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Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s chief operating officer, certainly thought so. So we thought it might be worth a point-by-point comparison

Comparisons are odious. That’s why it’s usually journalists and marketing people who indulge in them. So indulge me while I pick some apart.

Quoth Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s chief operating officer – the man who makes sure that the money is coming in right, who makes sure that the wheels of the company’s bank accounts are turning fast enough to satisfy shareholders – earlier this week: “One of the things that I want to make sure that you know today is that you’re going to be able to use the Windows Phone 7 and not have to worry about how you’re holding it to make a phone call.” He said it at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference, adding: “It looks like iPhone 4 might be their Vista.”

Though Turner wasn’t to know it, Apple was even then preparing its press conference to explain what (if anything) it was going to do about the whole iPhone 4 reception issue. 22 days after the release of the iPhone, Jobs led a press conference explaining that anyone who’d bought an iPhone 4 could have a free “bumper”. (The office joke: 1 day to diagnose the problem, 21 days to prepare and rehearse the presentation.) Those reception problems? Common to all phones, insisted Jobs, who deflected lots of questions in his customary expert way.

That leaves the “PR experts” who earlier this week told Cult of Mac that Apple would have to recall the iPhone 4 looking pretty stupid. Because they were stupid. Pause for a moment and remind yourself: on what grounds are items recalled? Oh yes, when they cause injury or death, or pose a hazard to the public. Losing your data reception because you (avoidably) covered the exposed antenna definitely likes in the category that Twitter calls #firstworldproblems. The idea that Apple would recall a device on that basis is simply laughable. In every newsroom, there’s a point early in the day when your news edior asks you what’s going to happen over some scheduled story: on Friday morning (UK time, before Cupertino was yawning and turning the alarm off) I was asked what would come out of the Apple press conference, and I said that Apple would portray problems with antennas as common to the entire industry, that it would offer free bumpers or cash refunds, or a full refund for anyone who wanted them, and that there was no chance of a recall. Do you think I qualify as a PR expert on that basis?

But let’s go back to the eminently sane and reasonable Kevin Turner. In his speech, he acknowledged that in the areas both of Vista and mobile phones, Microsoft had a bad patch. He’s happy now to praise Windows 7, and is full of expectation for Windows Phone 7. (Others differ, of course, but we have to wait and see.)

However, the idea that the iPhone 4 might be Apple’s “Vista”? Let’s try the comparisons.

Vista: fell seriously behind schedule, requiring Jim Allchin to take the project through a “reset“.
iPhone 4: released on the schedule everyone expected, at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference.

Vista: dropped much-promised features including WinFS as part of the “reset”.
iPhone 4: we don’t know what features were planned for it; we only know what we got, which is a ceramic case to (try to) improve signal reception, and a screen with a remarkable pixel density.

Vista: met enormous resistance from consumers, who couldn’t understand why it looked and ran so differently from its well-received and hugely popular (if insecure) predecessor, Windows XP.
iPhone 4: sold 1.7m in first three days, of whom 75% were owners of the previous version, according to data on both sides of the Atlantic from Bloomberg and AQA.

Vista: met even greater resistance from Microsoft’s main customers in enterprises, who didn’t like the fact that it didn’t run a lot of the software that ran on Windows XP.
iPhone 4: ran any and all apps that ran on previous iPhones and/or iPod Touches.

Vista: offered substantially greater security and reliability than predecessor.
iPhone 4: offered the same security and reliability as predecessor, plus cooperative multitasking.

Vista: was the subject of a court battle which exposed internal emails from Microsoft, revealing disquiet inside the company over OEM PCs which described themselves as “Vista-ready” even though they would not be able to run any but the lowest-specified versions of Vista.
iPhone 4: is the subject of a claim by the Wall Street Journal that people within Apple knew about problems with the antenna, but that Jobs nixed their criticisms because he liked the design. At the press event on Friday, Jobs called this “total bullshit”. Decide for yourself who’s telling the truth.

Vista: Microsoft never “apologised” for Vista, since it didn’t feel the need to.
iPhone 4: Jobs admitted that “we’re not perfect” but then added that nobody is. You’d be hard-pressed to really call it an apology.

Vista: Wouldn’t run on some Microsoft execs’ machines when they tried to upgrade them.
iPhone 4: Worked OK – though some people updating older phones have had problems with the latest (iOS 4.0.1) update “bricking” them.

So on balance, is the iPhone 4 really like Vista? It’s hard to overstate how monumental a screwup the development of Vista was. The entire development had to jettison key elements, such as WinFS (for search), and try to focus on getting the operating system out of the door. And as soon as it was released, people started complaining about its weird user interface experience; which led a Chinese Australian to set up a site where people could unload about it. (He was snowed under within days.) It’s still worth looking at that site, and seeing whether the points that people have made there have been fixed in Windows 7.

In short, the iPhone 4 antenna issue isn’t Apple’s “Vista moment” – despite what Turner might wish. It’s an annoyance to people who’ve spent that money, but Jobs’s numbers about the low level of returns (1.7%) compared to the 3GS (6%) – which will be pored over by analysts, and will have the force of a financial statement, meaning that if Jobs has fibbed then he’s theoretically liable to be hauled in front of the Securities and Exchange Commission – indicates that unlike Vista, users are actually very happy with it. (That’s also the anecdotal response I’ve had on Twitter.)

Sure, you might be annoyed, if you queued overnight or for hours in the baking sun, that the phone isn’t perfect. But there are lots of phones; personally I don’t have an iPhone or an iPad, because presently I think they’re too expensive for what they offer. You could easily choose another. The snark on view on Twitter indicates, to me, a strange sort of envy on the part of many people; a desire to see a company brought down because of its hubris, rather than its failings.

Certainly, Apple has never wanted for hubris, but it does try to live up to its own aims.

But what about the company that made Vista? There are still challenges ahead for Microsoft: the fact that Google is winning Office customers over to its much cheaper Google Apps products (something that Turner alluded to in his speech – search for the first mention of ‘Google’); the fact that it is only managing to grow its Bing search engine share by spending $1 for every $1 of business it brings in; the fact that Windows Phone 7 remains an unknown quantity which the company has all but staked its reputation in the mobile market on. (Sales of Windows Mobile licences, the previous generation, are dwindling; it would be interesting to see what the licensing revenue is for them. Apparently HTC, once – possibly still – the biggest licensee of Windows Mobile is going to go with Windows Phone 7 – though it seems to be doing rather nicely out of Android at present.)

