We heard from 9 to 5 Mac that Apple was due to begin selling a contract-free variant of the iPhone in the near future “at list price.” And guess what happened when we inquired to an Apple store? That’s right folks — you can now pick one up for $499 (3G), $599, or $699 (3GS). We’ve confirmed this info at no less than five stores, so you should be hearing the same message at your local Appletorium. Given the current unfriendly climate between Apple and Google, this could be seen as nasty jab, though the devices are still carrier-locked to AT&T, so you’re not being given much freedom… and it’s certainly not much of a statement. In many parts of Europe (France and Poland, for example) you can pick up the carrier-unattached device (and we mean totally unlocked), but that doesn’t appear to be the case here. Update: We’re getting mixed reports on the unlock status of these phones. One store says yes to the unlock, while others are saying they’re still AT&T-locked devices being sold off contract. We’re digging for more info on this now, so stay tuned.
Update 2: It’s looking like those initial reports of unlocked devices are inaccurate. It sounds like these devices are still locked to AT&T — so you’re just looking at an off contract pricing scheme. Which is also totally lame.
You know who makes the E-Ink displays on the Kindle? PVI. The Taiwanese company is also the EPD provider for several other tier-1 eReader device makers including Sony. So take a good look at that color E-Ink prototype display currently sitting in a PVI booth at a Shenzhen tradeshow ’cause that’s what you’ll see packed in color eReaders near the end of the year and into 2011. PVI is showing off both 6- and 9.7-inch color prototypes set to hit the manufacturing lines in Q4 (and sampling now), just right for the Kindle 2 and Kindle DX should Amazon choose to keep things simple and just swap out the display (and a minimum of componentry) within its existing device lineup. It’s worth noting that the extra layer of color filtering glass will impact battery life a bit, but certainly not enough to lose its edge on LCDs. And while PVI was demonstrating a color animation running on its new displays, they can’t do video worth a damn due to the slow frame refresh. And don’t expect to see the color EPDs sporting a contrast or color vibrancy anywhere close to what you’ll get from a traditional LCD either. Regardless, people seem smitten by the USA Today’s use of color so we’re sure these color E-Ink displays will find their niche as well.
Let’s get this out of the way right up front: the estimated number of iPads sold in the first 72 hours is nowhere near official. And if the numbers hadn’t been scraped together by a well known amateur Apple analyst who regularly trumps the pros then we’d be skipping the fruits of his black magic algorithms altogether. Nevertheless, Daniel Tello (aka, Deagol), has applied his proven approach of extrapolating Apple web order numbers to come up with a 120,000 total for first day iPad sales that slowed to 152,000 after 72 hours (not including iPads reserved for pick-up). Tello told Fortune, “My best guess, although very tentative given the early stage and few data we have so far, would be that they hit the 1 million unit milestone by the second week after it ships.” For those keeping track, it took the original iPhone 74 days to hit 1 million. Quite an accomplishment if these numbers pan out (and that’s a big if!) considering that only 3 to 4 million tablets are sold globally each year.
We’re still no closer to finding out whether this is the next iteration of the Bold, Storm or some other BlackBerry line, but the unofficially coined BlackBerry Slider continues to pique our interest. Here in the third round of spy shots, we’re seeing the elusive RIM-branded device from a few new angles, namely a round of side shots and a side-by-side with Curve 8900. You’ll notice that the new guys is a bit thicker and longer, and you’ll also see a complete lack of labeling beside the camera. There’s a fair chance that hitting that Source link will simply lead to increased frustration and stress in your life, but c’mon, anything to keep you from finishing up those 2009 taxes is worth a look.
Ok, you know the routine: the Apple store goes down prompting blog posts to deflect the onslaught of tips. Commenters then ponder why Apple has to go offline to add updates before a flamewar breaks out with somebody accusing somebody else of being a Nazi. Ah the internet, somebody should give it a prize. In between all the nonsense, feel free to wonder whether or not we’ll be seeing an overdue Mac Pro update to Gulftown in addition to the long awaited MacBook Pro update that should bring automatic NVIDIA Optimus graphics switching to Apple’s top-o-the-line laptops. We already know that iPad pre-orders are a lock. Check back at around 830 New York time to find out.
What looked like a drizzle last night seems to be turning into a full on downpour. The folks over at BlackBerry Leaks have gotten themselves even more facetime with that mysterious BlackBerry slider device — and it looks a lot better than we thought. Right now the theories are flying about just exactly what kind of phone this is, with BBL suggesting it might be the next phone in the Storm family, while Kevin over at CrackBerry has it on good authority that this new handset will be part of the Bold line. Kevin also says that the rumors he’s heard on this device call for a 360 x 480 touchscreen display (sans SurePress) and expectations for BlackBerry OS 6.0 to be onboard. The pictured phone apparently has a battery issue which is keeping it from powering up, but hopefully someone will find a way to spark this thing to life and we can get some more solid info. For now, check out one more pic after the break.
