Hasta La Gadget!

Apple’s iPhone-centric developer event is still days away, but a case manufacturer sent Wired.com two protective rubber cases designed for the next-generation iPhone.

The company, Gumdrop Cases, said it based the case design on a combination of specifications provided by inside sources in the plastics industry, as well as features seen in the prototypes leaked to Gizmodo and a Vietnamese blog. The company, which has offices in California, the U.K. and Hong Kong, said it did not receive the specifications from Apple.

“It’s supposed to be announced on Monday is what we’re being told, so we wanted to make sure we had cases available,” a Gumdrop spokeswoman told Wired.com.

The third-party accessories industry has historically been a leaky boat for Apple, according to Leander Kahney, Cult of Mac writer and former news editor of Wired.com. In the past, we’ve seen a number of case manufacturers begin selling protective cases for Apple products ahead of release. However, those leaks usually occur in China, and this is the first time Wired.com has actually received a case for a next-gen Apple product before it was released.

The characteristics of the two cases line up with the prototypes of the next-gen iPhone revealed in video and photos. Its overall form factor is slightly more square than the current iPhone. The case also fits awkwardly around the current iPhone: The holes for the audio/silent switch, volume button, power button and microphone jack don’t line up. The camera hole is slightly too large, giving enough room for a camera flash — a feature that Gizmodo and the Vietnamese blog saw on their prototypes of the next-gen iPhone.

A Gumdrop representative admitted the company deliberately mailed the cases, labeled “iPhone 4G Case” on a press flier, in order to gain attention prior to Apple’s official announcement of the product — you could call it a publicity stunt.

We have to get a next-gen iPhone to see if these will really fit, but the story about overseas insiders in the plastics industry is intriguing.

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off Monday, where Steve Jobs is expected to announce Apple’s fourth-generation iPhone during a keynote speech.

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Despite not having a single retail model sporting its display yet, at Computex, the company showcased prototype models sporting next-generation PixelQi screens.

One of the more interesting exchanges at D8 actually happened across two days as both Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer were asked about the future of PCs: Jobs compared traditional computers and tablets to cars and trucks by saying most people will eventually only need tablets while some would still need the added utility of a PC, and Ballmer responded directly by saying, “Well, there may be a reason why they call them ‘Mac’ trucks!” Ballmer snap. When it comes right down to it, though, both CEOs expressed relatively similar visions about the prevalence and importance of multiple computing form factors in the future and mostly differed on semantics — Ballmer came right out and said he thinks the iPad is actually a PC, and we’re pretty sure Jobs thinks it… isn’t. Check our edited video after the break to watch these two go at it across space and time, and then check our Ballmer liveblog / video highlights and Jobs liveblog / video highlights for more.

Continue reading Jobs: The PC is a truck. Ballmer: There’s a reason they’re called ‘Mac’ trucks.

Jobs: The PC is a truck. Ballmer: There’s a reason they’re called ‘Mac’ trucks. originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Jun 2010 18:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The timing couldn’t be worse: As Sprint’s highly-anticipated 4G smartphone gets ready to go on sale, a glitch involving the phone’s storage media has cropped up.

A problem with the 8-GB MicroSD card that ships with the HTC Evo has left some early users frustrated. Some people who tried to take photos using the phone’s camera got error messages saying the device cannot save files to the SD card “due to insufficient file permissions.” Others found that the gadget could not access the SD card at all. Gadget Lab experienced it when testing the phone’s otherwise impressive camera.

The Android-based HTC Evo is the first 4G smartphone to hit the market. Google gave about 5,000 of the devices to attendees at its developer conference two weeks ago.

“It seems to be fairly widespread among those who received the phones,” says Andy Y, an Evo user who has been in touch with Google and HTC tech support over his faulty Evo SD card. “It’s a troubling trend.” He has posted extensively on an online Android forum about his experience, where he says about 20 people have complained of similar problems.

HTC spokesperson Keith Nowak acknowledged the issue.

“We have seen this crop up intermittently in some of the Evo 4G devices,” Nowak told Wired.com. “We have identified the cause, are testing a solution and expect to have a software solution available very shortly that will be automatically pushed to phones over the air.

“Many users are finding that a power cycle or switching the card out seems to rectify the issue, in most cases,” he says.

A Sprint spokeswoman says Sprint is aware of the issue but it is “impacting few of the devices.” The HTC Evo phones distributed at the Google conference are from the same shipment that Sprint will be selling in the next few weeks, says the spokeswoman.

It’s a troubling complication for HTC and Sprint as thousands of Evo phones will go on sale this weekend.

HTC and Sprint unveiled the Evo in May. The feature-packed gadget has a huge 4.3-inch touchscreen, 1-GHz Snapdragon processor, a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera for video conferencing and an 8-megapixel camera cam for shooting photos and videos. (Evo’s MicroSD card has been manufactured by SanDisk.) Evo runs the 2.1 version of the Android operating system, and costs $200 with a two-year contract. Despite poor battery life, the phone has gathered positive reviews.

Neil Lund, one of the attendees at the conference and editor of droidninja.com, says he faced the camera problem the day he started using his Evo phone.

“Some photos I had taken came up blank,” he says. “I attempted to use the Astro file manager app to read from the SD card and it wasn’t able to recognize it.”

Lund reformatted the SD card and still came up with errors. He says a separate 2-GB MicroSD card filled with music that Google handed out to attendees worked fine on the phone.

“My hunch is that a bad lot of SD cards went out,” says Andy Y, who uses the name “Bek” on the Android forum where he posts. He says he hasn’t seen the card-related errors since he installed a new SD card on his phone Wednesday night.

Sprint exchanged Lund’s SD card from his Evo phone “free of charge and with no hassle,” he says.

However, HTC’s Nowak insists its a software glitch. “All I know for sure is it is a software issue, which is why we can easily make the necessary tweaks with an OTA (over the air) update,” he says.

Nowak could not confirm when that update would be available.

See Also:

• Wired Video: HTC Evo 4G Dissected
• HTC EVO 4G $200, on Sale June 4
• Strapped to Android, HTC Takes a Dizzying Ride to the Top
• HTC ‘Incredible’ Android Phone Lands on Verizon

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com