Apple / AT&T Spat? GOOG/AAPL 700Mhz?

I'll admit to liking Robert X. Cringely of PBS. Sure, his theories are wild sometimes. But they're wild in a fun way, and he'll revisit things that he got wrong. He doesn't resort to trolling like some writers of his generation who happen to be friends of his, and when he does troll, it's against something that we all hate anyway, like our mobile phone carrier. He's a uniter, not a divider.

Cringely's idea is that Stephenson's recent message of a 3G iPhone next year (covered recently here) will chill iPhone sales and cost AT&T about $1 billion in market cap. That, and that Apple will be parnering with Google to buy that 700MHz spectrum. If that charge was true, stockholders should oust Stephenson for neglecting is fiduciary duty: to make them a crapload of money. If I was a stockholder, I wouldn't forgive a billion-dollar mistake. I'm inclined to write off the spat as likely to be a rumor because Stephenson's line is pretty much the same line we were given from Jobs. However, there is a 'but' in this: the possibility of Apple working with Google for spectra, that's enough to give me pause. Like so many Cringely articles one has to file it away and see what happens in the distant future.

In other news, Apple has a $30 billion war chest. That's Microsoft scale money.

RoundRobin: CrackBerry.com Kevin Reviews iPhone

Kevin Michaluk of CrackBerry.com reviewed the iPhone and reviews it positively. He's got a thread going in our forums too. Someone may have asked if they could keep the 4GB iPhone until it became available on their carrier; I won't name any names, nor will I offer proof (because I forgot to take a !@#$ screenshot). No, I'll be content to insinuate. The other party would have accepted except that they have other immediate plans for said iPhone once the Smartphone Round Robin is over. Still, it's an interesting proposition, and if someone had a spare iPhone to give, someone would have taken someone else up on it. If someone could dole out iPhones to people that needed interface love, someone definitely would.

iPhone as Business Status Symbol

Presented for your approval, a somewhat funny cartoon about jerks in business and smartphones as status symbols, specifically, how the iPhone replaces the BlackBerry as a business status symbol. From the U.K. comic Alex [via]

AT&T CEO Stephenson Confirms Jobs

Steve Jobs mentioned the possibility of a 3G back in September, when he was announcing the iPhone on O2. He was asked a question about 3G and when we'd see it in the iPhone. His response back in September was telling:

"We've got to see the battery life for 3G get back up into the five-plus hour range, before it's really suitable for [the iPhone]. I think we'll see that hopefully late next year. But right now, you make a really big tradeoff to go to 3G, and that's really bad battery life."

Want to Feel Bad For the Record Industry?

figure 1: UMG CEO Doug Morris as interpreted by artist Psillos

If you're looking read a sob story for the music industry, Wired has your ticket. They interviewed Universal CEO Doug Morris about his woes with iTunes and how to deal with the MP3 problem, and it's pretty revealing.

Universal in the process of starting a new subscription-based service called Total Music to replace iTunes (and Microsoft's Plays-For-Sure, and maybe Microsoft's other Zune marketplace too). The best part about that is he's looking to deliver yet another format. You have MP3s, you have iTunes' AACs, you have Windows Media's WMA, you have other myriad formats like OGG and FLAC, and then you'll have yet another choice.

figure 2: Mr. Non-Digital guy drinking with Mr. Internet Enabling Apple Board Member Digital Guy

Morris admits he's not a digital guy, but... wow. his response to the threat of iTunes doesn't make sense to me. He wants tech companies to foot the bill for at least the first few months, which I don't think will fly. They're just going to pass the added cost on to consumers, and after that the consumer is stuck with keeping things up. Would I need multiple subscriptions for multiple devices? If I do, that would suck. If I don't, it would still suck, since the tech companies would still build the cost of the unnecessary subscription into the retail price of their music player. And this is assuming they don't try to establish a 4th common format, mind you. Which they probably will, probably with the help of Microsoft (or worse, Real).

