A group of small, regional cellphone companies announced Wednesday that they’re going to start selling the iPhone at prices that undercut the big carriers.
NTelos Wireless of Virginia; Appalachian Wireless of Kentucky; and Alaska Communications, Matanuska Telephone Association and GCI of Alaska all said they will begin selling the iPhone on April 20.
Except for Matanuska, the companies said they will charge $150 for the basic 4S. That’s $49 less than what AT&T, Verizon and Sprint charge. A two-year service contract is required.
Matanuska didn’t say how much it would charge for the phone. Cellcom of Wisconsin also said on its website that the iPhone 4S is “coming soon.” It doesn’t say when or how much it will cost.
Another small regional phone company, Mississippi-based C Spire Wireless, started selling the iPhone last year. A bigger regional company, U.S. Cellular, has said it turned down the iPhone because it was too expensive.
If you paid attention in sex ed classes, you might remember that you shouldn’t store condoms in places where they might be exposed to friction, heat, cold or other conditions which might cause them to deteriorate prior to use. With that information in mind, let’s take a look at an iPhone case with a secret compartment designed to hold condoms.
Brilliant idea or an — ahem — accident waiting to happen?
Only time will tell.
The Playa case (as in “player,” not the Spanish word for beach) is made by Annex Products — a company which previously brought us the Opena, an iPhone case with a built-in bottle opener. (See the Opena in action in the video at bottom.)
After a year and a half, the iPhone 5 turned out to be the iPhone 4S, which left a lot of us wondering what that meant for Apple’s release schedule. (Up until then, the company was reliably releasing iPhones every year.) Well, we could be getting back to it: a Foxconnrecruiting officer is hinting at a June release for the iPhone 5.
So, quick caveat right up top: who knows if this new release in June will be the iPhone 5. In the wake of “the new iPad” and what’s now two years worth of pressure for the fabled iPhone 5 to be damn near revolutionary, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple swing in a different direction. The iPhone is also a mature platform, and one that hasn’t seen that much movement hardware-wise. We’ll just have to see.
Back to the matter at hand: a Foxconn recruiter, talking to a TV Tokyo program called “World Business Satellite,” mentioned that the company is “looking for 18,000 employees” for a “fifth-generation phone.”
Does Apple have a backdoor that it can use to help law enforcement bypass your iPhone’s passcode? That question became front and center this week when training materials (PDF) for the California District Attorneys Association started being distributed online with a line implying that Apple could do so if the appropriate request was filed by police.
As with most things, the answer is complex and not very straightforward. Apple almost definitely does help law enforcement get past iPhone security measures, but how? Is Apple advising them using already well-known cracking techniques, or does the company have special access to our iDevices that we don’t know about? Ars decided to try to find out.
Apple has a new U.S. carrier partner for the iPhone, and once again, it’s not T-Mobile. Nor is it MetroPCS, Cricket, or any of the large regional operators in the country. Instead it’s NTelos, a carrier with only 400,000 customers in Virginia, West Virginia, and portions of the surrounding states.
Apple isn’t snubbing T-Mobile or other regional operators; it’s merely following the path of least resistance. NTelos’s CDMA 1X and EV-DO use the exact same frequency configurations as the Verizon Wireless and Sprint networks, as does the network run by C Spire, the first small operator to land the iPhone.
Several other media outlets have reported that there are no technical reasons Apple can’t offer T-Mobile an iPhone 4S. That’s true, but there is one big practical reason: Apple would have to add support for T-Mobile’s HSPA+ wireless frequencies if the device were to have more than just bare-bones 2G data connectivity. As we have pointed out before, adding new bands to the iPhone is much harder than it sounds, and building a specific variant of the iPhone for a single carrier is something Apple has so far been unwilling to do.
YARMOUTH PORT, Mass., April 4, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — A new app for iPad and iPhone combines science and technology to help save critically endangered North Atlantic right whales by reducing threats of collisions with large ships along the East Coast of North America. The free Whale Alert App is the result of a multi-organization effort that brings together government, academia, private sector industries and IFAW (the International Fund for Animal Welfare, www.ifaw.org ).
Whale Alert provides mariners and others with one stop shopping for all right whale management measures using easy-to-use nautical chart-displayed information. The app links the bridge of a ship to the latest data about right whale detections and informs users when their vessels enter right whale management areas.
“Endangered right whales are being run over and killed by ships, but we can save them. This new iPad app helps keep whales and ships apart and gives them a fighting chance,” said Patrick Ramage, IFAW’s Whale Program Director. “Imagine a world where endangered right whales use iPads and iPhones to alert ship captains that they are in the area. That dream is now reality and IFAW is very proud to be part of the team that made it happen.”
New York Times in a lengthy article titled “iEconomy - In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad” a followup to their earlier article about ”Why Apple’s iPhone was made in China”, attacked Apple for not doing enough to improve living conditions for workers at their suppliers factories.
The New York Times recounts an incident from May last year where an explosion in Foxconn’s factory killed 2 workers.
The article goes on to quote a former Foxconn manager:
“Apple never cared about anything other than increasing product quality and decreasing production cost,” [..]
[..] Some former Apple executives say there is an unresolved tension within the company: executives want to improve conditions within factories, but that dedication falters when it conflicts with crucial supplier relationships or the fast delivery of new products.
Apple’s CEO Tim Cook responded to the report with an internal email to Apple employees: Continue reading “Tim Cook Responds to Factory Worker Mistreatment Allegations” »
Samsung’s response to Apple’s patent infringement lawsuits, by countersuing Apple hasn’t been going so well for the company.
A German regional court dismissed Samsung’s complaint, which claimed Apple infringed on one of its patent relating to 3G/UMTS wireless standards. This was Samsung’s second loss to Apple, in the same court, within a week.
There wasn’t any official reason given as to why Samsung’s claims were dismissed. Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents speculates: Continue reading “Samsung Loses Second 3G Patent Lawsuit Against Apple In Germany” »
In case you are not aware, the serial number provides some interesting information about your iPhone, including the week it was manufactured and the factory id.
Folks at OS X Daily tell us that the serial number on the iPhone tells you the week it was manufactured, the factory where it was made and somethings which you already know such as the color and the size of the storage.
The first step is to locate the Serial Number. The easiest way to find it is to open your Settings app and navigate to General -> About -> Serial Number. You should also see the Serial Number in the Summary tab in iTunes when your iPhone is connected to the computer.
Serial numbers come in the form AABCCDDDEEF which can be read as follows: Continue reading “How to Decode iPhone Serial Number” »
The Washington Post published a piece titled “Apple’s Siri threatens to damage cellphone service for all” yesterday, which held Siri responsible for excessive load on mobile networks, because of its frequent communication with Apple’s servers.
The Washington Post’sPaul Farhi claims: Continue reading “Siri Isn’t The Bandwidth Guzzler That is Ruining Mobile Networks” »
