A study from wireless billing vendor Validas has revealed that Verizon Wireless smartphone owners are now exceeding the data usage of iPhone owners, who are currently restricted to AT&T. According to the study, average data consumption on Verizon smartphones is 421 MB, as opposed to 338 MB on the iPhone. And out of all the vendors, Verizon Wireless has seen the largest data usage increase over the past year – from 33.4% to 42.9%, year over year. Sponsor Since Blackberry devices were excluded from the study (and compress data anyway), that leaves Windows Mobile, Android, Symbian and Palm’s webOS to blame (or thank?) for the Verizon phones’ data-hogging ways.
Think giant active-shutter glasses are a roadblock to 3D adoption? Wait until you get a load of this, the N-3D from Aircord Labs, a glass pyramid with semi-reflective sides that allows you to peer through while reflecting the image of a screen above. In this case the screen is provided by an iPad which, as you can see in the video below, separately renders three sides of an object.
Remember how awesome and clever Futurama was the other night ? Well, if you missed it, your chances to see it in its original form might be slowly dwindling. It seems that Comedy Central has wiped out the reference in the dialogue to the “EyePhone 2.0.” So, while we don’t have any conspiracy theories brewing about what happened, it’s a pretty odd thing to scrub, and we figure there are two possibilities: either Comedy Central is trying to cover their <censored> on this one, or they got a late night email from…
It takes longer to read books on a Kindle 2 or an iPad versus a printed book, Jakob Nielsen of product development consultancy Nielsen Norman Group discovered in a recent usability survey. The study found that reading speeds declined by 6.2% on the iPad and 10.7% on the Kindle compared to print. However, Nielsen conceded that the differences in reading speed between the two devices were not “statistically significant because of the data’s fairly high variability” — in other words, the study did not prove that the iPad allowed for faster reading than the Kindle. A total of 24 participants (10 is about average for a usability survey) were given short stories by Ernest Hemingway to read in print and on iPads, Kindles and desktop PCs.
The Predators movie is set to be released on July 7th, and what would the release of a big budget summer film be without an official video game. That’s where Predators for the iPhone comes in. Chillingo & Angry Mob Games, who if you recall was the team behind Guerrilla Bob , have worked together to bring Predators to the iPhone, but does the game live up to the awesomeness that is a Predator? Predators has you playing a Predator hunting down a number of hunters across twenty-four stages, each stage increasing in difficulty
The New York Times is reporting that Apple, Inc. is “working on an update to its television software” that runs on its Apple TV hardware, an update that “will offer a completely redesigned interface for it.” The Times’ source asked not to be identified, and Apple – unsurprisingly – declined to comment on the matter. The Times cited several additional anonymous sources that claimed the new Apple TV could: be a completely new hardware product, be a software update to the current hardware offering, and/or run Apple’s expanding iOS. Apple TV was first launch in 2006 and since has been described by Apple’s CEO as “a hobby.” One thing we’re looking forward to seeing: how Apple, Google, Roku, Tivo, and others compete for space in your living room.
UPDATED: 10 hours after I wrote this, Apple released a note explaining the same thing. Keep reading to see the complete text of the note. Thanks to Phil for sending this awesome video to me – proof that the iPhone 4 antenna issue really isn’t much of an issue at all. I covered this extensively in a post on Thursday.
This is my son, Micro-Bash. He is one year and several months old. And he can unlock an iPhone. More »
I’m amazed at how much press this so-called antenna thing is getting. It’s really out of hand. I think you know my track record. When Apple does something wrong, I’m right there to call them out.
iPhone That iPhone on Verizon rumor just won’t die — Bloomberg is now reporting that we’ll see an iPhone on Verizon’s service in January of next year . “Two people familiar with the plans” say that AT&T exclusivity will finally end next year, and analysts say that if that happens, Apple will sell lots more iPhones, up to 3 million more per quarter to Verizon’s 90 million or so customers. Of course there’s no comment by Apple or Verizon so far, and I’ll point out that we’ve heard this rumor time and time and time again — first back in January of this year, then for the new iPhone 4 announcement and WWDC, and now pushed off until next year. Basically, don’t hold your breath.
The iPhone 4 ’s massive launch hasn’t been blemish free, with reports of spotty displays (which seem to have disappeared) and antenna woes being rather widely reported. Well — it looks like it’s possible there’s another issue too — this time with the proximity sensor. Now, we’re no strangers to spontaneously turning on speakerphone with our faces (though admittedly our cheeks are pretty round), so it’s hard to say if this is an iPhone 4-specific issue, but the mounting reports would suggest that it’s possible the new handets sensor is a little bit… over sensitive
We’ve already seen some pretty good iPhone 4 KIRFs , but it looks like there’s a new king in town: the Air Phone NO. 4. Not only does it faithfully emulate the iPhone 4’s hardware design with what we can only assume is the highest quality materials (it even eliminates those pesky seams), but it packs a “non-smartphone OS” that has all your favorite apps including Safari, Mail, “Games,” “Sound” and, last but not least, FaceTime — or a FaceTime icon, at least. Curious to see what other wonders await behind that familiar veneer?
A lot of speculation was dished out leading up to the launch of the latest iteration of the iPhone, and plenty more has followed since it has started landing in the hands of early adopters. I was one of the lucky few that managed to secure a pre-ordered phone, but wasn’t able to get it shipped to my home. Instead, I woke up and the crack of dawn and stood in line for several hours to get my iPhone 4 – meeting several great people during the process. Since having time to play and experiment over the weekend, I’ve been surprised by several things – good and bad, big and small – about the phone and the new OS.
iPhone , Jailbreak/pwnage When we talk about “jailbreaking” the iPhone, that means opening up the underlying file system on the phone for full read/write access; on a vanilla iPhone, only the ‘userland’ data is accessible to users and apps. The term is derived from Unix jargon, where a ” chroot jail ” is the limited section of the file system that an underprivileged app can access. A jailbreak allows third parties to install and run any software they want, rather than the subset of iPhone apps approved by Apple and distributed through the App Store.
Well, this must be one of the most epic “I told you so” moments in the history of consumer electronics. Professor Gert Frølund Pedersen, an antenna expert over at Denmark’s Aalborg University, managed to get his concerns about the iPhone 4’s external antennae on the record a cool two weeks before the phone was even released. In an interview on June 10, the Danish brainbox explained that he wasn’t impressed by Steve Jobs’ promises of better reception, describing external antennas as “old news,” and suggested that contact with fleshlings could result in undesirable consequences to the handset’s reception: “The human tissue will in any event have an inhibitory effect on the antenna. Touch means that a larger portion of antenna energy becomes heat and lost.” Machine-translated that may be, but you get the point
