Hasta La Gadget!

Oh, iFaithful, your newest Apple phone(s) are only a day away. Which is even more reason to hunker down into this latest chunk of pre-announcement gossip. According to information obtained by the Wall Street Journal, Sprint’s betting the farm on a 30 million-plus order of next-generation iPhones to put it on an even battle ground with heavyweight rivals AT&T and Verizon. The cost of this loss-absorbing gamble? That would be about $20 billion, with the Hesse-led co. subsidizing the $500 cost of each handset. For the third place operator it’s matter of do-or-die, as there really isn’t an alternative to the critically-praised, Jony Ive-designed handset that set off this smartphone race. Hesse’s purported admission to the company’s board that customer churn is directly linked to its iPhone omission only serves to underscore the uncomfortable plight his company faces. It remains to be seen if Sprint can convert its base of 52 million subscribers (mostly pre-paid) into the contracted customers it needs to stay financially afloat. While an iPhone on Sprint certainly seems a given, it’s unclear whether this next device will opt for a WiMAX or LTE radio.

WSJ: Sprint places $20 billion order for next iPhone, hinges company future on Apple’s handset? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Oct 2011 15:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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See that? That just might be the cheaper iPhone that Apple’s rumored to formally unveil on Tuesday. Gizmodo Brazil managed to get a hold of a purported iPhone 4s from within a Brazilian Foxconn factory, and while the hardware itself looks just about identical to the iPhone 4 that exists today, there’s a new SKU that’s leading to understandable speculation. The N90A model number that popped up has certainly emerged before, but where things really get interesting is the “reprovado” (“disqualified”) labeling. Is this batch an early set of prototypes that didn’t quite pass QA? Will the eventual iPhone 4s even look anything like the iPhone 4 that’s on shelves today? You can bet we’ll be on hand in Cupertino to find out, and there’s no time like the present to clear out your Tuesday morning / afternoon / evening schedule (depending on time zone, of course) to find out with us.

Is this Apple’s cheaper iPhone 4? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 02 Oct 2011 00:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intel’s Ivy Bridge chips include the world’s first mass-produced 22-nanometer transistors. Image: Intel

If you dream of having brilliant, iPhone 4-like displays on your notebooks and tablets, you may see it become a reality sooner than you think.

Intel’s latest chips will provide support for an ultra-high resolution display, according to information seen in a slide presentation about the company’s upcoming “Ivy Bridge” processors during the company’s developer forum last week.

According to the slide, the Ivy Bridge chip will support super-high resolution displays of 4096 x 4096 pixels on a single monitor, as well as processing for 4K QuadHD video.

How pixel-packed is a 4096 x 4096 display? A 1080p screen is 1920 x 1080, so that’s over four times as large. 4K QuadHD — a technology largely ignored while the world has primarily focused on 3-D TVs — packs video into a resolution of 3840 × 2160, slightly below the 4K cinema standard.

First revealed in May, Intel’s Ivy Bridge chip features a unique 3-D transistor which uses a thin silicon ridge in place of the power-conducting strip normally used in 2-D transistors. The change makes the 3-D transistor 30 percent more efficient than planar transistors, with only a 2 to 3 percent price bump. The development is a big step for Intel in its rivalry with chips usingARM architecture, and could allow for portable notebooks to feature a screen similar to Apple’s Retina Display on a larger scale.

Slim, portable devices like the MacBook Air or Asus UX21 Ultrabook often use an integrated graphics chip in order to save on space. Notebooks and high end computers tend to use a separate, more powerful GPU for their processing needs (for example, the 2010 MacBook Pro featured an Intel Core i5 or i7 processor and an NVIDIA GeForce GPU).

Intel’s Ivy Bridge technology will be in full production later this year, so we should start seeing it incorporated in products in 2012.

VR-Zone via Macrumors

Are you a Sprint subscriber? Super stoked about possibly getting your hands on an iPhone? It seems as though you’re finally about to be in business. After a chat with a freshly-briefed, forthcoming sales associate, TUAW is reporting that the carrier will start offering an Apple device of some sort next month alongside existing data plans — providing some confirmation for the recent Wall Street Journal report. Things get a bit cloudy after that in regards to exactly which handset the carrier will obtain, but the sales force is currently getting familiar with the iPhone 4. Regardless of which iPhone Sprint ends up procuring, it’s getting fairly impossible to shake the (seemingly) obvious. We’ll see in a month, eh?

Sprint begins iPhone briefings, exact model number remains questionable originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 02:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung has retaliated against Apple once again — this time, in France, where the Korean manufacturer has filed a complaint alleging that Cupertino infringed upon a trio of its patents. Originally filed with a Paris district court in July and announced yesterday, the complaint claims that the UMTS technologies featured in the iPhone and 3G-enabled iPads violate three of Samsung’s patents. Unlike a previous case in Germany, which recently resulted in a nationwide injunction against the Galaxy Tab 10.1, this filing “focuses on three technology patents, and not on the design of the tablets,” as a Samsung spokesperson was quick to point out. Details on the patents in question remain blurry for the moment, but it’ll probably be a while before the case progresses anyway, with the first hearing scheduled for December.

Samsung files French patent complaint against Apple, targets iPhone, iPad originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Sep 2011 07:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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