If they sell multiple versions with different music licensing -- one version more expensive and with a subscription, and one much less but without a subscription -- consumers get confused, have a negative experience with the platform, and return to iTunes (or Amazon MP3, or stealing music, or home taping, or whatever).

And if they get the tech makers to build in the cost a lifelong subscription into a device, what's to stop Apple from licensing that tech besides collusion? What would be my purpose to upgrade in music-playing hardware besides capacity? It doesn't look like it would be a good long-term deal for the tech giants either (let alone me), unless the tech giants have an elaborate plan for screwing over the record companies later.

Another part of his plan was to not renew the contract with iTunes, so they could reduce the number of songs and albums they'd sell on iTunes. Forcing customers to subscribe to a subscription service so he can escape the "golden handcuffs" of iTunes probably isn't going to fly especially well. The market has pretty much spoken for the iPod so far -- maybe something revolutionary will come along; maybe something won't. My best guess is that whatever replaces the iPod will still be made by Apple, but whatever. The music industry's next best hope is the Zune from Microsoft. Is that scary or what? Fleeing Apple for Microsoft is the very definition of "out of the frying pan, into the fire."

I dunno, it seems like this guy is dancing in quicksand. In other news, iTunes accounts for 22% of all music sold in the USA, and Amazon MP3 is also an excellent choice for online music. My line in the sand: if it's not iTunes or it's not MP3 or some similar open format, it's doomed. (photo via Getty, painting via Wired)

Google Maps: My Location

Google Maps for Mobile has unveiled a pretty sweet new feature -- on a bevy of mobile phones, Google Maps is smart enough to figure out approximately where you are. Google's system uses a method known as tower triangulation -- your phone keeps a list of nearby towers, and makes note of how strong your signal is. Google accesses their database of towers and compares your signal strength and correlates it to a likely location on the map. It's pretty slick, and has been common in parts of Europe for ages. Location-based features of mobile phones are a killer app, to be sure.

iPhone Launches in France Tonight

The iPhone launches in France tonight on the carrier Orange. One of the cool things about the French launch is that they're selling the unlocked iPhone for so much less than T-Mobile is selling it for. Maybe all the delays in launching a French iPhone were because Orange was a tougher negotiator... if that's true, the extra time was worth it: the uncontracted iPhone from Orange is a bargain at €649 (about $975); the standard locked iPhone with one of their four simplified plans is €399 (about $600),

The customer can unlock the iPhone for €100 (about $150), which drops to free after six months. If only we could have some straight answers from AT&T and Apple about unlocking in the U.S.A.

iPhone is Next Major Computing Platform?

Zach Nelson of Inc.com declared the iPhone is ushering in the next major computing platform. I agree with him, really -- the ability to intelligently browse actual websites on the iPhone is a killer business feature. He's the CEO of NetSuite, and a bit of the article is him crowing that NetSuite worked perfectly with the iPhone out-of-box, but still... it's a good article with some fine insights:

"Not the humble cell phone, you say? It's too small, too weak, too underpowered for serious productivity? If history matters, new computing platforms have always emerged from the low-end of the marketplace. The Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) minicomputer supplanted the IBM mainframe, then Sun’s Unix Workstations replaced DEC, and the PC replaced Sun. Now, the phone is going to surpass the PC."

"Just as there are still mainframes, mini-computers and workstations in use, the phone won’t eliminate the PC. But more and more work will get done on your phone. And the same transition we saw from keyboard-only mainframe applications to point-and-click mouse-driven interfaces is happening again, this time with designs that keep the needs of mobile users in mind. It is going to force software companies to think carefully about how they use that precious screen real-estate on the phone.

If you still aren't convinced, just wait, and the decision will be made for you by your best and brightest new hires. Never lose sight of what the college students of today are accustomed to. Living -- not just communicating -- on a small, handheld device is simply second-nature. They are so tied to these devices that their dedication, and the applications already being created for the latest vanguard of smart phones, is going to transform business five to ten years down the road." "

iPhone SDK Already Seeded?

Electronista reports that some developers have already received an advance copy of the iPhone system development kit. Apparently the kit makes good on Jobs' earlier promise of code signing.

