iOS Devices

According to Droid Life, you can forget about your Verizon iPhone 4.  It ain’t happening.  Along with deleting the ‘Wireless’ from their name, Verizon will also be touting the ‘Summer of Drooiid’ which will also include absolutely zero iPhone 4’s.

From what sounds like a pretty amped up webcast, Verizon Wireless has announced that as of Monday, they will just be

Shocking coming from the source.  Gizmodo says the iPhone 4 is fatally flawed because it is all glass and poorly engineered antenna on the outside, no matter how nice the Retina Display and new features and size are.  Apparently, they’ve already experienced some breakage.

This time, despite creating perhaps the best smartphone available and one of the most beautiful industrial objects in their history, the Apple industrial design team has failed. This time, Dieter Rams won’t be happy, just like consumers won’t be happy when their iPhone’s back break or the signal drops just for holding it.

From our point of view, we’ve dropped our previous iPhones many times and never had a screen breakage.  We’re not sure why those would start happening now.  Although we can reproduce the antenna issue, we’re not bothered by the simple tape or case fix.  And the volume keys?  Who cares!

What do you think?

I bring good news to iPhone 4 owners whose friends, neighbors and distant relatives didn

Although it isn’t going to change your life, it looks like a few iPhone 4s are coming off the assembly line with reversed volume buttons.  Reader Eric sends us his which he says works like it should if the buttons were reversed.  The ‘

Is this antenna thing really that bad, Neil? Jeez.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK37dysPPzU&w=700&h=400]

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that two congressmen wrote to Apple for clarification on recent changes to its privacy policy which include the collection of user location based data.  Reps. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas), co-chairman of the House Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, Thursday sent a letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs..

The lawmakers said they were concerned that users appeared to automatically be included in Apple’s gathering of geographic data unless they actively opt out of having information collected about them.”Given the limited ability of Apple users to opt out of the revised policy and still be able to take advantage of the features of their Apple products, we are concerned about the impact the collection of such data could have on the privacy of Apple’s customers,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter.

Android phones have been doing this since the get go.  I wonder if Google got a letter? Or is this type of data collection is expected from Google?

The nine questions are pasted below:

1. Which specific Apple products are being used by Apple to collect geographic location data?
2. When did Apple begin collecting this location data, and how often is data collected from a given consumer?
3. Does Apple collect this location data from all consumers using Apple products? If the answer is no, please explain which consumers Apple is collecting information from and the reasons that these consumers were chosen for monitoring. 
4. How many consumers are subject to this collection of location data?
5. What internal procedures are in place to ensure that any location data is stored

In response to many complaints about the signal strength, Apple has issued an official statement admitting the flaw and advising iPhone 4 users to ‘avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band’.

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Steve Jobs stepped into the antenna issue fray today.  If you aren’t yet familiar, if you hald the iPhone 4 a certain way, the antena signal degrades.  

After 24 hours with my device, it is easily reproducible and actually does affect call quality, at least in my case.  But Jobs isn’t worried according to this email chain.  In fact, if you hold your device in such a way as to make the signal go down, you are clearly doing it wrong:

Hi Steve,?????

So, um, just got my iPhone 4. Its lovely and all, but this ‘bridge the two antennae to kill your reception’ thing seems to be a bit serious. If I bridge them with my hand or with a piece of metal the bars slowly drop to ‘Searching…’ and then ‘No Service’.

Its kind of a worry. Is it possible this is a design flaw?

Regards

– Rory Sinclair

His reply:

Nope. Just don’t hold it that way.

Rory continued:

I texted someone from the phone and noticed reception dropping as I texted, down to ‘No Service’, so I emailed again:

Actually, its not calls that concern me, but i’ve just been writing a text and its very natural for me as a right-handed person to hold it that way, with the part of my hand at the base of my thumb covering the point the antennae meet, and it kills the reception each time.

I mean, pretty much as soon as i move my hand it comes back, but its pretty crazy… is this the reason Bumpers exist?

 – Rory 

Sure there are – every phone has these areas of sensitivity, depending on the location of the antenna. Some phones even ship with labels warning customers to not cover certain areas with their hands.

Reports of reception problems and yello blemishes mar Apple’s iPhone 4 launch, as product sells out internationally.

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We’re getting reports that normal Mall-type Apple stores are receiving anywhere from 1000 to 1400 units each with this snapshot showing 1200 in a Mall in the South.  

Have you picked up your iPhone yet?  Did the store run out?  How long was the line?  We want to know!

This morning sees the world’s insane love for the iPhone, as thousands hit queues across the planet, and supply dries up in the UK, France, Germany and Japan, even while Apple’s retail stores run out of stock. Demand is described as the biggest for any Apple product yet.

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iFixyouri (some dudes I probably wouldn’t let near my i personally) did a drop test on the new iPhone 4 after a well received previous attempt on just the case last month. Same results:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7-OBoDFeDY&w=500&h=500]

Gizmodo (surprise!) is reporting that touching the steel frame of the iPhone 4 may reduce the quality of an already important AT&T signal.  It is hard to argue with the video they provide:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ixIHyEPO5g&w=700&h=400]

Gizmodo has about 30 user videos showing issues as well as a link to a Danish scientist who predicted these issues. Something tells me those bumpers are going to sell pretty well.

Meanwhile MacRumors users are posting pictures of brown spots o nthe bottom right of their iPhone 4 Retina displays (below).

Maybe they don’t want people to see how huge that Droid x is. Or perhaps comparing displays isn’t to their liking.

Apple just released an official statement saying that White iPhones won’t be available until the second half of July.  Damn.

White models of Apple

That’s up from 100,000/day at Google I/O last month.  That extrapolates out to almost 60 million/year.  The iPhone 4 hit 600,000 day in pre-sales last week, but both platforms are rocketing upward.  Is this Windows/Mac all over again?  Is that a bad thing?

Some of our new iPhone 4 readers are getting the following emails from AT&T thanking them for staying with AT&T (as if there were a choice) and their recent purchase of an iPhone 3G.  Problem is: either the email is two years late or they are thanking them for buying a two year old phone.

Either way.  Poor form (again)

Full email below

Your shiny Android phone is a pocket full of risks as research claims one-in-five apps can steal your private files. And that’s why Apple and its curated App Store policies mean the iPhone really is the phone for the rest of us as smartphones go mass market.

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Surprise! The new iPhone 4 is faster than the 3GS but slightly slower than the iPad, new tests from Geek Bench claim.

With that in mind, tests show the iPhone 4 to be 31% faster than the iPhone 3GS. We know that both iPad and iPhone 4 use the A4 processor, but we don

Bad news iPhone fans as it seems over 25 per cent of iPhones break down within two years, according to Computerworld, though this is actually an improvement on before and not bad as an industry average, a firm involved in repairing the devices has claimed.

Allegedly the iPhone 3GS is more reliable than the 3G, but critics are concerned that the iPhone 4

iFixit got their hands on an iPhone 4 today and they are currently going to town on it. Not much new information is coming out of the process but it is impressive to see Apple’s work inide on this one.