Apple’s iPhone 4 Hits the Streets

Did you notice anything different on the way to work this morning? If you live in the US and pass by the Apple store (or any retailer that’s selling the iPhone), you may have noticed a small lineup of people in front of the store waiting for their chance to own the latest Apple phone. Rich Brome – Editor in Chief at Phonescoop.com, had this to say about the extra long lines this time around:

Apple’s marketing engine has done a great job once again, at building up the anticipation and getting people to line up overnight to spend their hard earned money on a new phone. While the iPhone is still locked to AT&T’s network in the US, Apple is looking at selling it unlocked in Canada when it goes on sale next month. This means you can pick up an iPhone without having to sign a long term contract with a carrier. This is something Google attempted with their Nexus One phone when it launched. For the customer, the end result is a more expensive phone since the carrier isn’t subsidizing it with a 2 or 3 year contract. However the customer ends up with a phone that will work with any compatible network. Which is certainly an advantage if you don’t like signing long contracts or you travel on a regular basis.

Early reports from the lucky ones who received their device yesterday and early this morning are indicating that Apple may have some issues with the physical hardware. The first is a yellow tint on the new Retina Display. Sadly, this is a problem that has come up all to often with device manufacturers. The second issue is around the cellular reception of the iPhone. In case you’re not aware, the sides of the device are used as the various antennas required (Bluetooth, WiFi, and Cellular). Left-handed people are reporting that the signal drops when holding the phone along the bottom. There’s a chance that this is related to how the software displays the signal strength. If Apple’s lucky, that’s all it will be. If it’s a deeper design issue, it’s going to be costly for Apple to fix it. And finally, if you happen to drop your device, you’re not going to be happy. Check out this video by iFixYouri.com – and remember to get a good case and don’t drop it!

How the iPhone 4 Compares to Other Top Smartphones

Engadget has put together a great chart showing the comparison between Apple’s new iPhone 4 and 4 of the top smartphones available today from competitors. The comparison does a great job of showing exactly how the new iPhone 4 stacks up against the HTC EVO 4G (Android), Nokia N8 (Symbian), Palm Pre Plus (WebOS), and the HTC HD2 (Windows Mobile).

I’m not going to ruin the results for anyone, you’ll just have to go and check it out for yourself. Apple has done a great job, as usual, with the presentation and story behind the iPhone 4. Head over to Engadget’s site and check out the comparison then let us know your thoughts. Is the iPhone 4 really a ground breaking device?

The End of a Mobile Marriage

As of 1PM EDT yesterday, my iPhone 3GS has officially been retired. Me and old whitey (my white iPhone 3GS) had an amicable divorce performed by a Best Buy Wireless associate. There was a lot of love in that relationship over the last two years. Old whitey got a minor facelift, dropped a few pounds, and got a whole lot faster from summer of 2008 to summer of 2009 to call herself the 3GS instead of the 3G.

I never much cared for my mother-in-law in that relationship. Ol’ Ma Bell, more formally known to outsiders as AT&T, always caused troubles in our relationship. She was always trying to get in my business. If she thought I had talked enough, she’d just drop the call. Being old-timey in her ways she thought I spent too much time Twittering and playing on “the Facebook” so she would see to it all too frequently that my Internet connection would be non-existent. Now she wants to limit everybody’s access and limit them to a fixed amount of bandwidth before being penalized monetarily.

Don’t feel too sad for me. I’m happy to report that I’m in the early courting stages with another who is very sexy. Oh is she beautiful. She’s larger than any others I’ve been with, but big girls need love, too. I call her EVO. Her figure is gorgeous. Slim, beautiful, vibrant, fast, engaging. She’s got more radios than you’d find at a NASCAR race. Wi-fi Wireless N, CDMA 3G, WiMax 4G, bluetooth, and even FM radio.

EVO is a much more social creature than old whitey. I can go to one place and see what’s happening on Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr. My contacts are vibrant with photos imported from my Facebook friends. My calendar is unified with my Exchange, GMail, and Facebook accounts. Not only does she dig the long ball with the MLB at Bat app, she likes robots, too. I may have found the one.

iPhone Security Vulnerability Exposes Your Data

A new report form Bernd Marienfeldt exposes a large security vulnerability in the way the iPhone secures your personal data. Oh, and if you have enabled a PIN prompt on your iPhone to help protect your device if it was to be lost or stolen, it won’t prevent prying eyes from accessing your data. Unlike the iPhone worm, this vulnerability is not limited to people with jailbroken devices.

So how does this work? Since the iPhone 3GS fails to provide full disk encryption, you take a iPhone and connect it to a computer running Ubuntu Lucid Lynx. This will allow access to the complete file system of the phone.

