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Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 Apple iPhone 4 Review

Reviewed by: Flora Graham
Reviewed on: 24 June 2010

At the start of summer, geeks stock up on sunscreen and mentally prepare for the annual reboot of a phone they either love, or love to hate — Apple’s iPhone. Wisely, Apple hasn’t sought to reinvent the wheel with the iPhone 4, but its sleek new look, handful of exciting new hardware features, and refreshed software has still managed to make us fall in love once more.
IPhone 4g Glass
But the iPhone 4 will leave a substantial dent in your wallet. If you buy it directly from Apple, SIM-free and unlocked for use on any network, the iPhone 4 will cost £499 for the 16GB version and £599 for the 32GB version. It’s also available from free on a £45-a-month contract. You can find the best deal for you by checking our price-comparison article.

IPhone 4g
Glass and steel
The previous iPhone reboot, the iPhone 3GS, kept the same appearance as its predecessor, the iPhone 3G. This time, it’s a whole new ball game, with the curved back of previous iPhones replaced by a flat, glass rear.

Apple’s case protects the phone and should help with reception problems caused by obscuring the antenna

Apple says that glass is more resistant to scratches than plastic, but we’ve smashed enough screens to think that this change could be a boon to case manufacturers. For the first time, Apple is even flogging a case when you buy the phone from the online Apple store — it’s a ‘bumper’ that surrounds the edges of the phones with rubber.

Despite its flat front and back, and a case that’s only 9mm thick, the iPhone 4 feels surprisingly solid and sturdy. But it doesn’t feel as thin as it really is — considering that it’s the thinnest smart phone out there, it feels much like the 3GS, which is about 3mm thicker at its widest point, but rounded so it’s thinner at the very edges. That’s not to say that the iPhone 4 feels chunky — it just doesn’t feel as wafer-thin as we expected.

Appearance is always a matter of taste. Some may adore the iPhone 4’s more industrial appearance, but others will prefer the rounded curves of the older models. We fall into the latter camp. Maybe that’s just because we miss spinning the 3GS on its back when we’re bored.

Call me quick
The glass back should also help the iPhone 4 to hold its network connection, since it should be transparent to radio signals. Although we adored almost everything about the previous iPhone, it was terrible for making boring old phone calls. The overloaded O2 network, which suffered from congestion when O2 was the only carrier to have the iPhone, was partly to blame for that.

The glass front and back are trimmed with a steel band around the edge, split into two pieces — hence the seams that Gizmodo revealed when it leaked an iPhone 4 prototype. The seams have a purpose: the two pieces of steel act as antennas — one for Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth, and the other for the mobile-phone network.

It sounds like a genius idea, but it didn’t take ZDNet UK editor Rupert Goodwins long to figure out a flaw — when you grab an antenna with your hands, it adversely affects reception. We tested the iPhone 4 with a Vodafone SIM card and, although we usually have five full bars of delicious Vodafone coverage in our elite testing tree house, the signal dropped to one lonely bar after a minute or so when we held the phone normally in our left hand. That means answering your phone in a one-bar environment could reduce the signal to zero bars, although we didn’t experience that problem, thanks to Vodafone’s solid coverage in our area.

Obscuring the seam on the iPhone 4’s left side can lead to a reduction in signal strength

The drop in signal strength only seemed to occur when we held the phone in our left hand, with the bottom of our palm slightly covering the bottom-left corner of the phone. Holding the phone in our right hand, or along the top, didn’t seem to affect reception. We lost one bar just by pressing a fingertip against the seam that’s on the bottom-left corner, so perhaps this is where the trouble lies. We’ll be getting our crack team of antenna engineers to investigate the issue more thoroughly soon.

We did experience one call that failed to connect and went straight to voicemail, so it seems that the iPhone’s call issues haven’t been totally resolved. We’ll be keeping our eyes on this issue during our long-term test of the phone, during which we’ll use other networks, so stay tuned.

The iPhone 4 includes an extra microphone for noise-cancelling purposes. We compared the phone to a Google Nexus One, which also has noise-cancelling microphone, by making a call next to a TV playing vuvuzela-blaring World Cup coverage. We called the same landline phone from both mobiles, and both calls were clear and audible, although the Nexus One did a marginally better job of cutting out background noise. We also found that the output of the iPhone 4’s speaker was easier to hear than that of previous iPhones, and we didn’t have to place it as accurately against our lugholes.

Look into my retinas
Besides its glass makeover, the iPhone 4’s dolled itself up with a spectacular-looking new display. Apple’s calling it a ‘retina display’, and it has a 960×640-pixel resolution, which is quadruple the number of pixels sported by the iPhone 3GS in the same 89mm (3.5-inch) area.

The 3GS’ 480×320-pixel screen is lovely and very usable, but the iPhone 4’s display is noticeably better. Even compared to the stunningly clear, 480×854-pixel screen of the Motorola Milestone, the iPhone 4’s display has the advantage because of its bright whites and midnight-dark blacks.

The screen makes everything look crisper, and, since user-interface elements like buttons are vector graphics, many parts of apps will look better without developers having to rebuild them to take advantage of the increased resolution. But, ironically, the extra resolution reveals the fuzziness of icons and images that haven’t been scaled up to handle it.