Lastly, the point that so many people overlook about Apple relates to its ambitions for the iPhone. These are rarely stated. When Steve Jobs launched it in 2007, he said the ambition was a 1% share of the entire phone market: “10 million units and we’ll go from there.”

That’s not the sort of barnstorming that you expect from most companies; they talk about capturing huge chunks. Apple wasn’t looking to get huge share. But you can bet that, being Apple, the plan was to make a lot more than 1% of the profit out there. Apple doesn’t necessarily want to dominate the market for smartphones (though it would certainly be happy to do that, just like the market for digital music players, where it effectively has a monopoly). It just wants to dominate all the profit. The cost of issuing these free bumpers to iPhone owners is going to be about $50m at the most (assuming 5m buyers and a $10 cost to Apple for the whole transaction.) The issue might have cost it more – but you can bet it’s not going to stop it rolling on. That’s perhaps the only way in which the iPhone 4 is really like Vista: it’s not going to stop the next stage of its ambitions.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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Firm offers free covers to owners and new buyers after signal problems sparked demands for recall

Apple’s iPhone 4 conference – as it happened

Apple is offering a free rubber “bumper” to owners of the iPhone 4 to head off criticism over problems with its signal reception but dismissed suggestions that the device should be recalled.

Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, said the problems had affected only “a small batch” of phones, and that it was due to an “inherent problem” with smartphones. “We’re not perfect,” he said at a press conference at Apple’s HQ in Cupertino, California. “We haven’t figured out a way around the laws of physics yet.”

Nevertheless Apple will offer the “bumpers”, which cover the sides of the phone, around the exposed metal antenna which receives the mobile signal. When users have held the phones by the bottom and left sides it has led to a loss of signal. People who have already bought a case are entitled to a free cash refund.

Jobs headed off the suggestion that Apple would have to recall the phone, following a media storm which had seen some compare the problems to those faced by Toyota, whose cars suffered problems with the accelerators and brakes. However the iPhone has not met any of the usual criteria for a product recall, such as spontaneously combusting or causing harm through heat or emission.

Jobs revealed that Apple has sold 3m of the iPhone 4 since its launch on 24 June. That indicates that the rate of sales has slowed dramatically, after 1.7m were sold in the first three days. But he insisted customer satisfaction was higher than with previous versions: the return rate was just 1.7%, he said, compared to 6% for the previous model, the iPhone 3GS released last summer.

The company said it cannot make enough bumpers to satisfy demand, but will keep the offer of the free case open until September.

Jobs admitted that there had been complaints about the phone losing signal when held by the left and bottom sides – but said that they were natural for any phone. He acknowledged they were not perfect but insisted that every phone manufacturer had problems with antenna design and interaction with the body’s tendency to absorb the phone signal. Apple’s stock rebounded as Jobs began speaking at 6pm UK time last night.

Apple’s share price fell by 4% overnight on Tuesday, knocking $9.9bn (£6.5bn) off the company’s $230bn value, as speculation grew that the phone might have to be recalled.

Since the iPhone 4′s launch, there have been many complaints about the way that the signal appears to drop off dramatically when it is held with a hand wrapped around its left and bottom sides (a problem dubbed the “iPhone Death Grip”).

Apple this week said that it had made a “simple and surprising” error in the software that displayed the strength of the signal, and on Thursday night issued a software update which changes how many bars are displayed when the signal becomes weaker.

The iPhone problems now feature in dozens of jokes. Earlier this week Kevin Turner, the chief operating officer of Microsoft, spoke at a conference about its Windows Phone 7 software.

“One of the things that I want to make sure that you know today,” he said, “is that you’re going to be able to use the Windows Phone 7 and not have to worry about how you’re holding it to make a call.”

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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Microsoft should abandon or entirely reboot its mobile strategy because its latest product is barely as good as the iPhone from 2007 on the present developer offer

The as-yet unreleased Windows Phone 7 is a “waste of time and money”, a “disaster” that Microsoft should kill as soon as possible. So says Galen Gruman of Infoworld, who has watched an in-depth demonstration of the new phone software at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partners Conference which has been going on all week at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

Windows Phone uses a “contact-centric” approach, where rather than doing “tasks” (in the iPhone app way), you are presented generally with contacts, and informed when someone has done something (updated their Facebook/Twitter feed, called you, etc). My personal first impression of the screenshots was “that’s really not going to scale to the point where you have 300 people in your contacts book and 20 Facebook friends and 50 emails and 100 people you follow on Twitter and 30 apps”, but I thought that was just me not following the thinking behind it.

But it looks like I may have been right.

Gruman started the year being impressed with early demos of Windows Phone 7 – but that’s worn off in a big way.

“Announced to much bravado in February as the platform that would breathe life into Microsoft’s mobile ambitions, Windows Phone 7 looked based on very early previews as if it might bring something new and exciting to the table. Back then, I noted that I was impressed by what I saw — with the caveat “so far.”

“No caveats now: Windows Phone 7 is a waste of time and money. It’s a platform that no carrier, device maker, developer, or user should bother with. Microsoft should kill it before it ships and admit that it’s out of the mobile game for good. It is supposed to ship around Christmas 2010, but anyone who gets one will prefer a lump of coal. I really mean that.”

Ouch. What’s happened, Galen?

“The early demos were intriguing due to the use of the card metaphor to organize apps and information, providing a possible fluidity among apps and information that would let users swim through their business and social activities. And the distinct UI — though based on the unsuccessful Zune media player — looked as if it would stand out from the crowd of mobile devices that have largely copied the iPhone UI, such as Google’s Android, RIM’s touch-oriented BlackBerry Storm, and Palm’s WebOS.”

Hmm.

“But that was just the lipstick. Now, in Microsoft’s in-depth demo this week at the Mobile Beat conference, there’s no mistaking the big pig behind the gloss. Seeing the UI in action across several tasks, not just in a highly controlled presentation, shows how awkward and unsophisticated it is — I had the same feeling you get when you got a movie based on a great trailer, only to discover that all the good stuff was in the trailer and the rest of the movie was a mess. A pig, in fact.”

