Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve been to this rodeo before (a few times, actually), but the smoke that leads to fire is getting far harder to ignore. Following a Bloomberg report in June that a Verizon iPhone was on track for a January 2011 release as well as independent confirmation from John Gruber, Yukari Iwatani Kane from The Wall Street Journal is now sounding mighty confident that the aforementioned plans are true. According to various people “briefed by Apple,” Jobs and Company will begin “mass producing a new iPhone by the end of 2010 that would allow Verizon Wireless to sell the smartphone early next year.” It’ll rely on a key Qualcomm chip as well as a CDMA radio, but curiously enough, there’s nary of a mention of LTE in this report. In closely related news, it’s bruited that Apple is also developing a separate iPhone model, though it’s unclear how soon VZW will be able to grab the fifth generation edition. ‘Course, it’s not exactly the shocker of the year to hear that Apple’s toiling on a new iPhone without a dubious antenna design, but the real question is this: will the Verizon iPhone beat AT&T’s elusive white iPhone 4 to market? Inquiring minds would love to know.

Update: The WSJ udated the story to be more clear, “Apple Inc. is making a version of its iPhone that Verizon Wireless will sell early next year.” So it’s not just a generic CDMA iPhone that may or may not end up on Verizon Wireless. The WSJ also added that the CDMA iPhone 4 variant will be built by Pegatron and would only work on a CDMA network (i.e., it’s not a dual-mode GSM/CDMA device). Also, according to one source, VZW has been working with Apple to test its network and adding additional capacity to avoid being overwhelmed a la AT&T.

WSJ: Verizon to sell iPhone in 2011, fifth generation iPhone is in the works (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Oct 2010 14:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What’s the first thing you should do when you get the N8? Considering it packs the biggest image sensor embedded in a phone yet, Carl Zeiss optics, and an eight-digit pixel count, it seemed obvious to us that the answer was to take it on a picture- and video-taking stroll around London. On our way out we saw our iPhone 4 looking all sad and lonely, so we went ahead and brought it along as well. Below you shall find one gallery of pure, unadulterated N8 sample shots, another interspersed with the iPhone’s results for comparison’s sake, and a final one with side-by-side 100 percent crops from each image taker. Once you’ve digested all of those, we suggest hopping past the break and tucking into some tasty video comparisons for dessert.

Naturally, all the images are entirely unretouched (but for our masterly watermarking) and the iPhone 4’s HDR hocus pocus has been left off. We’ve also provided a zip file containing all the full-res imagery shot with the N8 in a link below.

A quick note is also merited about the N8’s resolution. The sensor’s display ratio is 4:3, which means that full 12 megapixel shots are only available in those dimensions. The camera software, however, defaults to shooting 9 megapixel snaps at the increasingly popular 16:9 ratio — this is done simply by cropping away the “excess” bars at the top and bottom of the image, meaning that the 9 megapixel images are giving us identical performance as the 12 megapixel ones, they’re just chopped down (from 4000 x 3000 to 4000 x 2248) for the sake of convenience. Now, on with the show!

Continue reading Nokia N8 vs. iPhone 4: camera showdown

Nokia N8 vs. iPhone 4: camera showdown originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Sep 2010 23:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The iPhone 4 launched this weekend in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, but buyers wound up with a surprise — their handset’s front-facing cameras couldn’t do FaceTime. The National reports that the video chat feature is missing from phones sold at UAE carriers Etisalat and du, as well as those from Vodafone Qatar. Carriers are blaming Apple for the missing feature, and spokespersons from both Etisalat and Vodafone say they’re speaking to Cupertino about reinstating FaceTime post-haste; It was reportedly advertised on Middle Eastern versions of Apple’s iPhone website until around September 20th, when all references to FaceTime were removed. TUAW reports that some UAE denizens have actually tested FaceTime on phones bought abroad and found it working just fine, but that the functionality disappears after installing the local version of the iOS 4.1 update.

RIM’s Mike Lazaridis famously warned that countries threatening to ban the BlackBerry might thumb their nose at other forms of internet transmission too, but if’s far too early to tell if Apple was pressured into removing FaceTime or chose to for another reason entirely. It’s worth noting that both the UAE and Egypt (also missing FaceTime website ads) have banned certain VoIP services in the past.

[Thanks, Mohammed]

iPhone 4 hits UAE and Qatar, but without FaceTime installed originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 26 Sep 2010 13:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nuu Mini Key didn’t satisfy your desire for a physical keyboard on your iPhone? Try this TK-421 QWERTY case instead, which sexes up the formula with a swiveling package that hearkens back to the T-Mobile Sidekick. There’s still no extra battery life to be had here, and yes, the keypad connects via Bluetooth, but we’re willing to sacrifice a good bit for a totally awesome hinge and a dedicated number row. Invented, designed and sold by ThinkGeek, gadget stocking stuffer seller extraordinaire, the unit’s priced at a very reasonable $50. Shame it’s not slated to ship till “mid-November” and only then in limited quantities, else we’d snap up two right now. Watch that screen spin right round after the break.

Continue reading TK-421 abandons his post, brings us this flip-out QWERTY case for iPhone

TK-421 abandons his post, brings us this flip-out QWERTY case for iPhone originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Sep 2010 20:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Palm OS on the iPhone? Check. Android on the iPhone? Quasi-check. Newton OS on the iPhone? As of today, that’s a trio of affirmations. Developer Matthias Melcher has wisely used a good bit of his free time to port one of the world’s forgotten-but-not-forgotten operating systems onto Apple’s iOS platform, and while things are understandably sluggish right now, he’s currently working on performance optimizations that’ll hopefully have it running like a clock before long. He’s also made the source code available to anyone willing to tinker with the emulator, and somehow or another, he’s even managed to bring over the much-hyped handwriting recognition aspect. Don’t believe us? Hop on past the break and hit play.

Continue reading Einstein brings Newton OS to the iPhone, handwriting recognition and all

Einstein brings Newton OS to the iPhone, handwriting recognition and all originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Sep 2010 01:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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