Greg Kumparak is the Editor of MobileCrunch.com, and has been writing for the TechCrunch network since May of 2008. You can follow him on Twitter here.
What’s black, red, wears a Verizon badge, and looks just like the Samsung Glyde? The Samsung Glyde 2, of course!
Presumably in hopes of losing a friend or getting someone fired, HowardForums user StandardsDT waited for his in-the-know buddy to leave the room before going camera crazy.
Here’s what we know so far:
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Tip #1: If you’re going to be a huge wanker and rob a retail store, don’t rob an Apple store. You know those little fancy handsets they carry around? Thats so they can avoid doing much with cash.
Tip #2: Don’t friggin’ steal stuff or shoot people, unlike this guy at the Arlington, Virginia Apple Store.
One female victim was shot in the shoulder before the suspect fled the scene. Here’s to a speedy recovery, Apple Store lady.
Well, that’s a surprise. Rumors had pointed at Sprint to be the home of the Hero here in the states - but there it sits in the FCC database, packed to its big ol’ chin with AT&T-friendly 850/1900Mhz bands.
[Via EngadgetMobile]
When we mentioned yesterday that Vodafone was considering snatching up T-Mobile UK, we figured that’d be the last we heard of it for a while. They’d go quiet for a while, do some negotiation, and then they’d either make a big deal about the purchase or just pretend the whole thing never happened. As it happens, it’s a bit more heated than that.
According to ElectricPig, there’s a bit of a bidding war going on right now, with O2 and Orange throwing up their paddles alongside Vodafone. It’s all a big messy mess at the moment, though; some claim that Orange wants nothing to do with it, while other say they’re already bidding away. The current rumored price getting tossed around is right around £3 billion pounds, which is just under $5 billion USD.
What say you, UKers - got a preference as to who walks away with T-Mobile UK’s customer base in tow?
Photo: jennlynndesign on Flickr
Oh, Palm Pre. You’ve got style. You’ve got grace. You’ve even got a PlayStation emulator! But what you don’t have, young one, is a SIM card slot that makes you friendly with the vast majority of popular carriers around the world.
That won’t be a problem much longer, or so say the rumor mill. Now, we’ve known a GSM Pre has existed for months now, but Palm has stayed mum on the topic. According to T3, Palm will make an announcement next week regarding everything you need to know about the UK release of the Pre.
If these things are released in the UK before the US, we fully expect the eBay grey market to be jam-packed within the week. Unless, of course, they’re locked down to specific carriers - in which case we fully expect them to be hacked and up on eBay within a week and a day.
Well, iPhone OS 3.1 Beta just went live on Apple’s developer center and, as usual, it’s a quest to figure out what has changed. Our lovely developer friends have already started tearing it apart in search of that hidden gem detailing the iPhone 4GFP (The FP stands for “Face punch”), and we’re keeping tabs on what they find.
When it became clear that HTC’s oh-so-pretty Sense UI wasn’t going to make it to the G1 by any official means, we figured it wouldn’t be too long before the goods leaked and an unofficial port was made. Hell, we outright said so.
If you work in a top secret area (read: government agency, weapons lab, or Apple campus), phones packing cameras (or standalone cameras, for that matter) are usually frowned upon. Remember the “Loose Lips Sink Ships” campaign of WWII?
Fortunately for you high-falutin folk, RIM kept you in mind when designing the BlackBerry Tour. You’ll be able to pick one up 100% camera free come July 12th, ready to lurk in your pockets as you slink around your hush-hush headquarters. Plus, going with the camera-less version ought to save you some ducats, right? Nope. Both the version with eyes and without are $199.
Note to employers: If you’re going to set your employees up with Tours, don’t buy the sans-camera version unless it’s actually necessary. We’ve seen too many employers cut their employee’s work phones off at the knees, only to allow them to bring big-boy cameras to work. Yeah, that makes sense.
[Via CrackBerry]
I don’t know if you guys are aware, but nothing is better for making people think you’re awesome than doing card tricks. No, seriously. Anyone you know with a ton of friends only has so many friends because of their card trick repertoire.
Actually, there is one thing that’s cooler than doing card tricks: doing card tricks with virtual cards. For maximum cool, it must be done on an iPhone. Just when you started to think such incredible feats were impossible, David Blaine has saved the day with an iPhone app: David Blaine’s Street Magic: See-A-Card by David Blaine [brought to you by David Blaine].
For just $1.99, you can get all the benefits of knowing a card trick without actually learning a card trick. Whoever said you can’t buy friends?
