“Inside Steve’s Brain” author Leander Kahney of Wired magazine is reporting a programmer source inside a major software house has revealed that the next generation iPhone 3G will thinner — we’re talking Paris Hilton thinner — by a whopping 22%.
Not only that, it will sport better battery life than the already impressive 8 hours talk time of the first gen model, and twice the NAND flash capacity, topping out at 32GB. (Paving the way for 64GB iPod Touch’s?)
Still not enough, echoing Kevin Rose (historically not the most reliable of iPhone prognosticators), Kahney thinks the phone may be heavily carrier subsidized — down to the $200 level in some cases — in an effort to put the hurt on Blackberry.
Okay, fess up, who left the rumor mill jacked up to max?!
Read
Another week, another single line, non-specific iPhone launch announcement. This time it’s Movistar in Spain.
Unofficial beginning of June scorecard:
Launched: Austria (T-Mobile), France (Orange), Germany (T-Mobile), Ireland (O2), UK (O2), USA (AT&T)
Announced: Africa (Orange), Argentina (America Movil), Australia (Vodafone / SingTel), Austria (Orange), Belgium (Orange), Brazil (America Movil), Canada (Rogers), Chile (America Movil), Columbia (America Movil), the Czech Republic (Vodafone), Denmark (TeliaSonera), Dominican Republic (America Movil/ Orange), Ecuador (America Movil), Egypt (Vodafone / Orange), El Salvador (America Movil), Estonia (TeliaSonera), Finland (TeliaSonera), Greece (Vodafone), Guatamala (America Movil), Honduras (America Movil), Hong Kong SAR (Hutchison) India (Vodafone / SingTel), Italy (Vodafone / Telecom Italia), Jamaica (America Movil), Jordan (Orange), Latvia (TeliaSonera), Lithuania (TeliaSonera), Macao (Hutchison), Mexico (America Movil), New Zealand (Vodafone), Nicaragua (America Movil), Norway (TeliaSonera), Paraguay (America Movil), Peru (America Movil), Philippines (SingTel), Poland (Orange), Portugal (Vodafone / Orange), Puerto Rico (America Movil), Romania (Orange), Singapore (SingTel), Slovakia (Orange), Spain (Movistar), South Africa (Vodafone), Switzerland (Swisscom / Orange), Turkey (Vodafone), Uruguay (America Movil)
Rumored: Netherlands (?),
Note: Extent of America Movil and Orange Africa deployment not yet fully detailed.
That still leaves China, Japan, and… Antarctica!
Read
What’s going to power the next generation iPhone 3G? Infineon again? Insider Intel? A curveball from PA Semi? And more importantly — when are we getting our hands on one?! What do YOU think?
To give you some help, here’s a HUGE roundup of all the iPhone 3G chipset and ship date rumors. Epic-style. Because let’s face it, roughly 0.01 seconds after Steve Jobs pulled the first iPhone from his pocket back at Macworld 2007, and someone, somewhere, put aside their childlike sense of wonder long enough think: “Nice! What’s the next gen going to be like?”
Complementary, contradictory, obvious, confusing, all but confirmed or from left field via outer space, the rumors have flooded the internet ever since. It’s become almost impossible to keep track of them all. But we’re going to try!
One week from today Steve Jobs takes Moscone Center stage for the sold-out WWDC keynote, and according to everyone and their newsfeed, announces the iPhone 3G. In eager anticipation, every day this week, TiPb wil be rounding up a different set of next generation rumors, from 3G to GPS, release dates to price points, colors to casings, 2.0 software to .Mac .Me services, and this weekend we’ll wrap it all up with a look into the WWDC/iPhone 3G Crystal Balland a roundup of the very best of YOUR predictions.
So come on, let’s get in on!
[Digg it!]
Read the rest of this entry »
The Golla Camo Washed Green Vertical Pouch for iPhone, available now at the phonedifferent store (TiPB) for $19.95 here, is a casual and trendy way to carry your iPhone, whether you are backpacking in the outback or cruising the urban jungle.
To get your Golla guerrilla groove on, tune in after the break for a review of this swanky iPhone case from Golla! Read the rest of this entry »
Despite a brief mention in our forums and I believe some chatting during a podcast episode (though the exact one I can’t recall), we haven’t discussed the StyleTap emulator much here at TiPb. Here’s what it is: an emulator for the PalmOS that allows you to run their tens of thousands of apps on the iPhone or the iPod Touch. Back in February, StyleTap had created a version of it that they successfully demo’ed on a Jailbroken iPod Touch. Now we hear word that they really and truly intend to release it to the world as an official iPhone app.
Don’t laugh - there are truly a ton of Palm apps out there — many of which fall into really cool niche categories that are unlikely to be duplicated anytime soon as native iPhone apps. Stuff like Mobile Gadgeteer Matt Miller’s personal fave, a Tide Tool app that lets you check the status of the ocean tides around the world.
