Preposterous reception issues still don’t stop the new iPhone from being the best mobile you can get

There is no denying that it is a stunning looking piece of tech: 24 percent slimmer than the 3GS at just 9.3mm, beautifully compact, but with considerable heft, and a hard-edged industrial sexiness instead of the more curvaceous, tactile charms of earlier iPhones. The glass front and back are very tough: We’ve dropped ours a few times and it’s come up smiling… so far. A more contentious design feature is the steel band that separates front and back. Not for aesthetic reasons but because it’s also the aerial, and the cause of the iPhone’s well-documented reception issues — seemingly something to do with contact between it and human skin.

Bizarre reception flaws aside, the iPhone 4 is a great showcase for Apple’s technological and design prowess, with the new iOS 4 operating system and a noticeably faster processor than the 3GS making operation a very smooth and enjoyable experience. It all chugs along nicely, from the media player to the apps to the Web browser. The processor is the same sprightly Apple A4 chip found in the iPad. You’d think that this much power would drain the battery at speed, but we can confirm the battery life is slightly better than the 3GS, at least so far. The 3.5-inch Retina Display, with an 800:1 contrast ratio and 960×640 resolution, sets a new benchmark for mobile screens, a joy to use indoors and at most outdoor light levels. It becomes reflective in direct, bright sunlight but it’s still far superior in this respect to the AMOLED displays found on most Android phones. The downside is that older apps and their icons can appear dated and grainy on the new display.

iOS 4 brings multitasking to the iPhone table — not all apps support the feature though — and has other tricks up its sleeve. You can create folders for your apps and set your own home screen image. iBooks makes the jump from iPad to iPhone with the arrival of iOS 4, offering  up text of impeccable clarity, although obviously insufficient size for anything more than half an hour or so of reading. Crystal clear fonts enhance Web browsing, email and all other text-based functionality. The keyboard’s visually unchanged and still excellent. We would have liked to have seen support for numbers and punctuation on the same keys as the letters, but autocorrection seems even better than on the previous OS.

The camera’s been improved too. Though stills are not suddenly of compact camera quality, they are much better than on the 3GS and the HTC Desire — and bigger, at five megapixels. An LED flash is a welcome addition. Video improvement is even more striking: 720p HD footage looks pristine not just on the phone’s display but also when uploaded to your computer. Some detail seems to be lost when compressing for uploading online. In-camera editing is also straightforward.

In addition to the main camera, there’s a second, front-facing one. This is to facilitate Apple’s attempt to popularise mobile video calling with its Skype-style FaceTime app. Let’s say it’s more fun than essential; it needs to work over 3G rather than just Wi-Fi, for a start.

iPhones have always been great media players and that’s still true. Should you choose to use Cover Flow it seems slightly quicker, as do synching and copying, though improvements are minimal.

The iPhone 4 is another classic slice of Apple. In just 12 months Steve Jobs and his band have again redefined mobile handsets. From the simply beautiful Retina Display to the addition of HD video, and from the idiotproof UI (user interface) to the attempted reinvention of video calling, the Apple iPhone 4 is a majestic piece of kit that will no doubt steal hearts. As long as that signal-loss issue doesn’t prove to be a killer… iBand Aid

iPhone 4 Specifications
SCREEN 3.5-inch, 960×640 pixels
PROCESSOR Apple A4 1GHz
STORAGE 16GB or 32GB
CONNECTIVITY 7.2 Mbps HSDPA, Bluetooth 2.1+ EDR, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, A-GPS,
3.5mm audio
BATTERY 7 hours 3G talk, 10 hours Wi-Fi
browsing, 6 hours 3G browsing, 10 hours
video, 40 hours audio
CAMERA 5-megapixel with tap to focus, LED flash
VIDEO 720p up to 30fps
SIZE/WEIGHT 59x115x9.3mm/137g

Apple Inc.’s iPhone 4, showing the gap that may cause antenna issues for some users, is held for a photo in Aspen, Colorado.