So you may feel that your data is safely stored away on your iPhone, it’s still accessible to the more knowledgeable cracker. This is something Apple has to face more and more as their platform continues to grow. They have managed to fly under the radar of the growing security aware public for a while now. But with the install base growing to such a large number, it brings more attention to the platform from the hacking community. As I mentioned in a previous post, Apple needs to get serious about security if they want to be taken seriously in the enterprise.   

Source = engadget mobile

All iPad Competitors will Fail – Really?

“The Apple iPad sure has the entire world interested in what it can do.  I’ve had everyone from managers and directors at the office (including the Chief Medical Information Officer at the hospital where I used to work) ask me what it was, if it was for them, and why they should buy one. Those are hard questions to answer, especially if you don’t know what the person’s intended use for the device is. However, I have had a fair number of those same people indicate that they were going to wait until either a MS/Windows or Android tablet was released and they were going to get it. Really? Personally, I think this is a horrible idea.  Here’s why…”

If you don’t know how someone is thinking of using a product, it is very hard to recommend a suitable product for them. If the person is the Chief Medical Information Officer at a hospital, then you really need to be aware of their plans. There is a significant difference between using the iPhone or iPad for business or enterprise versus using it for personal use. iTunes is a key part of the Apple Ecosystem for personal users. However, security of data on the device, remote management, compliance with government standards and the ability to side-load your custom applications are all key elements for any business that plans to role out a mobile device to their staff.

The way I see it, having a platform that meets and/or exceeds all of the requirements of big business, and also provides functionality to general consumers is more important to long term success. Sure, having a central ecosystem like iTunes is good for consumers, but I would rather have platforms that satisfy both consumer and enterprise needs. Then connecting these altogether with a nice easy to use market/platform would be fairly easy to add on. From XP to Vista to 7, Windows Servers, Xbox, Windows Phone, and Zune, Microsoft has something to help both the consumer and the enterprise manage their lives and their business. Connecting everything together seems easier than Apple’s position of building out those products to where the enterprise needs them.

But that’s just my thoughts. Take a chance to read the article over at Just Another Mobile Monday and let me know what you think. Is everything that goes to compete against the iPhone and iPad doomed to failure?

Apple Announces Multitasking in iPhone OS 4.0

Yesterday was Apple’s big announcement – iPhone OS 4.0. There was a bunch of new features announced, including the long awaited – multitasking. If you want to follow the announcement, check out live.gdgt.com.

There’s a lot of focus on multitasking these days, so I wanted to run through what Apple announced and what it means for developers and the applications you use every day. Apple’s focus was to find a way to allow multitasking but without allowing background processes that end up killing your performance and battery life.

“How are we adding multitasking while preserving battery life and performance. We looked at tens of thousands of apps in the app store, and we’ve distilled the services those apps need to run in the background. So we implemented those services, and we’re providing those services as APIs to developers so they can add multitasking while preserving battery life.” – Scott Forstall, SVP of iPhone Software via live.gdgt.com

The announcement goes on to define the seven (7) background services they are providing – Background audio, Voice over IP, Background location, Push notifications, Local notifications, Task completion, and Fast app switching. These are the only multitasking services exposed to the developer. Let’s quickly run down what each one of these can do for you:

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How To: Google Buzz from Windows Mobile and Android

Google’s Buzz is doing quite well so far, but in many ways it seems to have been rushed to market. It’s crazy that you can access a Google service from only a specific version of Android (2.X). While the iPhone has full support, if you own an Android 1.5 or 1.6 or a Windows Mobile phone you are out of luck. Well, that is until now…

Jay Glogovsky posted a link in a Google Buzz post that will actually allow you to use the service on platforms that are not currently supported.

I present the “Link of Golden Awesomeness”: https://m.google.com/app/buzz/#~buzz:view=nearby

So far I have tested this on Windows Mobile and Android 1.5 and it works well. For Windows Mobile it did not seem to work in the default browser; I was using Opera Mobile 10 beta 3 and it worked just fine. In Android I just used the default browser with no problem.

So, start buzzing from the road, even if you aren’t iPhoning it!

If you try this on another phone and it works let us know and we will mention it in this post.

CES: New iPhone Cases and Speaker Docks

I’m sure that you’ve heard of this new smartphone from Apple called the iPhone.  You’ll be happy to know that a couple manufacturers have decided to built cases, docks, and external speakers for this device. Each manufacturer had a radically different accessory design and function. The good news is that if you don’t like how one looks or works, there is another manufacturer just a couple booths away with another design.