It’s definitely a case of the more pixels the merrier as far as ebooks and Web pages are concerned. The text on Web pages looks as sharp as a razor — no matter how closely you zoom in — and ebooks also look wonderful.

Apple’s iBooks app has made it to the iPhone 4. The super-sharp screen means ebooks look great
That’s good news given the revelation that Apple’s ebook app, iBooks, is coming to the iPhone from the iPad. If you’re a proud iPad owner, the ebooks that you buy on there will be available to download again for free on the iPhone 4. But you may be annoyed by one quirk of iBooks on the iPhone 4 — the buttons to open the store and edit your library are reversed compared to the iPad’s, for no good reason we can see.

Fourth time’s the charm
The iPhone 4 runs the latest version of the iPhone operating system, iOS 4. We’re fervent fans of the iPhone’s intuitive user interface, and iOS 4 adds some features we’ve been craving, including a light dusting of multitasking. That means you can theoretically listen to Spotify while you surf, or make a Skype call at any time — once the companies have updated their apps to take advantage of the feature — because the app is always running in the background.

The multitasking feature already offers advantages, even without updated apps. For example, Web pages will load in the background while you go off and do something else, and you can stop writing an email to look something up in your notes, without losing what you’ve written.

It’s basic stuff compared to what’s offered by a desktop computer, since only a few, restricted program types can run in the background, such as VoIP and music apps. But this feature is easy to use and doesn’t drain the iPhone’s battery as much as true multitasking would.

FaceTime lets you make video calls to other iPhone 4 owners — but only over Wi-Fi

The iPhone’s email app has also received some polish. You can now read new emails from all your accounts in one combined inbox, and group conversations as in Gmail. The Palm Pre Plus and BlackBerry range of phones also handle email very well, but these improvements put the iPhone 4 up there with the best touchscreen smart phones in this field.

Finally, Apple has given us some power over our home screens with iOS 4. Previously, the only thing you could do to make your phone your own was to slap an image on the lock screen and order your apps. Now you have the option to add wallpaper to the home screens and sort your icons into folders. It’s not much, but it’s a welcome change, especially since there are apps that you may not have any interest in, such as Stocks (especially once you’ve blown your nest egg on the latest iPhone), but are unable to delete.

You can also get iOS 4 on the 3GS, so it’s not unique to the iPhone 4. For more information on what’s new, check out our full iOS 4 story, and also see our detailed comparison of iOS 4 and the latest iteration of Google’s Android operating system, version 2.2.

LED light, camera, action
Apple has bumped up the resolution of the iPhone’s camera to 5 megapixels, and added an LED photo light to help out in dark situations. With a steady hand, it’s easy to get decent shots with the iPhone 4 and, thanks to the LED light, shots in dim conditions are surprisingly good. The on-screen controls for the LED light are easy to use. We also love the touch-to-focus feature, which does just what it says on the tin, providing a quick, intuitive way to let the phone’s automatic focus and brightness controls know what you really want to capture.

Naturally, the phone’s snapper can’t compete with a compact camera in terms of photo quality or exposure controls, but we’d be happy to have the iPhone 4 in our pocket for those Facebook photo emergencies.

The biggest bonus of the iPhone 4’s camera is its super-fast shutter speed. It takes only a split second to capture a shot after you’ve pressed the on-screen shutter button. That’s a big bonus in those situations when you really need to take a photo.

The iPhone 4 also records 720p, high-definition video at 30 frames per second, and video has the same tap-to-focus feature that previous iPhones only offered when taking still photos. In our tests, the video quality was fine, but film suffered from extreme shutter roll, with the world seeming to wobble like jelly because the camera’s processor can’t handle motion well enough. Don’t expect the quality of a dedicated camcorder, and you won’t be disappointed by mobile-phone video that’s good enough for capturing occasional shenanigans.

iTunes makes it easy to sync your photos, along with music and apps, as long as you don’t mind being locked to one computer and one program. Other phones offer much more flexibility. For example, you can’t store just any file on your iPhone, as you can with many other phones that work as external flash drives. But, if you just want to keep it simple, iTunes will do the job, and it also gives you desktop access to Apple’s huge music, video and app emporium.

Face up to your calls
The iPhone 4 also treats us to a camera on the front. This camera does take stills but it’s mostly meant for video calling — a feature that Apple has dubbed FaceTime. FaceTime seems to have impressed the Americans more than the concept of bacon weave, but we’re not so easily wowed, since we’ve been basking in video calls in the UK for years.

Once more, Apple offers an easy-to-use interface that makes video calls easy to make and control. FaceTime has plenty of pleasing features, including the fact that the image of your friend’s mug rotates automatically when your chum rotates their handset. But FaceTime only works between iPhone 4 handsets and only over Wi-Fi. We don’t expect that FaceTime will usher in a new dawn for a feature that’s failed to take off in the past.

Chat marathon
The major drawback of the iPhone has always been its paltry battery life, but, despite its thin case, the iPhone 4 promises to make improvements. Apple says we’ll get 7 hours of talk time over 3G, and 300 hours of standby time from the new, bigger battery. We’ll soon be putting these claims to the test, with a full battery showdown, so stay tuned for our results.

