Mobile Devices - Page 191

nVidia's Tegra is making all sorts of headlines in the past few weeks.

First we heard about the Zune HD, now we hear rumblings that Tegra will be in new SmartPhones by 2010.

If the rumors are true we will see Tegra driven smartphones from one of the "top five" manufacturers. There was no listing of who the tip five are, but I am betting that none of them are Apple.

The phones could have Android or Windows Mobile (with Win Mo more likely) and will be in the $199 range.

Read more here

Yesterday we told you that the first iPhone app with real nudity had been both published and then banned. Many people were covering the launch as it appeared to be a reversal of Apple's Morality Police tactics.

However as people checked the developer's website and saw a message about server usage, there were more than a few retractions.

We did not think that was the case. After all why would Apple change now.

Well it turns out we were correct after all as an Official Apple statement released today shows.

Good thing we bought ours bfore the ban...

Read more here

I have said it before and I will say it again, an iPhone is good but a jailbroken iPhone is better and if this is the iPhone 3G S it is better still.

For those of you that have played around with a jailbroken iPhone you know that there are some pretty impressive games on Cydia, everything from the original Doom to a Pacman like game.

Well then the emulators started showing up and you would play even more games. With the more powerful graphics on the 3G S the third party emulator devs have dived in. One has even come up with an emulator for the Play Station 1 and GameBoy Advanced.

Read more here

The gang over at Engadget got to play around with the new HTC Hero and so far they are loving it.

The new Hero does feaure Android but it is not a Google branded product. This means you are not going to get loaded down with the Google logo, but it also means that you won't be getting over the air updates also.

There are going to be a host of new features but one of the ones they liked the best was the Teflon outer coating.

Flash was also shown off with mixed results, they were able to get YouTube to work but not Yahoo, but this is in line with what Adobe showed off as well.


Is it just me or does that keyboard look familiar?

Read more here

If you are disappointed by the looks of your new iPhone 3G S well then ColorWare has a solution for you.

They have announced a simple process where you can send in your iPhone 3G S and have the back cover dyed to a different color. But the fun does not stop there.

You can have them change the normally chrome bezel, the home button, your headphones, and the SIM-Card holder. You do have to send the phone to them (if you are in the US) to get these exciting new colors added.

You might want to do this while you are waiting for AT&T to activate MSS and tethering or while you wait for a jailbreak from the devteam.

Read more here

It is time for an iPhone 3G S update; after all it is the Monday after the big release. Here is how it all stands

For sheer numbers Apple managed to push over one million of these out the door. The 3G S remains un-jailbroken and cannot be unlocked just yet (although 2G and 3G phones can be jailbroke and the 2G can be unlocked with redsn0w).

The iPhone 3G S has received mix reviews that range from perfection to claims of it not being worth it. With all that Apple still managed to get a ton of these out to the public, which means that Apple still has it where the iPhone marketing it concerned.

Read more here

Analysts are saying that this weekend Apple could sell half a million iPhone 3G S handsets. This is a rather large number and is significantly less than either the 3G bought in with its launches.

Although some are saying it is due to the limit on the number of countries that are getting the 3G S, after all 21 countries had the 3G at its launch while the 3G S will only be released in 8.

The low number could also be due to the relatively minor improvements made to the new 3G S; including a complete lack of any outside improvements to the appearance of the phone.

Read more here

In the race for OpenCL/Cuda performance it looks like ATi is not doing so hot. In a good read over at Anandtech we are told that ATi's stream processor is just not there in terms of GP-GPU computing.

To test this Anandtech used ATi's new CyberLink's Espresso and ran it on an ATi GPU, an Nvidia GPU and a CPU.

The results were interesting. The ATi card was not only slower than the nVidia GPU (and in a couple of cases slower than CPU only) it also produced very poor quality video compared to the CPU and nVidia GPU.

It seems that ATi is just not there yet in terms of utilizing GPU computing, this will affect them as nVidia moves farther and farther ahead in the GP-GPU world.

Read more here

The new iPhone OS has made its way to many a happy iPhone user. This is a good thing as it means that iPhone users can now finally join the ranks of other smart phone owners with such exciting features as Copy and Paste, Tethering and Voice control.

But with these come some interesting extras. Aparrently hidden in the new update are 45 patches that cover vulnerabilities in the old iPhone OS. This would seem to fly in the face of Apple's normal stance of "our hardware and software is completely secure".

Do not get me wrong, I think the inclusion of fixes and security patches is great and Apple is doing the right thing by making sure they get out to iPhone owners. I just wish they would knock off the BS that OSX and iPhone OS are more secure than other operating systems out.

Read more here

There is very good news for some people that pre-ordered the new iPhone 3G S (S is for silly). It looks like there are a few that will actually get delivered tomorrow on the 17th as opposed to the 19th when the rest of the world will fight for the new Apple toy.

Tomorrow is iPhone OS 3.0 day and will (if I am not wrong) be another day of down AT&T servers, iTunes activation servers and other fun for those wanting the new OS on the first day out. For those that are getting the phone tomorrow, I have a feeling that you won't be able to use it before the 19th anyway.

Read more here.

AT&T and Apple have detailed how the launch of the iPhone 3G S will work come June 19, and it looks like those who don't preorder the phone will be getting the shaft.