We’ve been excited about Nvidia’s Tegra chipset making its way to mobile handsets for as long as they’ve been showing off their prototypes - which, to be clear, is quite a while. They’ve managed to jam a beast of a computer down into a itty-bitty chip and sink the power requirements down to less than one watt, all while keeping the thing cheap. In other words, straight ridiculous computing power (games, HD video output) on a handset that lasts, as Nvidia puts it, “days and days”.
We’d heard whispers from Nvidia’s crew back at CES that this thing ought to make its mobile debut in Q4, but we had a hard time getting an official statement on the matter. Looks like it has become a sure thing since: in an interview with The Street, Nvidia’s GM of mobile Mike Rayfield fessed up that one of the big five manufacturers should launch a Tegra phone by the end of this year.
We aren’t going to take a stab at which of the big five we’re talking about here, but we can make educated guesses as to which platform it’ll run. Last we heard, Tegra played friendly with Windows CE Embedded, Windows Mobile, and Android. If you see us around, pardon the shade of blue that has conquered our faces; we’re not going to stop holding our breath until we get a Samsung-made, Android-based Tegra phone.
UPDATE: Looks like our own Peter Ha of CrunchGear nailed out this information in an interview with Nvidia last week. Not only that, but he took it one step further, getting pricing/carrier information; expect Tegra phones to launch in Q4 on AT&T/T-Mobile for right around the $199 price point.
When the iPhone SDK launched and the platform was opened to native applications, it was huge news. No longer limited to cruddy web apps, developers flocked to the platform and the App Store exploded.
Last night, Google announced that developers were now free to develop native applications for the Android platform. Unfortunately, this move isn’t nearly as monumental.
Unlike the iPhone’s web apps, the non-native applications that run on Android are actually quite capable. Android apps generally run inside of a virtual shell called “Dalvik”, allowing improved compatibility across devices without hindering the functions supplied by the platform. Native applications are a big tradeoff; they can perform better and can make use of C/C++ code, but require significantly more work for the same functionality and device portability.
In other words: don’t expect the Market to fill with goodies because of this, but some apps might make use of it in time.
The internet is filled to the brim with hubbub about Apple approving bare breasts in the App Store. Some cry for others to think of the children, others support the loosening of Apple’s grip on application content, and the rest all shrug it off with the rightly answer of “Who gives a damn?”
We want to know, dear reader: if you’re a-okay with people doin’ the nasty in a few apps, what’s the limit? Is there one? Let us know in the poll below, then weigh in down in the comments.
With a nice big 3.2″ touchscreen, 5 megapixel camera, and 624mhz CPU, the Samsung Omnia wasn’t a bad piece of hardware when it was released last year. Hell, it still outspecs most phones released today. Hardware-wise, it’s set - but on the software front, it’s luke-warm garbage. The TouchWiz interface helps a little, but deep down inside it’s still clunky ol’ Windows Mobile 6.1.
Well, a handful of handy hackers might soon fix the Omnia’s software. How? Android! It’s still in an early (read: not working) stage, but they’ve managed to get it to start up and provide some basic level of functionality. Best part? You don’t even need to flash your handset; they’ve got it running right off the SD card. If they manage to knock out some of the kinks and blast out a few drivers for the device, this could get really interesting.
Keep up the good work, guys.
If you live in one of those houses where making a call on your AT&T phone requires standing in a specific corner, knocking three times, and saying a short prayer, you were probably pretty jazzed to hear about MicroCell, AT&T’s broadband-powered cell tower for your living room. When we discovered mentions of the MicroCell in an iPhone update, you probably got outright excited. It seemed like it was just weeks away from launch.
That was February. 4 months later, AT&T has still been mostly mum on the matter - until now. Unstrung caught AT&T network delivery honcho Gordon Mansfield talking up the MicroCell, saying it’s “on track for a full national launch by the end of 2009.” A window of six months? Pah! That’s like a lifetime in the mobile world. There will be 14 new iPhones released by then!
So don’t worry, folks - by the time you have a flying car and a broadband connection in said flying car, you’ll be able to pick up a MicroCell to go along with it.
Way back when 2009 was still somewhat fresh, Nokia’s CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo dropped the news that the world’s favorite Finnish handset maker was getting into the laptop biz. With a bit of algebra, logic, and other voodoo, we figured that what he actually meant was netbooks. Some commenters called us crazy, citing a weak economy and low-margins. Turns out, we were right.
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Uh-oh. Looks like the race for live video streaming on Android is on. When we got footage of Kyte running on Android last week after hearing next to nothing on the matter from the competitors, we guessed that it might be the first mobile streaming app to go live on the platform. Turns out, Qik has had something up their sleeve - and it just slipped right out.
We’re not quite clear on all of the details yet, but an early Alpha version of Qik’s Android application has become available.