The iPhone 4 also ramps up the Wi-Fi speed, with support for the latest 802.11n standard. HSPA connectivity enables fast downloads and uploads over 3G.

The prize for the most unpredictable new feature goes to the iPhone 4’s gyroscope, which helps out the phone’s accelerometer when it comes to games and apps that need to know the exact orientation of the phone. We’re looking forward to seeing what developers of augmented-reality apps come up with to exploit this quirky new toy, but, for now, it doesn’t add much to the experience of using the phone.

Happily, Apple hasn’t skimped on speed to support all of these new tricks, and the iPhone 4 is as nippy as a trip down a water slide covered in K-Y Jelly. Everything from apps to text messages pops up quickly, and the on-screen keyboard is thrillingly responsive. It also adds a spell-checking feature to make one of the best virtual keyboards in the business even better.

Conclusion
Apple had plenty to live up to after making three of the highest-rated phones on CNET UK, and, with fantastic Android-powered handsets such as the HTC Desire on the market, the competition is stiffer than ever. But we think Apple has done enough to stay ahead of its rivals, thanks to the iPhone 4’s improved camera, the useful software tweaks in iOS 4, and a simply stunning screen. With a price that’s often double that of competing handsets, the iPhone 4 is very expensive, but no other phone can offer quite the same sheer, silky pleasure. The iPhone 3GS is dead — long live the iPhone 4.

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Monday, June 28th, 2010 We Are Hiring!!!

Online Senior Brand Manager
Job Description
Salary
Basic Salary in the region of £30k – £40k plus performance related bonus (£50k OTE)
The Company
As a leading Insurance provider our highly successful business is looking to recruit an Online Senior Brand Manager. This new role provides a very exciting opportunity to the right individual to help an already successful business take a range of products and further develop our online B2C propositions.
The Role
This opportunity will be tasked with taking further our early success of marketing insurance services online. This role will also be tasked with launching several brands and propositions that we wish to develop online. This opportunity exists in our Essex office located in WestCliff On Sea.
The Responsibilities:
• Manage and develop the brand proposition including customer engagement, visual identity and tone of voice.
• Build insight and understanding of the customer experience.
• Monitor the performance of the brand, identifying areas of development and creating key activity to sustain its performance.
• You will manage the delivery of brand and PR/communication campaigns on and off line
• Use various techniques to maximise our investment in PPC and SEO
• Monitor competitor propositions ensuring we maintain our competitive advantage
Skills Required:
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) including paid for and natural search strategic planning and implementation
• Development of email marketing campaigns – acquisition and retention
• Building and maintaining affiliate marketing network
• Website management and development
• Media planning & buying
• Agency relationship management
• Report writing
• Budget management
• Campaign performance tracking & analysis
• Drive and determination
• Good communication skills, both written and verbal
• A creative approach to new campaigns
• Good negotiating and interpersonal skills
• Strong organisational skills
• Commercial awareness
• Good numeracy skills and a knowledge of statistics
• A high standard of computer literacy
If you feel your skills meet the relevant criteria please forward your CV to (jobs@pierinsurance.com) alternatively for further information please contact (Alison Saunders on 01702 222855).

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Monday, June 28th, 2010 Apple criticized by left-handed org over iPhone 4

June 26, 2010 6:51 PM PDT
by Chris Matyszczyk

If you have an iPhone 4 and have been left hanging because you were hanging left, might I offer you some words of comfort? There is an organization for people like you. And the organization is not happy with Apple.
According to the Telegraph, the Left-Handers Club, which numbers some 90,000 members, claims Apple is “discriminating” against those whose left hand is their chosen one.
IPhone for Left Handed People?
Lauren Milsom, who runs the Left-Handers Club, told the Telegraph: “I would strongly suggest that Steve Jobs employs left-handers in his design and testing team in future, and urgently address this issue to ensure the phone is fit for purpose.”
Oh, in case you had not been accosted by a southpaw on this issue, it concerns the fact that the iPhone 4 seems not to be ideally designed for those who clutch their phones in their left hands.

Have you been left hanging?

Indeed, the mere clutching of the phone in that hand might cause a loss in reception. Apple seems to have suggested that perhaps users might think of holding it another way.

Perhaps there are those for whom designing a robotic arm (right-handed) just for the purpose might seem like too much effort. But the Left-Handers Club insists that Apple should have declared itself at fault and not left lefties in the lurch.

“Clearly more testing is needed to be certain this is the case, but if so, left-handed potential customers need to be warned that the phone will not work for them, until it can be redesigned to remedy the fault,” Milsom told the Telegraph.

It is, indeed, possible that Apple employs absolutely no left-handed people in its design department. Though somehow I find it unlikely.

If America can have enjoyed eight presidents who were left-handed (yes, Messrs. Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Obama were or are all lefties), one might have thought that one or two of the left-handed minority might have passed an Apple interview process.

You could put a very fine band of lefties together in Billy Corgan, Phil Collins, Kurt Cobain, Tony Iommi, David Byrne, and Robert Plant. And still have Paul McCartney making the coffee and ready to step in if someone went down with exhaustion of one kind or another.

