Hasta La Gadget!

Well we’ve made it to our tenth show, and it was nothing short of explosive! For our entry into the world of double digits, we sat down with Late Night host (and all around awesome dude) Jimmy Fallon for a lengthy and hilarious conversation about games, gadgets, “The Wizard,” and much, much more. Then Microsoft’s Kudo Tsunoda joined the team onstage for a demo of the company’s Kinect — including a look at how the underlying tech actually works. Finally, Josh, Nilay, Paul, and Joanna sat down to rap about — and play with — the latest and greatest gadgets (including some unreleased gear). Oh yeah, and then we had a near riot during the giveaways! It was one crazy party, and if you couldn’t be in the crowd, this is the next best thing. What are you waiting for? Watch it now!

Hosts: Joshua Topolsky, Paul Miller, Nilay Patel
Special guests: Jimmy Fallon, Kudo Tsunoda, Joanna Stern
Produced and Directed by: Chad Mumm
Executive Producer: Joshua Fruhlinger
Edited by: Michael Slavens
Music by: glomag
Visuals by: Invaderbacca
Opening titles by: Julien Nantiec

Taped live at Cooper Union, New York City

Download the Show: The Engadget Show – 010 (HD) / The Engadget Show – 010 (iPod / iPhone / Zune formatted)

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The Engadget Show – 010: Jimmy Fallon, Kudo Tsunoda, Microsoft Kinect, iPhone 4, Samsung Captivate, Droid X originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Jun 2010 17:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I had to do it. While Mobile Managing Editor Sascha Segan is busy in the labs benchmarking and pounding away at the new Apple iPhone 4, I just wanted to have some fun. As far as I can tell, FaceTime Apple’s new video calling over Wi-Fi utility may be the funnest thing on this new phone. However, I wouldn’t know for certain until I tried it for myself. My partner in crime for this little experiment was none other than former PCMag EIC Michael J. Miller (he blogs regularly on Forward Thinking).

He called me, we selected FaceTime and we were on our way. Check out the video to find out why we think FaceTime is so much fun.

For the first time, Apple support technicians have pointed at a manufacturing issue as the origin of the yellow bands and spots that people are finding in their iPhone 4’s displays. There’s no official word from Apple yet, however. More »

If you thought that the hype was settling down, guess again: iPhone-hungry masses lined up outside Apple stores around the world Thursday, eager to get their hands on Apple’s latest smartphone.

“The line is longer than expected. I wish they had it more organized by time frame like they do at the genius bar,” said Robert Arnold-Kraft, a line waiter outside Apple’s downtown San Francisco store.

“My legs are already cramping up. It’s almost been two hours. This launch is bigger than a blackout sale,” said Joseph Canino, in San Francisco.

“The line here is about 2,000 people deep! Ughh,” tweeted Sandra Saldivar, in Modesto, California.

In fact, the launch of the iPhone 4 may have drawn the largest crowds ever. In New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Tokyo, Paris and London, thousands of would-be customers queued up, some camping out overnight, to get a chance to buy the phone.

They’ll need some luck. Apple reported receiving more than 600,000 pre-orders for the phone, in a presales rush that swamped AT&T’s and Apple’s web servers and led to countless customer complaints.

Some customers lucky enough to place their orders successfully, and smart enough to choose at-home delivery, started receiving their phones as early as Tuesday. Those who chose to pick up their pre-ordered phones at an Apple store had to wait in line today, although there are separate lines for pre-orders and for customers without pre-orders. And the unhappy few who chose to pick up their phones at an AT&T store may have to wait until next week.

If you’re in line now and don’t have a reservation, you may be looking at a long wait. Apple employees estimated a six- to seven-hour wait for nonreservation customers, according to Lun Esex, waiting in line in San Francisco.

According to some estimates, Apple may sell as many as a million iPhone 4s today, a clear record. By contrast, it took the original iPhone 74 days to hit a million, and the iPhone 3GS took a whole weekend to reach that number.

Problems have already started to crop up. Many customers are reporting that the iPhone 4 loses signal strength when you touch the lower-left corner of its external antenna band. Some customers have complained that the iPhone’s high-resolution display exhibits yellow discolorations. And Apple has said that the white version of the iPhone 4 will be unavailable for at least 3 weeks, prompting some grumbling.

A large crowd stands in line outside the Apple store in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, early Thursday waiting to buy the new Apple iPhone 4. (Mel Evans/AP)

Still, waiting in line is worth it for some.

“Pre-ordering your iPhone is like getting the T-shirt without going to the concert,” said iPad DJ Rana Sobhany in a tweet. “The waiting and anticipation is part of the fun.”

“I feel excited, cold and insane,” said Juliet Hoffman, who was near the front of the line in San Francisco at about 9 a.m., after waiting for three hours.

Others were less excited about the onslaught of new iPhone customers, given that AT&T’s network is already stretched to the limits.

“So *excited* to know there are about to be 500k+ more iPhone users on ATT starting today. Never thought I would be a network NIMBY,” tweeted Alexander Rose, executive director of the Long Now Foundation.

Evan Wiendczak, foreground center, from Boston, waits as the first person in line to enter the Apple flagship store in New York Thursday morning to buy his Apple iPhone 4. (Richard Drew/AP)

Top photo: Customers line up to buy Apple’s newest iPhone outside an Apple store at the Ginza district in Tokyo on Thursday. Hundreds more lined up across the city at Apple stores and other Softbank outlets.
Shizuo Kambayashi/AP

Additional reporting by Brian X. Chen.

Below is a video shot by Wired’s Missy Schwartz, showing a fraction of the long line outside the downtown San Francisco Apple store.

It usually takes a couple of days before the negative reports about hot new products crop up. People are just starting to receive their new iPhones, and there’s already a slew of online complaints that point to what appears to be one major design flaw in the latest iPhone.

According to numerous reports, holding the phone’s new external antennae
band has the tendency to completely block reception. The issue seems to
have first popped up (as many do) on a Mac Rumor board. Gizmodo put out a call to readers with the new phone and got a flood of responses from
users who seem to be having the same issue.

Perhaps it’s because a product like the iPhone 4 is bound to be under the microscope upon its release–or maybe this is a legitimate concern. Either way, it seem like this is something Apple is going to have to address soon.

Do you have an iPhone 4? Are you having this problem? Let us know in the Comments section.