Verizon’s Twitter account might have tipped the forthcoming arrival of the iPhone to America’s biggest CDMA network, but Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg is still playing coy about the possibility of a Verizon iPhone.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Seidenberg says that a Verizon iPhone will only arrive “when Apple thinks it’s time.”
We were skeptical of yesterday’s purportedly leaked shot of a new CDMA iPhone running on the Verizon network, but perhaps e’re wrong: a recent Tweet coming from Verizon’s own Verizon Careers Twitter account seems to suggest the iPhone is coming to the network soon.
The evidence is admittedly a bit ambiguous. The operator of Verizon Careers’ Twitter account pimped their recent addition of the iPad to their mobile line-up, and was then asked by Twitter user slink317 for an “iPhone hint?”
Verizon Career’s response accompanied a retweet of slinky123’s question: “yes that is the latest scoop.”
The wording’s pretty strange, but we’re not sure how else to read that besides as a quasi-official confirmation that the iPhone is coming to Verizon sometime soon. Lending some veracity to that interpretation, the Verizon Careers tweet in question has since been pulled.
What do you think? Is the Verizon coming to iPhone, or was this just some low-level drone paid to man a Twitter account making a mistake and openly speculating on Verizon’s iPhone future?
One New York teenager was so put out by Apple’s endless delays in delivering the white iPhone 4 that he used gray market sources to build a $130,000 business selling them himself.
17 year old Fei Lam started whiteiPhone4now.com after production problems (namely, light leaking through the casing and onto the camera’s sensor) caused the first of the white iPhone 4’s delays.
Like many similar sites, whiteiPhone4now.com sells aftermarket conversion kits that allow iPhone 4 owners to mod their iPhone 4s to a white model themselves.
Unlike most of those other sites, though, Lam knows a guy who knows a guy who works at Foxconn, and was able to get Apple certified white iPhone 4 components shipped to him straight in Queens.
Thanks to an issue with light leaking onto the camera sensor, Apple has delayed the white iPhone 4 until at least March of next year… a nine month delay which probably harbingers the cancellation of that device.
It’s a delay that has bitten some customers harder than others: in fact, some customers have been so desperate to have a white iPhone 4 that they have converted them to white themselves as an aftermarket mod.
Don’t even think about buying or selling an iPhone 4 modded to white on eBay, though: Apple’s coming down hard on “fake” and “counterfeit” white iPhone 4s, banning them from sale on the world’s most popular online auctioning site.
Even if Glassgate turns out to be much ado about nothing, the iPhone 4 is a fragile little phone, despite its Gorilla Glass plated front: according to a study by third-party warranty company SquareTrade, the iPhone 4 is the most fragile smartphone that is.
The iPhone is undeniably huge in Japan, where the device accounts for over sixty percent of all smartphones sold. The iPhone 4 alone has been the number one selling handset in Japan for the last 18 weeks.
That’s not to say its dominance is unassailable though. Call it a spin, call it a blip, but this week saw the iPhone fall out of the number one spot in Japan for the first time in over four months, as Samsung’s Android-based Galaxy S smartphone careened into the standings at number one.
If you’re the type who likes to do all of your shopping in one place, good news: Target stores have confirmed that starting on November 7th, the Big Bullseye will be selling the iPhone.
I always thought the original Nintendo Famicom controller lost its allure when it made its way to the United States in 1986 as the joypad for the NES, so I’m glad to see the Famicom controller’s classic design live again, this time as a polycarbonate case for the iPhone 4. Gorgeous.
[via Technabob]
By now, everyone that wants a white iPhone 4 knows that you aren’t going to get one any time soon. So in the meantime, while you are waiting for the white iPhone 5, check out the banned white iPhone 4 video (warning: NSFW) by clicking the read link below.
Steve Jobs says that multitouch must be horizontal, but for some reason, I don’t think this is quite what he had in mind: the Table Connect for iPhone is a close-to-complete project that marries a 58-inch multitouch surface with your jailbroken iPhone 4 through a 30-inch Dock Connector… not only charging your iPhone but turning your desk into your iPhone.
