iphone 4

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Google Plus (iTunes) iOS users will see a big update in their App Store today with lots of new features and improvements that were detailed earlier this week. Most notable is the ability to start and join video hangouts from a mobile device. In brief testing on both an iPhone 4 and an Android device on Wi-Fi, the Video conferencing worked great. It should work over 3 or 4G but the results obviously won’t be as good. Also, this version changes Huddles to Messenger and you can now send picture files through the messenger application.

Full list of improvements below:

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Adding some validity to the possibility of a new iPhone branded “4S”, @chronicwire has just posted the images below showing the iPhone 4S branding on what looks like legit packaging for a new Otter Box iPhone case.

Another couple if you head down south. Notice the changed volume buttons that may or may not be indicative of a volume button to camera shutter feature.

LEAK: Photo of the back of the package showing the iPhone 4S case, depicting new volume buttons, and on the right side. New soft-looking volume buttons being on right side of iPhone 4S can probably be attributed to the “volume button to take pic” iOS5 feature

Update (Sept 23rd): TUAW talked to Otterbox who clarified:

She explained that the ad reflected the current conversations going on in the blogosphere. “Like many, we are watching the rumor sites and using information to plan ahead as much as we can.” Otterbox promises support for whatever iPhone debuts, but they’re emphatically not stating or leaking anything further. “We do not have any confidentiality agreements with Apple,” Richardson told TUAW.

As for those iPhone 4S Otterbox packaging photos that leaked yesterday, she explained, “What was circulating yesterday was not a case image for the iPhone 4S but a packaging design.” Otterbox has not identified the source of the photos.

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image via Walyou

Last week, we heard that iPhone 4S devices, ones identical in appearance to current iPhone 4s, were rolling of the assembly lines in big numbers. The only differences in this model are the 8 Megapixel camera and A5 Processor. Everything else is the exact same. In fact, Apple employees could be carrying these around without anyone knowing. The ‘iPhone 5′ lost in a bar might have looked like an iPhone 4.

The bad news is that we reported that there were design and production delays that could have pushed the iPhone 5 launch back.

It appears that the tear-drop shaped iPhone 5 with larger screen and thinner, rounder body is seeing continued design and production delays, at least on one assembly line (Apple has multiple production sources – Pegatron, Foxconn, etc). We therefore think that iPhone 5 will be delayed slightly at the very least and may see shortages all the way into 2012.

Since then, we’ve also heard that those iPhone 5 delays might push the teardrop iPhone 5 out until 2012. This is from two separate, additional sources who have ties to Apple and its manufacturing partners. We don’t want to believe this but we’re hearing it more and more…
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Let’s not pretend that Apple isn’t thinking about Solar charging its iOS devices.  It even registered iPodsolar.com in 2007.  Until the solar iPod is released, however, there are other ways to charge your iOS device from the sun.

Etón today announced the availability of their Mobius NSP300B Rechargeable Battery Case for iPhone 4, which was originally announced this year at CES.

The admittedly stylish (for having a solar panel strapped to it, that is) case packs in an 1800 mAh rechargeable lithium ion battery, high-efficiency monocrystal solar panel, and micro USB to charge the battery on cloudy days and nights. Other features include LED charge indicator lights and a stand by switch to turn off direct power transfer. In other words, hitting the stand by switch will let you to collect power without using it, allowing you to control when the case is actually powering your iPhone.

As you can see from the chart below, Etón estimates approximately 1 hour of solar charge will provide you with up to an additional 25 minutes talk time, 20 minutes of data usage (3G), 35 minutes of video playback, or 145 minutes of audio playback. In comparison, a fully charged case will provide you with an additional 5 hours talk time, 8 hours data usage and video playback, and 32 hours audio playback.

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(flipped)

MacPost..posts..another image of today’s earlier ‘iPhone leak’ which shows much more of the front of the device.  In the time since our original post this morning the iPhone 4 repair experts at iFixyouri have chimed in to note that the grill on the white iPhone front plate is a non-OEM version which likely indicates that this isn’t from Apple.

Apple removed the grated grill during the white iPhone redesign to help with the proximity sensor issues.

Perhaps this one is built from parts floating around Asia, but it isn’t one that Apple would have put together itself – recently anyway.

More below:

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PocketNow shows what it thinks to be an image taken with an iPhone 5.

This (very attractive) photo claims to have been taken by an iPhone 4, but the rest of its EXIF data tells a different story: although the image has been cropped to 2235×2291 (5.12 megapixels), the original picture was a much larger 3264×2448 — or just shy of eight megapixels. What’s more, the lens was recorded as a 4.3mm f/2.4, which is closer to that of a point-and-shoot than the iPhone 4’s actual 3.85mm f/2.8.

