Hasta La Gadget!

Seriously, can’t we keep any mystery in our lives anymore? After we saw what’s purported to be Best Buy’s “playbook” for the iPhone 4 debut yesterday, today we’re being treated to an inventory list revealing the stock ordered up from Apple for the big retailer’s launch of the new handset. Black 16GB variants of the iPhone 4 dominate, with up to 70 per store, but the leak also includes smaller orders for the white 32GB units as well. None of these are in stock yet, mind you, and that playbook did serve up some confusing messages as to whether Best Buy will have any unreserved iPhones to sell at all on launch day. Still, at least you’ll now have a better idea of which locations stand the best chance of dishing out some of that Apple pie you crave so much.

Best Buy’s iPhone 4 inventory plans revealed by another purported leak originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Jun 2010 07:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While you’re waiting (and waiting and waiting) for your Apple iPhone 4, study up on the cases that are available for it. Griffin has announced its first iPhone 4 accessories. The Elan Holster Metal (shown here) is a flip-top horizontal case with an integrated clip. A Velcro enclosure holds the flap shut. It lists for $34.99.

You can also choose the Elan Passport Wallet ($34.99) which has metal accents and card pockets. It not only keeps you iPhone protected, but helps you organize all the things you need to carry. The Reveal ($24.99) is an ultra-slim hard-shell case redesigned for the iPhone 4. It adds just a millimeter of thickness to the sides and back of your iPhone.

Though the Apple iPad and the Samsung Wave most assuredly share the same brain, EE Times would like you to know there’s more to a chip than its core — analyzing Apple’s system-on-a-chip designs in detail back to early iPhones, the publication noticed that Cupertino’s silicon both has custom design quirks on top of ARM and shows heavy influence from Samsung as well. EE Times claims that while the A4 and Samsung S5PC110 are similar, there are certainly differences, enough to call the A4 a custom design. Essentially, Apple has a taken a one-size-fits-all product originally engineered to meet the needs of a broad range of OEMs and reduced its complexity, footprint, and cost to match Apple’s particular goals. As far as whether PA Semi or Intrinsity had a hand in that design, the authors suggest only the latter seems very involved. What all this means for intellectual property questions is anyone’s guess — we’ll let the lawyers fight that one out — but when you encounter diehard fans that claim one’s ripping off the other, at least now you’ll be able to calmly explain the situation. Find the deep technical dive at our source link.

Apple’s A4 is like Samsung’s S5, except where it’s not originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Jun 2010 01:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has traditionally been — how shall we put it — cagey with revealing memory and CPU specifics of its mobile devices, but MacRumors is today reporting its discovery that the fourth-gen iPhone’s RAM apportionment will be a very healthy 512MB. We’ve heard similar rumblings from reliable sources of our own. What it means is that iPhone 4 users can look forward to not only the same processor (though potentially at a lower speed) as their iPad compatriots, but also double the memory allowance. Of course, this will hardly be the first handset to offer half a gig for the OS to dance inside, but at least Apple’s keeping up with the times. Wouldn’t wanna disappoint all those pre-orderers now, would we?

iPhone 4 to have 512MB of RAM, double the 3GS and iPad? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple on Wednesday apologized for technical issues that marred yesterday’s iPhone 4 pre-order process, but said that it still managed to sell 600,000 of the devices in its first day.

“It was the largest number of pre-orders Apple has ever taken in a single day and was far higher than we anticipated, resulting in many order and approval system malfunctions,” Apple said in a statement. “Many customers were turned away or abandoned the process in frustration. We apologize to everyone who encountered difficulties, and hope that they will try again or visit an Apple or carrier store once the iPhone 4 is in stock.”

The new iPhone 4 is not scheduled to hit stores until June 24, but Apple, AT&T and several other retail outlets started taking pre-orders for the device on June 15. Unfortunately, the companies’ systems could not handle the extra demand, and many online buyers were met with timed-out browsers and 404 errors.

Since then, AT&T has suspended pre-orders, as have Radio Shack and Best Buy, which were accepting in-store orders.

The Apple Web site also now says that pre-ordered iPhone 4’s going forward will ship on July 14 rather than June 24.