A trusted Verizon employee has just confirmed to TechCrunch that the carrier is having an all-staff vacation blackout from the dates of Friday, September 21 to September 30. You know what that means, right?
The next iPhone, whether it’s called the iPhone 5 or simply the new iPhone, will almost certainly be available in stores (with lines wrapping around the back of them) starting Friday, September 21.
It’s largely expected that the next-gen iPhone will be announced on September 12, in usual Apple fashion. (Though the spectacle may be a bit different this time around consider that Apple’s lead presentation executive was fired in December.)
If we travel back a bit and examine the historical timeline from Apple’s announcement, to pre-order, to launch, the dates all seem to match up.
Last year Apple announced the iPhone 4S on a Tuesday, October 4th. The phone went up for pre-order on that Friday, October 7, and was available in stores on Friday, October 14, a week later.
The iPhone 5/2012 timeline looks almost identical:
- Expected announcement: Tuesday, September 12
- Expected pre-order date: Tuesday, September 12
- Launch date, as confirmed by our trusted source: Friday, September 21
And so began ticking the internal iCountdown clocks of a million fanboys.
FCC filings, leaked roadmaps, and comments from RIM’s top brass all pointed to the existence of an LTE-capable BlackBerry PlayBook — the only question left was when the thing would finally launch. The answer, according to a new statement released by RIM, is very soon.
RIM’s LTE PlayBook will launch in Canada on August 9 (with support from a handful of Canadian carriers), where it will remain for the time being. The company hasn’t provided any specifics on when the 4G-capable tab will trickle into other markets, saying only that it will be available in “the coming months from carriers in the US, Europe, South Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.”
Interestingly enough, there’s very little word on what (if any) changes RIM made to the tablet aside from the inclusion of an LTE radio and a microSD card slot. All that RIM has revealed as far as the refreshed tab’s spec sheet is that it sports 32GB of internal storage — not much of a shock considering RIM killed the 16GB PlayBook line back in June. Also notably absent from today’s announcement are any specifics when it comes to pricing for the tablet, though that’s probably the sort of detail that’s best left for RIM’s carrier partners to disclose.
UPDATE: RIM representatives have just confirmed to me that the LTE PlayBook indeed sports a new 1.5GHz processor, instead of the 1GHz chip seen in the original models.
While the 4G PlayBook’s existence has been an open secret for months now, it’s sort of heartening to see RIM getting ready to push it out the door. If the roadmap I previously alluded to is accurate, then the refreshed tab looks appears to be the last major bit of hardware RIM was planned before the first BlackBerry 10 devices make their debut in early 2013.
Considering how much the company has riding on a successful launch, it’s probably good for them to be able to take one more thing off their already-loaded plate. That said, the market for a RIM tablet appears to be slowly drying up — RIM reported that it shipped 260,000 PlayBooks in its most recent earnings statement, down nearly 50% from the previous quarter — and the inclusion of an LTE radio may not be enough to turn that trend around.
FCC filings, leaked roadmaps, and comments from RIM’s top brass all pointed to the existence of an LTE-capable BlackBerry PlayBook — the only question left was when the thing would finally launch. The answer, according to a new statement released by RIM, is very soon.
RIM’s LTE PlayBook will launch in Canada on August 9 (with support from a handful of Canadian carriers), where it will remain for the time being. The company hasn’t provided any specifics on when the 4G-capable tab will trickle into other markets, saying only that it will be available in “the coming months from carriers in the US, Europe, South Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.”
Interestingly enough, there’s very little word on what (if any) changes RIM made to the tablet aside from the inclusion of an LTE radio and a microSD card slot. All that RIM has revealed as far as the refreshed tab’s spec sheet is that it sports 32GB of internal storage — not much of a shock considering RIM killed the 16GB PlayBook line back in June. Also notably absent from today’s announcement are any specifics when it comes to pricing for the tablet, though that’s probably the sort of detail that’s best left for RIM’s carrier partners to disclose.
UPDATE: RIM representatives have just confirmed to me that the LTE PlayBook indeed sports a new 1.5GHz processor, instead of the 1GHz chip seen in the original models.
While the 4G PlayBook’s existence has been an open secret for months now, it’s sort of heartening to see RIM getting ready to push it out the door. If the roadmap I previously alluded to is accurate, then the refreshed tab looks appears to be the last major bit of hardware RIM was planned before the first BlackBerry 10 devices make their debut in early 2013.