Now, I may be exaggerating a little. There are a lot of booths with cases, docks and accessories for your favorite Apple mobile device. What really gets me, is why even enter that market at this point? There are so many companies making accessories, that you don’t really stand a chance of being in the top 10 unless you’re doing something so radically different than everyone else and from what I’ve seen, that’s just not happening.

Consumers are sitting in a great position as the price of accessories is only going to go down. Unfortunately, so will the quality and the manufacturers will struggle to make money and provide for their employees.

Anyway, I hope you’ll forgive me if I neglected to visit or take pictures of any of these companies and their products.

ClintonFitch.com Takes on iPhone App Reviews

Clinton Fitch has long been reviewing devices and applications in the Windows Mobile space. Earlier today, Clinton stepped outside of his comfort zone and posted his first ever non-Windows Mobile review.  Dan over at GearDiary.com does a great job of describing this monumental event.

Now, in terms of the review, Clinton takes a close look at Exact Magic Weather Radar and Zyrtec AllergyCast for the iPhone. Both of which are available from Apple’s app store. Given the crazy and unpredictable weather we’ve been seeing this year, I think every gadget should come with some sort of weather radar system.  Exact looks to be a great option for that.  When it comes to allergies, I can’t really speak as I don’t have any allergies. So I’ll just leave it with a  – If you do, check it out – comment.

Clinton has assured us that he will still continue reviewing Windows Mobile devices and applications, but you can expect to see him spread his wings and include other platforms going forward.  Congratulations on the new addition to your site Clinton!

Rogers’ iPhone Upgrades for Customers

I just received this email from Rogers about the details on their upgrade program for existing iPhone owners. If you have questions please comment at the bottom and we will ask our contacts at Rogers.

“Hello Darren,
We’ve just announced the details of special Hardware Upgrade savings for our existing iPhone customers and wanted to let you know.

There has been a lot of excitement around the new iPhone 3G S and we wanted to recognize the early adopters who helped make the iPhone the hottest-selling handset in Canadian wireless history. We will be discounting the price of the iPhone 3G S by between $250 and $500 to provide savings to many of our iPhone customers.

What this means is that eligible iPhone owners can acquire the iPhone 16GB 3G S for as low as $199 or the 32GB for as low as $299 until July 31, 2009.

For Fido customers, we’re offering the Fido Rewards iPhone 3G S promotion. This enables iPhone customers to redeem FidoDollars towards a new iPhone 3G S with an additional $100 top-up from Fido.
For customers who don’t qualify for these extra savings, we are pleased to offer Rogers Wireless customers the iPhone at our cost on rogers.com. This cost – $580 for the iPhone 3G, $680 for the iPhone 3G S 16GB and $780 for the iPhone 3G S 32GB – represents the price we pay for the device plus a nominal fee for the SIM card. Customers can access these devices at retail locations for just $19 more for the three devices.

We’re also happy to announce that Rogers and Fido are extending the 6GB/$30 data promotion until July 31. This offer is valid for customers on a new or existing iPhone plan or customers buying an Android-powered HTC Magic or HTC Dream.

Five ways to save

1) For Rogers Wireless customers who bought an iPhone 3G between July 11 and Sept. 30, 2008, and with an average monthly spend of at least $100, Rogers will provide $500 off the cost of an iPhone 3G S. This special offer expires July 31, 2009 and comes with the addition of a one-year term to the customer’s existing service agreement.
· 16GB 3GS $199
· 32GB 3GS $299

2) For Rogers Wireless customers who bought an iPhone between July 11 and Dec. 31, 2008, but aren’t eligible for the above offer, Rogers will provide $250 dollars off the purchase of an iPhone 3G S. This special offer expires July 31, 2009 and comes with the addition of a one-year term to the customer’s existing service agreement.
· 16GB 3GS $449
· 32GB 3GS $549

3) All Rogers Wireless customers can upgrade to the iPhone 3GS at our cost at Rogers.com, or for a suggested retail price of just $19 more than our cost through our retail channels.
· 8GB 3G $580/$599
· 16GB 3GS $680/$699
· 32GB 3GS $780/$799

4) Fido customers can take advantage of the Fido Rewards iPhone 3G S promotion:
· Use FidoDollars towards the purchase of a new iPhone 3G S
· Fido will top up the FidoDollars amount by $100
· This promotion does not include an extension or renewal of their service agreement.

5) New and existing iPhone customers can take advantage of a limited-time promotion of 6GB of data for $30, now extended until July 31. Other Rogers and Fido data plans will remain the same, including the only national standalone data plan at $25 per month for 500 MB. We know that this is the right plan for most Canadians – 93 per cent of current iPhone customers on a data plan use less than 500 MB of data per month.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

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