The kit is apparently not a full-access type of kit; it's more of an intermediating layer between the programmer and the actual operating system frameworks. That means that a lot of the iPhone's possible functionality won't be realized (at least as the SDK currently stands) as programmers won't be getting raw access to the iPhone. As Jobs said earlier, they want to be as open as possible while ensuring that iPhone owners' information is safe.

If that's true, it also means that a lot of apps that currently work on hacked iPhones via Installer.app probably won't be easy to port over to the official SDK.

Apple's Joswiak: "We're Awesome"

The title doesn't give an exact quote, but if I was to say there's a gist to this interview, that would be it. CNN Money.com Fortune interviewed Apple's Greg Joswiak, who is in charge of marketing for iPhones and iPods. As is almost always the case with an interview like this, he doles out the money quotes like Michael Jordan sticks out his tongue. Some of it we've heard before -- they want to take time to make sure everything is going alright, and there isn't really any new news, just that it's presented in more detail than before:

"I think the software development kit (SDK) that’s going to be available for the iPhone is very interesting, because we think that with the revolutionary multi-touch interface and the phenomenal product that the iPhone is, and certainly having OS X underneath it, that it’s going to be an unbelievable platform for developers.

"Of course what we want to make sure we’ve done is keep the phone safe and reliable, and that’s why it’s taken us a little while to get this SDK out. Especially now that we’ll have a real SDK which means legitimate developers are going to come into the space. There are all kinds of fantastic and great things that they’re going to do.

[....]

"We do our best to try to understand what customers are going to want down the road. I’m fond of the Wayne Gretzky quote — you skate to where the puck is going to be. We try to understand as we develop our product road map, what’s going to be exciting in the future. And that’s one of the advantages we have over our competitors. Our competitors tend to put the cross hairs on where we are now, and by the time they come up with a product that tries to match where we are now, we’re beyond them. We’re one or two generations beyond, moving faster than they are."

$1500 German iPhones Unlock Via iTunes

Last week, there was press of unlocked iPhones as the result of the T-Mobile vs. Vodafone lawsuit. T-Mobile lost the suit and as a result have to sell an unlocked iPhone. To keep anyone from actually buying it, they set the price astronomically high, at €999, or $1500 American. There were really only two possibilities for how the $1500 iPhone would be unlocked: one, they would do it for you at the store. If they could unlock from the point of sale, hackers would figure out how Apple did it in the baseband radio and we'd all get unlocked phones. Apple clearly couldn't do that, so they instead do it from iTunes. If someone purchases an unlocked iPhone from T-Mobile, their IMEI (kind of like a unique serial number for your iPhone) is put into a database. And when that iPhone is activated, it shows up as unlocked. Presto, that's it!

If you're looking to translate the German from the image above: "Unlock Complete. Your iPhone has been successfully unlocked. Click continue to set [?] and sync your iPhone."

Rare Find: Relevant Press Release

It's an increasingly rare day when a press release finds its way to my inbox that's actually relevant to me or anyone that uses an iPhone. But, goosync.com has done it. They have a product that syncs your iPhone with Google's online calendar. It's a Windows-only app and it requires Outlook with a plugin, but if you were looking for a way to sync the Google to your iPhone, there's a way to do it.

"A synchronisation application is not yet available for the Apple iPhone. However, it is still possible to synchronise the device with GooSync by using the Funambol Outlook Plugin. [....] A GooSync client for the Apple iPhone is planned for release in Q1 2008."

Treo 680 First Looks All Over Again

I think that I've been lucky with all of the phones that I've reviewed in the Smartphone Round Robin. I think there's a proper order. I began with the device furthest away in mentality to the iPhone, the BlackBerry Curve, and it was a fine device. I missed having a touchscreen, but it was a good device. Then, I got to use the Tilt for a week, and that was actually another good device -- very powerful with its touchscreen, and it has a form factor at least in parts reminiscent of the iPhone, though maybe without some of its ease of use. And last, I get to review the Treo, which is in many ways the closest of all of the phones we'll review to the iPhone. Did you know that iPhone owners were 7 times more likely to have used a Treo (or Sidekick) than any other phone?

