Looks like HTC has just filed a patent for a device that would feature dual touchscreens in a clamshell design. Many are comparing the device to the Microsoft Courier, a similarly dual-screened device, but the Courier would be lacking one key element that is sure to make its way on to this interesting HTC design: Android.

As you can see in the above image from the patent report, the device would open up across a central hinge to reveal two screens. Word is that one will hold the content while the other will make up a virtual keyboard, at least in some instances. There is no doubt that the device could be oriented as a book reader, with a page on each screen. If this isn’t in the plans, well, HTC is missing out on a golden opportunity. An eBook reader application on a device that actually opens up and looks like a book is something I would definitely be interested in. HTC could pull off something similar to the enTourage eDGe Dualbook and no doubt improve on the concept vastly.

While there is no confirmation on whether or not the device will run Android as of yet, given HTC’s loyalty to the OS and their pioneer-spirit for Google’s open-source system if they get the little green guy on this thing and we have a real winner.

[Source Techradar]

Apple Previews iPhone OS 4

CUPERTINO, California—April 8, 2010—Apple® today previewed its iPhone® OS 4 software and released a beta version of the software to iPhone Developer Program members. The iPhone OS 4 beta release includes an updated Software Development Kit (SDK) with over 1,500 new Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and over 100 new features that will be available to iPhone and iPod touch® users this summer. New features include Multitasking for third party apps; Folders to better organize and access apps; improved Mail with a unified inbox, fast inbox switching and threaded messages; enhanced Enterprise support with even better data protection, mobile device management, wireless app distribution and more; Apple’s new iAd mobile advertising platform; and iBooks, the delightful new ebook reader and online bookstore recently debuted on the iPad™.

“iPhone OS 4 is the fourth major release of the world’s most advanced mobile operating system,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re delivering over 100 new features, including multitasking, folders, a unified inbox, deeper Enterprise support, and an iPhone version of our iBooks reader and online iBookstore.”

iPhone OS 4’s new multitasking offers users a new way to quickly move between apps, and provides developers seven new multitasking services to easily add multitasking features to their apps. These services include background audio, so apps like Pandora can play music in the background, and VoIP, so VoIP apps can receive a VoIP call even when the iPhone is asleep or the user is running other apps. iPhone OS 4 provides multitasking to third party apps while preserving battery life and foreground app performance, which has until now proved elusive on mobile devices.

Folders help users better organize and quickly access their apps. Simply drag one app icon onto another, and a new folder is automatically created. The folder is automatically given a name based on the App Store category of that app, such as “Games,” which the user can easily rename. Using folders, users can now organize and access over 2,000 apps on their iPhone. Users can also create and manage iPhone folders on their Mac® or PC using iTunes® 9.2.

iPhone OS 4 delivers the best mail experience on a mobile phone with its new Unified Inbox, allowing users to see messages from all their email accounts displayed together in a single inbox. With just a few taps, users can quickly switch between inboxes to see messages from any single account. In addition, users can now thread their messages by conversation, making it easier to stay on top of email discussions, as well as open email attachments with compatible apps from the App Store. 

iAd, Apple’s new mobile advertising platform, combines the emotion of TV ads with the interactivity of web ads. Today, when users click on mobile ads they are almost always taken out of their app to a web browser, which loads the advertiser’s webpage. Users must then navigate back to their app, and it is often difficult or impossible to return to exactly where they left. iAd solves this problem by displaying full-screen video and interactive ad content without ever leaving the app, and letting users return to their app anytime they choose. iPhone OS 4 lets developers easily embed iAd opportunities within their apps, and the ads are dynamically and wirelessly delivered to the device. Apple will sell and serve the ads, and developers will receive an industry-standard 60 percent of iAd revenue.

The iPhone OS 4 beta release includes a developer preview of Game Center, which contains a set of APIs that allows developers to create apps with the ability to invite friends to play a game, start a multiplayer game through matchmaking and track achievements and compare high scores on a leader board. Apps created with GameKit APIs will work with Game Center, Apple’s new social gaming network available to iPhone and iPod touch users later this year.

New enterprise features in iPhone OS 4 include improvements in security, scalability and compatibility. The new Mobile Device Management service can be integrated with third party servers to wirelessly configure, query and even wipe or lock managed iPhones, and iPhone OS 4 enables enterprises to securely host and wirelessly distribute their own in-house developed apps to employees. The new Data Protection feature uses a user’s passcode as an encryption key to protect mail messages and attachments stored on the iPhone. iPhone OS 4 now provides the option to set a longer, more complex passcode, making iPhone and its data even more secure. iPhone OS 4 allows IT managers to set up multiple Exchange ActiveSync accounts, is compatible with Exchange Server 2010 and includes support for forthcoming SSL VPN applications from Juniper Networks and Cisco.

Today, more than four billion apps have been downloaded from the revolutionary App Store and more than 185,000 apps are available to consumers in 90 countries. Over 85 million iPhone and iPod touch users around the world can choose from an incredible range of apps in 20 categories, including games, business, news, sports, health, reference and travel.

Availability
The iPhone OS 4 beta software and SDK are available immediately for iPhone Developer Program members atdeveloper.apple.com. iPhone OS 4 will be available as a software update to iPhone and iPod touch users this summer.* A version of iPhone OS 4 will be coming to iPad this Fall.

*Some features may not be available on all products. For example, Multitasking requires iPhone 3GS or third generation iPod touch (late 2009 models with 32GB or 64GB).

HTC Desire delayed

Our chums at Clove.co.uk have informed us of yet another delay for the HTC Desire. It’s getting a little silly now, HTC just can’t seem to get this out the door properly. With Andy’s light problems he has outlined on the podcast regarding the Virgin version’s data problems it’s been a bit of a rough start for what is one of the most impressive phones on the market.

We have now been informed by HTC this morning that they are delaying shipments to all SIM-Free E-tailers until next week. This is very frustrating for both you and ourselves, having made so much effort in trying to ensure you receive your Desire as early as possible. The actual shipping date is yet to be confirmed, although HTC expect to start releasing stock on 13 April.

Please be aware this is completely out of our control and will affect all other E-Tailers as well. We will continue to update you with as much information as we can.

We will not be refunding any orders that have already been charged unless requested – this will simply cause further delays next week.

Please accept my personal apologies for this further delay, we only wish we could give you better news. Hopefully you will appreciate we continue to offer the best customer service we can and keep you informed as best we can, even when the news it not what any of us wishes to hear