Posts filed under iPhone

With MWC 2010 previewing a raft of new smartphones all snapping at the iPhone’s heels, Apple might just throw off the competition this year by releasing a brand new iPhone with a distinctly new form factor.

That’s the view of Ben Reitzes, a Barclay’s analyst who follows Apple. Talking to EETimes, he said:

I think they will try to change the game on everybody – it bothers them that everyone stole their form factor.

If true, it would certainly be ironic. Apple changed the mobile phone game by shifting the emphasis away from hardware and onto software. Now that the other manufacturers have caught up with software, Apple are now trying to shift back towards hardware again!

[Source: EETimes]

The Apple iPad has now launched and all the hype has dissipated like the lancing of a grotesquely engorged ulcerous boil. Through the clearing mist lies reality and the path to the future, which, oddly, doesn’t feature the iPad at all.

In fact the only thing that’s caused the iPad to exist in the first place is the limitations of current display technology.

Find out why after the jump.

With Apple rumoured to be announcing its 4th generation iPhone on January 27th (along with one or two other products, apparently!), the rumours are flying thick and fast over what could be included.

Fortunately, French site NowhereElse.fr (which apparently is French for “Nowhere else” ;) has rendered a nice visualization of the rumoured specs, with nice, if completely arbitrary, probabilities of each feature.

Samsung announced the Samsung Bada platform last week, a bold move designed to move Samsung phones firmly into the smartphone space. Bada is a whole new mobile technology from Samsung that takes on the iPhone and Android in a head to head battle.

Bada is a mobile operating system designed for smartphones, with support for everything you’d expect from an iPhone-equivalent device: GPS, Web browsing, touchscreen support, and all sorts of sensors, including tilt, GPS, proximity, and even weather!

Better still is Samsung’s strategy – virtually all of their new phones from 2010 onwards will feature Bada, meaning all of Samsung’s range of phones will be smartphones. As Samsung say, Bada will be the basis for a “smartphone for everyone”

Just one problem though – despite a lengthy presentation, Samsung didn’t actually show a Bada phone in action!

Fortunately, we can now put this to rights with these new pics of the Bada interface that have just been unearthed.

More pics after the jump.

Here we go – the Apple iPhone 3GS has been officially announced in all its glory! The s stands for speed, apparently, as it’s faster than any iPhone before it. 7.2Mbps HSDPA, OpenGL/ES version 2 for super-fast 3D graphics, 3.2 megapixel camera complete with auto-focus and auto-exposure – nice!

More details after the jump (the details are being live-blogged courtesy of Gizmodo and Twitter, so refresh to read more!)

Eighteen months after the iPhone was launched, the world’s major mobile phone manufacturers have finally released a set of phones that will give it some serious competition. Apple completely changed the game with the iPhone, focusing not on features that nobody used, but on a world-class user interface that was literally second to none.

Ever since then, seemingly every mobile phone that’s been released has featured a touchscreen, but the user interface itself has been largely unchanged, with just a few tweaks and polishes here and there; certainly nothing that come close to Apple’s glorious invention.

Until now.

With the start of MWC 2009 just days away, the big guns of the mobile phone world are preparing to unleash their brand new phones onto the market, and nearly all of them have something very special waiting in the wings – full touchscreen phones with enhanced user interfaces that match or even surpass the iPhone’s, plus a feature spec that takes your breath away.

Is 2009 the year that the iPhone is finally overtaken? Read on to find out.

If there’s one thing I’ve noticed since the launch of the iPhone, it’s how few phone companies have been prepared to take on the iPhone at its game. All the iPhone “killers” out there from the major phone companies are really nothing of the sort – they’re just touchscreen phones that pretend they’re iPhone competitors, but they don’t really go for the throat.

Before you start protesting and throwing examples of your favourite phone at me as a demonstration of how wrong I am, Sony have very kindly come up with all the proof I need – and it’s not even a phone!

The Nokia N97 is the first Nokia N-Series touchscreen phone, and so comparisons with the Apple iPhone are inevitable. So inevitable, in fact, that the first thing everyone wants to see is pictures of the N97 next to the iPhone.

Fortunately, Scoble, who’s at Nokia’s N97 briefing this morning, has kindly obliged, so here are the pics, courtesy of Scoble and Flickr.

More pics after the jump.

PDA phone, smartphone, smart PDA phone – whatever you call it, PDA phones have been the talk of the mobile phone world throughout 2008. There are now tonnes of different PDA phones on the market, and with a bewildering array of phones to choose from, finding the right one has become a nightmare!

To help you through the PDA phone maze, we’ve compiled a little guide to the best smartphones to buy for Christmas 2008.

In an intriguing article, long-time technology pundit Bob Cringely has made a compelling case for the death of Windows Mobile. He is, as he admits, no expert on mobile phones, but this counts in his favour as he has no bias towards one platform or another.

Analyzing the current mobile phone market and some of the announcements that have been made this year, he predicts that Apple’s iPhone will become the dominant smartphone platform, Google’s Android will be second, and Symbian and RIM fighting each other for third place. Windows Mobile, meanwhile, will simply wither on the vine and eventually be killed off by Microsoft.