Thanks to Cherryhead25 for the tip!
Just prior to the original iPhone’s release, AT&T’s operation “Fine Edge” brought faster, stronger, better 2.5 / 2.75G speed to the GSM masses. This year, in a strangely reminiscent move, reports are coming in that AT&T is showing their 3G HSPA network the same type of love:
For the past few months we’ve been seeing average download speeds between 500 - 800 kbps with a spike here and there. This morning’s tests however, are yielding between 1400 - 1500 kbps.
Gee, could another iPhone release be on the horizon?
Read
Om Malik says GPS on the iPhone is locked and loaded:
[T]here is one thing that’s for sure: The new iPhone has Global Positioning System (GPS) built into it, thanks to legal requirements put in place by the FCC.
The GigaOmster further says that new-to-the-space-space Broadcom has nailed the contract, which is great for them but panic-inducing for the stand-alone GPS market. (We know Google sees positively HUGE maps usage from the GPS-less iPhone already, so that makes the kind of sense that does.)
But Brian Lam of Gizmodo thinks the whole GPS on the iPhone thing is pretty poorly thought out:
No thanks. Don’t need it. I’m fine with the current location technology. It works for walking and that’s all I need it for.
Lam’s reasons? Current cell and WiFi location services are much quicker than GPS, they better suit walking and the iPhone is less useful while driving anyway, GPS kills battery life dead, and GPS chips would significantly fatten up the iPhone.
Personally, both 3G and GPS are still bleeding edge tech when it comes to realistic day-to-day usage in everywhere, USA when not hooked up to a generator, so while nice to have as an option, and fetishized by the tech media and the blogphere commentorati, neither will have the impact on my life that the 2.0 software update likely will. It just ain’t mainstream enough for me to be melodramatic about yet.
What do you think?
[More on the Broadcom GPS story, with thanks to reader southerntraveltourism]
Yesterday came word that the name Apple might be using to rebrand .Mac was “Mobile Me”, and amid the pitchforks, torches, and angry villagers storming the internet pipes to Cupertino, we figured our readers could easily come up with a better name, and sweetened the pot with $50 worth of gift card incentive to prove it.
Daring Fireball’s John Gruber had previously mentioned that iMobile might be an alternative, though his readers felt it could too easily be mistaken for immobile, probably not the poetry Steve Jobs is shooting for.
Now Gruber, and his handy crowd-source at Twitter bring word that just plain old “Me”, surfaced as me.com, could be a candidate as well, and had mysteriously changed ownership just today.
Make of that what you will (and I will continue to make fun, for the same reasons mentioned in the first post). And don’t forget to enter our contest. Pick a better name than “Mobile Me”, and if the blog staff likes your name best, the $50 gift certificate is yours! [We'll compile the guesses from this and from our previous post. The Gift Card is for the Phone different Accessory store. Deadline: 4EST on Monday June 2nd].
[From Dieter: I dislike this whole "me" thing for several reasons. First, it smacks of a 1990's, by-committee branding that sounds hip and clever but is actually staid and out-of-touch. Very Un-Apple. Second: If Apple somehow manages to make this brand hip and the "Me" does make people feel like they have ownership and identity with the brand ("Me.com really is about ME. Gosh, it's like it's my very own internet service,") then they'll be faced with an impossible task: not screwing that up. Think about how unhappy you are with .Mac's reliability and speed. Now imagine if that service weren't called ".Mac" but instead "Me." People will become disenamoured very quickly. Now we can obviously assume that this whole Me.com thing will have better reliability -- but if Apple really is looking for a straight-out, bald-faced "this is Me on the internet" branding, then even the tiniest failure in the system is going to make people super pissed -- it would go from "Aw crap, .Mac sucks again" to "Me.com is down again. Apple broke ME". Not good.
Thirdly: Windows ME. 'nuff said.]
Okay, so their names weren’t really Harold & Kumar (Fukaba and Vincenti, for the record), but then again it doesn’t really sound like they were banned for life from the Apple Store as initial Interwebs rumor mongering suggested, b’okay?
Seems some Palo Alta teens were waiting for a classmate, ducked into the Apple Store to burn some time, and ended up getting burned instead. You know the story, boy finds iPhone, boy Jailbreaks iPhone, boy downloads Raging Thunder, to show another boy, Apple Store management, security, police, and parents become involved and hilarity ensues. (Though perhaps not for our hapless hax0rs and their two friends).
Fake Steve has the full fake details on what sounds to me like a bit of a fake — or more accurately overblown — story.
Hopefully no iPhones were bricked in the course of these shenanigans and the boys will be back to giving all their money to Apple again in the near future.
