May 22
AT&T 3G network will be mostly ready by June 30
Filed under: iPhone
AT&T announced today that about two-thirds of its U.S. network will enjoy download speeds of 1.4 Mb/s and upload speeds of 500 to 800 Kb/s by June 30.
Compared to the actual throughput of the EDGE network, it could be about 15 times faster.
According to the press release, 275 markets will be ready by the end of June. As to which cities and towns those are, Ma Bell is silent. It expects to have its nationwide network entirely 3G-enabled by the end of the year. The upgrade is part of a $20 billion network overhaul which has been in the works since 2005.
AT&T also didn’t mention anything about a new iPhone, but hinted at “the addition of more 3G-enabled smartphones in the summer and fall of 2008.”
[Via Apple 2.0]
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May 22
Switzerland to get the iPhone, remain neutral
Many great things have come out of Switzerland: chocolate, clocks, cheese. Many of them, as you might notice, start with “c.” But now something great is coming into Switzerland, and that’s the iPhone. Confirming rumors published in Swiss’s Le Matin last week, a notice appeared on Swisscom’s website with the…
May 22
AdBlock
AdBlock is an extension to iPhone and iPod touch’s Safari web browser that filters out advertisements when you are surfing the Web. It is a for-pay app which runs ~$10US. Available via Installer (add http://i.cocoamug.com as a source) | Discuss | Developer’s Website
May 22
Intel Germany CEO Spills on Atom-Based Mini-Tablet iPhone
Through the fabulously true-to-life magic of machine translation comes word from ZDNet.de that Intel Germany CEO Hannes Schwaderer has confirmed an upcoming, larger (more tablet-y?) “version of the iPhone” based on Intel’s Atom platform. Supposedly, the beefier unit size isn’t due to the Atom chipset, but to the previously rumored bigger 720×480 display.
This adds to past rumors of a mystery Apple device making use of Atom, though Schwaderer’s supposed semantic choice calling it a “version of the iPhone” seems odd, given that Atom is designed more for UMPCs than traditional mobile devices. Also, too much bigger and it’s not much of a phone-sized gadget anymore—more like a mini-tablet or as Jesus has called this particular phantasm, the Son of Newton. As always, we’ll believe it when see it. [ZDNet.de via MacRumors]
May 22
3G Rumors: iPhone in Canada Next Month With Reasonable Rates?!
I’m not going to get off on another Rogers rant here. Suffice it to say, when it comes to Canadian telcos, I’m the rat who, having learned helplessness, now lies face down on the hot plate. However, not content to let me lie there and wither in peace, now comes this report, determined to kick poor […]
May 22
Refurb iPhones still contain previous users’ data
Filed under: Security, iPhone
Here’s a slightly disturbing story from iPhone Atlas. Apparently user data is recoverable from iPhones that are being sold as refurbished. A detective from the Oregon State police recovered email, photos, and other user data from an “out-of-the-box refurbished iPhone.” Indeed the image to the right is a partial screen capture from the refurbished iPhone.
According to the iPhone developer Jonathan Zdziarski “all of the personal information that was sitting on [his iPhone] prior to the erase or restore is still left sitting in the unallocated blocks of the iPhone’s NAND memory.” In other words doing a Restore operation through iTunes will not actually fully delete all the data on the iPhone. What’s needed is a low-level format of the NAND, but there doesn’t seem to be a readily available means for doing this.
With the 3G iPhone presumably about to drop it seems safe to assume a lot of second-hand iPhones are about to become available on eBay, etc. It would be nice if there were some fully reliable way to ensure that all personal data is expunged from the device. The original information is on Zdziarski’s blog.
Update: Just to be clear, the data was recovered using forensics software. Average users who buy refurbished iPhones will not have easy access to the previous userss data, though it will still be there waiting to be recovered by anyone with the proper expertise.
