This latest rumor comes from the best of the bunch. Apple employees are probably some of the brightest people I’ve known. iPhone prototypes have been lost, and lost again. They’ve even given away an external harddrive containing internal documents and materials. So obviously when they speak – we listen. The New York times had the privilege of talking with one of Cupertino’s finest who gives us a bit of low down on Apple’s latest iMiracle.
We’re just weeks away from the announcement of the new Apple iPhone 5, according to an Apple employee who asked not to be named because he was not allowed to speak publicly for the company.
BGR posted some interesting case pics today of what could possibly be the newest iPhone. Showing off some some nice curves, this could very well be the latest design. With the rumors piling up on whether we’ll see an iPhone 4S featuring the same design with the upgrades being internal, or an upgraded iPhone showcasing a completely new design – it’s hard to tell where it’ll all land. With Case-Mate quickly taking the pictures down, that only adds fuel to the fire.
The source within Apple says the iPhone will sport the 8 megapixel camera as well as the coveted A5 bbq chip. He also states that the iPhone 5 will be “fairly different‘ from the iPhone 4.
I personally don’t care much at this point. I am hoping for a design change. I wasn’t happy to have the same for 2 years with the 3G/3GS. The speed upgrade was nice, but that same design got old. I like some fresh meat in my hands. We’ll see if these latest rumors stack up against the rest – hopefully in a few weeks!
Source: NYTimes Apple ios5 iphone 4 iphone 5
For those unfamiliar with the HTC ChaCha, it is an Android handset that is reminiscent of the Blackberry’s design, featuring a QWERTY keyboard and more importantly – Facebook integration. It is the first HTC handset that has been touted as a “Facebook phone” which seems to be targeted at those who can’t get themselves off the social networking website.
Now if you’re living in China and you’ve been meaning to get your hands on the device hoping to get on Facebook, you may be out of luck. Facebook along with Google (and several other websites) have been blocked by China, and it doesn’t look like things are going to change with the HTC ChaCha either. Instead of Facebook, it appears that the China version of the HTC ChaCha will be integrated with QQ instead, which is the country’s most popular instant messaging platform with about 700 million users.
As you can see in the photo above, even the Facebook button has been removed and replaced with QQ’s logo. Other than that change, the phone remains pretty much the same as the Facebook version, sporting an 800MHz processor, a 2.6” HVGA touch screen display, a QWERTY keyboard and Android’s Gingerbread 2.3.
There has been some talk of Nintendo entering the smartphone gaming market after the creators of Pokemon released a card-based app game for Android and iOS. Even though it wasn’t Nintendo who directly published the game, Pokemon is a uniquely Nintendo franchise which pretty much got the rumor mill churning. During the Tokyo Game Show that’s taking place on the other side of the world, Nikkei was able to interview Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata and asked him to speak on the rumors of Nintendo releasing games for smartphones. In typical Nintendo fashion, Iwata had this to say,
“This is absolutely not under consideration. If we did this, Nintendo would cease to be Nintendo. Having a hardware development team in-house is a major strength. It’s the duty of management to make use of those strengths. It’s probably the correct decision in the sense that the moment we started to release games on smartphones we’d make profits. However, I believe my responsibility is not to short term profits, but to Nintendo’s mid and long term competitive strength.”
In other words, NO. You have a greater chance at seeing Apple open source their software than Nintendo officially developing app games for smartphones. Guess it’s back to the emulators..
[Andriasang via Electronista]
We know this is the moment many of you have been waiting for! The just announced Epic 4G Touch, Sprint’s Samsung Galaxy S II is now available online from the carrier.
It goes for $199.99 with a two-year contract, or $499.99 for the phone only. It sports a 4.52-inch Super AMOLED Plus display, radio capable of 3G/4G speeds, Mobile Hotspot functionality, video chat capability, 1.2GHz dual-core Exynos SoC and a very slim form factor.
Source: Sprint
The time for faster mobile processors is nearing, as Qualcomm recently announced its plans to unleash its fourth-generation Snapdragon chipsets to device manufacturers by the end of 2011.
The S4 class of Snapdragon chipsets will be bringing up to 2.5 GHz clock speeds in single-core, dual-core, and quad-core varieties.
This would mean that upcoming Android smartphones and tablets using the Snapdragon S4 chipset family will get processing and performance boosts. Several Android devices today are still using the dual-core Snapdragon S3 (third generation) chips, including the Motorola XOOM, HTC Sensation, HTC Sensation XE, HTC myTouch 4G Slide, HTC EVO 3D, and the HTC Jetstream (HTC Puccini).
Tech news site thinq_ quoted Qualcomm vice-president Cristiano Amon as saying that this latest generation of Snapdragon SoCs (System-on-a-Chip) has full connectivity integrated into them, including GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 3G/LTE.
Amon also told attendees at the Innovation Qualcomm held in Istanbul, Turkey, this week that the first quad-core Snapdragon chipsets will be coming out before this year is over. He also said that consumers can expect the first devices bearing quad-core Snapdragon chipsets to start appearing in early 2012. Amon refused to provide specific dates, however.
Based on 28-nm semiconductor technology, the upcoming chipsets are expected to deliver up to 150% increase in overall performance and up to 65% lower power consumption than most existing CPU cores. The S4 class of Snapdragon chipsets will also come with an up-to-date, faster, quad-core Adreno graphics processing units (GPU) said to provide 15 times better performance than the original Adreno GPU.
Qualcomm’s integration of various technologies into one chipset is its strategy to offer the “best mobile performance at the lowest power consumption.”
One of Qualcomm’s chief competitors, NVIDIA, is also expecting its first quad-cores to come out by the end of the year. NVIDIA’s CEO recently hinted that tablets bearing the quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 “Kal-El” processor may start arriving this year and quad-core smartphones coming a little later.
Do you choose your Android handsets on the basis of CPU/chipset manufacturer? Who’s your favorite CPU maker?
Image credit: Qualcomm, thinq_