Apples IPhone 3G Web & better email-Enabled, Smart phone
or Smartphones
What countries will get the iPhone 3G
today? Apple puts the tally at 21: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark,
Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New
Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K. and the U.S.
France, which was on the list last month, fell off; Apple now says that
the iPhone 3G goes on sale there on July 17. Mon Dieu.
What will I pay for the iPhone 3G? No offense, but that depends on who you
are. If you are a current iPhone owner in good standing with AT&T -- you've
paid your monthly bill on time -- the price tags are $$199 for the 8GB model
and $299 for the 16GB.
Not an AT&T customer, but new to the iPhone? You're in like Flynn: You
also qualify for the $199 and $299 prices.
But if you're an AT&T customer now and using another phone, you might
have to fork over as much as $399 or $499 for an 8GB or 16GB phone, respectively.
Depending.
_____________________
After what seems like months of speculation, and weeks since CEO of
Apple Corp. Steve Jobs trumpeted it at his company's annual developers conference,
Apple Inc. today rolls out its new, faster, Better Apps iPhone 3G.
But with the hype seemingly on mute compared to last year's original frenzy
when the first-generation iPhone debuted -- is there anything worth knowing?
Because Apple changed the game with iPhone 3G - it's no longer demanding
a slice of carriers' subscriber revenues and now takes subsidy payments from
operators instead -- the first day of iPhone v.2 is a completely different
deal. By now you probably know that the "3G" in the name stands for the new
network capabilities it offers, including faster data transfer speeds. And,
of course, there's the built-in GPS, which application developers will no
doubt make use of with a slew of new apps. (There were already more than 550
available when Apple's App Store went live on Thursday.)
And yet, on opening day, we expect you'll have questions. And we have some
of the answers.
When does the iPhone go on sale? In the U.S., doors open on Friday, July
11 at 8 a.m. your time. In the other 22 countries that get the iPhone out
the gate, your mileage may vary. Japan's Softbank Mobile Corp., for example,
was going to start selling the iPhone 3G at its store in Tokyo's Harajuku
district at 7 a.m. local time (6 p.m. EDT Thursday in the U.S.) In some markets,
however, the phone won't arrive for a week or more. (But I Bet you can get
one on ebay if you look through our links)
Where do I get one? (Right Now on eBay or Direct from the Apple Store on
links) With Apple's strategic shift -- it's taking the money up front from
carriers in the form of subsidies, rather than a piece of the subscriber action.
There are a sizable number of cell phones and smart phones
on the market that Apple competitors hope can challenge the new iPhone 3G,
even if the vendors won't actually draw a direct comparison between their
products and Apple's. These manufacturers have until now tended to focus on
the use of a touch screens for input. But with iPhone 3G coming out, the new
emphasis is on how some smart phones have long been able to access faster
3G wireless networks.
Sprint Nextel Corp., for example, has been particularly forward about promoting
its new Instinct, which was developed with Samsung. Sprint noted that the
Instinct started selling out at some stores shortly after its June 19 launch.
And Best Buy Co., the Instinct's exclusive national retailer, yesterday declared
the multimedia smart phone its best-selling handset of the past two years
based on the first two weeks of sales.
On Friday, Palm Inc. plans to announce a new low price for an "electric
blue" Centro being sold through AT&T Inc. along with both white and black
models. The price will stay in effect until Sept. 20 and is timed to coincide
with back-to-school sales. A Palm spokeswoman noted in an e-mail that Centros
sold for use with Sprint and Verizon Wireless networks function on 3G networks,
and that Palm has had 3G-capable smart phones "for years."
Palm noted that the Centro, which features a touch screen, is half the price
of the iPhone 3G, is available in more colors and is supported by more carriers.
(In the U.S., the iPhone 3G is available only from AT&T.)
The comparisons, implied or direct, by competitors to the iPhone started
when the original Apple device was announced in early 2007. In addition to
the Instinct and Centro, iPhone challengers include the LG Voyager, the Motorola
Rokr E8 and Nokia's N95, although some of the features they offer vary widely
from those of the iPhone, which passed its first anniversary two weeks ago.
There are other possible rivals set to hit the market later this year, including
the BlackBerry Thunder and Nokia's reported iPhone beater, which is code-named
Tube. Also potentially on the horizon are a number of devices based on the
Android open platform.
Despite all the comparisons to the iPhone's hardware, the real news to arise
from the Friday launch could be the opening of Apple's App Store, through
which the company will distribute more than 550 different applications for
free or nearly free. The applications vary from medical dictionaries to games
and tools that provide access to news content, and the number of products
being offered is expected to grow quickly.
Although competing phones already offer an array of applications for work
and entertainment, the App Store has put an emphasis on very-low-cost tools
-- including some unusual offerings, analysts and reviewers have noted.
