Hasta La Gadget!

French retail giant FNAC is selling contract-free iPhones, and they ain’t cheap. The 8GB model is €800 ($1120) and the 16GB a rather painful €800 ($1261).

This comes barely two weeks after French telecom regulator ARCEP called the exclusive iPhone/Orange team-up a "serious threat" to competition, a decision which itself followed a complaint by rival cell carrier Bouygues Telecom.

Scouring the FNAC Web site reveals nothing other than price and specifications, so it remains unclear whether this iteration of the iPhone is still tied to Orange (with a pay-as-you-go option) or if it is truly unlocked, like the considerably cheaper Belgian iPhone (€530/$742 and €620/$869).

If it is tied to Orange, then this seems to be a rather pointless purchase. You might save on contract fees, but you can be sure that the Pay and Go charges will more than make up for it.

Product page [FNAC via Infinite Loop]

See Also:

• French Law Means Unlocked iPhones
• Belgian iPhone: 3G, Here By June And Non-Carrier Locked
• Unlocked 3G iPhones For Sale in Spain
• Orange’s French iPhone Exclusive

We know, the holiday season is officially kaput, but if you still owe that niece or nephew a gift and you feel like teaching them tech-savvy and brand loyalty, you might want to consider one of these KIRF walkie-talkies / organizers that let you send text messages in addition to voice calls in the same vein as that Slide Click we saw back in the day. Trust us, typing on a small keyboard or numpad is one of the best skills they can have when they grow up — it’s a lot more practical than the Morse code we learned back in our day. The lone exception here is the feature-less RAZR knockoff that does voice-only — hey, it’s only fitting that the one phone here that doesn’t knock off a smartphone have less features.

[Thanks, James]

Read – Discovery Exclusive Pink Slide and Text Messengers (Sidekick)
Read – iChat SMS Text Messenger/Chat Talkies (Blackberry)
Read – iText SMS Text Messenger (iPhone)
Read – Discovery Exclusive Flip Phone Walkie-Talkies (RAZR)

Filed under: Cellphones

Keepin’ it real fake, part CLXXV: The SMS walkie-talkie roundup originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Dec 2008 03:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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pspan class=”mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image” style=”display: inline;”img alt=”AppleGestures.jpg” src=”http://uk.gizmodo.com/AppleGestures.jpg” width=”400″ height=”361″ class=”mt-image-none” style=”” //span/p pApple is still busy patenting every possible application for a touchscreen or control system that hasn’t already been used and on Christmas Day filed a new one called ‘Swipe Gestures For Touch Screen Keyboards’./p pThe idea is for it to supplement the on-screen keyboards on its current devices by allowing people to use various gestures to simulate access to common keys. br / /pimg width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’http://feeds.uk.gizmodo.com/c/552/f/9581/s/2a558f3/mf.gif’ border=’0’/div class=’mf-viral’table border=’0’trtd valign=’middle’a href=”http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/sendemail2.html?title=Apple Files Patent For New Gesture-Control Touchscreenlink=http://uk.gizmodo.com/2008/12/29/apple_files_patent_for_new_ges.html” target=”_blank”img src=”http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif” border=”0″ //a/tdtd valign=’middle’a href=”http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=Apple Files Patent For New Gesture-Control Touchscreenlink=http://uk.gizmodo.com/2008/12/29/apple_files_patent_for_new_ges.html” target=”_blank”img src=”http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif” border=”0″ //a/td/tr/table/divbr/br/a href=”http://da.feedsportal.com/r/27588658908/u/0/f/9581/c/552/s/44390643/a2.htm”img src=”http://da.feedsportal.com/r/27588658908/u/0/f/9581/c/552/s/44390643/a2.img” border=”0″//a

I’ll file this under “extreme endurance testing.” These guys in Russia put an iPhone through a rigorous battery of tests that include freezing, tumbling in a dryer, dunking in beer, dropping and more. The site is in Russian, but the marvel that is Google Translate makes the read worthwhile. For example:

The aluminum lid compartment nutrition allowed to stand the test of honor fall to the asphalt. We threw smartphone flat and at an angle. Before the asphalt was a mini-training on grass, where the phone was left unhurt, even if dropped from two meters, the same situation with the office and carpeting in it. Asphalt is left to the body of a vanishing ink. In addition, the cap has become a bit of waste, has a slight backlash. But it should be noted that other elements are not affected. With pleasure, the screen is not only remained operational, but very slightly scratched.

Can the iPhone withstand the “test of honor?” What about abuse like being rolled over by a car? Watch the video and find out.

I wonder if the Nokia folks would be upset if I tried this with the 6650?

You might also like:

• iPhones, Androids and Apps (1)
• Hold the Phone, iPhone (1)
• Apple to Sue and/or Buy Vodaphone and/or RIM After Overnight Beat-Down (2)
• Up a Tree (Without a Paddle?) (3)

This article was written on September 04, 2007 by CyberNet.

It seems like the rumors of a Google Phone have been going around and around the web for years now.  Really, it’s only been about a year and up until recently, I wasn’t convinced that Google even had a Phone in mind. I’m beginning to think that it’s actually a possibility though, especially after reading what Om Malik had to say today in his article titled “Five Facts About Google Phone.”

In his article, he said that all of the recent news/rumors were “enough to get me dialing-for-dirt over the big holiday weekend,” and then he went on to list five “facts” about the Google phone. I’m still going to call them rumors, but he says the info he found is from a reliable source. The “five facts” are as follows:

1. Google Phone is based on a mobile variant of Linux, and is able to run Java virtual machines.
2. All applications that are supposed to run on the Google Phone are java apps. The OS has ability to run multimedia files, including video clips.
3. The user interface is similar to a UI typical of mobile phones, and the image (with red background) floating around isn’t representative of the Google Phone UI. The entire UI is said to be done in Java and is very responsive. The UI, of course has a “search box.”
4. There is a special browser which has pan-and-browse features that are common to modern browsers such as browsers for iPhone and Symbian phones. The entire browser is apparently written in Java. But then others have told us that the browser is based on the WebKit core, the same engine in Safari and in iPhone, and Google has been making optimizations to speed it up. This is one aspect of the Google Phone I am not sure about.
5. Initially there was one prototype, but over past few months Google has the mobile OS running on 3-to-5 devices, most of them likely made by HTC, a mobile phone maker, and all have Qwerty apps. The model that folks have seen is very similar to the T-Mobile Dash. Around 3GSM, there were rumors that Google, Orange and HTC were working together on mobile devices.

While it’s interesting that it could potentially be based upon a variant of Linux, I’m more curious which wireless network(s) would be behind it. We all know the frustrations that have come from the 5-year exclusivity agreement that Apple made with AT&T with the iPhone. I have a hard time believing Google would take such a route, but it’s possible.

The thought of a Google phone may sound exciting, but I still don’t know if this is something Google would be able to be successful with. And as others have pointed out, those five “facts” listed above aren’t all THAT impressive.  It still makes more sense for them to develop software for mobile devices and stick to that aspect of the mobile world instead of developing their own phone. It’s been about one year since Google Phone rumors surfaced, and while I’m still skeptical, I’m more convinced today than I was yesterday. Of course, only time will tell us if there really will be a GPhone.

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