At this point, it’s by absolutely no means a secret that Motorola is cracking away at some Android phones. Hell, Android is kind of a big deal for them now. While early details have come in abundance, the finer things — such as a release date for any of the Moto/Android handsets — have been evasive. We still don’t have anything specific, but if these latest rumors pan out, we might have an idea of a launch window.
According to the WSJ’s very own “people familiar with the matter”, we ought to expect both T-mo and the ol’ VZW to be rockin’ Moto-branded Android phones by the end of the year. T-Mobile will be getting a touchscreen/QWERTY phone with an emphasis on social networking. Verizon’s will sport the touchscreen/QWERTY combo as well, though there’s no mention of its social abilities.
Now, Moto - please do this right. We need a gorgeous Android phone. Don’t let them be dog ugly. Oh, and for bonus points, lets make sure they all work.
If you’re rocking an iPhone and are looking to get Flash up on your handset, continue holding your breath. If you’re on an Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile, or webOS-powered handset, however, we’ve got good some news.
In Adobe’s earnings call last week, CEO Shantanu Narayen slipped in one little meaty morsel on Flash on the go:
Four months after the Quickfire got pulled from the shelves for being a fire danger, it has returned. We’re can only assume they’ve fixed that nasty little charger-of-fiery-death issue. After 4 months and a recall warning, these things probably weren’t going to fly off the shelfs at the original $99 dollar price tag - so AT&T went ahead and chopped it down to $30 bucks.
At $100 bucks, we’d skip it. At $30, it’s a good pick for anyone looking for a dampened Sidekick. Make sure you pick up a headset adaptor if you have any interest in listening to music on this thing, as neither an adaptor nor compatible headphones are included in the box.
[Via EngadgetMobile]
No, no - that headline wasn’t intended as commentary on the hygiene of Android users (though if a good chunk of the Android devotees I know are any indication, it very well could be. Zing!) Earlier this morning, mobile analytics group Flurry gave us an exclusive sneak peek at their Smart Phone Industry Pulse report for June. Flurry’s June report harvests data from 1,100 applications running across 4 platforms (iPhone OS, BlackBerry, J2ME, and Android) on over 40 million handsets, and sheds a bit of light on the usage habits (stickiness included) of smart phone users over the past few months.
Photo Credit: Jae Won Joh
The sun cracked over the horizon, and off we went. Like any good Apple fan boys bloggers, we camped out (in multiple places around the country, even) to pick up our iPhone 3G S. We’ll have our final, non-rushed review up sometime in the next few days - in the mean while, it’s time for you to voice up.
We’ve got our opinions, forged from the steels of writing about and playing with too many cell phones cell phones. We want to hear what you think, dear iPhone owner. Whether that new iPhone 3G S is your first stab at this whole Apple-made cell phone nonsense or you’ve been rockin’ the fruitphone since the EDGE-only days of yester-yesteryear, we want your insight.
Love it? Hate it? Share your wisdom in the comments below.
Before we start review, there’s something I have to admit: I hate most mobile IM clients. We see a whole lot of phones go in and out of the MobileCrunch office, each generally toting its own crappy, broken instant messaging suite. Be they slow, flakey, or just outright terribly designed, we’ve grown to have a nearly unshakable bias against them.
With that in mind, know this: We love Beejive 3.0 on the iPhone.
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If you’re just weeks outside of eligibility for an upgrade to the iPhone 3G S, you’ve probably been one of the many folks clamoring for a deal. No matter where you turn online, you can find people ranting on the matter - with just 11 months between the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3G S, lots of folks are getting a bit screwed over. In a pleasantly surprising turn of events, AT&T has listened.
It’s not going to help all early adopters of the 3G, but AT&T has announced that they’ve opened the eligibility window for the 3G S up by three months. If you’re going to be eligible for an upgrade in July, August, or September, they’re going to go ahead and give you the upgrade deal from day one. If you (like me) are only eligible every 18 months, you’re still out of luck - but if you spend $99 a month or more on your plan and are thus prepped for an upgrade after just 12 months, you’re good to go. If your status is changing, ppgrade eligibility tools should begin reflecting your potential savings beginning tomorrow.
Here it is, folks. At long last, version 3.0 of the iPhone OS has launched here in the US, bringing with it just about every feature the phone should have had from the start - and a whole lot more.
If you hadn’t already coaxed an iPhone developer into letting you piggyback on their account or (gasp!) actually shelled out for a developers membership, the past 3 months have probably been pretty grueling. You read the blogs, and kept up on every new feature to be uncovered. Maybe you even made a list of all the things you wanted to check out first. No? Well, here you go.
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