One example: Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Melodis Corp. today announced a free
music search application for the iPhone called Midomi Mobile. Expected to
be available in the App Store on Friday, it's designed to allow a user to
quickly find a favorite song by singing, humming, speaking or typing information
about it into the iPhone. It even allows a user to hold the iPhone in front
of a speaker playing recorded music to get information on the song being played.
Apple first day bummers
Submitted by Anonymous on July 11, 2008
Apple was apparently too smart by half. Their sneaky non-announcements left
us iphone 1.0 customers in the dark as to how/when/where we can download or
update our software/firmware to iphone 2.0. It isn't happening for us in
the itunes store via the correct route of hitting "check for update".
(as ?? promised??)
I'm gonna' guess they want the new customers buying 3G phones to all get
serviced first. Fine. But why not tell us all what's happening when? Instead
of slowing down or pacing the web site traffic, hundreds of thousands of frustrated
first gen iphone customers will keep making hits on the itunes store to see
when they can get their iphone 2.0 software and start using some the programs
already posted on the new app store. Oh, don't get me started on Apple's
loopy logic in simi-hiding the apps store in the background. Why Apple? Why?
Please stop making us grope around so hard for what you have promised for
months.
________
With all the talk about 3G, better check out where AT&T has 3G network.
They're still way behind VZ and Sprint EVDO from a coverage perspective. Watch
out iPhone 1.0 owners or iPhone 3G buyers if you really care about the 3G
part.
Apple Inc.
announced that it sold 1 million iPhone 3G Mobile Phones
on Sunday, three days after the device launched, and
said that more than 10 million IPOD and iPhone Software
applications from the App Store had been downloaded
since late last week.
552 applications, about
one-fourth of them free for the downloading. The App
Store boasted exactly 800 applications. Of those, 179,
or 22%, were free.
Hello iPhone, Hitting the 1
million mark in three days is a big improvement over the
74 days it took to sell 1 million of the original
iPhones in the U.S. market last year, according to Apple
Inc. officials.
Independent analyst Jeff
Kagan called those early sales "impressive ... and
amazing."
But hold the phone:) we
think in the coming weeks you will see some really
awsome deals on eBay, and that's where we are going to
buy ours! Not just cheap prices, but more Accessories
like Cases ring tones, chargers and even already
unlocked for you!
You know there were people
standing in line to buy one just to resell on eBay, so
now its time to take full advantage of it and go
shopping!
In a statement, Apple CEO
Steve Jobs called the opening weekend iPhone 3G sales
"stunning ... the new iPhone 3G is clearly off to a
great start around the world."
Steve Jobs termed the App Store's performance "a
grand slam."
In the U.S., customers were unable to perform
in-store activations on Friday, but the problem
apparently was resolved by 6 p.m. Eastern time,
according to an AT&T Inc. spokeswoman. She said
2,000 AT&T stores sold out of the iPhone on Friday,
but customers were able to place orders and pick them up
later. it was an iTunes problem and it was fixed within
hours of the fault.
In other news
Apple patches months-old iPhone bugs
Apple Inc. patched 13 vulnerabilities in the iPhone
and iPod touch last Friday, including several it had
fixed in Mac OS X or the Safari Web browser as long ago
as March.
Six of the 13 bugs were tagged with the phrase
"arbitrary code execution," which Apple uses
to denote the most serious vulnerabilities. Other
operating system vendors, such as Microsoft Corp.
typically label such flaws "critical" in their
threat-rating systems.
All but two of the bugs affected Safari or WebKit,
the open-source code that provides Safari's core engine.
Several of the Safari and WebKit patches for the
iPhone and iPod touch had been released by Apple earlier
-- sometimes months earlier - comparisons with previous
security advisories and searches on the CVE (Common
Vulnerabilities and Exposures) database indicated.
According to Computerworld's analysis, five of the 13
iPhone/iPod touch fixes were for vulnerabilities
previously patched in Mac OS X or Safari.
|
Book Mark
Us! 
U.S.-targeted, but we knew that this year's
show would be totally different. The American cell phone market is currently
about to become more vibrant and volatile, both in terms of network models
and cell phone models. The risks at stake for industry players are obviously
higher than ever, but so are the development pace and the willingness of trying
new cell phone interfaces and technologies. For consumers, this will mean
a whole new world in terms of choices in the years to come, and we choose
to look at this year's CTIA as the beginning of a new wireless era in the
U.S. For the first time in history, we can also present a 10 hottest phones
list from CTIA, consisting exclusively of U.S.-targeted cell phones and smartphones.
If you are looking for even more exclusive in-depth content from CTIA, make
sure to check out our full coverage (not yet completed), or tune in to CTIA
2008 Live on infoSync TV. 