There’s plenty more; it’s worth reading in depth. Gruman says that as well as resting on old technology, Windows Phone 7 is simply outdated:

“The bottom line is this: Windows Phone 7 is a pale imitation of the 2007-era iPhone. It’s as if Microsoft decided in summer 2007 to copy the iPhone and has shut its developers in a bunker ever since, so they don’t realize that several years have passed, that the iPhone has advanced, and that competitors such as Google Android and Palm WebOS have also pushed the needle forward. Microsoft is stuck in 2007, with a smartphone OS whose feature checklist might match that era’s iPhone but whose fit and finish would look like a Pinto next to a Maserati.”

Gruman went along to a presentation at WPC (which has been generally described as “lacklustre” – and certainly seems to have been much smaller than in previous years by all accounts) and was worried by what seemed like poor responses to the handful of outside developers who had come along.

Arguably, WPC is not the place where you’re going to find the hottest WP7 developers; it’s more about geeing up the people who will resell Microsoft products. But the fact that only a few months short of the grand launch of WP7 it can’t wow even developers for the platform sounds bad. Gruman’s description of the presentation makes it sound like one of those uncomfortable events where the tumbleweed was always at risk of rolling past.

And as for the “locked in a bunker since 2007″ jibe – don’t forget the Kin, which seems to have been the victim of political infighting at Microsoft, as the incoming developer team from Danger (which Microsoft bought to produce the Kin) found themselves mired in layers of management that effectively brought them to a dead stop. Read the full horror of it at the Mini-Microsoft blog (by a disaffected Microsoft manager, but the comments are from ex-Danger staff and others).

Back to Gruman, who points to the flaws with the “tiles” method:

“… the big tiles quickly eat up screen real estate (about four fit), so you don’t get the compact access to apps that all the other major mobile operating systems provide. I bet this will depress app sales for those poor souls unlucky enough to get seduced by the Microsoft brand or the inevitable discounts at the cellular stores as the carriers try to dump these devices in January 2011 for $25 (shades of the unlamented Kin).

“Plus, Microsoft has done its usual trick of gumming up the UI, even though this one is relatively simple. There are two ways to navigate through tiles: in panorama mode and in pivot mode. In both cases, the tile continues to the right, and you swipe to see more. In panorama mode, cut-off text on the right indicates there’s more (at Mobile Beat, a developer asked if users knew what that cut-off text was for, and the Microsoft rep essentially admitted they didn’t get it was a way to say “more”). In pivot mode, each tile is self-contained, and there is an icon to indicate there is more. It’s a subtle difference: Using a panorama basically means the tile continues because it won’t fit on screen, while using a pivot means you have a series of what are essentially pages. I bet developers and users will get confused very fast.

“Visions of Vista’s litter of control panel dialog boxes, Microsoft Bob, the Office ribbon, Clippy, and Windows 3 flew through my head — not that Windows Phone 7 looks like any of these; it just shares the same flaw of being obtuse.”

And that’s only for starters. Other complaints: the browser, IE7 with a bit of IE8, doesn’t support HTML5; there’s no multitasking except for Microsoft’s own apps (Android and, now, the iPhone both support cooperative multitasking by all apps); there doesn’t seem to be interapplication communication for third-party apps; there’s no copy-and-paste (emphasis added) – even though Apple was roundly and rightly criticised for not introducing it until summer 2009, and Windows Mobile 6.1 did have it.

Gruman says there’s going to be no come-from-behind take-over-the-world for Microsoft if this doesn’t succeed: RIM (prepping BlackBerry 6), Android, Apple and Nokia will all eat its lunch and dance on its grave.

At this point, people usually begin an ad-hominem, to ask whether Gruman is biased or (sigh) in the pay of company X or Y. Judge for yourself from the Infoworld author bio and item list.

Meanwhile, if anyone else has had a hands-on with Windows Phone 7 – via the developer kit or other methods – we’d love to hear about it. Good? Bad? Indifferent? What’s it really like?

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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People have been talking about the coming mobile revolution for 20 years, but on a recent book tour with my Android phone, I realised it’s finally here

I’ve just come back from a month-long, multi-city, US and Canada book tour for my new novel, For the Win. I’ve done book tours before, but this one was different: this was the tour with an Android Nexus One phone, and it was game-changing.

I’ve been told about the coming mobile revolution for 20 years now, but frankly, mobile phones are generally rubbish. The carriers are awful and abusive. The apps suck. And so on. Something’s changed.

Take directions: Google Maps are, of course, the ne plus ultra of navigation, so having them in your pocket is powerful. But combine that with Android’s stellar turn-by-turn directions, which incorporates Google’s traffic data to get you round the terrible snarls, and things get really easy. What’s more, the ability to program the map destination by speaking it (Google’s various voice apps have given it improbably good voice-recognition performance, producing a training set that is wide and deep), or by photographing it on a printout (using the Google Goggles app that converts images to words to Google searches), felt futuristic and deeply right.

Young adult book tours involve a lot of school visits, often in deep suburbs that the media escorts supplied by your publisher aren’t that familiar with (these escorts often come armed with confusing Mapquest printouts that seem to come from an earlier century). When you’re not running late to a tour stop, you’re often running early, with just enough time to stop for a cup of coffee and a snack. Add Google location search to that and you can avoid going to a petrol station or (even worse) McDonald’s or Dunkin’ Donuts and find hidden gems that you’d have to be a local to get at otherwise. I ate better on this tour than I ever have before.

I “rooted” my Nexus One, breaking into the OS so that I could easily “tether” it to my laptop, using it as a 3G modem between tour stops (we didn’t have to root my wife’s matching phone, as Google supplied us with an unlocked developer handset). My typical tour day started at 5am with breakfast and work on the novel, then a 6am interview with someone in Europe, then pickup, two to four school visits with a short lunch break, three or four interviews, then a bookstore signing or a plane (or both). As busy as that sounds, there’s actually a fair bit of dead time in it while sitting in the escort’s car, trying to find the next stop.

This time round, I plugged the laptop into the cigarette lighter and the phone into the laptop – this gave the phone a battery charge and the laptop internet access. And best of all, it meant that I could harvest those dead minutes to answer emails, keep on blogging, and generally stay abreast of things.

Which meant that I got lots more of the touring author’s most precious commodity: sleep. On previous tours, returning to the hotel meant sitting down for three to four hours’ worth of emails before bed, which cut my sleep time to less than four hours some nights. But this time round, I got back to the room completely caught up, and was able to flop down in bed, eat some minibar cashews, and hit the sack.

