Motorola isn't the only US mobile company doing really badly at the moment - US mobile phone telco Sprint Nextel Corp is seemingly doing much, much worse. After losing a million customers in the last three months alone, the company has announced a $505 million loss for the same period. One of the reasons is the success of the iPhone, which helped iPhone carrier and Sprint arch-enemy AT&T to gain 1.3 million customers during the same period.
However, the iPhone isn't the only reason - Verizon also notched up an extra 1.5 million customers, yet it doesn't carry the iPhone. No, the major reason is Sprint's recent purchase of rival Nextel, which has led to a plethora of poor service complaints from customers, causing them to leave in their, well, million! Worse, Nextel cost Sprint $36 billion, yet may now only be worth just $5 billion - a $31 billion loss! Ouch! In response, Sprint has fired 4,000 of its employees, closed outlets, and has just begun a fierce price war to gain new customers, but it may be too little too late.
So the iPhone may not be the sole reason that Sprint is in trouble, just as it's not the sole reason that Motorola's handset business is also recording record losses - it's just that it doesn't exactly help them either!
[Source: Bloomberg]
Posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 10:12 pm by Mike Evans
Filed under
Rumours
Oh, you can tell there's an Apple announcement imminent, as the Apple fanboys are stoking up the fires of hypeville. The latest rumour is that the next generation iPhone will not only have 3G (which is a given), it'll also come with GPS and, wait for it...mobile TV!
The news comes from a Swiss website, of all places, which doesn't actually provide any authoritative sources backing up its claim; rather, they simply add the news that Swiss Telco Swisscom has secured distribution rights to the iPhone in Switzerland to other news that Swisscom is rolling out a mobile TV service, and come up with the answer that the mobile TV service simply must be for the new 3G iPhone!
Er, right!
All the rumours for the next-gen iPhone are just that - rumours - but we can be sure that it'll come with 3G, hopefully with HSDPA, probably with GPS, and probably not mobile TV. Not exactly a concrete list of iPhone features, granted, but while news from Apple is so scarce, the fanboys will fill the vacuum, and nobody can accuse them of being impartial!
[Source: LeMatin.ch, via MacRumors]
Posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 11:17 pm by Mike Evans
Filed under
Rumours
The iPhone in its current can no longer be bought online in either the UK or, more significantly, the US. Apple has apparently declined to comment on why there's no more stock left, but rumours are reaching fever pitch that a new 3G iPhone is on its way in June, and will be announced at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
The current model didn't have 3G as it would apparently drain the battery too quickly. So what's changed now to enable Apple to launch a new 3G model? Well according to some reports, you'll be able to turn off 3G when you don't need it, meaning the radio buried deep inside the iPhone can be switched to the less power hungry 2G protocols when you don't need super high-speed access (in other words, when you're not using the Internet).
This seems, at best, a hack, as no other 3G phone requires you to keep switching between different communication modes, and it doesn't exactly fit Apple's mantra of ease of use. How many ordinary phone users even know of, let alone care about, 2G or 3G, or when to use each type of communication technology?
Still, a 3G iPhone at last makes Apple's Uber-phone fully usable, so however they manage, it, let's hope we see it soon.
[Source: MyMotherLode]
Heading this way real soon is the Sony Ericsson P5i, the latest in a long line of glorious Sony Ericsson smartphones. Still codenamed Paris, the P5i hasn't yet been officially announced, but as these new pics show, it certainly won't be long before it's launched in blaze of hype.
It looks superb, despite the fact it's got one of those annoying rocker-style keypads first seen on the M600i. It's features aren't too shabby, either, with touchscreen, 5 megapixel camera, GPS, WayFinder 7.0 software, and a weather application as well.
More pics of the Sony Ericsson P5i after the jump.
No Nokia N96 review worth its salt would be complete without referring to its spiritual daddy, the hugely popular Nokia N95. The Nokia N96 offers similar features and a similar form factor to the N95, but with a much more mature platform (in other words, unlike the N95, it actually works without crashing!). However, it's not, apparently, designed as the N95's successor (largely because the N95 is still on sale!) Rather, it's a video and mobile TV phone that just happens to include much of the N95's functionality!
However, whereas the N95 was a revolutionary phone, the N96 is more evolutionary. The features of the N96 aren't as world-shattering as they were when they first appeared a year earlier on the N95, leading some to question whether it was actually a boring phone.
Boring? GPS, 5 megapixel camera, mobile TV, video, HSDPA, WiFi, etc., etc., and we call that boring?! The N95 really did set the bar high!
Still, if you're going to buy a new mobile phone, you need to know whether it's going to be the phone for you. Only one way to find out - read on for our comprehensive Nokia N96 review!
Samsung have announced the new Samsung P960 mobile TV phone. Rather than being destined for the South Korean market, though, as Samsung's previoius mobile TV phones have tended to be, the new P960 is aimed fairly and sqaurely at Europe, with Samsung proudly boasting that the P960 supports both the Euopean mobile TV standards (Digital Video Broadcast - Convergence of Broadcast and Mobile Service (DVB-CBMS) and Open Mobile Alliance Mobile Broadcast Service Enabler Suite (OMA-BCAST), in case you were wondering!)
The Samsung P960 is a slider, and you'll be pleased to know that it has a few other tricks up its sleeve, too. An MP3 player with Bang and Olufsen amp, for example, a three megapixel camera, and a plethora of nifty mobile TV features, such as Tivo-esque time shifting and Picture In Picture (although quite how you see a miniaturised view of a TV programme on a screen that's already only 2.6" in size is anyone's guess!)
More details and pictures of the Samsung P960 after the jump.
The Samsung Soul is the first mobile phone review I've done in a while, but I felt it deserved more coverage as it's an intriguing mobile phone. Not only does it look stunning (which is a nice new trend that Samsung have managed to keep up throughout their entire Ultra range of mobile phones, of which the Soul is set to be the last), but it comes with some cracking features as well.
The Samsung Soul is the flagship phone for Samsung for 2008, so you'd expect it to be feature-rich, but feature-rich and good looking? That takes some doing!
The question is, how well do the features on the Samsung Soul work? Read on to find out with our comprehensive Samsung Soul review.
Samsung's latest flagship phone, the Samsung Soul, is now on sale at the Carphone Warehouse. The Soul, in case you've forgotten, is set to be the last in Samsung's glorious Ultra range of mobile phones, and quite possibly the best of the entire range as well. Featuring a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, image stabilizer and face detection, the Soul is right up there amongst the best of all camera phones.
Better still, it offers HSDPA for super-fast data transfers, a Bang & Olufsen-powered MP3 player, FM radio, and superb OLED keypad that makes the Soul one of the best looking mobile phones on the market today. So, fantastic features, great looks, and a cracking price of £35 per month. Seriously, what are you waiting for?!