Random iPhone 3G Rumors

There are a lot of rumors floating around that various carriers will get the 3G iPhone. Telefonica is one of the carriers usually named, Vodafone is usually the other. The rumors lately indicate that the next generation of iPhone, the iPhone 3G, will be available in May.

This blog post is basically for the record -- I don't buy it. These posts are all referencing obscure foreign blogs while the more traditional scoop-based mac sites remain silent on the matter (like thinksecret.com, for example). I don't think Apple will replace the iPhone hardware that soon, either -- part of me thinks that Apple will unveil a new iPhone right about the time that original purchasers near the end of their contracts. You know, selling stuff to their already-captive audience. Apple has hinted that maybe we'd maybe see something iPhoney with 3G in late 2008, and that's probably still true.

T-Mobile vs. Vodafone Lawsuit

I had earlier decided to skip this story, since I'm not aware that we have many, if any German readers, and T-Mobile of Germany only sold 10,000 or so iPhones so far. UK-based Vodafone has been calling sour grapes on the iPhone for a while now. They're the parent company of Verizon, they passed on the iPhone 1.0, they want 3G, they don't want to give up their control and just become a data network, they've made a lot of noise throughout the iPhone's launch and they've been very effective about staying in the press. Anyway, Vodafone sued T-Mobile for a stop of how they marketed the iPhone because it violated some German laws. They filed the lawsuit a few days ago, and it would appear that Vodafone just won their case.

The resolution of the lawsuit ended in an interesting outcome: it would seem that the iPhone is available unlocked for use with any carrier, with no contract, available from T-Mobile for €999. That's right, an unlocked iPhone can be yours for the bargain price of about $1500 U.S. I don't think they'll have many takers, but my hope is that at least one hacker figures out how they activate these special $1500 iPhones and mimics the process so that *any* unlocked phone can skip or bypass the sometimes-very-difficult activation process and publishes it for the cred. Barring that, that a group of hackers figure it out and charge for a solution.

Phone Different Podcast #9

How quickly we've reached our 9th podcast! Amazing, simply amazing. Plenty of stuff to talk about in this podcast, and yet somehow we hit our time target. I should be injured from a "light-hearted" and "fun" game of "touch" football and Dieter should quit smoking for every podcast. Wish him success and support by sending us an email at podcast at phonedifferent dot com. Or call us and leave a message, that secretly pleases us more.

We had to up the bitrate again; something is different in how Leopard encodes MP3s or maybe GarageBand is exporting additional noise in Leopard or something -- the 1411kbps AIFF file sounds great, the 48kbps/60kbps podcast sounds like garbage. Maybe we're both just being more finicky about how the podcast sounds, but we're getting some weird artifacts, both with LAME encoding and iTunes encoding. So, we're letting this one out at a 80kbps bitrate. We've also been storing the art inside the individual MP3s; let us know if it shows up.



• Our podcast feed
• Download Directly
• Subscribe via iTunes

PC Mag: iPhone Tops

PC Magazine readers fingered the iPhone as the top cell phone in the PC Magazine "Trustworthy Tech" yearly bit.

"iPhone owners passionately love their devices. In its first year on the survey, the Apple iPhone scored a stunning 9.1 out of 10 from our readers, beating the ratings that every other phone, from every carrier, in nearly every category, has received in the three years we've been including cell phones. The iPhone's 9.6 scores in music and video playback might have been expected, but its 8.2 for call quality (a score significantly better than average), another 8.2 for coverage, and an 8.0 for earpiece volume show that it's not just the i our readers like. They love the phone, too.

"In the case of other devices, our readers seem to have settled into slightly cranky resignation. Almost all brands on nearly every carrier rated scores between 7.0 and 7.5 overall, with differentiations coming feature by feature. Check out our online charts for full details."