So surely Apple has plenty of lefties who will stand up and offer a “Please, sir!” while waving their favorite hands in the air.

Perhaps it really is the case that Apple thinks phones just look better in right hands, a sentiment with which I cannot help but agree. Or could it be that there really isn’t any consistency in the way people hold their phones?

Is it really true that everyone who is left-handed holds the phone in his or her left hand? Or vice versa? Are there some who might, in fact, have trained their less able hands to hold the phone while their more able hands do things like dialing, texting, and nose-picking?

If one embraces that logic with both hands, then the iPhone 4 might actually make things better for left-handers.

However, it would be nice if Apple were to wheel out some of its internal left-handers just to show the left-handed lobby how they’re dealing with the issue. You see, left-handers are very special people. According to the Left-Handers Club, they see better under water, reach puberty earlier than righties, and one in four of the Apollo astronauts was left-handed.

But here is by far the most important fact that should make everyone pause for left-handed thought: The Left-Handers club tells us that four of the five original designers of the Macintosh computer were left-handed.

. Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET.

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Friday, June 25th, 2010 DC Comics follows in Marvel’s iPad footsteps

by Seth Rosenblatt on Cnet.com Reviews

DC Comics–home to pop culture icons Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman (and lesser-known characters like Jonah Hex and The Losers)–announced Wednesday that it would be distributing its comics digitally in a deal that resembles those of its competitors, but with some unique twists.
Marvel App on IPad
The publisher has partnered with ComiXology and the PlayStation Network to digitally distribute its comic books on Apple iOS devices and on all PlayStation Portable devices. ComiXology has now locked down distribution deals with more than 30 comics publishers, including the “big two” of Marvel Comics and DC, as well as Boom Studios, Image Comics, and Slave Labor Graphics.
DC Comics on IPad
DC Comics also announced that the company would be digitally publishing the 26-issue comic book limited series Justice League: Generation Lost simultaneously through the ComiXology app and in stores, known in the industry as a “day and date” release. Although Marvel announced plans for a day-and-date release of The Invincible Iron Man Annual No. 1, it won’t be published until Wednesday, June 30.

The ComiXology app offers the same smooth reading experience as detailed for the Marvel app. The page movement is smooth; auto-zooming on panels makes reading them easier while preventing yourself from reading ahead; and the store puts relevant details like the names of the comics’ creators and a story synopsis easily at hand.

Marvel also has a different pricing scheme than DC Comics does for its day-and-date release (the two are historic rivals going back to Marvel’s reinvention of the superhero in the 1960s). The paper version of the Iron Man annual, which will tell the “unknown origin” of the classic Iron Man villain The Mandarin, will be 80 pages long and retail for $4.99. The digital version of the comic, available from Marvel’s ComiXology-based app, will be split into thirds. Each one will be available on June 30, but each will cost $1.99, the standard price for one of Marvel’s digitally distributed comics.

DC’s Generation Lost is available in the app for the same price as the paper copy, $2.99. Meanwhile, the three already published issues of Justice League: Generation Lost are available for $1.99, the price of most comics DC has published through the app. These include superhero titles as well as titles like The Sandman, written by uber-popular author Neil Gaiman; Bill Willingham’s Fables, about characters from nursery rhymes and the fables of myth coming to life; and Tiny Titans, aimed at kids. A smattering of comics has been made available at 99 cents; most of them seem to be from DC Comics’ WildStorm imprint.

The publisher has also made available a number of titles for free. These include black-and-white Batman stories from several years ago, the Web comic Bayou, an adaptation of the TV show Fringe, and a preview of Superman No. 700, released Thursday.
DC Comics
The variable pricing indicates that digital comics sales are even more fractured than book sales. Unlike music, which has been locked into a 99-cent price point since Apple’s iTunes Store pioneered it, prices for digital books and comics are heavily dependent on the publisher. ComiXology, as the first digital distributor of comics that has secured deals with the two biggest comics publishers, as well as 30 smaller publishers, could be in a position soon to dictate prices as Apple did and as Amazon.com is trying to.

The PlayStation Network launched Wednesday as well with more than 80 issues from DC, including the first 25 issues of the Superman/Batman comic that debuted in 2003. But the system will work slightly differently for PSP users, as only a handful of those issues are for sale in DC iPad app. Comic book adaptations of video games that DC has been licensed will be available exclusively on the PSP, but DC plans to add 50 comics per month to their PlayStation Network catalogue.

DC hasn’t yet ruled out involving other systems. “Android is a very compelling platform and it seems to be catching on very, very quickly,” said DC Comics’ Co-Publisher Jim Lee. “Our goal is to be on the best platforms possible.” To that end, the DC Comics Web site will soon add the ComiXology Web app embedded in the browser, making your purchased comics available from your desktop computer. However, John Rood, executive vice president of sales and marketing for DC Entertainment, DC’s parent company, cautioned that the company was still being careful. “We’ve learned that more is not better and we’ve certainly learned not to be first.”