Steve Jobs touted the iPad’s processor as “custom silicon” and the “most advanced chip” Apple has ever done, but it appears the company didn’t do much with it at all.
Dubbed the A4, the iPad’s brain is actually a system-on-a-chip (SOC) consisting of the Cortex A8 single-core processor made by ARM and Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR SGX graphics processing unit, tipsters have told ArsTechnica’s Jon Stokes.
In other words, Apple licensed chips from other providers like it did with the iPhone, and it didn’t produce the parts in-house, which many assumed to be the case when Jobs introduced the iPad and the A4 in January.
Apple has not provided official details on the A4’s specifications, which is unsurprising. Apple has traditionally been secretive about the exact components inside its previous products, leaving component analysts such as iSuppli to rip apart the gadgets and figure out the nitty-gritty details about their guts.
The Cortex A8 and the PowerVR SGX would make sense, as they’re the same technologies used in the iPhone and iPod Touch. MacRumors also spotted a clause in the iPad’s software development kit that confirmed the SGX is being used in the iPad.
If the A4 SOC’s parts were outsourced, the role of PA Semi, a semiconductor manufacturer that Apple acquired in April 2008, remains unclear. Stokes speculates that the PA Semi team may have helped optimize the A4 to extend battery life for the iPad, which Apple claims will last 10 hours with active usage and one month on standby.
Shipping next month, Apple’s iPad won’t include a camera, but a growing number of clues hint at future versions of the tablet gaining a webcam.
MacRumors received a tip regarding lines of code referring to camera characteristics in the iPad’s software development kit (screegrabbed to the right). The snippets of code allude to zoom, flash, and “front camera.” Added together, that sounds similar to the iSight webcams on MacBooks and iMacs.
Also hinting at a webcam, a job listing Apple posted earlier this month sought a quality-assurance engineer for the “iPad division” to test still, video and audio capture and playback.
The very first hint of a webcam was discovered in a demonstration unit of the iPad during Apple’s Jan. 27 event. The iPad’s Contacts app revealed a “Take Photo” button. However, developers tinkering with the iPad SDK say that button has since been removed.
Some have speculated that Apple could announce the iPad will ship with a camera before the device ships at the end of March. However, it seems unlikely that Steve Jobs would leave such a major feature unmentioned.
What I wonder is whether these hints of cameras appearing in future iPads will affect sales of the first-generation tablet. I would assume the average consumer will opt to wait for the second-generation of the device in the hope of it gaining a camera.
Updated 5 p.m. Wednesday PDT: MacRumors received the tip and screengrab of the code. Erica Sadun did not provide the code, as previously stated. Wired.com regrets the error.
You know what happens when we see a video pop on Nokia Conversations (Nokia’s official blog) featuring a senior VP from Nokia’s smartphone division? Everything stops — who knows what might be revealed during an informal, semi-scripted chat. When asked about Nokia’s future smartphone technologies and experiences, Jo Harlow, SVP of Smartphones dives right into a discussion of augmented reality as a means to enhance existing Nokia services like the Ovi Maps experience. She then shifts to an entertainment perspective since “everyone’s talking about 3D.” As she sees it, there’s an opportunity for mobile to be earlier to 3D than typical television development to mobile. That means content, specifically 3D games, which Jo says “could be very, very interesting in terms of enhancing that experience.” One can only imagine that what interests Nokia’s Senior VP of smartphones will ultimately interest manufacturers on the way to retail. And it’s not like Nokia’s been shy with its 3D prototypes in the past. Watch the discussion unfold in the video after the break.
Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers. Recruiting a ton of them to create a rich app experience for Windows Phone 7 Series is going to be Microsoft’s toughest challenge if it wants to get its groove back in the mobile space.
Demonstrated last week, Microsoft’s new mobile operating system Windows Phone 7 Series looks elegant and immaculate compared to its predecessors. The OS blends together Xbox Live gaming, Zune multimedia, personal media (photos and videos), social media utilities, productivity tools and third-party apps, which are organized into categories called “Hubs.”
Even so, a neatly packed user interface doesn’t fully address the fundamental weakness of the previous Windows Mobile OS: a fragmented platform that made coding and selling apps for Windows Mobile a challenge for smaller developers.
In other words, Microsoft has long lacked the sort of widespread, enthusiastic support from independent developers — not just enterprise coders within large organizations — that made the iPhone and its App Store a blockbuster innovation.
“They’ve been doing such a miserable job for a while now,” said Peter Hoddie, CEO of Kinoma, which creates software that makes Windows Mobile easier for users to navigate. “I would be thrilled if they could turn it all around and tell a story that makes sense, but they have a long way to go.”