Travelling with your own internet source is brilliant. At Atlanta airport, I was stuck for four hours while a monster storm hammered the building with barrages of lightning. Immediately, every one of the expensive Wi-Fi networks in the building went dead as thousands of stranded travellers tried to use them all at once. I found a corner with a mains outlet, plugged in the laptop, tethered my phone, and enjoyed my own private network connection. It wasn’t fast, but it was free and it worked.

I still have a US T-Mobile account from when I lived in the US, and I pay for the unlimited data plan there (which, like the Orange UK Sim I use here, has a bizarre and fraudulent definition of “unlimited” that includes a data cap). It’s easily worth keeping the account alive for those times that I’m back in the US – one day’s 3G savings (not having to pay for expensive hotel and airport broadband) pays for a month’s mobile service.

But when I travel to places where I don’t have a Sim, such as France or Germany, where I’ll be touring in September, it’s not pretty. Orange charges nearly £1 per megabyte, and its bolt-on Euro traveller plans charge something like £30 for 30MB, and limit you to 30MB per month. I can’t figure out who the putative customer for this is: the travelling exec who really needs email on the road, but receives a tiny trickle of email every day, apparently.

The most absurd part is when you take an Orange UK Sim to France (France Telecom being Orange’s parent company) or a T-Mobile Sim to Germany (Deutsche Telekom has the same relationship to T-Mobile except in the UK, where it’s a joint venture with France Telecom) and the company charges an extortionate roaming charge for using their parent company’s network, on the grounds that they’re “different companies”.

Which is the fundamental paradox of mobile – so long as the mobile carriers remain a part of mobile computing, it will only work for so long as you don’t go anywhere.

• Cory Doctorow’s new novel, For The Win, is out now

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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WeatherFist shows phone vulnerability, devs claim

Security researchers fooled nearly 8,000 iPhone and Android users into joining a mobile smartphone “botnet” under the guise of installing an apparently innocuous weather app.…

Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn’t work

Read Full Story…
(Source The Register)

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T-Mobile shifts 10,000 BlackBerrys per week during Christmas quarter, as BlackBerry Storm 2 9550 debuts on contract and Curve 8520 on prepay

Read Full Story…
(Source Mobile News CWP)

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Following a difficult year, Spinvox’s operation providing translation of mobile calls to text messages has been purchased – but investors will lose out

Earlier reports by PaidContent had said that Nuance, a digital speech conversion company based in Burlington, Massachusetts, might buy troubled voicemail-to-text counterpart Spinvox before year’s end – and Nuance on Wednesday confirmed exactly that…

The price – $102.5 million – is less than half the more-than-$200 million in investment that Spinvox had raised before things started to go bad earlier this year, so there’s significant loss here for investors. It comes in $66 million in cash and $36.5 million in Nuance shares (2.3 million).

Nuance says it will be “integrating SpinVox’s carrier services with Nuance’s advanced speech recognition platform”, making it sound rather like the speech-to-text technology on which Spinvox, with its headquarters in Marlow, England, has prided itself will play second fiddle to Nuance’s own.

Nuance’s announcement repeats its clear statement that it’s its own, “sophisticated” speech technology which is “proven”: “This transaction marries innovative speech solutions and robust carrier-grade infrastructure to accelerate innovation.”

It means much-needed consolidation in a digital telephony market that may yet prove hot in 2010, with Google Voice and BT’s Ribbit ramping up to offer voice comms overlapped with web services.

Until recently a second-generation dot.com darling of English media, six-year-old Spinvox raised its second $100 million in March 2008 from Goldman Sachs, along with GLG Partners, Blue Mountain Capital Management and Toscafund Asset Management. Invesco Perpetual in September said it lost 90% of its own investment

But its finances began looking shaky this year, when paidContent:UK reported how staff had accepted an offer of stock instead of salary. Christina Domecq, the chief executive, said in a July interview with us that missed payments from its suppliers and the pressure of rolling out in Latin America had stressed company finances, and promised the company would turn cash-positive in 90 days.

But our story opened a can of worms. A BBC News story piled on, reminding readers that Spinvox’s voicemail-to-text process is not wholly automated. The company admitted the necessity to use human transcribers at call centers in new territories is very expensive…

Spinvox had never outright disguised its use of humans but, facing a perception problem in the summer season on top of financial difficulties, it was forced to raise over £15 million in emergency investment and take a £30 million bridging loan to stay afloat – all while defending against staff complaints about company spending…

It amounted to a perfect storm that was sure to mean investors calling for a full or partial sale. Three months ago, Invesco publicly confirmed sale chatter by saying in a filing the company was on the block. The company declined to tell us whether it met its 90-day cash target.

Nuance isn’t yet detailing which parts of Spinvox, which has been through a few layoff rounds in the last year, may be retained, but our guess is it won’t be the whole thing. In a final effort to be upfront about the product, however, Nuance’s announcement reminds us that the service offers both “full and partial speech automation”.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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Forces Bing on browser box

Verizon has unilaterally updated user Storm 2 BlackBerries and other smartphones so that their browser search boxes can only be used with Microsoft Bing.…

Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn’t work

Read Full Story…
(Source The Register)

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ComScore has highlighted Android’s success in the US market while ignoring the finding that more than half its prospective smartphone buyers actually want a BlackBerry

ComScore has released the results of a survey of the US market under the headline: Android: Crashing the Smartphone Party. It says:

Among the report’s key findings is that consumer awareness of Google’s Android is growing rapidly, due in large part to the Verizon Droid ad campaign. Further, of those American consumers in the market for a smartphone, 17% are considering the purchase of an android-supported device in next three months, compared to 20% indicating they plan to purchase an iPhone.

What ComScore’s press release fails to mention, strangely, is that three of the top four mobile phones in its table of “Intended Smartphone Purchasers” are all from Research in Motion (RIM). The BlackBerry Pearl (18%) is beating the Apple iPhone 3GS (14%) while the BlackBerry Storm (13%) and Curve (11%) are not far behind.

With the BlackBerry Bold (4%) and Tour (3%) also making the Top 10, RIM’s BlackBerry system is the choice of more than half (51%) of those planning a purchase in the next three months. This is more than iPhone (20%) and Android (17%) added together.

RIM’s improved performance is supported by its latest financial results. As my colleague Richard Wray reported earlier this afternoon, profits in the three months to the end of November were $628.4m compared with $396.3m in the same quarter last year, a 59% increase. Rick’s story says:

RIM shipped a record-breaking 10 million smartphones, better than investors had expected, and said it expected to shift even more in the last three months of its financial year as its push into the consumer market continues to pay off.