Considering how much the company has riding on a successful launch, it’s probably good for them to be able to take one more thing off their already-loaded plate. That said, the market for a RIM tablet appears to be slowly drying up — RIM reported that it shipped 260,000 PlayBooks in its most recent earnings statement, down nearly 50% from the previous quarter — and the inclusion of an LTE radio may not be enough to turn that trend around.
There’s been quite a little buzz building around FreedomPop thanks to its ambitious plans to provide freemium wireless Internet to everyone in the United States, not to mention its peculiar 4G-friendly iPhone cases.
As it turns out, that’s not all that the Niklas Zennstrom-backed company has been working on behind closed doors. FreedomPop has just announced that it plans to release another 4G-capable case — this time meant for use with the iPod Touch — and has already begun taking pre-orders for the $ 99 gadget.
“We’ve had thousands of inquiries,” FreedomPop marketing VP Tony Miller told me. “[The iPod case] was further down on the roadmap, but we had to push it up.”
Like the iPhone case (the “Freedom Sleeve”) before it, the 4G iPod Touch case is basically a WiMax mobile hotspot that’s been designed to wrap around a device instead of sit next to it. Your mileage with the thing is going to vary considering WiMax’s limited footprint, but the company plans to release an updated model compatible with Sprint’s new LTE network in due time. For now though, interested users are going to be in for a bit of a wait — Miller says that the iPod case should be in the wild within “two months at the latest” as actual production of the device hasn’t yet begun.
That said, the company’s marketing machine has already kicked into high gear — the company has said that the new case effectively turns an iPod into an iPhone. It’s a juicy message for sure, not one that’s true right out of the gate as users will have to get set up with a VoIP service like Skype to make the phone bit a reality. FreedomPop has cryptically hinted that the ability to make voice calls may soon be folded into its wireless service though, so that statement may ring truer down the line.
If this iPod case concept sounds eerily familiar, it’s because Sprint essentially did the exact same thing about two years ago with the ZTE-made Peel. Well before Sprint finagled a deal to sell the iPhone, interested consumers could pick one up and shell out $ 29.99/month for 1GB of 3G data. Despite the obvious similarities — I’m told that ZTE may be on deck to produce FreedomPop’s iPod case — Miller claims that no one on the team had heard of the Peel until they began doing research into the feasibility of such a product.
FreedomPop’s twist on the device (if you haven’t yet heard) on the other hand grants users 500MB of free monthly Internet access, as well as some bonuses for playing nice with others. As I’ve mentioned before, FreedomPop is really trying to play up the social component of its freemium Internet service — users can share portions of their data allotments with each other, and can score an additional 10MB for each new user they refer to the service.
Miller also let slip a few details on the sorts of rates the company will offer for users who need more than 500MB/month. Those in need of just a little more bandwidth per month can pay the normal $ 10 for each additional gigabyte, but the company also plans to offer low-cost data plans for really heavy users. Miller wouldn’t break down the tiers specifically (mostly because the company hasn’t quite ironed them all out yet), but revealed that the company plans to run with an aggressive pricing model — FreedomPop’s data plans are said to cost between 20% and 50% less than similar data buckets from major carriers. Take the near-standard $ 50 for 5GB bucket for example: under FreedomPop’s purview, that same chunk of data access would users a relatively scant $ 25 to $ 40.
If it seems like FreedomPop is spending too much time and effort focusing on iOS devices, fear not — Miller also confirmed that Android is “on the roadmap,” though exactly how far down that is on the company’s list of things to do is still unclear. Then again, this iPod case wasn’t supposed to happen for a while, so who knows how long it’ll be before the first Android-friendly FreedomPop cases hit the streets.
The iPhone 5 is coming. The latest rumors peg September 21 as its release date. But even though Apple has yet to announce the phone, there are already countless, as in, hundreds and hundreds, of cases available for the model. It was just a matter of time until one of those case makers filled in the blanks by inserting a logical prototype into one of their cases.
Now, the device shown here is likely not a real-life, completely working iPhone 5. Even if it is a real thing, it doesn’t matter since Apple already revealed most of iOS 6′s goodies. Case makers are given specific specifications, and from there, they design cases to properly fit the device. The hundreds of cases available tell a story of a taller iPhone like the one in the pictures here.
As Gizmodo points out, Shenzhen Coolzone Technology is responsible for this latest leak. The case maker is currently hawking 29 different iPhone 5 cases, each with the taller design and with the headphone jack located on the bottom of the device, next to what appears to be a spot for a smaller dock connector.
This isn’t the first time that an upcoming iDevice was revealed by case makers. It has happened to nearly every iPhone and iPod over the last few years. The sheer amount of cases with identical specifications seem to confirm the new, taller design. Last fall, when the iPhone 5 was supposed to hit, just a handful of cases spoke to a radical redesign. But this time around, Alibaba is filled with cases of the same form factor.