We’ve remarked on a number of occasions that the camera holes in the purported iPhone 5 cases seem significantly bigger than the current iPhone 4 cases.  Could this be an indication of some serious glass?

Interestingly the EXIF Data (comparisons below the fold) points to a GPS location here.

This one was “supposedly shot by an Apple engineer eating his lunch at work.”

YUM.

Update: Here is the original image on Flickr

Update 2: Taken down.  That’s obviously a good sign.

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MacRumors has posted renderings of the iPhone 5 based off information sent to third-party case developers. The measurements are 4.33″ x 2.36, which compares to the iPhone 4’s dimensions of 4.5″ x 2.31″. Along with the mock-up above, MacRumors also got their hands on a purported iPhone 5 case.

If these cases are correct (seen after the break), they point to the iPhone 5 packing a larger 4-inch screen, compared to the iPhone 4’s 3.5-inch. But, earlier reports contradict MacRumors, saying the iPhone 5 will feature a screen closer to 3.5″.

You may remember our case reports from July which showed the iPhone 5 having a longer and wider design. Macitynet.it also posted their case findings yesterday, which match up closely to MacRumors’ and 9to5mac’s findings. But again, there are those who claim the iPhone 5 will have a 3.5″ screen.

At any rate, why would case manufacturers begin spending millions of dollars to build these cases without any definite knowledge? Could the 3.5-inch design be the iPhone 4S and the iPhone 5 be slightly larger than 4-inches? Apple is expected to announce the iPhone 5 later this month, and the phone is planned to go on sale either October 7th or October 14th, with pre-orders starting around a week before.

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Not to be confused with yesterday’s story of an iPhone 5 prototype potentially being lost in the wild, today CNET reports that two men involved in last year’s high profile case of the lost iPhone 4 prototype purchased by Gizmodo have pled not guilty.

This comes after the court decided to not file charges against Gizmodo and instead file misdemeanours against the two men, Brian Hogan (pictured above) and Robert Sage Wallower, suspected of finding and selling the device.

Hogan, the man who allegedly obtained the prototype iPhone in a bar last year has plead not guiltily, along with Robert Sage Wallower, who is charged with possessing stolen property in the case, in front of Judge Jonathan Karesh this morning. Pretrial is slated for October 11.

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While Google passed the 40% smartphone share (Microsoft must be happy!) in the US threshold, Apple continues to outpace the industry as a whole posting modest 1 point gains in the US smartphone category according to comScore.   Apple moved up from 25.5% in March to 26.6% in June on the year old iPhone 4 model which also saw its US debut on Verizon.

Apple also moved up in the hardware category, below:

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In case you haven’t noticed, a rumored Fall release of iPhone 5 is being preceded by the usual media brouhaha. Is Apple going to release its next handset in September? How about October? Maybe they’ll gradually bring the device to market over the course of both months? Has the company already field-tested the gizmo in June? And if the phone is already in production, how come carriers are only now getting prototypes in sealed boxes? Do case leaks mean a ringer switch has been repositioned to the opposite side? And what’s with those iPhone 4 price cuts at Target and Radioshack and AT&T vacation blackouts?

Disregarding all of the above for a second, what exactly about Apple’s fifth-generation iPhone is going to blow our socks off the most? If you ask Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu, it’s the large display combined with an even thinner profile than iPhone 4:

It turns out that we are picking up that this interim iPhone refresh in the Fall timeframe could be a bigger upgrade than we expected. We believe this makes sense to improve the iPhone experience without making it too bulky as we have seen with models from competitors.

But what exactly is ‘bulky’ these days? Are we talking a few millimeters larger display or ‘Android superphone bulky’? Italian-language MelaBlog.it did a cool side-by-side comparison of the current-generation iPhone 4’s 3.5-inch display and the rumored iPhone 5 at various display dimensions. An iPhone 5 with a 4.3-inch display would require a frame wider and taller ten millimeters than that of the iPhone 4, while keeping the same 9.3 millimeter profile. Reducing the display edges “to a minimum” – that’s an edge-to-edge display for you – could allow Apple to engineer a monstrous 4.7-inch device, as depicted in the above drawing. There’s just one problem, though (plus, a cool reader mockup below the fold)…

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Daring Fireball‘s John Gruber today makes note of his complaints about iPad magazines (all valid), including the large files and static page sizes. But he also mentions casually, but apparently factually, that the iPad 3 will have a 2048×1536 Retina Display:

These magazines and newspapers that render each “page” as a static 1024 × 768 image are going to look like utter ass on the iPad 3’s 2048 × 1536 retina display.