Some highlights from the XLS files:

• 1.1 points higher than next best overall rating.
• tops at text messaging
• tops at picture messaging (and MMS isn't even supported yet!)
• 1.9 points higher than next best web browsing
• 2.5 points higher than next best music player
• 2.5 points higher than next best video player
• lowest rate of required repair among smartphones

AT&T Drops EDGE Requirement

I don't know why AT&T dropped the EDGE requirement from the iPhone, but they did. If you want to save $20/month ($240/yr, $480/2 yrs) and skip the EDGE data and go wi-fi only, that's now your option. Doing so removes your ability to use visual voicemail and your rights to 200 free messages, but you can add a different SMS plan once EDGE is dropped. If I was to drop EDGE, I'd probably drop AT&T too -- I'd spend some of that money I'd be saving on breaking my contract and unlocking my iPhone.

iPhone Commercial

A story about iPhones on a plane, just like the commercial with the pilot, but without the happy ending. Any story that ends like this is not a happy story:

"If the passenger with the iPhone would be kind enough to use it to check the weather at our alternate, calculate our fuel burn due to being rerouted around the storms, call the dispatcher to arrange our release, and then make a phone call to the nearest Air Traffic Control center to arrange our timely departure amongst the other aircraft carrying passengers with IPhones, then we will be more than happy to depart. Please ring your call button to advise the Flight Attendant and your fellow passengers when you deem it ready and responsible for this multi-million dollar aircraft and its passengers to safely leave"

The pilot commercial seems to irk no small amount of people, as they can't tell if the commercial is legit or not. See here for more; here's the original ad from Apple about Bryce and his delay.

Jailbreak 1.1.2

The jailbreak for 1.1.2 is still for the technically inclined and maybe not for the average Joe. But for those of you that are technically inclined, it now works on all platforms: Intel Mac, PowerPC Mac, and Windows. If you're running 1.1.2, you'll have to downgrade to 1.1.1 and then jailbreak with jailbreakme.com and perform some steps before you upgrade back to a jailbroken 1.1.2, but it's possible. You can find the update at conceited software.

O2s' iPhone: Best. Launch. Ever

Though neither O2 nor Carphone Warehouse have disclosed sales numbers beyond hundreds tens of thousands, O2 CEO Peter Erskine pronounced the iPhone their fastest-selling device ever. EVAR. On top of that, a full two-thirds of the iPhone customers came from other carriers, compared to 40% for AT&T in the U.S.

Apple Tracking You via IMEI

"As I sit here applying a new layer of Reynolds tin foil to my international hat of conspiracy, its been proven that Apple tracks iPhone usage and tracks IEMI numbers of all their iPhones worldwide. Hidden in the code of the “Stocks” and “Weather” widgets is a string that sends the IMEI of your phone to a specialized URL that Apple collects."

Philippe Kahn: iPhone Nano Coming

figure 1: Industry heavyweight Philippe Kahn

Philippe Kahn, founder of Borland, inventor of the camera-phone and a bunch of other stuff, recently predicted the arrival of an iPhone Nano in an interview with Uberpulse during the 6sight conference.

"Kahn was also totally gaga about the iPhone and even predicted the coming launch of a smaller version of the iPhone, that he called the "nano". The Fullpower CEO also said his company was working with most of the CE manufacturing using sensor which I assumes include also Apple!"

iPhone Bringing Data Prices Down in Canada

Iain Grant of Seaboard, a Canadian Market Analyst group, figures that the iPhone has caused precipitous price drops in Canadian data plans. That's right -- the iPhone isn't out yet, and yet they finger it to be the cause. In June, 1GB worth of data would have cost in excess of $2300 Canadian per month. Then, a string of price cuts over several months occurs. Now the price for 1GB worth of data is $100 Canadian per month on Bell and Telus. Rogers doesn't have a 1GB plan, but their 1/2 GB plan is now $80 Canadian per month. Like the MacWorld article says: "This price plunge is almost entirely attributable to the expectation that the iPhone is coming." He also concludes that the delay of the iPhone in Canada is entirely attributable to Rogers' unwillingness to make their data as cheap as possible, or as Grant puts it, "plans that aren't ridiculous."

