iPhone 4G: What to Expect

iPhone 4G Rumors Heat Up

It's been less than a year since the iPhone 3GS launched, and the rumor mill is already churning out speculation about an upcoming iPhone 4G, expected as early as May.
New rumors have been circulating over the past couple of days, saying a new Apple iPhone 4G will be available by June, or even as early as May. Besides the earlier-than-expected launch date (new iPhone models traditionally come out in June or July), potential new features are in discussion as well, such as a better camera, an OLED screen, a removable battery, and different casing.

A Bloomberg/BusinessWeek report quotes an analyst from the Goldman Sachs Group saying the iPhone 4G would have a better camera than the 3-megapixel shooter found on the iPhone 3GS. The iPhone 4G's camera could offer up to 5 megapixels, which would put it on the par with the camera in Google's Nexus One.
The story also speculates that Apple is working on an updated version of the iPhone OS with an overhauled App Store. The analyst in the Bloomberg story did not identify who gave him the information, but speculates the iPhone 4G will go into production as early as April, with availability expected sometime in June or July.
Derailing from the usual July/July launch timeframe though, is a report originating from a French Web site, which claims we are likely to see the next generation iPhone in May. The report says Apple targeted May because it thought that's when Google would release their Nexus One Android smartphone. Actually, the Nexus One was unveiled earlier this month. Is it like that Apple would move up the release of a new iPhone to compete with Google? Maybe. But it doesn't seem likely that Apple would misjudge Google's launch date by several months.
Also this week, a report from Korea Times quoted unnamed mobile executives claiming the iPhone 4G will have an OLED screen and support for video chat. Most surprisingly, it claimed that the upcoming iPhone would feature a removable battery - though the chances of this happening are slight (Apple refused to use removable batteries in all three generations of iPhones and its latest laptops also sport non-removable batteries).
All-in-all, some of these rumors are plausible, such as the OLED screen and a better camera, though earlier launch dates as soon as May might seem a bit far-fetched, as Apple usually refreshes products in a yearly cycle.

SOURCE: PCWORLD

Google Nexus One Vs. Apple iPhone

Promoting and directly marketing HTC's latest new Android phone under its own brand, Google has taken the fate of its Android smartphone platform into its own hands. How does the new "superphone" mass up to last summer's iPhone 3GS?

AppleInsider has presented a series of articles on how Android stacks up against Apple's iPhone OS as a platform in general terms. In this article, we'll consider the hardware specifics of the latest offering from Google's partner.

Meet your maker

While the tech press likes to say Google designed the Nexus One "with HTC," Google executives clearly gave all the credit to HTC at its introduction, saying "It’s inaccurate to say Google designed the phone. Peter [Chou] and his team [at HTC] built and designed the phone. Google is just marketing and selling the phone."

The phone is nearly identical to what HTC itself sells under the name Bravo in Europe, apart from the placement of its buttons. Google's impact on the Nexus One's specs is far less significant than even Microsoft's original Zune, which while being based on the Toshiba Gigabeat, was at least given a design update and noticeably different software that rendered it incompatible with other PlaysforSure MP3 players. In contrast, the Nexus One is very clearly a Google-branded HTC phone, and there are no intentional, artificial compatibility barriers with other Android platform devices.

HTC has a history of building higher-end PDA-style phones, often with physical keyboards, large screens, and envelope pushing hardware features. Most of its phones have been designed to run Microsoft's Windows Mobile, and are therefore targeted at that platform's core market of IT staff and gadget enthusiasts. HTC has served as Microsoft's primary licensee, building 80% of the Windows Mobile phones to reach the market (although many of these were sold under different brand names, just as Google is now doing with the Nexus One).

The company also built previous generations of PDA-style phones sold by Palm, prior to the debut of the new WebOS-based Pre. But HTC's history as the leading maker of Windows Mobile phones is what positioned it to be the first major manufacture to launch an Android phone, because Google targeted its relatively new Android operating system at hardware reference designs running Windows Mobile, in much the same way that popular desktop distributions of Linux are geared to run on Microsoft's reference design for Windows PCs.

