Articles about iPhone

Apple has been in the habit of issuing very short press releases that simply and clearly address concerns of the public without much in the way of formalities. Today, in an unusually long and formal message, Apple says it has found the cause of the iPhone 4's poor reception when it is held in a "death grip."

According to the company, it's not a reception issue at all, but a problem with the way iPhones all the way back to the iPhone 3G have calculated signal strength.

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The rumors are true: iPhone 4 signal strength wavers when the device is held in the hand. Isn't that like the typical position for holding a cell phone? I can confirm the behavior with the unit FedEx delivered about 3 hours ago. When the phone is flat down, I see four to five bars. When I hold the device in my left hand, the bars slowly go down until either there is one bar or "searching" appears on the screen.

I want to thank Justin Horn for bringing the problem to my attention. I had complained about "searching" behavior on Twitter. He posted: "Is the new iPhone 4 antenna design causing signal issues?" Gizmodo has crowdsourced the story, getting readers to confirm the declining bars scenario; good for Giz practicing some fine "process journalism."

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In a statement to the press this afternoon, national wireless carrier AT&T outlined the different ways that customers will be able to get the first batch of the new Apple iPhone 4.

Customers who pre-ordered an iPhone on June 15 will begin getting theirs this week. Emails will be sent to customers when each order has shipped. One of our staffers received a note earlier today that estimated an afternoon delivery tomorrow.

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As anticipated, Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone 4, at WWDC on Monday, and although we knew most of the details, there were some surprises. Here's what you need to know:

1. Design

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Gizmodo was wrong to acquire a lost iPhone prototype -- quite likely a nearly finished version 4 design -- let alone pay to obtain it. Perhaps this marks the distinction between bloggers and journalists. I would have contacted Apple about returning a device so obviously stolen. There is grave difference between obtaining secret information for the public good and what Gizmodo did: Obtain property containing trade secrets belonging to a public company. Gizmodo has violated the public trust and broken the law. Free speech isn't a right to pay freely for something clearly stolen.

I typically reserve this kind of treatise on journalistic ethics for my Oddly Together blog, where in late March I posted "The Difference Between Blogging and Journalism." Betanews founder Nate Mook asked me to write something here about the journalistic and legalistic ethicacy of Gizmodo's actions. I simply couldn't refuse.

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Multitasking, the feature that has been the absolute top of every iPhone user's want list --which, by proxy became a major marketing point for both Android and webOS -- has made its way to iPhone OS 4.

"We figured out how to implement multitasking for third party apps and avoid those things [battery life and lag]. So that's what took so long," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs this morning.

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American business history almost certainly will recall Apple as one of the most successful marketers ever. With iPhone, the company has performed a remarkable magic trick: Making the late-starting mobile seem ready to take over the world. But the hard reality of facts -- not the torrent of glowing emotions coming from American and European financial analysts, journalists or Mac loyalists -- show something else. Apple's smartphone is by no means the roaring success everyone here claims it to be.

Let me preface by reminding that I'm on record as calling Microsoft's mobile strategy a train wreck and asserting that the cell phone is poised to replace the PC. I've also called Apple's mobile platform -- iPhone, iPod touch and App Store -- as leading contender to become the next-generation computing platform.

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As AT&T promised, iPhone 3G and 3G S users today gained the ability to send Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) messages.

To enable MMS, users must first have iPhone OS 3.1 installed, and then the AT&T carrier update v5.5 which is installed through iTunes. Once the update is in place, phones must be rebooted, and then the Messages app will feature a camera icon in the lower left corner, which triggers multimedia messages to be sent.

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The creative end of the music industry is drawing ever closer to a nexus: a point where composing, recording, distributing and publicizing music meets. You could be holding it in your pocket right now, and it's not the same point of convergence sold by the ounce that drove the industry in the past. It's the ubiquitous, lionized, and oh-so-lucrative iPhone.

Recording

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According a statement from Apple today, between Friday's launch of the iPhone 3GS and Sunday evening, its third full day on the market, more than one million units were sold, and six million customers downloaded the iPhone 3.0 software.

Apple's ailing but soon-to-be-returning CEO Steve Jobs said, "Customers are voting, and the iPhone is winning. With over 50,000 applications available from Apple's revolutionary App Store, iPhone momentum is stronger than ever."

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After a lengthy presentation about the free iPhone 3.0 update (which will cost $9.95 for iPod touch users on June 17) and software support from third party companies such as Line6, Planet Waves, Zipcar, ngmoco:), gameloft, Pasco, and TomTom; Apple unveiled its show-closing announcement, the iPhone 3G S, "the fastest iPhone ever made."

The unit will differ from the previous iPhone generations in that it will support 7.2 Mbps HSDPA, include an Autofocus 3 Megapixel camera with a 30 fps video mode, an internal magnetic compass, improved battery life, and hardware encryption and come in 16 GB and 32 GB varieties for $199 and $299 respectively. Outwardly, the device looks identical to its predecessors, and offers a similar 3.5" multi-touchscreen, volume rocker, sleep/wake, and single home button.

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The iPhone's operating system has secured the fourth-largest share of the global smarphone OS market, and has been increasing fourfold annually. While it has won the hearts of many, it has done so despite a prominent lack of certain built-in functions. The "Top 8" of these absent features are: MMS support, Adobe Flash support, video recording, Bluetooth modem tethering, push notifications, SMS forwarding, background applications, and -- an old favorite among the Mac faithful -- cut-and-paste.

While cut-and-paste functionality, and roughly four of the top eight needed functions were indeed added, they were piled under no less than a dozen other new abilities intended to advance videogaming on iPhone.

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Next Tuesday in Cupertino, California, Apple will unveil iPhone software version 3.0, according to an invitation received by the Apple faithful today.

Apple's popular mobile phone is currently on OS version 2.2.1 (Build 5H11), which was an incremental update pushed out in the first weeks of 2009. The last major update -- one that would warrant its own event, like the one scheduled for next week -- was version 2.0, when the 3G iPhone was released.

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The leading US electronics retailer will begin selling the hit phone on September 7 in 970 stores, including all the stores where Apple has launched its "mini-store" pilot program.

Best Buy said it would sell iPhones through its Best Buy Mobile shops that it has begun to open across a little over a dozen cities nationwide. Those smaller versions of the bigger retailer focus primarily on mobile phone sales.

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In an internal e-mail sent Monday afternoon by Steve Jobs and subsequently leaked across the Internet, the Apple CEO laments the launch of the service and shakes up management to prevent it from happening again.

The biggest change announced in the e-mail, as first revealed by Jacqui Cheng of Ars Technica, would be the promotion of Eddy Cue to vice president of Internet Services. Having previously headed up the company's successful iTunes division and the new App Store, Cue's responsibilities would now expand to Mobile Me.

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