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May 22
Apple’s AirPort grabs 10.6% share of 802.11n WiFi market
While Apple’s share of the entire US PC market hovers between 6% and 8% depending on the source, its share of the 802.11n WiFi base station market is even higher. Stephen Baker, an analyst for market research firm NPD Group, told AppleInsider that…
May 22
Switzerland to get the iPhone, remain neutral
Many great things have come out of Switzerland: chocolate, clocks, cheese. Many of them, as you might notice, start with “c.” But now something great is coming into Switzerland, and that’s the iPhone. Confirming rumors published in Swiss’s Le Matin last week, a notice appeared on Swisscom’s website with the…
May 22
A line forms in Manhattan
It’s beginning to look a lot like…Soviet Russia. According to some of Engadget’s informants, a line has formed at the 24/7 Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York City. The purpose of the line? Nobody quite seems sure. Apple reps apparently say that they’re controlling the crowd of iPhone purchasers,…
May 22
AT&T making out like bandit on iPhone
Filed under: iPhone
Apparently AT&T is making out pretty well on this whole iPhone thing. According to a Rubicon Consulting study (NYT link, registration required) of 460 iPhone users about half (47%) switched to AT&T to get the iPhone and agreed to pay an average of $19 more per month to use the iPhone over their previous cell. Those numbers are just about right in my case from when I traded in my Treo on Sprint.
What about you guys? How many of you switched to get an iPhone and how much more are you paying per month than you were before?
[via iPhone Central]
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May 22
SpoofApp
SpoofApp is an iPhone caller ID spoofing, voice changing, and call recording application. It is a for-pay, by minute priced app which requires a subscription. Developer’s Site
May 22
iPhone vs. Big Media: Mo Music Mo Money!
With the super-fast new 3G iPhone Steve Jobs will all but certainly announce this June, it makes sense that Apple would want to provide services that exploit all that delicious bandwidth, like over-the-air (read: via cell as opposed to WiFi or local sync) ringtones, ringbacks (shudder!), and iTunes Music Store purchases. Sounds great! You’re on […]
May 22
New Google Reader is iPhonerrific
Attention, mobile RSS junkies. Google’s released a new iPhone-specific version of its Google Reader feed reader. The new version which, unsurprisingly, is in beta, is supposed to bring many of the features available in desktop browsers: you can star items, share them with others, and mark them as unread, and…
May 22
iPhone “Currently Unavailable” Online: Brilliant Pre 3G iPhone Strategy?
The iPhone is “currently unavailable” at the AppleStore US, following the dry-out in the UK. Does this mean they are waiting for the shipment of the next version? If so, this is a brilliant and rare move for Apple.
We won’t know for sure until next month, but knowing Apple’s tight command of their stock levels, it looks like this may be the reason. But considering we’re almost exactly 30 days from the WWDC keynote, it could mean the 3G iphone is coming sooner than we think. Let’s assume this is what is happening. If so, this move is brilliantly kind and uncharacteristic of Apple. What they’re doing is trading off secrecy to protect people from buying the first-gen iPhone in its last days before its successor is unveiled. I mean, if you’d bought an iPhone and it was upgraded to v.2 days after your purchase, wouldn’t you be pissed? Maybe they’d rather short the sales for a month and not have to deal with thousands of pissed off customers. [Apple Store—thanks, Erik]
May 22
RIM CEO: BlackBerry Bold Not Inspired by the iPhone At All, Really
RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis, who was hating hard on touchscreen keyboards last time we heard from him, took the defensive on the BlackBerry Bold’s iPhone-esque aesthetics at the Wireless Enterprise Symposium, saying that the Bold “wasn’t a response to another device…. This was actually designed three years ago and the actual physical design of this product—I have the original models from 2006.” Syncing to iTunes aside, Mike, I take it that this would be your response to the iPhone then? What do you guys think? Update: Changed the picture to live shot comparison, rather than renders.
Lazaridis also continued proselytizing for the full, physical QWERTY, calling it “the most exciting mobile trend,” arguing that
“I’m not making this up. People are running out of their two-year contracts and they’re coming into the stores and they want to be able to do Facebook and they want to be able to do instant messaging and they want to be able to do e-mail and they ask for those features thinking that they’re going to get another flip phone and they’re walking out with a (BlackBerry) Curve or a Pearl because they’re the best devices for doing those kinds of activities.”
Man, it sure would be great if there was a BlackBerry flip phone, wouldn’t it ? All mocking aside, I think he’s kinda right—look at the success of the Sidekick and LG’s various QWERTY-but-basic phones, like the Rumor and enV. [Cnet via Daring Fireball]