Apple Cool on iPhone Games?

figure 1: John Carmack of Id Software

Gamedaily.com recently interviewed John Carmack about a good many things. One of the things that they ended up chatting about was iPhone games, or as one could say, lack thereof. It turns out that Carmack has an iPhone, and would love to write some games for it. Carmack talked to Steve Jobs about it at WWDC, and had followup meetings, and he's pretty frustrated with the current situation. It's a great read into one of the brilliant minds of gaming -- even if DOOM is a parody of itself nowadays, he's still one of the pre-eminent names of gaming.

"We've certainly been looking at it but Steve Jobs and I have not been seeing really eye to eye on a lot of important issues. We were in a fairly heated argument at the last WWDC [Worldwide Developers Conf.] and we've had a few follow-ups. I have an iPhone right now and it's a platform I would enjoy developing for but Apple is not taking progressive steps in regards to [gaming]. Their strategy seems to be working just fine from a business standpoint, so I'm not going to second guess them and tell them they're being fools or idiots for not focusing on this.

"The honest truth right now is that Apple's not exactly hugely supportive of this. When they finally allowed games to be put on the iPod... in many ways it's one of the worst environments to develop games for. You have to work on an emulator... just all these horrible decisions. I expressed my fears directly to Steve Jobs that some of these mistakes might be carried over to the iPhone, so they're at least aware of all of them, but they're not giving any spectacular signs that it's going to be a big deal for them in the next year."

YouTube Doubleheader: iPhone and iPod Parodies

Here for your enjoyment is a Saturday Night Live sketch that spoofs Apple's current iPhone ads. The ad apparently went unaired, perhaps because NBC's lawyers wouldn't let them air a sketch that condones punching cops and the use of meth to stay sane. That's what makes it humor, I suppose. That or they ran out of time.

Warner CEO Likes iTunes

figure 1: Bronfman doing the evil fingers thing

Edgar Bronfman (ridiculed previously) actually had some positive things to say about iTunes recently, totally unbidden. He said that the music industry execs "used to fool themselves" and their dismissal of online markets put them "at war with consumers." I don't ever take it as a good sign when they refer to possible customers as consumers. But, my guess is that now that Warner is building their new online store, they've realized that it's not as easy as it looks. So here's my premonition: Warner is probably ripping off the iTunes look and feel left and right with their new music store. That, or they figured it was too hard and they're scrapping the thing, opting instead to dive wholeheartedly into the iTunes scheme.

What if You Posted a Troll and No One Replied?

Why, that would be the saddest thing in the whole wide world. C'mon folks, he says his XDA is better than the iPhone, and that Windows Mobile will surpass the iPhone's interface with the next release. Judging from all the typos and missed capitals, he even slipped it past his editor. C'mon, he just wants you to comment.

Google Phone Not a Threat to iPhone

figure 1: Gene Munster. Gene, I didn't mean to treat you bad.

The Google mobile phone operating system known as Android has been getting a lot of press lately, and one of the more interesting angles I've seen in the past few days is that Android isn't meant to compete with the Apple iPhone. Gene Munster, an oft-quoted analyst at Piper Jaffray with plenty to say about the iPhone, thinks that the iPhone is aimed at a much higher market than any phones built with Google's Android.

"We believe Google is working with, not against, Apple in the mobile world."

It can tough to position a software product with the masses when it doesn't cost anything. In a lot of people's minds, this is true: no cost = worthless. But it's that same quality makes it attractive to handset makers, it allows them to push prices down. Multiple handset makers shipping multiple phones with one operating system (like Windows Mobile) tend to push prices down, since those handset makers compete with each other. If those same handset makers can shop a Google phone to carriers at less cost than they could make a Windows Mobile phone, it becomes attractive to them. It becomes attractive to carriers, since they don't have to do as much work to brand all of those featurephones with weird RTOS operating systems, they just have to brand Android once, and they don't have to share their intellectual property with anyone.