To be specific, it expects to ship between 10.6 and 11.2 million mobiles at an ASP (average selling price) of $320.

The BlackBerry has long been popular for business email and among celebrities but it’s now attracting consumers, including teens who use it for instant messaging.

There’s still plenty of room for all the companies in the smartphone market to grow, for two reasons. First, the major handsets are still not available across the globe. In RIM’s case, only 35% of its subscribers are overseas, but this could change rapidly now RIM has signed deals with China Mobile and Digital China Holdings Ltd. Second, there’s a shift from ordinary mobiles to smartphones, which means that smartphone sales can continue to grow as existing phone users upgrade.

There are reasons for thinking that Android will do particularly well, because it can easily be adopted by local suppliers and networks: there’s no need to wait for Apple or RIM to design new handsets or set up operations in hundreds of different countries. Microsoft Windows enjoyed a similar advantage over the Mac. This time, however, it looks as though it will be Android that benefits, rather than Windows Mobile.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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• RIM shipped record-breaking 10 million smartphones
• Sales of rival Palm Pre dipped by 5% to 783,000 units

Consumer demand for BlackBerry handsets has boosted profits for RIM, the Canadian manufacturer of the mobile email device, which was once the preserve of business executives.

But a rise in quarterly profits of almost a third for RIM is in stark contrast to the poor performance of rival North American mobile phone manufacturer Palm, which reported a worse than expected loss for the three month period.

Both companies are battling hard for a share of the lucrative market for so-called smartphones, against the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer Nokia and newest entrant Apple, which has taken the market by storm with the iPhone.

After a faltering start with the initial version of its first touchscreen device, the BlackBerry Storm, which was critically panned, RIM has scored successes with the Storm 2 and a consumer-focused version of its Curve smartphone and has been expanding its share of the smartphone market

Analysts had been hoping for similarly great things from Palm. After several years in the doldrums, Palm released what many critics believe is its make or break handset – the Palm Pre – in the US over the summer. It has since arrived in the UK under an exclusive deal with O2. But while the Palm Pre has been a critical success, with reviewers saying its runs the iPhone a close second in terms of functionality, the handset has been a poor seller.

In the three months to end November, Palm shipped a mere 783,000 smartphones, representing a 5% decrease from the three months to end August, although it does mark a year-over-year increase of 41%.

In stark contrast, in the same period RIM shipped a record-breaking 10 million smartphones, better than investors had expected, and said it expected to shift even more in the last three months of its financial year as its push into the consumer market continues to pay off.

Strong sales of BlackBerry devices helped RIM grow quarterly revenues by 11% to $3.92bn (£2.4bn) and the company expects that to rise to between $4.2bn and $4.4bn in the three months to end February – its fiscal fourth quarter. Profits in the three months to end November were $628.4m, up from $475.6m in the previous three months and $396.3m in the same quarter last year.

Palm, on the other hand, reported its tenth consecutive quarterly loss, which was worse than analysts had been expecting as the company invested heavily in marketing the Palm Pre, and the more recently launched Palm Pixi, to try and resuscitate sales.

Palm’s net loss narrowed to $85.4m over the three months to end November – the company’s fiscal second quarter – compared with a loss of $508.6m a year earlier, though that figure was distorted by a tax payment.

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, apple, Blackberry, compare, compared, comparemobiles.com, consumer, deal, email, iphone, largest, maker, marketing, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, new, nokia, o2, palm, phone, phones, released, review, sam, sim, sol, storm, three, Touch, uk, world

Storm8′s iSpy

A maker of some of the most popular games for the iPhone has been surreptitiously collecting users’ cell numbers without their permission, according to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday.…

What is your recession sales strategy?

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(Source The Register)

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• Orange to start selling the iPhone from 10 November
• ‘Added value’ plan dashed Christmas price war hopes

Orange will start selling the iPhone to British customers in just over two weeks, triggering a two-horse race for customers in the run-up to Christmas.

The mobile phone company announced last month that it had become the first UK network to prise open O2′s exclusive grasp on the device, which has helped the company maintain its place as the UK’s largest operator.

Orange is understood to be planning to launch the iPhone on 10 November, the day after O2′s two-year exclusive contract with Apple comes to an end. It will be sold through the company’s own shops and Phones4U .

Carphone Warehouse, which was the only independent retailer able to stock the iPhone when O2 had it to itself, is also expected to sell the phone on behalf of Orange. Orange refused to comment.

The date that Orange has picked to start selling the phone is the same day that Vodafone will announce its half year results. Management at the company has made no secret over the past few months that it wanted to get its hands on the iPhone. Although it has spawned a host of copycat devices, it is still seen as the best touchscreen phone in the market, winning a clutch of industry awards.

When Orange announced it had managed to sign a deal with Apple, Vodafone moved quickly to sign its own deal with the Californian company but will not get its hands on launch its the iPhone handset until the start of the new year. Instead it will rely on the new Blackberry Storm 2, But the merger timetable has been threatened by the government’s recent decision to ask the competition authorities to look at the impact of the deal on the UK’s airwaves. As a result, T-Mobile may have to go it alone with the iPhone for most of next year.

Kevin Russell, chief executive of the UK’s smallest network, 3, said last week he expects to be stocking the device sometime next year.

“I would expect the iPhone to be on the 3 network sometime during 2010,” he told a Westminster eForum event in London. “At the moment, we don’t have the iPhone. We don’t really have any smartphones but if we improve our range of smartphones and introduce the iPhone then our data traffic will grow massively.”

Certainly interest in the iPhone among UK consumers shows no signs of abating. Already Orange has had over 200,000 customers register their interest in getting the device, before the company has even said what it will charge for it.

There is hope that having more than one network offer the device will lead to a Christmas price war. But Orange UK boss Tom Alexander told the Guardian after signing the deal that the company is more likely to look at other ways of increasing “value”, such as including accessories and even pre-loading certain applications.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, apple, best, Blackberry, compare, comparemobiles.com, consumer, contract, deal, government, iphone, largest, merger, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, new, o2, orange, phone, phones, phones4u, sam, sol, storm, t-mobile, Touch, uk, vodafone

Raindrop will aggregate multiple online communications media, according to Mozilla, and sift the stuff you want from the less important

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(Source ZDNet UK)

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• Nokia put the cat among the pigeons by announcing that it was suing Apple for patent infringement. A failed agreement between the two over some licenses for using some Nokia systems for wireless protocols puts around £7 an iPhone. I’d expect Apple to pay up quietly – but it’s bad timing by Nokia on the back of its recent struggles.