Unfortunately, there is no timeframe given to this and with some expecting a Fall upgrade and others putting the release update as far out as next March, we’ll have to wait and see.

We earlier found bits of code which seem to indicate that an upcoming iPad will indeed have double the resolution as the current iPad 2.
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In an exclusive report, Boy Genius Report’s Jonathan Geller says that Apple is about to launch an inexpensive iPhone costing $350 by the end of summer:

According to our source, Apple will indeed be launching a prepaid / lower cost iPhone this year. We are told the handset will retail for no more than $350 without contract. Ready for the really interesting part? It’s entirely possible that the low-cost iPhone will in fact be the iPhone 3GS.

The author theorizes that “there would be an iPhone 4S in addition to the prepaid iPhone 3GS available within the next month to two” in addition to the iPhone 4 which BGR is told Apple will continue to sell…

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The gigantic glass display spans three 6 lanes of traffic.

Apple’s Hong Kong Flagship store just got the curtain treatment according to a 9to5mac reader Nastypenman.  The IFC center is the gateway to Hong Kong from the Airport rail link (ferry terminal, subways, etc) and is in the heart of Central, Hong Kong’s premiere shopping and business district.  The IFC had evict or relocate about 20 stores on two-three levels, circled below in this Macrumors report from March.  It could be Apple’s most expensive store to date (rent-wise) as Hong Kong’s prices are some of the highest in the world and this is about the most sought-after spot in Hong Kong.

Apple is also rumored to be building another local store, possibly in Pacific Place a short walk away.

A very Apple-like internal picture below:
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In a note last night, Wayne Lam of IHS-iSuppli made the case against Apple going with 1st generation LTE chips in its next iPhone.

“It remains to be seen whether the next Apple iPhone set for introduction in September will support 4G LTE,” said Wayne Lam, senior analyst for IHS. “However, if it does, two things are clear. First, the iPhone’s minuscule printed circuit board (PCB) will have to grow in size in order to support the first-generation LTE baseband processor as well as all the supporting chipset. Second, the next iPhone’s BOM value certainly will increase substantially compared to the iPhone 4 if LTE is implemented in the same manner as in the HTC Thunderbolt.”

I think Apple is more concerned with the extra space and battery life the new chips would consume much more than the extra cost of the components.“The first generation of LTE chipsets forced a lot of design compromises with the handset, and some of those we are just not willing to make,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple chief financial officer, speaking at the company’s April 2011 earnings call.

The next round of chips which would allow Apple to put LTE in a similarly sized package won’t hit the streets until the first half of 2012.

I don’t see an iPhone as big at the Thundebolt or Charge, ever. 
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Have you ever wanted to get your hands on an iPhone that Apple engineers have used for testing? If you’ve got 5 figures to blow on a non working phone, now’s your chance because an iPhone 4 prototype has shown up on Ebay. The listing comes from a user by the name of jtmaxo, who lists the device as ‘Apple iPhone 4 black APPLE GENUINE PROTOTYPE, GENUINE’. In the description the users states the device as a GSM iPhone labeled with the model number XXXXX FCC ID: BCGAXXXXX IC ID: 579C-AXXXXX.

Just like Gizmodo’s iPhone 4 prototype, the volume buttons are missing ‘+’ and ‘-‘ labels and storage information (XXGB) on the back of the device. Also, the seller says the device won’t activate through an AT&T SIM card plugged in through iTunes. Lastly, on the front of the device a ‘DF1692’ label is shown, which is thought of as a tracking code used by Apple. When the seller searched the serial number on Apple.com, it returned no results. So, where did the seller get this device?

(update: the prices keep fluctuating.  It was over $100,000 last night but somehow is down to $7K this morning.  Apple will likely pull this auction anyway.)

via This is my next

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image via BGR

As AT&T tries to swallow up the American wing of the German telekom, many have wondered whether Apple would allow T-Mobile to carry the iPhone.  Apple’s answer so far is a no*, but that hasn’t stopped T-Mobile customers from adopting iPhones.  In huge numbers.

In a meeting with T-Mobile spokespeople today ahead of the NYC Pepcom event, I received word that there are actively over a million Apple iPhones currently on T-Mobile’s network.  When asked for a breakdown, the spokesman said the majority were pre-iPhone 4 but that a significant amount of people had “taken the scissors” to their T-Mobile SIM cards.  T-Mobile doesn’t currently offer a Micro-SIM solution for Apple’s iPhone 4 so people who want to use the iPhone 4 must modify their SIMs into MicroSIMs.  Those using iPhone 4s also won’t receive T-Mobile’s 3G or 4G data speeds because of the radio differences between the networks.