MakeFreeiPhoneRingtone Works with 1.1.2

If you're running iTunes 7.5 with an iPhone running 1.1.2, making custom ringtones is drop-dead simple again. All you need to do is download a new copy of MakeiPhoneRingtone and you're pretty much back in business. The only catch is that you need to edit your AAC files to 40 seconds or less. For that, the makers of the freeware app MakeiPhoneRingtone hope you pick Fission, their not-as-free audio editor. Maybe this is the carrot I was talking about yesterday to get people to think about upgrading to 1.1.2.

iPohen Kyeobard Erorr Raets: Esaily Duobel

A study has been performed about the error rates of mobile keyboards. The three keyboards picked were the iPhone virtual software keyboard, QWERTY keyboards (like those on BlackBerries and Treos), and T9 numeric keypads. iPhone users erred at a rate of 5.6 errors per message, T9 users erred at a rate of 2.6 errors per message, and QWERTY users erred at a rate of 2.1 errors per message. The test was done with 20 folks in each group, and the iPhone owners had to have used their device for at least a month to qualify as eligible.

There are some doozies in the press release:

While the iPhone's corrective text feature helps, this data suggests that iPhone users who have owned the device for a month still make about the same number of errors as the day they got it," said Gavin Lew, Managing Director.

Compared to hard-key QWERTY devices, the iPhone may fall short for consumers who use on their mobile device heavily for email and text messaging. The iPhone was clearly associated with higher text entry error rates than a hard-key QWERTY phone. The finding that iPhone owners made more texting errors on iPhones than their hard-key QWERTY counterparts (on their own QWERTY phones) suggests that the iPhone may have a higher fundamental error rate. Specifically, the high rate of false alarms for iPhone keys adjacent to high frequency letters is troubling. The iPhone’s predictive and corrective text features do alleviate some of the errors users make while texting, but it does not catch them all.

"iPhone is a great switch from a numeric phone. But if you're switching from a hard-key QWERTY phone, try the iPhone in the store first."

New iPhone Emulator: GameBoy Advanced

There's a new Nintendo emulator for the iPhone. Beyond the venerable NES.app Nintendo emulator, there's now the GameBoy and GameBoy Advanced emulator named gpSPhone for the iPhone., made possible by some of the same folks that brought you NES.app. I'm guessing you can expect gpSPhone to mature fairly quickly.. There are limitations, you have to supply your own boot ROM, you have to hack your iPhone first, and sound support is iffy at best, and you definitely have to install it to /Applications, but those are meager gripes about a software emulator at version 0.0.5. [via TUAW]

Apple in Talks with China Mobile for iPhone

China Mobile revealed that they are having talks with Apple to bring the iPhone to China. The deal was revealed by China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou, but they have yet to really seal the deal. From an executive spokesperson at China Mobile:

"Of course, we hope to bring the iPhone to China. But for the time being we are only in preliminary contact with Apple, and we have not made any concrete progress yet."

UPDATE: iLounge found some more Wang quotes. He's apparently not excited to share any revenue with Apple, though he's excited to carry the iPhone itself:

Our customers like this kind of fashionable product. We still think we can maintain the operator-centric model because we have the customers, the end users.

Apple Keeps Giving Quotes to Pocket Lint

Apple continues to grant interviews to pocket-lint.co.uk, and there are some good quotes in there. These money quotes sum up the essential approach to their work on the iPhone and how it's like a little zen garden. A walled zen garden, to be sure -- there are some things that you just can't do that don't make any sense, but a zen garden nonetheless. More on that later. Anyway, to the quotes:

"All the complaints and feature requests we've had can be fixed and added by software upgrades."

"We didn't want to include something for something's sake."

"For the average mobile phone most people only use around 10%, Apple didn't want that to happen with the iPhone."

image credit koi-z-are-us.com

1.1.2 Officially Released Last Night

Here I had thought that Apple released it on Friday, in conjunction with their european iPhone launch. No, they officially launched it Monday night, to little fanfare. Again, there isn't much to this update. It closes the TIFF vulnerability that allows people to easily hack their iPhones at jailbreakme.com, that's about it.