• What’s going on with Amazon? The company announced remarkably strong financial results on Thursday, saying that the Kindle was now the most popular item it sold and that it expected Christmas to be even better. Recession, what recession?

• Time for the weekend, and here’s a little something to keep you going until Monday – or at least the next 30 seconds. OK, it is only going to apply to those of you who (like me) get a little obsessive about just HOW AMAZING the technologies used in TV programmes like CSI manages to be. But it’s still bloody funny. (Courtesy of b3ta)

You can follow our links and commentary each day through Twitter (@guardiantech, or our personal accounts) or by watching our Delicious feed.

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, apple, blog, compare, comparemobiles.com, iphone, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, nokia, phone, phones, sol, storm, twitter, uk

New Mobile & Latest Deal News!

Stock arriving Monday, order now for delivery next week.

BlackBerry received mixed reviews last year for the original Storm, which was the first touchscreen BlackBerry device. The new BlackBerry Storm2 is exactly the same size as the original Storm, many of the issues have been addressed and BlackBerry have piled in even more technology, producing a fuller, smoother-running device, with an improved touchscreen.

The on-screen QWERTY keyboard now allows for simultaneous double-touching, which means faster typing. The keys now feel more real by both audibly and physically clicking. As anticipated, the Storm2 now has Wi-Fi, something that was sorely missing in the original Storm. Internal memory has been increased to 2GB and can be expanded with a microSD card. Many Google apps will work on the Storm2, such as Gmail and Google Maps, and the Storm2 has GPS.

The 3.15 megapixel camera has autofocus, LED flash, image stabiliser and geo-tagging. Apps for Twitter and Facebook are pre-installed and photos can be uploaded directly from the phone. Business users will be happy too, with push email, calendar and contacts that are compatible with Microsoft Exchange, Novell Group Wise and Lotus Domino.

Compare all BlackBerry Storm2 deals

Tags: 3, all, Blackberry, card, compare, comparemobiles.com, deal, Deals, email, google, latest, latest deal, mobile, mobiles, new, new mobile, phone, review, reviews, sam, sim, sol, storm, test, Touch, twitter

Reviews of the new Windows Mobile 6.5 are uniformly dismissive – and why is Microsoft so silent about how many have been sold?

Windows Mobile 6.5 came out. We’d like to say it’s a barnstormer. But then we read the reviews. And they raise some very serious questions about the future of Microsoft’s mobile platform.

Shall we begin?

Let’s see, Gizmodo doesn’t like Windows Mobile 6.5…

The remaining interface changes are subtle, and intended almost solely to make Windows Mobile 6.5 bearable to use without a stylus. (Though don’t get me wrong—most WinMo 6.5 devices will, damningly, still come with styluses.) It doesn’t really feel like a redesign—it feels like someone went through 6.1 and adjusted a few values. Add a few pixels of menu spacing here, some plasticky highlight graphics there, and BOOM. 6.5. Let’s go to lunch.

and…

The confusingly-named Mobile Internet Explorer 6 is to Mobile IE 5 what IE 7 was to IE6 on the desktop. Get that? This is to say it’s a massive upgrade, but like IE7, which added tabs and popup blocking about two years after everyone else had it, Mobile IE6 is at least a generation behind its competitors. For what it’s worth, it adds smooth panning and scrolling, intelligent zooming and full(er) support for CSS and Javascript pages that MIE5 used to choke on spectacularly.

Rendering is good, but not WebKit good, and the browser has a tendency to reflow text in an odd way, formatting columns of text more narrowly than it should. And even though rendering is vastly improved—though inexplicably, not to the point of the Zune HD’s browser—the experience is still glitchy. Page loading is slow even on a fast Wi-Fi connection, and there’s often a pretty wide gap between when a page looks like it’s done and when the browser actually becomes responsive enough to interact with.

…To put it another way, handset manufacturers have done more in the last two years to improve Windows Mobile than Microsoft has, which borders on pathetic. In the time since Windows Mobile 6.0 came out in February of 2007, Apple has released the iPhone—three times. Palm has created the Pre, with its totally new webOS. Android has come into being, and grown into something wonderful. RIM has created a touch phone and a revamped BlackBerry OS. For these companies, the world has changed.

And Greg Kumparak at MobileCrunch doesn’t like it…

Windows Mobile 6.5, we wanted to love you. We wanted you to come along and wash away the past, whisking away all signs of the antiquated 6.1 we’ve grown so tired of ragging on.

We went into this review with the full hopes of emerging with a generally positive outlook. Sorry, Windows Mobile 6.5 – it’s just not going to happen.

…a very small chunk of the operating system (namely, the home screen and the start screen – more on those later) has been overhauled for finger-friendliness. If you actually want to do anything, however, you’re straight back to using the stylus. Want to type? Stylus. Want to navigate the settings screens? Stylus. Want to do just about anything outside of launching an application? Yep – grab that stylus.

…We can sum up the entire problem by pointing out one flaw: Let’s say you want to move an application in the start menu. You tap-and-hold an icon, expecting it to allow you to drag it to a new location. A menu pops up, with just one option: Move to top. You can not rearrange icons manually here. At all. If you want to move one icon to a specific location, you get to move every other icon arround it. This is an incredibly obvious use case, and it was not addressed. This lack of foresight extends throughout most of the OS.

Typing on Windows Mobile 6.5 is an absolute miserable chore. How bad? Every time we sat down to review this thing, we got so frustrated with the keyboard that we had to stop. We. Hate. This. Keyboard. Typing on this keyboard is like sewing with your feet.

…Every single change in Windows Mobile 6.5 feels like it was made by a team of homebrewers or modders, rather than a huge corporation with truckloads of money to blow on one of their flagship products.

Oh dear. Well, perhaps ZDNet’s Matthew Miller will like it better?

The headline is “Windows Mobile 6.5 disappoints; no Start customizations and stylus still required“. That’s not promising.

I have to say Microsoft disappoints me greatly with this release. We have seen more leaked than what was released today so maybe there will be some upcoming updates, but I am disappointed by the lipstick Microsoft gives to us with WM 6.5. The thing is, the beauty isn’t even skin deep on this release..