I’d want one to perch my iMac, but seeing as how I’ve never once seen the surface of my desk underneath its perpetual detritus of tobacco ash, beer bottles and discarded Starbucks cups, it might be money ill spent.
[via Engadget]
Earlier this week, Apple finally launched a local version of its online retail store in China.. and within 10 hours managed to completely sell out of all available iPhone 4s. As 9to5Mac notes, since Apple’s attempted on cracking down on iPhone 4 scalping in its retail stores by forcing anyone looking to buy a handset from them directly online, this effectively means there’s not a single iPhone to be had in the country… unless you’re willing to pay a scalper his premium.
If you’ve been waiting to buy the white iPhone 4, we hope you’ve caved by now and just gone black instead. It’s hard to think of a more troubled product: not only has the white iPhone 4 undergone a troubled manufacturing history thanks to light leaking into the camera sensor, but Apple’s said that we can’t expect to see one until spring 2011… just three months before they unveil the fifth-generation handset.
To be honest, it doesn’t take a genius to see that the white iPhone 4 is probably never going to arrive: at this point, it makes more sense for Apple to aim to have the white iPhone ready for June for simultaneous launch with the iPhone 5 than try to sell the white iPhone 4 at the tail end of the current generation.
In fact, that’s just what Boy Genius Report is now claiming, saying that the white iPhone 4 has been secretly canceled. Not that Apple will admit as much: BGR says that they will instead just claim there’s another delay in March, and assume everyone will forget about the debacle of the white iPhone 4 by June.
Apple’s probably right: the longer the white iPhone 4 is delayed, the more the returns diminish on actually releasing it. Time for an informal poll: how many of our readers are still holding out for the white iPhone 4? Let us know in the comments.
With T-Mobile losing its iPhone exclusivity in Germany to O2 and Vodafone, the last European iPhone exclusivity deal is dead. That’s good news for German consumers, who now are not only in a position to avail themselves of the spoils of the carrier wars as different mobile providers scramble to attract customers, but who also now have the option to buy an unlocked iPhone directly from Apple.
id America’s Gasket series of brushed aluminum cases for the iPhone 4 aren’t available yet, but I can’t wait until they are: the bronze colored case, in particular, is just a few glued-on wristwatch cogs away from a thorough steampunking.
In the meantime, we’ll have to wait, but the Gasket cases should cost just $30 when they’re made available, and id America promises that they will provide owners with “perfect fitment.” You can’t put a price on that, can you?
No, really, that’s not a GameBoy Color… it’s a decal slapped on the back of an iPhone 4.
I’m totally dropping $6 on this: I actually still have the exact model of the GameBoy Color this decal is based upon, right down to the fluorescent 90s hue.
Before the iPhone 4, the worst that could happen to the back of your handset in a clumsy drop is a few dings or scratches, but the new iPhone’s all glass back makes the accidental spill twice as hazardous as it was before by doubling the glass surface area that can be cracked, splintered or shattered in a fall. Add antenna attenuation issues into the mix and a case becomes a better investment than before, but some people simply prefer the pristine look of an uncovered iPhone.
This iPhone 4 accessory is an interesting solution to the problem of Apple’s latest smartphone’s fragile backplate. In essence, it’s a just $14.
[via Technabob]
Today, I will show you how to add Flash playback to your jailbroken iPhone 4 in three easy steps using an app called Frash by Comex.
The elusive white iPhone 4 that many of you wish you could get your hands on was recently spotted in New York. The folks over at Pocket-lint managed to catch up to a guy who was seen holding and using a white iPhone 4, which currently, is just as hard to spot as a Yeti in a snow storm.
How this guy happened to get a hold of his white iPhone 4 isn’t clear, but there are several ways this could have happened. He may have gotten it from someone at Apple that he knows, he may work at Apple, or this could be a clever iPhone 4 makeover.
Usually when we see an iPhone like this, it’s the handset of some Saudi Arabian oil prince or B-list rapper whose definition of class is synonymous with champagne fused with gold flakes, and whom has duly paid Swarovski some forty or fifty grand to dip his iPhone 4 into some horse glue and then roll it in their overpriced crushings of glass.
