Oh come on, this can’t be real can it? Apple go ape-crazy if you try to write an iPhone app that even slightly treads on their toes, so I can’t see them suffering this witch to live.
OLO Computer have a teaser ad up for what appears to be a Netbook mini-laptop-thing that uses the iPhone as it’s (please forgive the technical term here) computery-bit.
There are no specs available, just a ‘coming soon’ and a contact email. We’ll keep an open mind on this one - but not so open our brain falls out.
Via ITWire.
Oh, shyeaaaah! RIGHT! Absolutely, and by the way I most certainly am interested in that bridge you are selling.
According to rumours currently circulating on the electric interweb, Apple is working on a S60 version of iTunes.
There are about eight hundred and twelve reasons why this is not going to happen - mainly to do with Apple’s DRM technology, there being no sensible reason for Apple to push sales away from the iPhone and Nokia’s own commitment to Comes WIth Music - but that doesn’t mean we can’t come up with a screengrab of the software in action.
It might not be real. Just sayin’.
Industry analysts J. Gold Associates has a theory that, if true, could mean that the mobile market is going to get a LOT more interesting.
Nokia and Google, says J. Gold, are close to combiniing the Android and Symbian operating system “to provide a single open source OS.”
In some ways it makes sense. Nokia recently announced that they were opening the Symbian OS source code. At the time this move appeared to be a reaction to the imminent launch of the already open Android, but it could be seen as a simple repositioning for closer coopration.
The question is - what is in it for both parties? J. Gold believe that Google would prefer to cooperate ratehr than strike out on their own so as to bring their applications and services to a broader range of handsets. For their part, Nokia stand to gain credibility within the open source community and promote development.
Interesting times, indeed.
Well, if it’s good enough for Batman, it’s surely ready for the likes of us.
According to Mobile Royale (”An Asian perspective on all takes mobile industry”) the pic at the top of this post is from the all-new S60 5th edition- a.k.a the OS for Nokia’s upcoming Tube (that’s Mr Nokia 5800 XpressMedia to you, squire).
So, is it? Well, it’s worth noting that the person who provided the snap to Mobile Royale is a well known S60 theme designer. This could mean that he as either been designing a theme for the new OS or - equally likely - has knocked up a proof of concept theme in his copious spare time.
It doesn’t look particularly remarkable at first glance but the devil may be in the details. It’s a 480×640 resolution shot, which could point to an increase in screen quality and there is a nice row of fingertip-sized icons on the top row, which suggests a doing away with that old-fashioned, pre-iPhone Applications button.
Presumably, eagle-eyed viewers of the Dark Knight will be able to let us know if anything like this popped up? Go see it on IMAX, you should get a decent look.
A memo is rumoured to be circulating the offices of AT&T that suggests the new 3G iPhone might finally ‘do’ MMS.
Lack of Multimedia Messaging was one of the main complaints about the origonal iPhone (that and ‘no 3G’, ‘no keyboard’ and ‘costsa bleedin fortune’) so this would seem like an obvious addition.
It’s just a rumour though, and there must have been some reason why it wasn’t included in the first place. Possibly this is down to the lack of a decent SMS tariff on many US networks. The official word at the time was basically “Just use email”which always seemed a bit of a cop out.
In the UK, of course, we are all about the SMS bundling. Come on Apple - sort it out!
The plot, it thickens. Obviously, with only a couple of days before the WWDC, the Apple rumour factories are on compulsory overtime, but there might just be something in this.
Photographs have turned up at iLounge that claim to show two new iPhone touchscreen designs from an unnamed Taiwanese manufacturer. Yup, TWO. The first is your standard iPhone form factor (although slightly smaller at 3.2″), the other is a titchy 2.8″. Could this mean were going to see an iPhone Nano?
There is some speculstion about what this might involve - a popular theory is the the smaller version will be a 2G model intended for the budget market, which may relate to those earlier pricing rumours, albeit as a bit of a let down.
Apple are predicatbly tight-lipped, no doubt smirking to themselves as we all stew about it over the weekend.
You can tell there is a new iPhone on the horizon by the way all the Mac blogs are foaming at the mouth and wildly speculating.
It’s got 3G! No - it’s got 4G! I heard it will cost £200 and come with a free pony! Yeah? Well I heard they will be given away in six-packs on street corners!
It’ll all be academic by Tuesday, when that nice Mr Jobs gives his WWDC keynote speech and ends with another, Columboesque, “Just one more thing..”. Until that happy day, though, it’s open season with the iPhone rumours and Macworld have come up with what they think is O2’s super secret plans for marketing the iPhone in the UK.
According to ’sources’, O2 will be offering the phone at £100 with an 18-month contract. Subscribers to the most expensive (£75/month-ish) contract can get a handset for free (in a certain sense of the word).
O2 will also be offering the phone for sale at around £269 for use with a pay-as-you-go SIM - although unless that comes with a decent PAYG data plan it would seem to be a bit of a waste.
The next version of the iPhone will be thinner, have more memory and feature GPS.. probably.
Leander Khaney over at Cult of Mac has apparently been handed a semi-official spec sheet for the next-gen iPhone by an anonymous developer. Khaney - also an editor for Wired News - received the tip from a developer at a major software publisher who had seen the specs first-hand.
Assuming nobody is exaggerating, the iPhone 2.0 will have improved battery life and be 22% thinner than the version 1.0 handset. Memory is set to double, with 16GB and 32GB models available.
The source also confirmed that the phone is due for launch on the 9th of June and that the US release will be subsidised to better compete with the Blackberry at around $200 - something which lends some weight to our earlier story about UK pricing.
The Times is reporting a juciy tidbit to add to the huge pile marked ‘next-gen iPhone rumours’. In an attempt to flood the UK market and grab some mindshare, Apple is relaxing its price controls on the new 3G iPhone and letting operators set their own price. Industry rumours suggest that this could be as low as £100 in the UK and €99 on the continent.
The new handset is expected to be revealed on June 9th during the now-traditional Developers Conference keynote speech by Apple CEO, Steve Jobs. The phone is expected to hit the UK market by early July.
Telecoms analyst Ben Wood, of CSS Insight said, “exclusive deals with operators pushed more people to unlock iPhones and meet demand from customers on competing networks.” Could this mean that Apple are about to rethink their exclusive deal with O2? Either way, a slew of cheap iPhones would really give the UK market a kick - £100 is comparable to a low end Nokia smartphone, and it would be interesting to see how the other manufacturers respond.
Fingers crossed for a UK smartphone price war this summer!
When we reported on Linux taking off in the mobile sector, we sort of assumed it was going to be a case of Android and other Linux-powered operating systems taking on the might of Nokia, Apple, et. al.
Now it looks like Nokia themselves might be joining in the fun.
Speaking at an investor’s conference, Nokia’s Chief Financial Officer Rick Simonson said of Linux, “It’s going to be terribly important.”
This shouldn’t be too surprising, given Nokia’s investment in TrollTech - who write the GUI code for the popular Linux KDE desktop - and it needn’t spell the end of Symbian. Nokia has a 47% stake in that OS, after all, and has never been shy about having different operating systems for different classes of handset.
Perhaps this is more a form of bet hedging. If Android takes off the way everyone seems to think it will, it would be handy to have a ready made OS that will be broadly compatible with many Android apps. Or perhaps this will just end up as another Beta Labs skunkworks project.
If anyone from Nokia is reading this and there are some decent Linux hackers near you - any chance we could have a version of PC Suite that will work on my Ubuntu PC? It’s not like the Windows one worked particularly well, but it might be a show of good faith to the Linux community, if nothing else.