Apple Inc.’s antenna design for the iPhone 4, the newest smartphone in its lineup, may be holding back sales of the device, according to a Piper Jaffray Cos. report released today.

Apple, the largest technology company by market value, may lose as much as 20 percent of its potential sales in the U.S. because customers are concerned about the antenna design’s effect on signal strength, Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis, said in the report.

The analysis is based on a Piper Jaffray survey of 258 mobile-phone users in Minneapolis last month. About two-thirds of the people surveyed said they were aware of the antenna design, and 20 percent of those said it affected their decision to buy the phone.

The lost sales may cost Apple as much as 11 cents a share in the quarter ending this month, Munster said.

Natalie Kerris, a spokeswoman for Cupertino, California- based Apple, declined to comment.

Apple’s ties to AT&T Inc., the exclusive U.S. iPhone carrier, may be an even bigger drag on sales, Munster wrote. For every person surveyed who cited the antenna issue, three complained that the iPhone isn’t available from Verizon Wireless, he said.

“The lack of an iPhone on Verizon is holding sales back by about three times more than the antenna issue,” Munster wrote. Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. mobile-phone company, will start selling the iPhone next year, two people familiar with the plans said in June.

Next Year, Verizon
Munster said he expects the iPhone to be available from Verizon Wireless, owned by Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group Plc, by the middle of 2011.

Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs held a news conference on July 16 and promised customers free phone cases in response to criticism that the iPhone 4 loses signal strength when held a certain way. The issue caused Consumer Reports magazine to withhold its recommendation for the phone.

Apple gained $5.11, or 2 percent, to $262.92 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading at 4 p.m. New York time. The shares have advanced 25 percent this year.

Apple will sell about 11 million iPhones worldwide in the quarter that ends this month, Munster said. About 4.4 million of those will be sold in the U.S.



At today’s keynote event, Steve Jobs announced the upcoming availability of iOS 4.1 for the iPhone and iPod touch. Jobs noted that the long running proximity sensor, Bluetooth, and iPhone 3G performance bugs that have been raised by users will be fixed in this update.

New features to iOS 4.1 include High Dynamic Range photos, HD video upload over Wi-Fi, TV show rentals, and Apple’s Game Center will make its official debut.

High Dynamic Range photos are photos created using 3 separate photos captured in quick succession at varying exposure levels. The photos are then combined using some complex algorithms to create an enhanced composite photo. Game Center, which was first introduced earlier this year, will officially be included in iOS 4.1 and allows gamers to invite others to play, post scores to online leaderboards, and more.

iOS 4.1 will be available next week for iPhone and iPod touch and will be a free update.

Jobs also revealed that iOS 4.2 will be released in November, finally bringing iOS 4.x support to the iPad. The free update will include wireless printing as well as a new feature called AirPlay, which replaces AirTunes. AirPlay will offer streaming of video, music, and photos. iOS 4.2 will be compatible with the iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone.

iPhone 4 Mexico

The iPhone 4 will go on sale tomorrow from two carriers in Mexico, ending the exclusivity arrangement Apple has had with Telcel for the iPhone 3GS. Movistar, a division of Telefònica, will also carry the iPhone, offering a series of tiered plans. Telcel will continue to sell prepaid phones as well as regular phone+plan contracts.

Telcel retail outlets across Mexico will begin selling the iPhone 4 tomorrow. Though plan prices are not presently available, Telecompaper says that postpaid customers will be able to buy the iPhone in 24 monthly instalments of 225 pesos each. Telcel also offers the iPhone 4 for outright purchase, with the 32GB model going for 10,500 pesos ($810 US) and the 16GB costing 9,359 pesos or $721.

Prepaid customers can get the iPhone 4 from Movistar in 12, 18 or 24 monthly installments. Movistar also offers five different service plans for the iPhone 4. Users can get the iPhone Basico package for a monthly cost of 449 pesos, iPhone Total 1 for 599 pesos a month, iPhone Total 2 for a price of 699 pesos per month, or Total 3 or 4 tariff plans for monthly fees of 819 and 1,119 pesos, respectively.