*Apple started selling unlocked iPhone 4s in the US for the first time earlier this month.

When asked to elaborate further on Micro-SIMs, the spokesman told me they are in the works but there was no time frame for release.  Why not wait until the deal with AT&T is over to make MicroSIMs?  Perhaps we’ll have a little surprise come September.

When asked specifically about the possibility of a T-Mobile USA iPhone, T-Mobile said they have nothing to announce at this time.
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TUAW notes that inside the USB device profiles of iOS 5 are profiles for two never before seen devices called “iPad3,1” and “iPad3,2.”  Obviosuly Apple is going to be making more iPads in the future and devices often show up in these profiles many months before they are delivered.  However, there was some speculation earlier this year that an enhanced iPad 2 or iPad 3 with a Retina display would be released in time for the holidays.

Most analysts currently estimate that the next version of the iPad will hit at the beginning of next year so.

Interestingly, TUAW notes that there are no new iPod touches listed.  Touches usually are released in the Fall, but with no new iPhone hardware announced or released at WWDC, Apple’s traditional hardware release schedule has been put in question.  
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Update: we just got the following unverified account:

According to my friend who was at the Sanlitun Apple Store when the incident took place, there were dozens of resellers outside the store trying to get the white iPhone 4, they were told to wait in line and was not allowed to go inside. Resellers got pissed and smashed the glass door, which costs about 300,000RMB or 46,000USD, according to an apple employee at the store. Then a foreign(non-Chinese) employee came out from the store with a metal club and hit 4 people, including 2 young men and 2 middle age women. All 4 people are hospitalized right now and no money was paid by apple for medical purposes.

Pictures are just coming in but it appears that there was some sort of incident between “foreign Apple Store Employees” and some locals during the iPad 2 launch.  One account:

The afternoon of May 7, Beijing SanLiTun store Apple, crowds queued to buy the iPhone4 conflict with in-store staff. One stands more than 1.9 metres for expatriate staff armed with iron rods Brawl wounded four customers. A glass door of the store were hit and destroyed by excited crowds. Are 4-bit the injured have been admitted to hospital

Another account has another poorly translated view:

Sanlitun Apple Store bloodshed, because too many people queuing waiting suddenly closed shop, where the weather is so hot multi-line Burongyia, Apple stunned party to a foreigner and a Chinese man actually hands-on, people with the scene confirmed the man was wounded also the guests lined up to buy Apple products.We look at the quality of foreigners, but also that, to earn the money we have in China is also the name of our people.

We’re not sure exactly what went down but it doesn’t look too good.

In other Apple Store glass smashing news, the Westlake Cleveland Apple store was robbed.  24 MacBook and 1 iPod stolen.  Perpetrators were last seen heading east (1999?)

More pictures of bloodied people and one final account below:

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According to a Blaze study stemming from 45,000 Android and iOS tests, the Android browser on average loads web pages 52 percent faster than mobile Safari. The results are inconclusive, however, because it’s unclear whether Blaze’s measurements take into account the new Nitro JavaScript engine that comes with iOS 4.3. The report was completed before this complaint was made public and Blaze is arguing that the lack of Nitro boost can “slightly” skew the results given that “JavaScript only accounts for a small percentage of the total load time.”

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With iPad 2 now in the picture (no pun intended), exhaustive camera benchmarks from numerous publications paint a pretty bleak picture for Apple’s magical device. Like it or not, iPad 2 cameras mostly earn lower scores when pitted against Motorola’s Xoom, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab and even Apple’s own iPod touch. The empirical testing backed by real-life footage proves what we’ve been suspecting all along, that iPad 2 takes substandard stills and grainier video than most tablets.

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Apple has mailers going out today telling us to get ready to interrupt our Friday in order to line up like little actors all over the place in their iPad 2 Friday marketing campaign blitz. Ugh. I’m kinda down on the whole “spend Friday in line without a reservation” thing if you hadn’t noticed.

It is also interesting that Apple seems to default to the White iPad more often than not in its marketing – which was only a rumor a week ago.

Sorry Apple, I’m not spending my Friday in line.  Instead, I’m going to do the more convenient thing: Have my alarm wake me up at 2:55 am on Friday morning before work, order it online then, then try to go back to sleep.  (we love you Apple) I won’t have a 2 to play with over the weekend but at least I’ll have my Friday.

I think @MarkGurman will be queueing up at the Grove in LA if anyone wants to go bother him there (or hold his place in line).

Also, Me: White 16GB Wifi, Tan Leather iCover. You?
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