Assuming the prototype displayed here correctly foretells the next iPhone’s design, it’s a bit strange that it will look simply like a tall iPhone 4. Sure, the current design has a stately, almost classic design, but the style is over two years old now. And in the mobile world, two years is near-retirement age. Haters will no doubt point and laugh at the rehashed design, but Apple has its massive bank account for comfort.
This is what happens when you’re someone who co-founded Apple.
Filed under: Cellphones, Misc. Gadgets, Tablet PCs
Steve Wozniak reveals contents of his backpack, has a lot of stuff originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Jul 2012 15:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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It looks like Nokia has been playing the blindfolded dictionary game again. Well, that’s if the image we see above is correct. It’s purportedly a table containing names of upcoming Windows Phone 8 devices, found by a curious wallpaper designer. The names listed for Nokia include “Fluid,” “Dogphone,” and the previously seen “Phi.” One slightly less superlative name — Nokia P4301 — caught the attention of PhoneArena, who mused that P might be for PureView? An interesting, if not optimistic leap. There are two other items in the table that might pique interest: a Samsung SGH-1687 and a Juggernaught Alpha. There’s little else to get excited about specification-wise, bar different versions of Windows Phone, however. That said, no one as yet has mentioned the elephant in the room — what about that “Virtual” model in the works from Microsoft?
Filed under: Cellphones
List of alleged Windows Phones reveals Nokia Dogphone, Fluid and P4301, working titles we hope originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Jul 2012 07:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Rumors and questionable leaks of Motorola’s next Atrix device have been making the rounds for what seems like ages, but Motorola finally put all that speculation to rest last night. The company recently revealed the new Ice Cream Sandwich-powered handset on their website, albeit with a notable lack of fanfare.
With its rounded corners and gently sloping back, the Atrix HD looks an awful lot like a softer version of its Verizon-bound cousin, the Droid RAZR. The similarities don’t end there though — like the Droid RAZR, the new Atrix sports an 8-megapixel main camera, and its rear-end is also clad in Kevlar (though it sports a slightly different weave pattern). Meanwhile, the device’s 4.5-inch 720p Colorboost display is swathed in a layer of Corning Gorilla Glass to help things from betting too hairy when the Atrix takes a spill.
A quick look inside reveals that the Atrix HD is running on an unspecified 1.5GHz dual-core processor, and packs 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage, an LTE radio, and an embedded 1780 mAh battery. While it isn’t quite as thin as its Verizon counterpart, the Atrix HD squeezes all of that into a (titanium or “modern white”) frame that comes in at 8.4mm thick.
Though the device’s spec sheet is now available for our prying eyes to pore over, we’re still left without some salient details. Even though its logo is displayed prominently under the Atrix’s screen, AT&T has yet to officially acknowledge the device’s existence. As such, there’s no word on a release date or pricing, but I wouldn’t expect things to stay that way for too much longer.
Dell XPS One 27 Hardware Specification Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 3rd Generation Intel Core i5/i7 processor Intel HD 4000 GPU; optional NVIDIA GeForce GT640M 2 GB DDR 5 graphics processor 16 GB DDR3 RAM, 2 DIMM slots 27 inch OLED HD monitor Resolution support of 2560×1440 pixels and aspect ratio 16:9 Up to 2 TG HDD Optional 32 GB SSD DVD or optional Blu-ray disk drive Waves MaxxAudio 4 sound system Built-in Infinity-branded speakers and 7.1 surround sound Ful HD webcam Integrated 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet LAN Bluetooth v4.0 with Wi-Fi card reader 4 x USB 3.0, 2 x USB 2.0, 1 x RJ45, 1 x Audio line, HDMI 1.4 out 8-in-1 media card reader Dell XPS One 27 Price The price of the all-in-one desktop PC is going to start from around Rs. 75000/- in India or 99 USD.
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Google’s updated its transparency report to show how many times governments worldwide sought to sensor search results, drop YouTube videos or look at user data in the second half of last year. Each request is logged and detailed, with the most filings coming from the US, UK and India. The requests varied from censoring a video where a Canadian citizen creatively destroyed his passport (not complied with) through to blogs promoting hate speech and violence (complied with). Mountain View’s list makes for interesting reading, but it’s not all bad news: where videos were merely critical or satirical of the local authorities, the search giant refused to pull ‘em, respecting private citizens right to free speech in a great majority of cases.
Google reveals government censorship requests are on the rise originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Jun 2012 07:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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