Orange UK and Apple have reached an agreement to bring iPhone 3G and 3GS to Orange UK customers later this year. Orange globally now offers iPhone in 28 countries and territories.
Orange, which has the largest 3G network covering more people in the UK than any other operator, will sell iPhone in all Orange direct channels including Orange shops, the Orange webshop and Orange telesales channels, as well as selected high street partners. A pre-registration site for customers to log their interest has been launched at www.Orange.co.uk/iPhone
More information on pricing, tariffs and availability dates will be released in due course.
Ever wondered what life would be like if you were restricted to 140 characters like Twitter? Well this video should give you a good idea. (113 characters)
If this was just about music then this is an exellent gadget, but life is not just about music anymore.
Music
Sound quality is amazing and crisp. The UI is nice and easy to use and the OLED screen is beautiful for flicking through album covers. Honestly, when it came to using this as a basic MP3 player I was drawn to how strong the sound was and the fact that I could hear little details in the songs I never recognised before was particularly ear opening.
The noise cancellation is unbelievably good. If you switch between an iPod Touch and the X Series listening to teh same song, the difference is so apparent that you start to wonder just how bad the Touch is.
Its also possible to adjust manually what sort of busy environment you're in (bus, train, airplane).
Design
I'm not sure about the graphite sides and back. It looks cool but it's not something that's nice to hold. That'll probably not be an issue after a week so I'm going to let it slide.
It's a great size, the device is small but the screen doesn't suffer. It's very comfortable and in relation to the iPod Touch I think it's a better size for pockets and stuff.
I love the all black look. It looks cool and understated. They even made the YouTube app with a black frame so nothing ever looks out of place. Along with the graphite, it's a sexy piece of kit.
The OLED screen is, as I said before, so clear and it's truly a feast for the eyes. The menu, pictures and video all really benefit from such a good screen.
The screen is extremely responsive to touch and
Apps
This is where things start to go down hill, while the YouTube is great... that's about it. The YouTube app is built in and solid but, let's be honest, you want more than just YouTube and it's just, well empty.
Web browser
In one word: Awful. It doesn't do what you want it to do. All I wanted to do was to get onto my blog but it was so incredibly difficult.
I even asked the PR guy who had been 'using it for weeks' to show me th browser and the fact it took him a while just to get on to Google made me realise that it was rubbish.
How can Sony get this wrong? It's not like I'm asking for somethign complicated. It should be a standard feature on all gadgets. The screenpad is also too difficult.
Conclusion
All round really good but I can't help but feel Sony were 'close but no cigar'. if you just want music then this is your best bet but as a package it's still a bit behind.
I finally got my hands on a preview unit of the Palm Pre (officially released on 16 October) to play with ahead of the full product which will be out in time for Christmas and, on the whole, I was quite impressed.
Software:
If you end up buying a Palm Pre, the software will be the reason why. The operating system is, in case you didn't know, web based similar to Google's Android.
The software including is, in one word, slick. You have a launch bar at the bottom of the homescreen that looks and acts like a Mac launch bar. You simply 'pick up' the bar with your finger and slide across until you find the application that you want to open.
Your open apps will be organised as 'cards' and you can flick through them by swiping left and right, closing them by flicking upwards so the card flies off the screen.
The universal search is another good idea. So you start typing and it will first suggest things that are on the phone, like apps and contacts. You can make it an internet search too. I love this idea, so instead of opening a browser you just start typing and search and instead of opening your contacts etc. Fantastic!
Notification bars on the bottom of the screen for new texts, emails, and song changes are great, and can be removed with a swipe. It really gives you a feel for being connected.
Let's start with the screen. It's beautiful, crisp, clean and clear.
It's 3.1" and 320x480 pixels with the multi-touch capabilities
fantastic.
Battery life is good lasting a few days, it has a 3 megapixel camera which is... ok. In fact it's quite crap. Like the iPhone it needs a lot of light and has a poor flash.
The qwerty keyboard is terrible. This is the killer. I was having so much fun playing with the phone until I tried to write an email.
