One day before a Dutch ban on sales of its Galaxy smartphone is set to go into place, Samsung reportedly will jettison a feature that judges found violated an iPhone patent. The Netherlands had said it would ban sales of three offending Samsung smartphones beginning Thursday.
Alongside the unveiling of its iPhone 4S at an event in Cupertino on October 4, Apple announced a brand new service called Find My Friends. Similar to Find My iPhone, Find My Friends allows you to see where you friends are based on the GPS location of their iOS device. Ahead of the launch of iOS 5 later today, Apple has made the Find My Friends application available, but you won’t find it in the App Store.
If you’re buying your new CDMA iPhone 4S through Sprint, then you’ll be pleased to know that the device will come unlocked — allowing you to stick in any SIM and use the device on any network. If you’ve ordered a Verizon device, however, it will come locked to Verizon, but you can request to have it unlocked after 60 days.
The folks over at Hipstamatic sent either the best or the worst email subject line, ever.
It announced “We Heart Boobies GoodPak,” presumably touting a limited-edition lens of the photo app for October. (Spam filters everywhere are convinced it’s an advert for a new porn toy. But of course we opened it anyway.)
Both the Android Market and iTunes are like flea markets: there’s some good stuff up front and lots of junk the more you rummage around the piles of crap in the back.
And the junk just seems to multiply the more you look.
Case in point: Google recently yanked “Is My Son Gay?” from the Android market after allout.org launched an online campaign about the homophobic quiz app. (Questions included “takes a long time to do his hair,” or if he “likes football” rather than “musicals.”)
The trouble is that both iTunes and the Android Market have apps that are just as offensive.
Sure, the new iPhone 4S has a brand-spanking new iOS 5, the endlessly cool Siri voice-recognition and HD-quality digital camera. But perhaps the most exciting feature for Apple is the 71 percent to 73 percent profit margin on each handset sold – and there should be millions, one analyst said.
The iPad has become the favored device for slurping up media in the U.S., overtaking the iPhone in August, according to new figures from an Internet research firm. Apple’s iOS also is the overwhelming choice for U.S. media consumption with Android a distant second.
As the number of voice calls have dwindled, mobile carriers now rely on text messaging as a profit center. Now that source of revenue is under attack as Apple prepares to release iOS 5 and iMessage, a feature allowing free messaging between iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users.
While Apple may not be all too happy about it, some German customers are ecstatic today having received their iPhone 4S pre-orders three days before the device is scheduled to launch.
Want to know what Apple retail employees can tell you about iOS 5 and iCloud? These images are of leaked internal Apple documents which are provided to retail store employees to help them sell iOS 5 and iCloud.
The first GeekBench benchmarks for Apple’s new iPhone 4S prove that dual-core A5 processor makes this baby a super speedy smartphone. Thought your iPhone 4 was quick? The new iPhone is about 68% quicker!
Following its unveiling of the iPhone 4S on October 4, Apple published a gallery of photographs taken with the device’s 8-megapixel camera. The results were stunning — so good, in fact, that many criticized the company for editing the photos before they were posted. However, this awesome image of a one dollar bill has not been edited, and it’s amazing.
So Apple didn’t announce that all-new iPhone 5 you were so desperately longing for, but the good news is, you can use your current stock of iPhone 4 cases with your new iPhone 4S, right? Wrong!
While Apple’s new iPhone looks the same as its predecessor, there’s a very subtly difference that may mean some cases won’t fit it.
If you thought untethered jailbreaking was dead, then think again. i0n1c, the jailbreaker behind the iOS 4.3.1, 4.3.2, and 4.3.3 untethered jailbreaks, reports that an untethered jailbreak for iOS 5 is already “covered” — days before the release goes public.
Image courtesy of Robert Shoesmith Photo: Robert Shoesmith
A gang of 14 thieves arrived on mopeds to raid Apple’s flagship store in Covent Garden, London, in the early hours of this morning and made off with a handful of valuable Macs and iOS devices. Robert Shoesmith, a man who is already camping out for the iPhone 4S, was woken up when the store’s alarm went off at around 1:15 AM.