This handset is actually different, though. Instead of paying $40,000 for a Swarovski iPhone 4, two Australian businessmen paid customizer Stuart Hughes eight million dollars to plate their iPhone 4s in gold and then encrust them in over five hundred diamonds totaling over 100 karats.
We’ve posted before about Karas Kustom’s line of iPhone 4 cases, which are sort of metallic girder structures to reinforce your iPhone 4’s fragile front and back plates while keeping your skin from directly contacting the antenna.
We liked them, but some of you gagpuked in the comments about their look, in which case… maybe Karas Kustom’s new range of colors will help sway you? Their iPhone 4 cases now come in silver, black, nlue, red, green, violet, orange, gold and pink anodize… and if you’re willing to pay a little more (well, more than twice as much, really) you can get your Karas case in copper, brass and phenolic, which Karas brags is “three times heavier than the original aluminum cases and will form a natural patina from normal use.”
“Heavier” and “patina” are two words I never thought a company making iPhone cases would be using braggingly in their press release, but there you go. The aluminum cases are the same price as they ever were at $39, but if you want one of the copper or brass cases, expect to pay $89 for your trouble.
It’s two days late, but late is better than never. GreenPois0n the jailbreak for iOS devices running iOS 4.1 is here. Unfortunately the first release is for Windows and Linux only, but the developers of the hack, Chronic-Dev, expect to release a version for Mac OS X soon.
The jailbreak supports iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, the third and forth generation iPod touch, and the iPad. Although it doesn’t presently support the second generation Apple TV at this time a future update will fix that.
The release of GreenPois0n follows last weekends surprise release of Limera1n by Geohot. Afterwards, Geohot and Chronic-Dev got together, so GreenPois0n now uses the same exploit as Limera1n. This cooperation saved Chronic-Dev’s SHAtter exploit for a future jailbreaking tool.
As far as I’m concerned the hacker cooperation can continue. I appreciate what they do for people who want out of Apple’s walled garden and I hope they continue to work together on future iOS hacking tools. You can download a copy of GreenPois0n for Windows or Linux by visiting www.greenpois0n.com.
UPDATED: Added a quote form Vince Tseng, SquareTrade’s VP of marketing.
Following up on our story about Glassgate last week, an iPhone insurance company says the iPhone 4 is significantly more prone to damage than the previous model. But it also found little evidence that Glassgate is a widespread problem.
At a press conference today, Microsoft’s CEO Steve Balmer officially unveiled its new Windows Phone 7 operating system for mobile devices, along with nine smartphones by various manufacturers that will carry the software upon its release.
Together with Android devices, smartphones running Windows Phone 7 will be one of the biggest competitors to the iPhone 4 running iOS, so how do the new devices compare to Apple’s already massively popular iPhone?
What’s that you say? You missed your chance to get a free case from Apple for your iPhone 4 as part of their Antennagate free case giveaway? Well, good news: you can once again buy an official iPhone 4 bumper in a panoply of colors directly from Apple. It’ll cost you just $29.99.
Don’t have the scratch? Not to worry: you can still try your luck complaining to an Apple Store Genius about your iPhone 4’s attenuation issues. Really, though, isn’t it worth thirty bucks not to have to listen to some insufferable turtleneck lecture you on the physics of radio antennas for half an hour before he wearily sighs and condescends to hand over your free Apple-branded rubber band?
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeDTJZtFfI0
Sharp has just matched the iPhone 4’s touchscreen pixel for pixel with their new IS03 Phone, but that’s not going to stop Apple from crowing about the Retina Display in their latest ad, highlighting the fact that the world’s “highest-resolution phone screen ever” will make “every freckle, every wrinkle” (and presumably every wart, every melanoma, and every port wine stain) look clearer and more beautiful than ever before.
For extra points, check out those impossibly beautiful Twitter friends the iPhone 4 hand model has. Compared to that, my Twitter friends are a sad collection of hobos.