To help address fragmentation, Microsoft said on Feb. 15 that it would be more involved in the hardware design process of its partners’ phones running Windows Phone 7 Series. Each Windows Phone 7 Series handset, for example, will include a built-in FM radio tuner and a physical button to access Bing search.
But the question remains whether Microsoft can make Windows Phone 7 Series a compelling platform, giving developers the tools and audience they need.
Microsoft was mum on details about its third-party app development platform at the Mobile World Congress last week in Barcelona, Spain, but developers have already leaked some of the company’s plans regarding its third-party development tools, which include Silverlight, Microsoft’s cross-platform web application framework, as well as a limited set of native application programming interfaces and managed APIs. (For a more detailed explanation translating nerd speak to normal human talk, see Mary Jo Foley’s article on ZDNet.)
Mobile developers polled by Wired.com had mixed reactions (to say the least) about Windows Phone 7 Series’ development tools, based on the leaked documents.
Kai Yu, CEO of BeeJive, was pessimistic. He said his independent company, which makes apps for the iPhone and BlackBerry, wrote off Windows Mobile years ago because of “incomplete, half-assed” developer tools and a lack of support from Microsoft, and he doesn’t see those problems changing with a new operating system.
“I think it’s just royally fucked,” Yu said of Microsoft’s phone platform. “That place is so big: The tools, the people, it’s all so fragmented…. What’s the advantage of having these hubs and cool-looking UI? In the end, I don’t know if that gives you anything.”
On the opposite side, Jim Scheinman, COO of Pageonce, which makes productivity apps for BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile and Android, said his company was excited about Microsoft’s reboot of its phone platform.
“My speculation is that Microsoft has some incredible platforms they can tie all together with the new mobile platform,” Scheinman said. “If one developer can write across all the other platforms, that would be easier for us and all the developers…. If you want to attract hundreds of thousands of developers, it would behoove Microsoft to try to make that happen. That would be a very, very exciting opportunity for all of us.”
But Hoddie wasn’t enthused, either. Regarding the new Windows Phone 7 Series OS, Hoddie said adding Silverlight into the mix wouldn’t help much. He explained that similar to Adobe’s Flash, Silverlight was a technology made for desktops, and it’s bound to cause performance issues when transplanted into mobile devices.
“Silverlight, geez,” he said. “Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water.”
Hoddie echoed some of Yu’s concerns, complaining about how “horribly” Microsoft treated its mobile developers. For example, Hoddie recounted an incident when one of his apps had a problem with text input on a specific phone running Windows Mobile. When he finally got in touch with Microsoft’s support team, Microsoft said it was only responsible if the text-input problem appeared in the Windows Mobile emulator software — and if it didn’t, Hoddie would have to contact the Japanese manufacturer directly to address the problem.
Poor developer support? That’s strange, because Microsoft understands more than any company how important developers are. (Steve Ballmer made that loud and clear in the video above.) The Windows PC operating system, after all, won the desktop OS war early largely with the help of software developers that made programs only for Windows.
But perhaps the problem for Microsoft is that the definition of “developer” has changed in recent years. Apple’s App Store popularized a business platform that made developing software a viable and even sometimes highly lucrative career choice for small, independent coders working in their bedrooms, whose quirky apps have made the iPhone one of the most innovative inventions yet.
By contrast, mobile developers working on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform have largely been laboring in the bowels of large corporations, creating mobile front ends for enterprise applications like SAP.
Can Microsoft attract the small developers as well, to create another app boom?
Independent developer Dave Castelnuovo, whose iPhone game Pocket God is one of the App Store’s all-time top sellers, said he and his peers had no plans to develop for Windows Phone 7 Series. He explained that fragmentation — a complex hardware ecosystem that requires developers to code several versions of one app to sell on one platform for different types of phones — will always be a major problem with Windows phones.
“Fragmentation ends up making development more expensive,” Castelnuovo said. “Microsoft is trying to solve some of that by being a little more hands-on…. They all have multitouch and the same three buttons, but the problem is I don’t know what kind of other options there are. Is there a camera option? What is the minimum CPU speed or amount of RAM? If you’re an independent developer, you’ll have to code to the lowest-possible common denominator in order to get to the biggest-possible market.”
There are still plenty of questions in the air surrounding Windows Phone 7 Series and its overall mobile strategy. Microsoft declined to comment on the purported leaks about Windows Phone 7 Series’ development tools. The company plans to preview its development tools at its MIX developers conference next month. Until then, developers will just have to wait and see.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
Steve Jobs touted the iPad’s processor as “custom silicon” and the “most advanced chip” Apple has ever done, but it appears the company didn’t do much with it at all.