The selection of titles that DC has made available so far represents a sliver of the publisher’s output, and appears to be smaller than Marvel’s initial ComiXology launch. Although Superman, Batman, and Green Lantern are represented, most of the best known characters, such as Wonder Woman, the Flash, and Aquaman, are not. What is included appears to be a broad stroke of what the publisher does: there are superhero comics, mystery comics, kids comics, horror comics, thrillers, war stories, and even one comic about zombies. (Frustratingly, it’s not the new series from the publisher’s Vertigo imprint with the horrible name, iZombie.)

Censorship remains a strong concern for digital publishers, especially given several high-profile instances of Apple censoring content. There are certain titles that Lee said he expects will be restricted, although this hasn’t happened yet. “You won’t be able to purchase some comics through the Apple Store, but you can get them from the ComiXology site.” Even with the potential restrictions caused by Apple’s policies, Lee was quick to add his admiration for Apple. “Apple has been a tremendous partner in this. I don’t think this rollout would’ve happened as well as it did without the iPad.”

DC Comics’ also took pains to announce in yesterday’s press release that the company was adding digital comics sales to its royalties program for comics creators. That’s not necessarily unique among comics publishers, but making sure that it was called out served to let the small comics community know that the company wasn’t pocketing all the cash from digital sales. It also struck a contrast with Marvel, which also has added digital sales to its royalty payments but hasn’t publicly called out their program.

This marks the first time that one of the two biggest comic book publishers has made a comic available day-and-date, and the concept is a live wire for many in comics. Although they might hold a fond place in the memories of older comics’ readers, newsstand sales and drugstore spinner racks are now virtually non-existent. For nearly two decades, the American comics industry has relied heavily on direct-market comic book shops and burgeoning bookstore sales of graphic novels. While Marvel made its Iron Man announcement in enough time for retailers to adjust their order level, DC has instead made all unsold retailer copies returnable, which cuts down significantly on retailer liability.

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/underwire/2010/04/ipad-app1_660.jpg

One retailer in San Francisco sounded largely unfazed by the announcement. Brian Hibbs, proprietor of Comix Experience, said it’s too early to gauge how the day-and-date release will affect sales, if at all. “We can’t avoid day-and-date. It’s going to happen, at least as experiments. But there’s no evidence yet that they replace these are 1:1 replacement sales.”

Hibbs, who is also on the board of the comics retailers advocacy group ComicsPRO, noted that DC’s plan to funnel some earnings from digital sales back into brick-and-mortar stores represents an unusual path to trail blaze in online sales. “Think if we had the record companies doing that when digital music started selling. We might still have record stores.”

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Thursday, June 24th, 2010 Lines forming as iPhone 4 arrives at stores

From CNN
After lining up for hours, or sometimes days, Apple-philes on Thursday morning were set to get their hands the iPhone 4, the latest in the company’s line of trend-setting smartphones. The phone was scheduled to go on sale in U.S. stores at 7 a.m. Thursday, as well as at 8 a.m. local time in France, Germany, Japan and the UK.
IPhone Queue
When Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the new phone this month, he said the iPhone 4 is “the biggest leap we’ve taken since the original iPhone,” which debuted in 2007.
The phone will cost $199 for a 16-gigabyte version and $299 for a version with 32 gigabytes of storage space for photos, videos, movies and apps.
The iPhone 4 has a higher-resolution screen, which Apple calls a “retina display” and says is better than anything in the industry.
It is about 25 percent thinner than the most recent generation of iPhones and features cameras on the front and back, which will allow video conferencing.
The phone comes in two colours: black and white.
Early reviews of the phone have been predominantly positive.
Some have criticized Apple’s continuing policy of not running Flash graphics, websites and games on its products, as well as the company’s deal to sell the iPhone only with an AT&T wireless network contract.
The size of the iPhone’s screen — at 3.5 inches, measured diagonally — has also come under criticism. Several Android-based smartphones sport larger screens, which some analysts say are better for watching video.
The Droid X and the HTC EVO 4G, for example, both have a 4.3-inch screens.
Apple’s popular phone also faces competition from Android-based smartphones like the Droid X, which Verizon debuted this week. Those phones run on a different operating system and therefore use different apps and games.
BlackBerry phones from the company Research In Motion remain the most popular smartphones on the market, although some analysts classify those phones separately because they run different apps and often don’t have touch-sensitive screens. iPhones and Android phones are thought to be more popular with general consumers, while the BlackBerry has more business clients.
Aside from the potential mob scenes at Apple stores, three other retailers — Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Radio Shack — will have the iPhone 4 on Thursday.
The phones also were available for pre-order on the internet.
Some customers reported receiving the phones Wednesday, an apparent hat-tip from Apple to its most loyal customers. The company sold 600,000 iPhone 4s in pre-order, and one analyst expected the company to sell as many as 9.5 million phones by the end of June. That would break previous records set by the company. Apple sold 1 million of the first iPhone in about 2 months.
Apple said the pre-order response for the iPhone 4 has been overwhelming, roughly 10 times bigger than the response when the 3GS went on sale. That led to some problems with orders and phone availability.
Are you going to pick up an iPhone 4 on Thursday? Check out our CNN iReport assignment and tell us what you think of the phone. Or feel free to share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.