Oh, come on Matthew, don’t hold back. Tell us what you really think.

The icons are randomly placed on the display and the only thing you can do with them is tap and hold to select to move them to the top. That is it! You CANNOT place icons where you want to, you CANNOT add or remove icons, and you CANNOT create folders and manage the icons to create an efficient device. IMHO, this is so ridiculous that I see little value in this new Start menu scheme and find it to be worse than what we have on previous Windows Mobile operating systems.

Hmm. Perhaps things will improve further in?

You will find several menus that are now much larger and more finger friendly, but these also require that you now tap arrows to continue scrolling through long lists. The worst though is that diving down to this level and lower takes you back to drop downs that require you to have a fingernail or stylus to make selections. This is particularly evident when you try to create a new appointment, manage your regional settings, enter a new contact, or perform many other tasks throughout the device.

That’s a no, then.

But even more pressing than the bad reviews for the update is the mystery of precisely how well Windows Mobile is faring: as in, how many licences has it sold? We know, for example, how the iPhone is doing (better and better, apparently); but whereas it used to quite easy to find Windows Mobile licence sales numbers, Microsoft has suddenly come over all quiet about it.

What we can be confident of is that the number of iPhones being sold now exceeds the number of Windows Mobile phones being sold. Why do I say that? Because Apple publishes the number of iPhones sold every quarter (a record 7.4m in the just-gone quarter alone; 20.75m in its past four quarters). You can be sure that if Microsoft were outselling it, or even butting up close, it would be shouting it from the rooftops, blogs and press releases. It isn’t.

In fact at the Windows 6.5 launch earlier this month our communications editor Richard Wray flat-out asked how many Windows Mobile licences had been sold in the past year. He didn’t get an answer.

Given that Microsoft says that the next version of Windows Mobile – version 7 – will be coming out in the fourth quarter of 2010, you have to wonder how many licences it will be selling then – given that Google’s Android could be then be up to version 3.0 (it’s just hit 2.0) and that RIM, Palm (don’t forget Palm) and of course Apple will all have been slogging away at updating their products.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, android, apple, Blackberry, blog, compare, comparemobiles.com, google, HD, iphone, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, palm, phone, phones, released, review, reviews, sol, storm, three, Touch, uk, update, world

Finnish company Nokia admits that it has underperformed

The many touchscreen mobile phones that have hit the shops this year, from the Apple iPhone and Palm Pre to the HTC Hero, have continued to eat into the commanding lead once enjoyed by Nokia, with the world’s largest handset manufacturer reporting its first loss for over a decade.

The Finnish company admitted that it underperformed the overall mobile phone market in the three months to 30 September. The decision to slash the value of its networks joint venture with Germany’s Siemens, due to the continuing economic gloom, plunged the company into an overall quarterly loss of €913m (£836m) compared with a profit last year of €1bn. It is the first loss for the company since it started reporting on a quarter-by-quarter basis in 1996.

Nokia, which once made more than four out of every 10 mobile phones sold worldwide, has suffered as new entrants including Samsung, LG, Palm, HTC and Apple have barged their way into the lucrative market for so-called smartphones, devices that can access the web, send email and play music. Consumers are increasingly being offered a range of touchscreen devices, most recently the Palm Pre, Motorola Dext and BlackBerry Storm 2, which will hit Britain later this month. Nokia has been slow to react; as a result its average selling price has slipped as it has sold more so-called mid-range phones and its smartphone pricing has come under intense pressure.

The market as a whole, meanwhile, has been suffering as consumers have been holding off getting a new phone, instead switching to cheaper Sim-only deals because of worries about their own finances in the economic downturn. Nokia signalled in its third quarter results that this trend may be coming to an end, helped in part by the slew of attractive new touchscreen devices which operators are using to lure consumers on to long-term contracts. This year, Nokia expects industry mobile device volumes to be approximately 1.12bn units, down 7% from 1.21 bn units in 2008. That is a better performance than Nokia’s previous forecast of a 10% decline this year.

But Nokia itself does not appear to be capitalising on the pick-up, with its sales lagging the overall market in the third quarter.

Nokia said it reckons the entire mobile phone industry shipped 288m units in the quarter, down 7% on the same period a year ago, but up 7% on the second quarter. Nokia, however, shipped 108.5m units in the third quarter, which is down 8% on the same period last year and only up 5% on the previous quarter.

Nokia blamed a shortage of components for its poor third quarter performance compared with the wider market. Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, its chief executive, said “We would have sold more devices and smartphones in the third quarter without the capacity constraints. The constraints did in fact hit the smartphone part of the business more than the rest of the devices.”

Nokia’s average selling price in the quarter was €62, at the same level as in the second quarter, but well down on last year’s €72.

Analysts believe Nokia has yet to come up with a real competitor to the iPhone. In a note issued after the results, Standard & Poor’s equity research team said Nokia’s overall market share actually fell in the third quarter, to 37.7% from 38.5% in the previous quarter and its share of the high-end smartphone market was also down. Nokia had originally forecast that it would grow its market share this year but was forced to ditch that forecast in July.

“While commentary that the demand environment for handsets improved during Q3 is encouraging, as is the improved industry outlooks for both handsets and infrastructure, we believe competitive pressures are intensifying and we see nothing from our preliminary read of results to change our view that Q4 will be challenging from both a market share and profitability standpoint,” the S&P team added.

Carolina Milanesi, research director for mobile devices at industry specialist Gartner, said sales of Nokia’s flagship N97 smartphone do not appear to have been exactly stellar. “Despite their positive comments on the N97 I am reluctant to say that sales of 1.8m for a flagship product are good enough. Moreover, as Nokia stated at the beginning of September that N97 shipped 1.5m devices since the launch we can see that sales are actually not accelerating.”

Nokia plans to launch four new touchscreen phones in the fourth quarter including the 5230 and 5530. Milanesi said she expects them to do well but “they will help drive volume, not necessarily value” because they are likely to be relatively cheaply priced.

Nokia stripped out smartphone sales for the third quarter, saying 47m “converged mobile devices” were shipped in the three months, compared with an estimated 44.2m units in the third quarter 2008 and 41m units in the second quarter 2009. Of that total figure, Nokia sold 16.4m units in the third quarter 2009, compared with 15.5m units in the third quarter 2008 and 16.9m units in the second quarter 2009.

