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Apple acknowledges the iPhone 4’s reception problems. Their solution: Hold it differently or buy a case. But if this is an Apple design problem, they should fix it for real or give out cases for free. More »

Japan tends to be on the weird side of any coin, and The Fingerist does nothing to undermine that reputation. This accessory for the iPhone and iPod touch was conceived at a “mutton BBQ restaurant” when one dude said to another that he needed an amp for his guitar app. Lo and behold, after an apparently successful CES appearance, the axe-imitating speaker thingie — replete with a guitar strap and line-out to jack into real amplifiers — is now on sale for ¥14,800 (or $150 for the rest of us). We can’t wrap our minds around such an expense just for the privilege of fingering our touchscreens, but then you can make some pretty sweet music using these things (video evidence after the break).

Continue reading The Fingerist finds fame, retail opportunities in Japan (video)

The Fingerist finds fame, retail opportunities in Japan (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Jun 2010 09:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon has added audio and video to its iPhone and iPad Kindle applications. Several titles are already in the store and give you popover additions to the words and pictures already in the e-books.

The new multimedia books get their own section: Kindle Editions with Audio-Video, which is rather sparsely populated right now. The international store contains just seven books, most of which are Rick Steves’ travel guides (plus a cookbook and Knitting for Dummies), while Technologizer reports that the US store currently lists 13 titles. Presumably more are on the way.

This marks a big leap over Apple’s own e-reader software, iBooks, which currently has just words and pictures. IBooks may have a nicer UI, but Kindle has the catalog, and often the lower prices: these new books come in at $13.79 in the international store, and at the regular $10 price-point in the US.

Of course, these versions won’t work on the Kindle hardware: even if they did they’d max out the 2GB storage pretty fast. As it is, these big files are only downloadable over Wi-Fi on the iOS devices.

Cookbooks, travel guides and how-to titles all clearly benefit from added video and audio. Let’s just hope that Amazon doesn’t decide to bulk up simple novels with these extra Megabytes, too, unless it is to add a fully synced audiobook version so you can switch back and forth between words and speech. That would be pretty sweet.

Kindle Editions with Audio-Video [Amazon via Technologizer]

Press release [Amazon]

Sorry, we couldn’t wait — having spent 11 hours on the streets waiting for the iPhone 4, it’s only natural to give our precious new toy some extra special care. With the help of iFixit’s teardown guide, we decided to take the plunge with our steaming hot Chinese delivery — a white front cover (with a shiny proximity sensor area above the earpiece), a white back cover (with “XXXXX” marked as the model number, ergo a prototype), and a Retina Display unit. Alas, there weren’t any white buttons in stock at the time, but let’s pretend this black-and-white combo is the new cool. Read on to find out how the surgery went.

P.S. — We’ve had many readers asking where we got the parts, but the link’s already in the post. Knowing some Chinese helps, too.

Continue reading White iPhone 4: early DIY edition, with a touch of black

White iPhone 4: early DIY edition, with a touch of black originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Jun 2010 11:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We just couldn’t leave this face-off of superscreens alone, and went back for another bite at the cherry. Admittedly, we found out the Galaxy S had a browser-specific brightness setting that we hadn’t maxed out before setting off our camera hounds, so we’ve gone and remedied earlier comparison shots with the gallery below, and just as a bonus, we’ve now also run a HD video clip on both phones. This was to see how the Hummingbird and A4 SOCs, considered close siblings, handled some taxing video work and also to again compare performance deep down on the pixel level. What we can tell you now is that both handsets chewed through the 1080p clip with ease and that both gave results we have no hesitation in describing as sublime. Click past the break for the up close and personal video comparison action.

Continue reading iPhone 4 vs. Galaxy S, part deux: HD video playback (video)

iPhone 4 vs. Galaxy S, part deux: HD video playback (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 26 Jun 2010 15:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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