Magic, Dream, Hero, Passion

Google launched Android 1.0 in October 2008 with HTC's Dream (sold as the T-Mobile G1), then followed up with HTC's second generation Magic (the T-Mobile myTouch) last summer, and then the HTC Hero (also sold with slight modifications as the Verizon Droid Eris) last fall. It's therefore nothing out of the ordinary that the newly released Nexus One running Android 2.1 is also being sold under other HTC names in other markets.

Unike earlier HTC models, the new Nexus One does not pair the stock Android OS with HTC's "Sense UI," a user interface theme HTC added to the stock Android both to differentiate its offerings and to solve some rough edges in the Android interface, such as the look of its virtual keyboard. HTC also applies Sense to its Windows Mobile phones which makes HTC's Android phones look and feel more similar to the company's other products than to those of other Android makers, including Motorola's Verizon Droid and the upcoming Sony Ericsson Xperia X10.

Overall, this fractionalization has resulted in making the Android platform less similar to commodity Windows PCs and more like PlaysForSure devices in terms of being unique to their manufacturer rather than offering a largely identical experience between vendors. With Android 2.1 however, Google seems to be signaling the intention to fold in many of HTC's Sense improvements into the standard OS, which should help streamline the platform at the expense of HTC's differentiation.

The Android balancing act

It remains to be seen whether Google will continue to work to neutralize the differentiation efforts of its partners in order to strengthen the Android brand, or whether it will continue to encourage vendors to create their own look and feel independently, as Motorola did with Blur and Sony Ericsson is expected to do with its upcoming phone.

On the other hand, it is in HTC's interests to create reasons for customers to pick its phones over those of other competitors. The company already advertises its Android and Windows Mobile devices under the same ad campaign, direction attention to its own brand rather than to either licensed operating system. Further, at CES the company unveiled a new initiative to release a series of lower-end smartphones based on BREW, Qualcomm's proprietary alternative to Java.

That indicates that despite its shift from Windows Mobile, HTC isn't betting its future on Android. Additionally, it shows that Android itself doesn't do enough to allow phone makers to hit low price points. Successful Android phones require a fast processor and significant RAM and other system resources to be taken seriously.

Finding one operating system to span from the bargain bin to the high end has similarly been a challenge for Nokia, which uses its own simple Nokia OS, the more sophisticated Symbian, a full distro of Maemo Linux in its Internet Tablets, and Windows on its netbook. Samsung has also announced plans to juggle Windows Mobile, Android, and its own Bada platform. Most other makers also have a variety of operating systems, leaving Apple, RIM, and Palm unique in pushing one single OS.

Motorola has announced an intention do to this with Android, but is already facing a rather direct blow from Google and its new branding partnership with HTC. On the other side, Google is also planning to add its new Chrome OS into the mix as a way to enter the significantly different netbook market, which will splinter efforts by its current licensees who already have Android netbooks and tablets under development.

The company has also announced a clear intention to turn its hardware partners into commodity manufacturers, leaving Google with control of all the value across their products, much as Microsoft did to PC makers in the 90s. This is all a precarious balancing act challenge Apple doesn't face.

Android super-Hero

Unlike most of its Windows Mobile phones, which nearly always supply a physical keyboard, HTC's Nexus One builds upon the previous Hero/Droid Eris form factor to deliver something that's closer to the iPhone, but which still supplies a trackball pointer rather than relying on ubiquitous multitouch for navigation. The result is a something of a middle ground between the gadgety PC experience of Windows Mobile and the slick and refined appliance experience Apple provides.

In many ways, the Nexus One is HTC's answer to the Motorola Verizon Droid, which stole the spotlight this winter as Google focused on it and left HTC's Hero (Verizon Droid Eris) to serve as a runner up to be given away for free with Droid purchases. HTC's Hero was also relegated to running an older version of the Android OS, as Google launched Android 2.0 on the Droid exclusively.