For customers in Mexico City who just can’t wait, Telcel will begin selling iPhone 4s at their Masaryk and Reforma-Lomas locations beginning at 9:30 tonight.

White iPhone 4

iPhone 4 is very much similar to black iPhone and contains similar problems  as of Black one. Dude to this reason Apple thought to postpone the White iPhone 4. Apple has decided to give free cases to everyone who buys an iPhone 4.

However, they limit that offer until Sept. 30th.

But also Orange UK have given an update about the release date of White iPhone 4. The White iPhone 4 Release Date is confirmed by a customer email and some other trusted sources such us Product-reviews.net and the Inquirer.

iPhone 4 stickers by iBand Aid

These slick little stickers to stop your skin from killing your signal strength on the iPhone 4 surfaced a while back. If you like, the idea of fixing your iPhone 4 antenna woes without a case these may be for you.

iPhone 4 stickers
The little stickers look a lot like Band Aids that my daughter wears every time she gets a scratch. You can get a package of seven iBand Aids for right under 5. That much green gets you beige, gray, black, blue, green, and white versions of the thing.

If you need more a bundle with five packs of seven will set you back about 20 and to be a dealer of the stickers you need to drop 489 to get 160 packs of the things. You could probably just use those tiny real Band Aids and save some green.

by Shane McGlaun/slipperybrick.com on August 13th, 2010

You probably know that you can rent movies from the iTunes Store. But there are a number of conditions that affect what you can and can’t do with rentals. Here’s an overview of how you can watch them, on which devices you can view them, and how to move them from one device to another.

Apple’s movie rental service is easy to use, but it offers a limited amount of flexibility. (You can thank the movie studios and the MPAA for that.) Like other movie-rental services, you have 30 days to start watching a rental from the exact day and time you rent it. Once you start watching, you can watch it for 24 hours. That means you can watch part of movie at night and finish it up the next day or, if you really like the movie, you can watch it over and over again during that 24-hour window.

This 24-hour limit can be a problem for some people, though. Imagine it’s a Wednesday evening, and you’re tired and fall asleep during the movie you rented. Or you have small children and don’t have enough time to watch the whole non-G-rated film in one go; you’d better make sure to watch the rest on Thursday before it’s too late. When this 24-hour period is up, the movie will automatically delete itself from your computer or portable device. While there’s a sort of workaround that lets you continue watching a movie that you paused during the 24-hour window, if you switch to some other content in iTunes or on your Apple TV, the rental will expire. There’s no official way to extend your rental-period or discount on re-renting a movie.

Apple lets you watch rentals on a Mac or PC with iTunes; on an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, iPod classic, or iPod nano (3rd generation); on an Apple TV connected to a TV; or on a portable device connected to a TV with an Apple composite or component AV cable. Finally, you can watch HD rentals only on a computer, an Apple TV, or an iPad.

Ideally, if you plan to rent a movie from the iTunes Store, you should rent it from the device you are planning to use to watch it. If you have an Apple TV, rent the movie from it directly; if you want to watch a movie on your Mac, rent it from iTunes; if you want to watch one on your iPad, rent it from there. Bear in mind the size of the file, and how much space you have available: standard definition movies take up roughly 1GB to 2GB, HD movies 2GB to 3GB or more.

Rentals don’t work like other items you purchase; you can’t sync them to a portable device. To put a rental on a device like an iPod or iPad, you have to move it, which removes it from the original device after copying. This transfer has something to do with DRM voodoo to make sure that you don’t rent a movie and put it on different devices, where you might be able to get around the 24-hour viewing window, or allow two people to watch it on different devices. You must also be connected to the Internet to move a movie, and iTunes sends authorization information about your device to its server so you can’t play the movie back on two devices.

To transfer a rental, connect your portable device to your Mac, then in iTunes, click on the Movies tab. You’ll see your rental, and a Move button lets you transfer the file to your device. Click this button, then click Apply to start the transfer. When it’s completed, you’ll be able to watch the movie on the device.

