iPhone 3g owners received the preceding sms message yesterday afternoon. Turns out “that under certain conditions the new ultracompact Apple USB power adapter’s metal prongs can break off and remain in a power outlet, creating a risk of electric shock.” Apple is offering replacement via orders on their website at http://www.apple.com/support/usbadapter/exchangeprogram/ or through their retail stores starting Oct. 10.
Just yesterday, Apple released iPhone update 2.0.2 which is supposedly designed to improve communications between the smart phone and wireless networks. This is good news considering, since the release of the iPhone 3G on July 11th, there have been nothing but complaints about glitches and poor connectivity and bad battery life.
The bay area-based company didn’t even acknowledge a problem with is phone until two days ago… only after completing the 2.0.2 patch to offer worldwide. And even then, the description of the iPhone issue was vague at best, as Apple spokespeople decline to specify the Apple part that the patch was targeting, whether it be the antenna and amplifier, the radio frequency transceiver, etc. This is a little bit scary in terms of consumer confidence… if they neglected to tell us about this problem until it was solved months later, are there any other significant problems that Apple is keeping under wraps? For more info here’s an article printing an interview with Jennifer Bowcock, Apple spokeswoman.
In the three previous months, with the final day of the period being on June 30th, top wireless service provider At&t made over $3.77 billion in profit! This is over $800,000 more than what At&t made in such a period only a year before, marking a 30% increase in profits. And what can be attributed to such a rise? Mobile phones of course! Even though the giant lost over 1.5 million land line customers in the quarter, they have gain over 1.3 million back in mobile customers– and these mobile customers have some serious monthly plans. With their addition, wireless unit revenue grew 16% and data revenue rose a monstrous 52%. The global launch of the iPhone 3G was a huge influence, as the company said sales of the iPhone 3G were twice that of results from the first launch in the first 12 days. Looks like yet another sign of change towards a mobile world.
Yes, after all the talk of the new 3G network, the faster and better way for mobile phones to access the mobile web, the iPhone 3G, Blackberry Bold, and countless other handsets specifically developed for this “cutting edge” technology, Verizon goes and jumps immediately to 4G. As of this morning, head executives announced that Verizon Wireless would be launching a 4G network in 2010, for both better speed and a superior technology platform. Now, as far as I know, these transitions from 1st generation phones to 2nd generation to 3rd generation are supposed to mark giant leaps in the mobile field… so whether or not the change to 4G will live up to the first 2 transitions is questionable at best. But still, the fact that mobile networks are becoming so powerful and fast is a great trend to see! Here’s a chart to give an idea of how 4G speed is supposed to perform.
Last weekend, the Apple network experienced massive gridlock across the board, as iPhone 3g owners tried to activate their wireless service while many of the original iPhone users tried to upgrade to the new 2.0 OS. It was poor planning to say the least, as the releases of the new OS and the new iPhone within a week of each other basically invited mass scale problems. Because of the network, Apple customers were taking much longer to purchase iPhones at the stores, and current iPhone users found that their phones completely stopped working when they tried to update the system.
But in spite of all this mess, in their first weekend of sales, Apple was able to get over 1 million people worldwide out the door with brand new iPhone 3Gs. Even though high sales were to be expected, this 1 million phone mark was nearly double what analysts had predicted, and will completely dismantle the economic model that had predicted Apple’s total iPhone sales for the year at just over 4 million. Boy I wish I had invested a week ago! Apple definitely has a winner here. You can get the full run down by watching this video.
It looks like the new Blackberry Thunder 9500, which is supposed to be RIM’s iPhone 3G killer, is the furthest thing from it at this point. Boy Genius was able to get amazing inside information once again, quoting one of his “RIM ninjas” as saying “Thunder is in no way, shape, or form market ready. If bold was any indication, Thunder won’t be ready for at least another 4-5 months.” The source even went on to say “most of the people who have handled it think it’s a joke.”
Apparently, there are several serious problems with the phone at this point. The keyboard is very difficult to type on, the screen shows ripples whenever it is touched, and the accelerometer within the phone is overly sensitive, making the phone go completely out of whack whenever it is moved. There are also half second delays that consistently occur while navigating through the operating system. Let’s hope these bugs can be worked out… I’d really like to see the Thunder emerge and actually challenge the iPhone! It’d be a shame if it fell into the other group of minor touchscreen wanabees. For more from Boy Genius click here.
I definitely cannot take any credit for getting my hands on the new iPhone 2.0 operating system; that goes purely to the guys on the Wired Magazine Blog. They were able to get the OS, by some miracle means, and have found a few new features that are worth talking about.
First, on the main screen, there are two main changes: a contacts application icon (this was only accessible through the ‘phone’ icon on the original iPhone) and an application store icon, where users will be able to get all kinds of cool applications and games. Then there is the new geo-tagging feature on the camera, so you can store your GPS coordinates with a picture to show the exact location in which it was taken! The OS 2.0 also solved a big criticism of the first iPhone by giving the option to push emails- where the old iPhone OS would check for emails every 15, 30, or 60 minutes, the new operating system will be able to retrieve emails as soon as they come in. And finally, the new OS allows a contact search, which makes the process of finding someone’s number much more efficient than scrolling through the list. It sounds like they did a good job tying-up loose ends from the first OS, and in 3 days we’ll be able to find out ourselves!
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