As with the Droid, the Nexus One's hybrid design of being an iPhone-like touchscreen but still sporting a Windows Mobile-like array of touch sensitive buttons and a physical trackball results in the problem of making it easy to inadvertently fall back to the home screen while attempting to type. "we found ourselves consistently accidentally tapping them while composing an email or text message," Engadget complained. That review also said the unit's "[trackball] placement feels a bit awkward here, and there's literally nothing in the OS that requires it." In contrast, the iPhone 3GS uses a recessed home button that is difficult to hit accidentally.

The Nexus One now brings the Android 2.x platform to HTC's product lineup, although existing Hero/Droid Eris users will have to wait as long as this summer before they can obtain the latest update from their mobile provider. Apple regularly releases updates that all iPhone users can install as soon as they become available. Again, the layers of differentiation that Android partners are adding (like HTC's Sense, Motorola's Blur, and support for unique hardware) tend to complicate and slow the propagation of Android updates for users.

New Features

The Nexus One carries forward the basic iPhone-like design of the earlier Magic and Hero, adding a suite of new features such as a fast new processor, noise canceling audio, a better camera supporting 720p HD capture and playback initial reviewers have noted that HTC's camera works much better than the Droid's, which was plagued by focusing issues), a higher resolution screen, and a new OLED display like the Zune HD.

The display resolution of the Nexus One now almost matches the Droid, although it does so using an OLED screen. This may be why it uses a 480x800 resolution rather than the Droid's 480x854, adding some extra complication for Android developers who now have three different popular resolutions to account for on the platform (earlier models use the same 320x480 resolution of the iPhone).

As we noted in regard to the Zune HD, OLED technology results in a screen that promises to save power and which looks exceptional in low light. However, reviewers have actually reported that, like the Zune HD, the Nexus One's screen is terrible to the point of unusable in bright light, with Engadget writing, "Oh, and using this thing in daylight? Forget about it. Like most screens of this type, the Nexus One is a nightmare to see with any kind of bright light around, and snapping photos with it on a sunny day was like taking shots with your eyes closed."

At the same time, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, who has been using the phone for weeks, complained that he "found battery life to be woefully brief," and that users should "be prepared to keep this phone near a charger at all times," regardless of its rated battery life and the energy saving potential of its new display.

Google's Zune

In addition to OLED, the Nexus One also shares other engineering choices with the Zune. Unlike the iPhone and the iPods before it, which are all designed to power down the screen as quickly as possible the moment you stop interacting with it, the Nexus One debuts Zune-like flashy effects that assume you'll be staring at the screen even while listening to music. These include new interactive graphic background effects and music visualizers which require the screen to be on in order to notice them, an engineering decision that, like Microsoft's Zune, indicates more interest in delivering Vista-like sizzle than the practical, functional utility that Apple trends toward.

For Apple's products, anything that distracts from core features or doesn't add tangible value is a potential casualty. The company canned the latent audio recording features on the first iPods and initially delivered a simple black and white screen. The iPhone's user interface is rich with animation effects, but they are all targeted at enhancing its navigation and overall feel, not to decorate the screen with superfluous candy.

There are also more practical features the Nexus One holds over last summer's iPhone 3GS: the camera has an LED flash, which is handy when taking close ups in dim lighting; the camera also has a higher rated resolution, but that isn't necessarily an improvement when you're using a tiny CCD chip, as packing more pixels into a tiny sensor can result in more grain noise and greater file sizes without actually improving the shots you can take. The noise cancellation feature sound promising and valuable, and there's also a novel speech recognition feature designed to serve as an alternative to the virtual keyboard. Engadget called it "marginally successful."

The phone is also faster; it's rated to be significantly faster than the Droid, but only slightly faster then the iPhone 3GS when loading web pages. In JavaScript rendering, the iPhone 3GS actually came out ahead in some tests. One would expect that the very latest Android phone using the most advanced ARM processor available would perform significantly better than last summer's iPhone 3GS and just narrowly better than the Droid.

This indicates that Apple's software provides significant performance optimization, something that last year's Palm Pre also demonstrated. That model used the same chip Apple put in the iPhone 3GS, but failed to achieve the same performance. This does not bode well for competitors once Apple debuts its own optimized ARM cores under development within the company's PA Semi subsidiary.