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Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 Mobile phone firms test TV broadcast service

Broadcast TV could be shown using the existing 3G mobile phone spectrum – without clogging up networks

Richard Wray guardian.co.uk,
Tuesday 22 June 2010 11.30 BST

Mobile TV suffers from congestion if more than a handful of customers use the service in the same place.
O2, Orange, and Vodafone have teamed up to test a TV broadcast service which would allow British mobile phone users the chance to watch TV channels on their handsets.
The three companies, who control the bulk of the UK mobile phone market, are testing technology which would enable them to provide broadcast TV over their existing 3G mobile phone spectrum, without clogging up their networks, which are being used by smartphone users to access the web and send emails.
They are working with Ericsson, IPWireless, and Streamezzo on a three-month trial of integrated mobile broadcast (IMB) technology in west London and Slough.
Mobile Phone TV
All the UK mobile phone companies offer mobile TV services on their 3G networks but they suffer from congestion if more than a handful of customers use the service in the same place. IMB technology, however, uses part of the airwaves they picked up during the sale of 3G spectrum in the dying days of the dotcom boom which has lain dormant ever since.

This spectrum is perfect for broadcast services as it is “unpaired” – it cannot be used to send and receive signals so it is not used for mobile phone calls. But because it is part of the existing spectrum it works with the phone companies’ systems, making it easy to bill customers. This spectrum is available to more than 150 operators across 60 countries covering more than half a billion subscribers.

The trial, which starts in October, comes after T-Mobile and Orange tested similar technology back in 2008.

“With the strong growth of data traffic on our 3G networks and the mobile industry’s recent support of this high performance broadcast technology, the time is right to move forward with an IMB initiative,” said Luke Ibbetson, head of technology research and development at Vodafone Group. “By joining our peers in this UK pilot, we expect to be able to explore the potential of delivering broadcast services across available 3G spectrum.”

“Already a leading provider of mobile TV in Europe, our experience shows consumers will take advantage of linear broadcast services if the network experience is consistently good,” said Thierry Bonhomme, head of networks, carriers and research and development at Orange. “Network capability is key for mobile TV roll-out and IMB will enable more operators to maximize the benefits they get from 3G investments with high quality TV service deployments on an efficient, pragmatic and scalable solution that works from country to country.”

“We believe the road is clear for IMB now that it has been endorsed by the GSMA and supported by the wider mobile ecosystem,” said Gavin Franks, head of new business development at O2. “Based on the results of the pilot, we anticipate being able to offer our consumers through our networks a range of innovative new broadcast services such as mobile TV and intelligent broadcasting that will lead to an enhanced user experience.”

IPWireless and Ericsson, two of the pioneers behind the development of IMB technology within 3GPP, have partnered to deliver the end-to-end technology solution for the UK pilot.

IPWireless will supply the core 3GPP broadcast technology that will explore the performance of the TDD spectrum for mobile broadcast services. Ericsson, as the prime integrator, will provide integration services and a media platform. Streamezzo, recently acquired by Amdocs, is a leading software publisher of open mobile development platforms and will provide the rich media user interface for the pilot.

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Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 We Are Hiring!!!

Online Senior Brand Manager

Job Description

Salary
Basic Salary in the region of £30k – £40k plus performance related bonus (£50k OTE)
The Company
As a leading Insurance provider our highly successful business is looking to recruit an Online Senior Brand Manager. This new role provides a very exciting opportunity to the right individual to help an already successful business take a range of products and further develop our online B2C propositions.
The Role
This opportunity will be tasked with taking further our early success of marketing insurance services online. This role will also be tasked with launching several brands and propositions that we wish to develop online. This opportunity exists in our Essex office located in WestCliff On Sea.
The Responsibilities:
• Manage and develop the brand proposition including customer engagement, visual identity and tone of voice.
• Build insight and understanding of the customer experience.
• Monitor the performance of the brand, identifying areas of development and creating key activity to sustain its performance.
• You will manage the delivery of brand and PR/communication campaigns on and off line
• Use various techniques to maximise our investment in PPC and SEO
• Monitor competitor propositions ensuring we maintain our competitive advantage
Skills Required:
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) including paid for and natural search strategic planning and implementation
• Development of email marketing campaigns – acquisition and retention
• Building and maintaining affiliate marketing network
• Website management and development
• Media planning & buying
• Agency relationship management
• Report writing
• Budget management
• Campaign performance tracking & analysis
• Drive and determination
• Good communication skills, both written and verbal
• A creative approach to new campaigns
• Good negotiating and interpersonal skills
• Strong organisational skills
• Commercial awareness
• Good numeracy skills and a knowledge of statistics
• A high standard of computer literacy
If you feel your skills meet the relevant criteria please forward your CV to (jobs@pierinsurance.com) alternatively for further information please contact (Alison Saunders on 01702 222855).

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Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 Adobe Sent to Mobile Phone Makers

Adobe’s Flash Player 10.1 Sent to Phone Makers

By Nancy Gohring, IDG News

Adobe Systems plans to release the final version of Flash Player 10.1 for smartphones on Tuesday, but very few people will be able to use it right away.