My understanding of feature updates is this: Apple has to dangle the carrot to make official firmwares more compelling than unofficial, hacked firmwares. Are iTunes charging icons and international keyboards going to cut it?

Round Robin: Windows Mobile Fond Farewell

Of all the smartphones we test during the Smartphone Round Robin, the constraints of our phone exchange is felt most with the Windows Mobile 6 AT&T Tilt. One week is just not enough to get a full grasp on what Windows Mobile can do. If you've read some of my other reviews, you'll hopefully recognize that as a compliment-dig.

Possible iPhone Inspiration

I saw this Neonode N2 phone cross by in my RSS reader, and it looks like it could practically be the iPhone Nano. After reading the review at pencomputing.com it's clearly not, but the N2 is absolutely tiny. It's also built off a touchscreen interface, though the N2's is built off infrared instead of multitouch. The weirdest thing is that the Neonode N2 and N1 have been using iphone touch, tap, and swipe interfaces since 2002 -- they've been around a while.

The other weirdest thing about the N2 is that it's built off Windows CE, just like Windows Mobile, except the N2 doesn't add all of the Windows Mobile interface, they just use the bare guts of CE and add their own pretty. I have to say, it looks pretty decent from the few screenshots.

I'm not going to say that it's going to sell like hotcakes, because it probably won't. It costs about $645 US, doesn't do 3rd party apps, doesn't even do EDGE, and does only 1 GB of storage. They use a mobile processor I've never heard of on its own boffo architecture, so converting apps over isn't necessarily going to be a slice of pie or a walk in the park. I just figured it's kind of interesting. I wonder how well they patented their stuff and if we'll see yet another iPhone lawsuit.

iPhone in Europe

After a full weekend of the iPhone in Europe, how well has the iPhone been doing? Well, T-Mobile reported that they sold 10,000 iPhones on the first day. That's not too shabby; it's not an incredibly high number either, but it's not bad either.

O2 hasn't published any numbers yet, so there's a bunch of hemming and hawing about whether the UK launch was a success or failure -- and same with the German launch, actually. My guess is that since possibly 250,000 iPhones have been unlocked and sent overseas and Apple has had to limit purchases to 2 and require a credit card for purchase, that the iPhone launch must have been pretty good over there when it started a few months ago.

New iPhone / iTunes Software Roundup

Well, in iTunes 7.5, free ringtones are back. It turns out that you can do the old trick of renaming an AAC music file to turn it into a ringtone. To get it to work, take any 30 second m4a file in finder, rename the extension to be m4r, and drag it in to iTunes. Voila!

For the iPhone, folks figured out how to downgrade the iPhone firmware to the older 1.1.1 firmware to get all the fun goodies if you decide that 1.1.2 isn't all that great, or you miss the ease of the jailbreakme.com installer.

It seems that the iPhone modem firmware has been unlocked as well, meaning that they've figured out how to unlock 1.1.2 iPhones once the jailbreak is easy enough. A simpler GUI app will probably show up in the next few days.

Hackers have figured out how to re-flash the radio in 1.1.2 so it is now safe to unlock the iPhone, as you can "revirginize" the iPhone after unlocking it to avoid any bricking with the next update.

The 1.1.2 iPhone software has already been jailbroken. The software isn't quite out of beta yet, it works only with Intel machines, and you'll have to read a readme.txt file to figure it out, but it's available for download if you need it. If you want to jailbreak 1.1.2, you'll have to do most of the work from 1.1.1, so keep that downgrade link handy.

Filesharing for iPhone and iPod Touch

This guy Core of wickedpsyched.net coded a version of AFP, the Apple Filesharing Protocol, for the iPhone and iPod Touch. This means that you could enable filesharing on your iPhone and copy some files over directly from your desktop over wi-fi. If you ask me, this is better than disk mode, where you can plug in your iPhone and it shows up as a removable disk. It apparently doesn't show up in Installer.app yet, but give it a few days and I'm sure it will be there.

There's also great news if you're more of a windows person. Say you just prefer the Samba/SMB/Windows Filesharing so you can share with windows and mac, well he's got you covered there too.