Apple will be opening their stores a little early at 8AM. This will all those who preorder the phone to come in early and grab their new overpriced paperweight.

In the world of hardware it is often hard to keep track of changing standards and practices. Usually this happens across different platforms and hardware. However when it happens to Apple on their own products it is sort of funny.

According to a very detailed breakdown of features between the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3G S one stands out. OpenGL ES support. In the iPhone 3G you have OpenGL ES 1.1 only. In the new iPhone 3G S you have OpenGL ES 2.0 and 1.1, this is thanks to the new PowerVR SGX graphics chip in the cover.

Application developers are now faced with the problem of designing applications that can take advantage of the newer standard or making them available to more iPhone users.

Read more here.

Of course the big news that everyone has been waiting for is the new iPhone. But is not being called the iPhone 3.0 but the iPhone 3G S (maybe the S is for Speed).

They have taken the base iPhone and thrown something new under the hood. Almost everything is faster, roughly twice as fast. Of course not all applications will enjoy this. Maybe there is some truth to the rumors that Apple is using OpenCL and a more powerful GPU to accelerate the iPhone.

Apple has dropped in a new camera 3MP to be exact with auto focus and tap to focus as well as macro. 7.2Mbps HSDPA, video recording (complete with built in editing), voice control (not only for dialing but for iTunes control, a compass application (should be great for hikers),hardware encryption and of course all of the new features of the iPhone OS 3.0.

Apple has worked on the batter quite a bit too; they have improved the 3G Talk time to 5 hours and the WiFi Internet time to 9 hours.

Granted most of this should have been on the 3G, but hey it is finally here. If you are just getting an iPhone (or are eligible for an upgrade) you can pick up the 3GS for $199 for the 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB. If you are like me and are outside this you are looking at about $500 for the 16GB and 600-700 for the 32GB.

Availability should be in a little over a week and a half from today in the USA. And after that even more countries, over 80 countries will have it by August.

Get ready it is going to be a busy summer. Read more here.

Nokia opened its very own App store on Tuesday and already it is feeling the same pinch that got Apple at the launch of the iPhone. According to an article at usatoday.com the Ovi store is having some technical difficulties and is not being accepted as well as would be hoped.

Users are complaining that to access the store they have to login on their phones browser as there is no direct application to allow them access just yet.

But the worst issue came as the servers were overloaded and could not fill all the requests that were coming in from Nokia owners. At the time of this writing Nokia has added additional serves to handle the extra load but the damage may already have been done.

Read more here.

Apple is warning users of the iPhone and iPod that they might get a shocking experience when they go to use their earbuds.

It has been a little while since we have heard new iPhone rumors so I was not shocked when a couple popped up today.

The one that caught my attention was this little bit over at Wired. It seems that the rumor mill went into overtime churning out this one.

The rumor says that the next Gen iPhone will hit the streets on July 17th. But there is more than that, if the "source" is correct the new iPhone will have an OLED,a 3.2 MP camera (and can capture video), 1.5 times the battery life, and will have a 32GB version.

Of course it will have all the goodies from iPhone OS 3.0 as well.

Read more here.

The iPhone OS 3.0 has entered the BETA 4 stage. But according to people that have the new OS there is not much new to see.

One thing they do talk about is that the formerly empty store settings pane now has some information in it. The problem is there is nothing exciting there and only seems to link you to a bland web page that allows you to edit your account information.

To get OS 3.0 working you will also need to upgrade to the new iTunes, 8.2 (which is not out just yet.)

Read more here

A report that comes to us from Ars Technia through CNet states that Apple may finally catch up to Smart Phones from 2007.

I know you are wondering what I am talking about, why the iPhone is miles ahead of the other smartphones right? Well yes and no; the iPhone is a good product but even 2 and half iterations from the original it still lacks some basic features found in many other phones.

One of these is voice command and voice synthesis. But if the anonymous sources that tipped of Ars are accurate that long awaited feature will arrive with the iPhone Software 3.0.

Lets hope they are true, as that could mean real turn-by-turn GPS and a host of other fun toys.

Read more here.

The gang over at iSuppli stripped down their new $80 iPod Shuffle and added up the cost of the innards and packaging to see how much they really cost.

In a shocker to anyone that has not really been following Apple's business model they found that the cost of all components, was around $22.00.

This makes the markup on the device in the realm of 360%. This hefty little markup brings some of Steve Job's comments on netooks into questions.

He has said before that he did not know how to build a system for under $500 that was not a hunk of junk. Yet the iPod shuffle using cheap Samsung parts might prove different. Perhaps he meant he did not know how to build anything with a customer price tag of under $500.

Read more at Business Week.

When you think of Piracy you may think of hackers in a basement banging away on a keyboard trying to break the next game or copy protection. You may have images of torrent files or the MPAA. After today you may just have another image altogether.

It seems that one group of iPhone pirates decided they did not like the un-ethical behavior of another group and what's more decided to do something about it.

The coders of the software Intallous, which allows you to download free apps from the iTunes store. They were not charging for this service but did ask for a donation if you were so inclined.

Then another group came out with a service called Mega, this allowed for direct downloads, but for a price. The creators of Instalous did not like this so one of their members wrote an app called grabulous that allows a user to grab apps from Mega for free.

Read more here