Nokia’s share of the converged mobile device market was an estimated 35% in the third quarter 2009 down from 41% in the second quarter 2009, suggesting that consumers who were on Sim-only deals in the summer and have recently decided to take a phone on a long-term contract have not been rushing to grab a Nokia device, but instead plumped for rivals such as the iPhone.

In a note on Apple, American investment house Northeast Securities said it has run supply chain checks which indicate that shipments of the iPhone in September “exceeded [Wall] Street estimates of 7m by 25%-30%. Wider distribution and share gains were contributing factors”.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, apple, apple iphone, Blackberry, cheaper, comments, compare, compared, comparemobiles.com, consumer, contract, deal, Deals, drive, email, HTC, iphone, largest, lg, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, moto, motorola, n97, networks, new, nokia, palm, phone, phones, sam, samsung, sim, sol, storm, three, Touch, uk, venture, vodafone, world

Drinks firm PepsiCo accused by Twitter users of stereotyping women with iPhone app suggesting pick-up lines

PepsiCo has apologised after it was accused of stereotyping women with an iPhone application for its Amp Energy drink helping users “score” on a date.

The app featured 24 types of women, including “nerd”, “foreign exchange student” and “treehugger”, and offered possible pickup lines including “Wasn’t I in Space Academy with you?” and “You know the Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. I wonder what else she shaves?”

Pepsi’s “Amp Up Before You Score” app prompted a storm of protest on Twitter, with commenters suggesting people drink Coke instead.

The US drinks giant responded with a tweet apologising for any offence caused. “Our app tried 2 show the humorous lengths guys go 2 pick up women,” Pepsi said. “We apologise if it’s in bad taste & appreciate your feedback.”

Other categories of women featured in the app included “sorority girl”, “cougar” and “punk girl”, and offered suggested pick-up lines for each one. For “rebound girl” it offered a map of local ice-cream shops.

The app, which was launched last Friday, also encouraged users who were successful with one of its chat-up lines to record it via email, Facebook or Twitter.

“Let’s say you meet a girl who is way into being green, and you need a vegan restaurant – we’ve got you covered,” says an online promo for the app.

“Or say you need a quick primer on punk rock because she is staring holes in you and you are a little scared – we have got your back. If you are anticipating a successful night the Before You Score app gives you up to the minute info, feeds, lines and much more to help you Amp up and talk to 24 different types of ladies.”

Under the headline “Alienate your customers? PepsiCo has an app for that”, social media website Mashable said it was “certainly bold and controversial, but does it go too far?”.

Twitter users certainly appeared to think so. “So is there only 1 type of man? A neanderthal who needs a cellphone app to talk to women? Here’s a hint: put down the cellphone,” said one.

Another said: “Enough with the sexist apps – at least make it equally sexist and make a version that women can play.”

When asked if PepsiCo would withdraw the app, a spokesman told the Wall Street Journal it was evaluating its options.

“The application was designed to entertain and appeal to Amp’s target market,” said the spokesman. “We’ll continue to monitor the feedback from all parties and act accordingly.”

But not all Twitter users thought the app controversial. Another said: “Calm down PC pansies. Go read a Cosmo and get a sense of humour. You all make me sick with your sheltered approach to life.”

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

• If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, compare, comparemobiles.com, email, HD, iphone, line, marketing, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, phone, phones, sol, storm, test, twitter, uk, world

• Much-improved touchscreen hopes to silence critics

Vodafone will only have the forthcoming Blackberry Storm 2 to itself for a few weeks, after its success in grabbing the Apple iPhone is understood to have brought its exclusive collaboration with the email device’s manufacturer Research In Motion (RIM) to an end in the UK.

The mobile phone operator will offer Blackberry’s second attempt to break into the touchscreen smartphone market free to any customer willing to sign up to a contract worth £35 a month for two years (not £30 as we originally reported) when it hits stores on October 26.

Vodafone will have the handset as an exclusive in the UK, but only for a few weeks. RIM is understood to have demanded that the device be available to other operators after Vodafone joined Orange in successfully ending O2′s
exclusive two-year deal with Apple for the iPhone in the UK.

It is unclear whether any of the other UK operators will be stocking the Storm 2 in time for Christmas, but by the start of next year – when Vodafone will finally be able to start shipping the iPhone – it is expected to be available on at least one other network, most probably Orange, which will also start selling the iPhone within the next few weeks.

The Storm 2 will be launched by Vodafone in Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, France, Italy and South Africa, and Canadian handset maker RIM is hoping that it will get a more positive critical reaction than the first version that went on sale last November.

The original BlackBerry Storm was famously blasted by technophile Stephen Fry – a diehard Apple fan – who told his followers on Twitter that the device was “shockingly bad. I mean embarrassingly awful.”

RIM is believed to have tried in vain to get a test version of the handset to the actor and writer to see whether he reckons it is an improvement.

In fact, despite its critical panning, the phone went on to become one of the best selling handsets in the US market, greatly aiding RIM’s drive to expand its reach well beyond its traditional market of business people who want to be able to send email while on the move.

The new phone, seen by the Guardian, has a better touchscreen than the original version but Blackberry has retained the Storm’s controversial SurePress technology – which requires the user to physically press down the screen, rather than just touching it – to execute certain tasks. While the original Storm had just one SurePress sensor, however, the new device has four – one at each corner of the screen – meaning that pressing the device is a far smoother experience and typing takes far less effort.

RIM has also turned the individual physical buttons from the first version – which included call pick-up, end, menu and back buttons – into part of the touchscreen. The keys on the side of the device, meanwhile, which had a tendency to fall-off the first phone, have been replaced by more durable rubber keys.

The Storm 2 has a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus, flash and video recording but only 2GB of storage – though it can take microSD cards which would raise this by as much as 16GB. Blackberry has also improved the 3.5mm stereo headset jack, which was also a problem on the earlier device. Crucially the Storm 2 has wi-fi capability, something that was sadly lacking from the original device.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, apple, apple iphone, best, Blackberry, card, compare, comparemobiles.com, contract, deal, drive, email, free, gadget, gadgets, iphone, maker, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, o2, orange, phone, phones, sol, storm, test, Touch, twitter, uk, vodafone

BlackBerry maker RIM is preparing to launch a successor to its touch-screen
Storm handset, according to reports, which indicate that it may appear as early
as this week on Vodafone’s network.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

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