My fingers aren't fat, honest, but I found pressing the buttons really difficult. It was impossible to type quickly and left me frustrated with the amount of mistakes I was making when all I was trying to type was 'I'm emailing you from a Palm Pre'. True, you'd probably find it easier with practice, like the iPhone touch-screen keyboard but I was watching a friend try and type with long nails and realised that for some it'll be impossible.
Verdict:
The Palm Pre is fresh and different. It's a handset I can imagine people will fall in love with but I can't help feel that they messed up with the hardware. A better camera and some tweaks to the keyboard would've made this a must-have (iPhone) while it's now a might-have. Palm will be happy with their first mobile phone on the new webOS and this phone will do well because of the slick user experience. I love it.
If you haven't heard about Monopoly City Streets then it's likely that your road has been sold and your house is about to be bulldozed to make way for a stadium (that's exactly what happened to me).
So what am I talking about? Well, it's the really clever online Monopoly game created by EA that incorporates Google Maps. So you can buy real streets and build all sorts of things on them, including hotels, stadiums, houses etc.
This is what Piccadily Circus looks like:
The only problem is that it's quite slow BUT give it a day and I think this thing will be flying. I'm already hooked. Might end up a bit like Second Life.
So last night Apple showed off the Nano that now has a bigger screen (2.2 inches), a pedometer, voice recorder and, most importantly, a video camera.
Initially, everyone was excited talking about how Apple were taking on Flip and how having an iPod that could do so much made it such an amazing gadget. But on closer inspection, you'll find that it's good but not great... not by a long shot.
No HD? No way.
Let's start with the fact that the Nano is not a HD recorder. While snapping clips of your friends might be fine for now, eventually you're going to want better quality. HD is readily available now, the Flip Mino HD is reasonably priced and most importantly, everyone at the event was asking 'is it HD?' which makes you think Apple have missed a trick.
They will probably release a HD version later this year but for now, it's a problem.
Audio... what did you say?
The Flip suffers from the same problem. Tiny devices like this are fine if you're at home and filming the kids, but if you go outside or anywhere where there is some background noise and the subject you're filming gets drowned out completely. The solution? A mic jack or even bluetooth capabilities to potentially link one up.
The BIGGEST problem: camera position
And finally the awful position of the camera. Why oh why did Apple think it was a good idea to put it in the bottom left hand corner? When you hold the Nano as you would naturally in a portrait position, your hand will cover the lens.
What's more, the buttons are directly on the other side of the camera so you will usually have your fingers in the way of your video at the beginning and end of each video. This is by far the biggest problem with the Nano video (as the clip below shows)
I don't understand why Apple went ahead with this. Every portable video camera or mobile with video has the camera at the top because it's the natural way to shoot a video.
If you record in landscape then it's not such a big problem, but if you point and shoot then you'd normally do it in landscape.
My verdict: Nano? No No No
I think the Nano is a good size, it's very light and seems very solid. As a music player and all round gadget it's fantastic but if you already have a Nano or even an iPod and feel the twitch to upgrade because of the video facility, don't bother.
Your mobile will have the same video capabilities without the annoying awkwardness and if you have an iPhone then you'll have editing capabilities as well.
At $149 it isn't going to break the bank but if you really think about it and consider the things you may already have, such as a mobile with video and an iPod with a bigger hard disk, then it's probably not worth going for.
But if you want a small gadget iPod that has that little bit extra, then it's worth considering.
PS I would have been a lot more happier with the Nano if they'd placed the lens better. It really, really bugs me.
Apple are going head to head with the Flip by releasing an 8GB iPod Nano video camera with a speaker. It has a larger display of 2.2" and will come in a variety of coloursand will cost $149 for teh 8GB and $189 for the 16GB.
It is not HD.
Every iPod Nano will have a video camera. It's smaller and thinner than a Flip and will have uploading straight to Youtube.
It will also have radio, voice recorder and a pedometer.