Google Chrome Browser Gets ‘Native’ PDF Support – PCWorld 35067456 Flash Player 10.1 is designed to offer a consistent user experience across laptops, desktops, tablets, phones and televisions. The player for desktops became available June 10.

Users of phones running Android 2.2 will be the first to get the player, said Anup Muraka, director of technology strategy at Adobe. The trouble is that version 2.2 has so far only been pushed out to review units of one phone model, the Nexus One. All Nexus One phones, Motorola’s Droid and other Android models are expected to get the operating system soon.

Adobe also is releasing the final version of the player to partners including Research In Motion, Palm, Symbian and Microsoft; however, it’s unclear yet which phones currently on the market might get it.

“We have to work with each platform company to figure out which phones can support it,” said Muraka. If existing phones can handle it, Adobe will work with the phone makers to determine how to distribute the player to users.

“We may not see a huge number of these devices available on Tuesday, but the pipeline for Christmas, CES, Mobile World Congress next year is really exciting,” he said. The Consumer Electronics Show and Mobile World Congress are two large conferences early in the year where many phone makers announce new products.

The software can be pushed out to users over the air or it can be made available in application stores where users can choose to download it, he said.

It will also be possible for an operating system provider to display a pop-up for users who visit a Web site that requires Flash Player 10.1, explaining that they need the player and letting them download it immediately, he said. That would work similarly to the way computer operating systems allow people to download the most recent Flash Players when they visit sites that require it.

Otherwise, Flash Player 10.1 will be built into new phones that may appear by the end of the year or early next, Muraka said.

Flash Player 10.1 for mobile phones will support multitouch, gestures, soft keyboards and other input methods like accelerometers, he said. It will incorporate some other new features aimed at simplifying viewing Web pages on small devices. For instance, double tapping on a Flash object on a page will automatically zoom in on the object, he said.

Still, he cautioned that Flash Player 10.1 doesn’t have loads of new features. “This release is redesigned from the ground up to build a new foundation that not just scales across the Mac, Windows and Linux, but for the first time supports a wide range of mobile and emerging TV platforms,” he said. “While there may not be the usual long list of new features, that foundation is critical to upcoming growth and features coming in future versions.”

Adobe listed a number of high-profile companies that support the newest version of the Flash Player including Dell, Samsung, Google, RIM, HTC, Arm, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Intel and Texas Instruments. Content partners that said they’re happy for the new release include Turner, Viacom, HBO, MSNBC and Photobucket.

One company notably absent is Apple, which has publicly derided Adobe and is pushing the next-generation HTML 5 instead. Many content producers have been willing to recreate or format their content for display on Apple’s iPhone and iPad. But many haven’t, as is evident in a comment made by Forrester Research analyst Jeffrey Hammond in a blog post about Flash Player 10.1. He tested it on his Nexus One and wrote: “I think it’s great to not have to deal with ‘little blue cubes’ on the sites I visit every day.” Instead of content, iPhone users see blue boxes on pages designed with Flash.

Still, Apple’s stance throws a wrench in Adobe’s strategy. “[Adobe] realized there was an opportunity in the market and they got ahead of the game and positioned themselves to be the cross-platform form factor across mobile and desktop,” said Al Hilwa, an analyst with IDC. “They thought it was just a matter of implementing those variations but it turned out it’s not just that. The owners of the platforms like [Apple's CEO Steve] Jobs have to say we’ll use it, and he didn’t,” he said.

However, all of the major platforms except the iPhone are supporting Flash Player 10.1. That means that developers who wish to make their content available to most smartphones will be able to use Flash to cover most devices, creating separate content or applications for iPhone users.

Adobe’s battle with Apple points to the challenges that software makers face in the mobile market, a challenge that not just Adobe faces. “It’s not like in the desktop world where they could do all the work themselves and release it,” said Hilwa. “They have to work hand in hand with the device makers. That’s the nature of mobile software. It’s gated through the device makers so it’s a much more complicated integration story.”

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Monday, June 21st, 2010 Great Mobile Phone Blog I Read Today

App Creep and the Case for the Mobile Browser
By Kevin Kelleher

“Boy, you have a lot of apps,” my wife said after looking at my iPhone the other night. I told her I was waiting till I reached 100, at which point I planned to delete many of them. But it turned out I was already at 137. My iPhone was suffering an acute case of app creep.
By app creep, I mean the collecting (and then forgetting) of software programs. It isn’t new. But on mobile phones, the less popular apps are more visible, even a nuisance –- you frequently flip past pages of them searching for the one you need. It’s less of a problem on laptops and desktops, in part, because of the centrality of the web browsers on those devices. On a smartphone, I use a browser well less than a quarter of the time. But sooner than later, that will change, because as more and more companies offer services on the mobile web, the mobile browser will play a bigger role. Thanks to the advent of HTML5, browsers and apps will learn to live with each other.
In the meantime, while there may be 200,000 apps for the iPhone and 50,000 for Android phones, but iPhone users have on average just 37 apps installed and Android owners, 22, according to the latest figures from Nielsen. Of course, not all apps connect users to the web, but many of those that don’t contain content that can easily be found online.
Eventually, a spot on the home screens of smartphones will become like beachfront property in Monte Carlo –- highly coveted real estate. Most non-elite developers will find it easier to reach a mobile audience through the browser. But for now, the lion’s share of them are ignoring the browser in favor of native apps, which -– unless they’re a featured or best-selling app in an app store -– often languish in obscurity.
And yet, as Kevin Tofel pointed out a few months ago, mobile apps “are bite-sized, functional chunks of the mobile web” that work so well he has “yet to find a mobile web experience exceeding that of a mobile application.”
It’s helping that, increasingly, mobile browsers are growing more sophisticated. When Apple launched the iPhone, they were still relatively primitive –- merely desktop browsers writ small. But recently HTML5 has been changing that, allowing for some key features commonly found in native apps, such as geolocation APIs, offline storage and more.