You can’t, however, transfer a movie rented on an Apple TV or iPad to any other device, and you can’t transfer a rental from one computer to another. If you were to try–just take the movie file and put it on another computer into your iTunes library–you’d see an alert, when trying to play the movie, telling you that it is authorized to play on another computer or device.

You can, however, transfer a rental from one computer to an iPod, then from that iPod to another computer. Move it to the iPod, then disconnect the iPod and connect it to another Mac while holding down the Command and Option keys (to make sure that iTunes on the second computer doesn’t sync its library to the device). Click the Movies tab, as above, and move the movie over to the second computer. (Keep your eyes on iTunes; after it moves the movie, it may try to sync other content to the iPod, so be ready to click the X icon in iTunes at the top of the window to stop the sync.)

Renting movies from the iTunes Store can be pretty simple if you don’t want to do anything special, though you’ll have to jump through some hoops if you want to move rented movies. If you have an Apple portable device, or an Apple TV, it’s an easy way to find a flick to watch while you munch on some popcorn.

Cape Town – Vodacom has announced the South African launch of the Apple iPhone 4 on its website, but has not specified an exact date.

Moneyweb reported that Vodacom CEO Pieter Uys tweeted the iPhone 4 would be available in SA at the end of September, despite Apple’s Alan Hely saying that no date could be given for local release.

Vodacom has also not released pricing information, but iPhones usually sell at a significant mark-up in SA over their US prices.

The highly anticipated smartphone went on sale in June overseas, and had its share of controversy. Apple announced recently that it would issue a free pouch to users who complained that the phone dropped calls when held in the so-called “death grip”.

The financial impact of the pouch expense would be “fairly insignificant” to the company, said Abhey Lamba of the International Strategy and Investment Group.

Recently, Apple spokesperson Steve Dowling announced Mark Papermaster, senior vice president of iPhone and iPod hardware engineering, was leaving the company in the wake of the problems related to the iPhone 4.

“Apple hardware is almost indestructible. I’ve heard of people who have put their iPod through the washing cycle and it survived,” Apple engineering project manager for Mobile Me, Erin Caton, told News24 at the Tech4Africa conference.

Apple built a solid worldwide following for the iPhone and recently overtook Microsoft to be the biggest technology firm in the world.

The South Korean mobile market is quite different from the European and North American ones, but at least one thing is not changed there: Apple’s new iPhone 4 is a hit.

KT, the only South Korean carrier to offer the iPhone 4, said today it has received more than 100,000 reservations for the new handset in the first day of pre-orders.

KT hasn’t announced the exact date when the iPhone 4 will be available – this should happen sometime next month (September) anyway. The carrier is also in talks to introduce the iPad in South Korea, too, but there’s nothing official about this at the moment.

The older iPhone model (3GS), introduced by KT in South Korea in late 2009, was sold in more than 850,000 units in eight months. The iPhone 4 will likely be sold in more units in less time.

BEIJING — Consumers in China, the largest mobile phone market in the world, appear on the verge of getting the Apple iPhone 4, as early as September, official reports say.

China Unicom, the country’s second-largest mobile carrier, will start offering the iPhone 4 next month, according a late Tuesday report from the state-run Caixin media group.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal, reported that Apple would soon start selling an iPhone with Wi-Fi capabilities in China. Last Oct. in China, Apple started selling the iPhone 3GS, a smartphone that lacked Wi-Fi.

That was due to Beijng’s rule that all smartphones sold in China use the a home-grown standard called Wired Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure, or WAPI. Wi-Fi in mobile devices is also seen as a free alternative to paid 3G services.

Apple and Unicom also will bring out the iPad tablet, a device already visible in coffee shops around the capital – one that, like many iPhones here, are being used with Wi-Fi because consumers bought them overseas and have cracked them for use with SIM cards from No. 1 mobile carrier, China Mobile.

Caixin did not confirm that the iPhone 4 would be Wi-Fi-enabled. The Journal’s report claimed it would. Apple has yet to confirm the iPhone 4’s release in China.