Although the iPhone 4S just went on sale this past Friday the first wave of iPhone 4S shipments from China have started with a delivery date of October 14th. The carrier in my case is UPS.
I received my shipping notification this morning and other reports are cropping up about customers receiving their shipping notices from Carriers like Sprint and AT&T. I haven’t heard if Verizon models have shipped yet from either Apple or any of the carriers.
Have you received your shipping notification? Let us know if your iPhone 4S has shipped, from where and what the estimated delivery date is in the comments.
A number of lucky customers who pre-ordered the iPhone 4S on Friday, October 7, are already receiving shipping notices to say that their devices on the way — 4 days before the device is scheduled to launch. The orders are available for tracking via UPS with expected delivery dates ahead of this Friday, however, don’t expect your package to arrive early.
It’s nice to know that when I get caught in the rain with my headphones on, I don’t have to anxiously hide them if I’m wearing the Monster iSport Immersion In-Ear Headphones ($180). Did your kid spill his Kool-Aid on them? They’re machine washable!
Apple announced speech recognition for the next iPhone. Big deal. Android’s had it for more than a year. Apple is just playing “catch-up” and the feature’s not really earth-shattering anyway. Right?
Wrong. Everything in that opening paragraph is wrong, except the sentence that reads “big deal.” Siri is a very big deal, the biggest of deals.
In fact, Siri is the most important thing to happen to mobile in this decade so far.
This might be a record folks since iPhone 4S ship times have hit the one to two-week waiting period in less than 24 hours after going on sale October 7th. As you can see from the picture above all models from all three carriers have sold out for pre-order launch day delivery.
If you want an iPhone 4S of any type at this point your only option, if you want one on launch day October 14th, is to stand in line at your local Apple Store or other iPhone retailer. However, if history repeats itself we all know that the best place to find stock will be at the local Apple Stores.
It looks like Apple has yet another iPhone hit on their hands and I’m anxious to see what happens next year when LTE service becomes more widely available.
In the aftermath of todays iPhone 4S ordering frenzy Apple’s order status system has gone down. If you’ve ordered an iPhone 4S today rest assured that your order has been placed if you receive the order acknowledgement email from the Apple Store online.
There isn’t any need to check your order status after receiving that email until next week. Here are a few tips on how you can track your order later.
Best Buy is offering its customers the option to pre-order the iPhone 4S with delivery on October 14th. The email that I received points out some advantages to shopping at Best Buy. The most eye-catching is the Phone Trade-in program for a $300 Best Buy gift card. That isn’t bad, but the cash I’m getting from Gazelle for mine can be spent in more places.
With any luck, you’ve managed to get through Apple’s technical difficulties and order yourself a new iPhone 4S this morning. But what to do with your old iPhone? If you’re looking to sell it, here’s a reminder of four tips that will help you sell your old iPhone like a pro.
Following the release of the seventh-generation iPod nano earlier this week, iFixit performed its customary teardown to discover that Apple isn’t just producing its own processors for the iPhone, iPod touch and the iPad — but also the iPod nano, too.
I’ve taken what amounts to naps all night long and something woke me up again — maybe it was a little voice, but who knows. So I decided to get up and I tried my order again.
Bam! It worked this time since it seems that Apple and AT&T ordered more hamsters to keep their servers powered up and processing orders. It will even be delivered on October 14th which tells me they still have a good first supply of the new iPhone 4S to ship. I’m not sure how long this will last since there are unconfirmed rumors about supply shortages, which will just drum up more sales.
The surprise was that I even got to keep my unlimited data plan, but I’m not to sure how valuable that is these days considering I still cannot tether with it unless I cheat some how. Maybe someday AT&T will adopt Sprint’s model — an unlimited data plan with an alleged 5GB cap on tethering. Anyhow I’m mumbling and still rubbing the sleep out of my eyes the most important thing is that the ordering system is back up.
So if you haven’t gotten your order placed yet it might not be to late so go go go!