Still, HTML5 won’t be fully ratified as a standard by the World Wide Web Consortium until later this year at the earliest. And in the meantime, mobile browsers are incrementally rolling out HTML5 feature compatibility. Visiting html5test.com on a iPhone Safari browser rates it 125 out of 300, on an Android 2.2 (Froyo), 176 and Opera Mini, just 22 (although Opera plans to change this in coming months).
Meanwhile, some companies are starting to tailor web sites for mobile browsers. It took me 25 seconds to type Facebook’s URL into my iPhone’s Safari browser (21 when I used a bookmark). It took me 20 seconds to find the Facebook app and post the same update. I couldn’t post a photo through the browser, and I couldn’t update my profile information. But the basic functions of posting and reading updates are already similar to what the Facebook app provides.
Beyond technology, there is another barrier that mobile browsers will have to overcome: the perception that native apps are the entry point for the web on mobile phones. It’s a message that Apple has driven home relentlessly with its iPhone and iPad TV commercials. But as app creep afflicts those devices and as browser usability improves, consumers may warm up to their browsers more.
Developers have also gravitated to native apps, partly to follow consumer demand and partly because, as Kevin noted, the experience has so far been superior. But developing web apps for a mobile browser has strong advantages in the long term -– among them, avoiding both the need to write for and support multiple OS platforms and the sometimes onerous approval requirements of app stores.
So contrary to what some are predicting will be a stronger movement toward native apps and a marginalization of the browser in the age of the mobile web, I see something different: an eventual balancing out. Native apps will always be on mobile phones, but as a kind of premier gallery of a person’s most beloved ones. Sooner than later, most companies seeking our attention will do so through a browser.

Great blog by; Kevin Kelleher

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Friday, June 18th, 2010 Welcome To The Smartphone Wars

Author
Jack Schofield
Published 18th Jun 2010

We are now enjoying an operating system war over the small but very valuable smartphone segment of the mobile phone market. The frequently asked question is: will it follow the same path as the PC operating system war? This resulted in Microsoft Windows taking more than 90 per cent of the market, with Apple’s Mac OS marginalised. 

At the moment, there’s plenty of competition. Nokia is still the leading smartphone supplier with a 39.3 per cent share of the market, according to the IDC’s latest Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, released on May 6. Nokia is followed by Research in Motion (10.6 per cent) and Apple (8.8 per cent). Another 10 per cent is split between HTC and Motorola, which supply phones running Google’s Linux-based Android operating system and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile. Palm’s webOS is off the chart, but the company has been taken over by the world’s largest computer manufacturer, Hewlett-Packard, so it could get a second life.

This particular OS war extends beyond the smartphone market. Apple is using what it now calls iOS in the iPod touch and iPad media tablet as well as the iPhone, and it could well appear in the next Apple TV. Android will also run on tablets such as the Dell Streak 7 and 10, and will be used for Google TV. Microsoft’s Phone 7, due before Christmas, draws on the Zune MP3 player and could be adapted for tablets. HP is planning to launch tablets running webOS. Nokia’s Symbian^3 — which will make its first appearance in the N8 phone — at least has potential.

This might seem like a lot of operating systems to people who have become used to the limited choices available in the PC and games console markets, but it’s not. Many more companies competed for the mainframe and minicomputer markets. The microcomputer market had dozens of suppliers including Acorn, Amstrad, Apple, Atari, Commodore, Sinclair and Tandy, plus a number of alternative operating systems such as Digital Research’s CP/M and GEM, Microware’s OS9, IBM’s OS/2, and several versions of Unix.

New markets attract new competitors, but there’s always a shake-out. The industry can’t afford to support everything, so developers focus on the most popular systems, and users gravitate towards the ones that offer the best choice of software and hardware. The losers go bust, leaving one or two dominant platforms and a handful hanging on in niches.

Having a dominant platform suits business buyers because they want to preserve their huge investments in data, in programming and staff training for decades, or forever. But you can actually persuade consumers to throw away their investments and start again every five or six years. The games industry has managed to do that through successive platforms from the Atari VCS through the Nintendo NES, Sega Mega Drive, Sony PlayStation and PlayStation 2 to today’s market, which is split between Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.

Resource

http://www.trustedreviews.com/editorial/2010/06/18/Welcome-To-The-Smartphone-Wars/p1

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