Ghetto iPhone

Filed under: Cellphones

And to think, we actually believed that Nike and Apple were this close to delivering the long-awaited running application for the iPhone. While it was widely reported that these shots were indeed the real deal, AppleInsider is pointing out a chink in the armor: Cupertino doesn’t offer iPhone developers a programming interface for accessing one’s music, yet this mysterious program clearly showed someone listening to Chris Martin and friends (an unreleased song, evidently) while attempting to make it to 0.02km. The take away? It’s still pretty likely that the two outfits are working to create a fitness program for the App Store, but those screenshots ain’t it.

[Thanks, Michael]

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Filed under: Cellphones

Though we can’t definitively say this will end up being the priciest iPhone 3G this side of eBay, there’s a good chance it will be. Word has it that Vodafone will be offering up Apple’s latest 8GB handset for a mind-boggling Rs 31,000 ($712), or Rs 36,100 ($830) for the 16 gigger. Why so serious high? Because neither Vodafone nor Airtel will subsidize the phone, and to add insult to injury, there’s not even a 3G highway up and running in India. Grey market operators to capitalize in T-minus 3, 2, 1…

[Via Cellpassion]

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Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio, Portable Video

Apple’s experimented with allowing iTunes to stream over the internet as well as your LAN in the past and quickly removed the feature (probably due to RIAA pressure), so we’re not placing too much stock in this, but AppleInsider’s unearthed a patent that seems to describe a way to stream music over the ‘net to your iPhone / iPod touch. The goal is to prevent you from having to selectively sync content to your device — instead, you’d sync just the metadata and stream whatever you wanted direct from your machine as though it was all stored locally. There are some obvious problems here — it wouldn’t work if you didn’t have service (or over EDGE, really), most home upstream connections aren’t that fast, etc., etc., — but it’s certainly interesting, and a welcome addition to local storage if it ever makes the scene. In the meantime, how about working in some of those new UI elements from the Remote app into the iPod app?

[Via Macrumors, thanks Mark]

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Filed under: Cellphones

Steve made a big show of announcing that the iPhone 3G would launch in 70 countries by the end of the year at WWDC, and according to CFO Tim Cook during Apple’s last financial call, 20 more countries will join the list on August 22 for a total of 45. With that date just a couple weeks away, things are starting to fall into place, although not all 20 are confirmed yet. Here’s a quick breakdown of the 16 confirmed countries so far — any bets on what the other four will be?

• Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru and Uruguay on Telefonica
• India on Bharti Airtel and Vodafone
• The Czech Republic on O2
• Estonia on EMT
• Poland on Orange and Era
• Romania on Orange
• Philippines on Globe Telecom
• Hungary on T-Mobile
• Singapore on Singtel

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Filed under: Cellphones

Uh-oh, it look like it’s not just the underground unlockers who’re having problems with the iPhone 2.0.1 update’s revisions to the 3G’s baseband — Vodafone customers who’ve paid to have their handsets unlocked are starting to report failures to connect to iTunes followed by the appearance of an “0xE8000001″ error code. There are also reports from a handful of other carriers, but Voda’s selling Steve’s baby in 10 countries, so most of the complaints are from its customers. Other than that, there are some isolated reports of brickage, but we’ve mostly heard good things about 2.0.1, and our iPhones are definitely feeling a little better — how about you?

[Via TUAW]

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Filed under: Cellphones

Well, finally. iPhone firmware 2.0.1 has just been released by Apple, and we’re hoping it solves the myriad problems introduced by 2.0: crashing apps, interminable keyboard delays, choppy scrolling — you know what we’re talking about. We’re pulling down the 250MB file now, we’ll let you know how things turn out — won’t you do the same?

Update: Well, it took its sweet time to install, but things seem a little tighter and snappier all around. We’ll give it a day or so of actual usage before we pronounce things A-OK, though — how’s it going for you?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Filed under: Cellphones

It’s hard to say if the pigeon you see above actually understood what he / she was doing, but apparently these birds can be taught to at least play App Store games in a very poor manner. The creature’s owner does note that Mr. Pigeon was pretty awful at racking up high scores on Tap Tap Revenge, but the important thing to realize here is that pigeon pecks do register as presses on the screen. Now that this is all out in the open, we fully expect a follow-up video next week of someone teaching their bird to dial a number on command. Vid’s after the break.

Continue reading Video: pigeon learns to “play” Tap Tap Revenge

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Filed under: Peripherals, Portable Audio

Surely you feel like buying an all new TuneCast Auto just months after picking up the original, right? Trust us, we can hear the groans from here. For the scads of iPhone 3G owners who are downright perturbed by the inability to charge the thing with some older accessories, you’ll be none too pleased when handing over $79.99 for this. But unless you flex your DIY muscle and come up with some other solution (please share, will you?), buying an iPhone 3G-friendly alternative looks to be the only solution. This FM transmitter boasts ClearScan technology in order to hunt down and lock into the best FM frequency (good luck with that), but as we’ve already pointed out, the biggest boon is the iPhone 3G charging ability. Hey Apple, Belkin says “thanks.” Whatever that means.

[Via I4U News]

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Filed under: Cellphones

It has technically been available for three weeks today (and a few hours in the US, but who’s counting?), although we’re confident quite a few of you are still waiting to actually hold your very own iPhone 3G. Still, those that have braved the excruciatingly long lines and got lucky with AT&T’s apparently random Direct Fulfillment approach surely have something to say. We’ve already confirmed that firmware 2.0 has some serious issues that need dealt with, and aside from elaborating on those, what else would you have done differently with Apple’s second handset? Would you have changed the overall design more dramatically? Finally included a user-removable battery? Used a casing material that wouldn’t crack for no good reason under pressure? There’s still time for your input to be heard before firmware 2.1 arrives (ahem, Apple?) — sound off below!

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Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Apple’s deal with AT&T obviously got re-done in order to get the iPhone 3G on the street for a subsidized $199, but it looks like Steve gave in on a little more than revenue-sharing when he re-upped with Ma Bell: USA Today says that AT&T’s US exclusive on the iPhone has been extended for an additional year, until 2010. The extension isn’t officially announced, but it’s being cited in the context of a long interview with AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, who’s quoted as saying things like “The iPhone has repositioned AT&T as the premier wireless brand in the world.” So yeah, dude’s a fan — and with iPhone customers spending almost double on rate plans than the average AT&T customer, it’s not hard to see why. Looks like our dream of glorious data plan price wars will have to wait until Android makes a splash later this year.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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