We're now back onto the iPod. They're telling us how amazing the iPod and the iPod touches are.
20 million iPod touches sold to date and 30 million iPhones.
They've gone back to Genius again. You can just ask it to make a playlist for you and a mix. So basically it'll encourage you to spend more money.
Apparently playing games on the iPod touch is better than a DS or a PSP. Errr... I don't think so. It might be easier to buy games but it's definately a crappier game, trust me.
I can't see myself playing GTA on teh iPod, it's just not good enough.
Don't get me wrong the games are good but it (for the moment) doesn't compare in my eyes. I'm insulted.
Ubisoft have taken to the stage talking about Assasins Creed 2. It looks like Prince of Persia. It looks like a good game. But I bet it's better on a PSP.
Steve Jobs is now talking about iTunes 9 that will go live today. It integrates Genius in that it will create a playlist by recommending music to you depending on music you've already downloaded.
The Genius mixes create playlists and act like a 'Radio station'.
Synching also gets an upgrade. It will synch your applications, movies and music between your iPod/iPhone which helps you manage your library.
Home sharing allows you to copy media from your home Mac to your other Macs and even your iPhone/iPod. It can even do this automatically.
The new iTunes store is revamped and cleaner too.
iTunes LP is asically a virtual album. So you get lyrics, album cover, information videos etc. It's basically trying to get that whole 'I buy albums cos I wanna hold them and smell them'.
UPDATED: We've now been shown the iTunes store. It's a lot easier to preview and buy things. You can also share information on albums and songs on Twitter and Facebook. Not sure how useful that is but a nice touch anyway.
Steve Jobs is up. He looks skinny and he's talking about his liver transplant.
He's thanking everyone for their help it's quite sweet actually.
We're now moving on to 'music' and that they have sold 30 million iPhones. They also have 75,000 apps with 1.8 billion downloads.
He's just announced the iPhone 3.1 upgrade with the 'Genius' upgrade so it recommends apps from the apps store teh same way music is recommended to you.
Ringtones will also be added to the apps store for $1.29 (around 30,000 to be uploaded.
3.1 is available today.
I feel we're gearing up to a nice big iPod announcement
UPDATED: We've just been shown how easy it is so organise your apps and manage music and content between your iPhone and your Mac. It's literally as easy as drap and drop. Beautiful.
The Apple event tonight is going to be Beatle themed (kind of obvious with the whole Let's Rock thing) but more interestingly, Apple have dropped the prices of their iPods and it looks like the reason for this reduction is a 64GB iPod.
Prices:
32GB touch: $279 (was $399)
16GB touch: $249 (was $299)
8GB touch: $189 (was$229)
The Nano's price is now at $129 (8GB) and $149 (16GB), with the the Classic going down to $229 (was $249).
Stay posted for more nws from the event including the iTablet (fingers, legs, toes and even Ghostbusters proton pack streams crossed).
Google have revealed the changes that the Android Market update 1.6 will include with better user interface (UI) and new app sub-categories and support for Italian.
The UI is ok. Not that special but it's an improvement, I mean they've finally added screenshots and the descriptions are a lot better.
So yay Google. There's a video at the bottom of their note.
Some News from Android Market
Posted by Eric Chu, Android Mobile Platform on 03 September 2009 at 3:30 PM
I'm pleased to let you know about several updates to Android Market.
First, we will soon introduce new features in Android Market for
Android 1.6 that will improve the overall experience for users. As part
of this change, developers will be able to provide screenshots,
promotional icons and descriptions that will better show off
applications and games.
We have also added four new sub-categories for applications: sports,
health, themes, and comics. Developers can now choose these
sub-categories for both new and existing applications via the publisher
website. Finally, we have added seller support for developers in Italy.
Italian developers can go to the publisher website to upload
applications and target any of the countries where paid applications
are currently available to users.
To take advantage of the upcoming Android Market refresh, we
encourage you to visit the Android Market publisher website and upload
additional marketing assets. Check out the video below for some of the
highlights.
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