Missing Features

Despite being almost a year ahead of the iPhone 3GS in an industry where performance and capacity can often double on an annual basis, the Nexus One doesn't do a lot of things Apple's phone did last year. Like the Droid, the Nexus One doesn't do hardware encryption, meaning that most Microsoft Exchange shops will refuse to support either model (unless you can convince your company to downgrade its default security policy). The iPhone 3GS does support Exchange's default policy settings, which require device encryption.

The Android OS also can't handle moving purchased software titles from Android Market into the devices' Flash RAM storage (which on HTC and Motorola devices, like other phones developed for Windows Mobile, is provided primarily on removable SD RAM cards). This results in a significant limitation for developers and for users who want to run sophisticated mobile apps such as games. Google as been aware of this issue for a long time, but only commented that it has plans to address it at some point in the future.

Until that happens, growth of the Android Market will be artificially handicapped as Apple's App Store juggernaut further establishes itself as the best way for developers to make money and for users to find the latest, richest, and most regularly updated games, serious applications, and software-integrated hardware peripherals. Speaking of which, the Nexus One doesn't have anything comparable to the iPhone's Dock Connector, which has given birth to an ecosystem of iPhone and iPod related peripherals. Instead, the Nexus One only provides a mini USB connector.

Microsoft copied Apple in creating its own hybrid connector supplying power, USB, audio, and video signals for the Zune, but also demonstrated how difficult it was to build momentum behind such a standard. Google, partnered with a variety of hardware competitors under Android, neither created a standard hardware connector for Android nor one for its own branded version of the HTC Passion/Bravo. There is a docking mechanism of some sort, but no details on when the dock will be made available and what capabilities it will have in the absence of a hybrid connector.

The iPhone 3GS also supplies a consistent multitouch user interface that is used throughout it bundled apps. Google has only added limited support for this in the Android OS, and apps that can make the most use of "pinch to zoom" type features don't consistently offer it to the user. That includes Google's own web browser, which has become a primary feature of smartphones. The Nexus One also lacks the iPhone 3GS' automatic focus, white balance, and exposure set by the user's touch.

The Network

It's often said that the biggest problem with the iPhone is its association with AT&T, at least in the US. That being the case, it's hard to see how the Nexus One improves upon things by either limiting users to an even less complete network on T-Mobile (which suffers from serious problems both due to its less penetrating higher frequency radio spectrum as well as its much smaller network, primarily concentrated in urban areas) or asking them to revert back to 2007 and forgo 3G service completely to use the phone unlocked on AT&T.

Google promises a Verizon version to follow, but hasn't said when, hinting only that it is likely around the same time Apple is expected to bring the iPhone to CDMA carriers using either a worldmode or separate CDMA chipset. The reason behind this vagueness is likely related to Google's efforts to balance its love between carriers and hardware partners. Users interested in the Nexus One but wanting a Verizon phone are directed to the Droid.

Of course, the iPhone is also limited to working on AT&T or in EDGE-only mode on T-Mobile (if users incur the risks involved with cracking the carrier lock). It remains to be seen whether Google can keep users satisfied with T-Mobile's network and avoid the same criticism Apple gets for partnering with AT&T. If it can, Apple may be more likely to offer a new version of the iPhone that works with both AT&T and T-Mobile's 3G networks.

Reception

When Apple debuted the iPhone 3GS last summer, it all but silenced any talk out the Palm Pre, which up to that point had stoked lots of enthusiastic anticipation. Observers immediately shifted their attention to other potential rivals to the iPhone, and Android began receiving much of that attention. The Hero and then the Droid took turns basking in the Android spotlight last winter, and have now been eclipsed by the Nexus One, with general consensus being that this model is the "Droid-killer."

At the same time, Apple has continued selling its iPhone 3GS, shifting focus only slightly to the complementary iPod touch. Now Apple is stoking hype surrounding its expected Tablet launch, while continuing to sell and promote the same iPhone model. This pattern of Apple conquering new territory with blockbuster releases that occur only once a year while rivals throw handfuls of new models under its tank treads appears to be continuing with Android.

Google appears to be purposely fractionalizing its brand by pitting itself against each of its hardware rivals while also assigning Android credibility to Verizon with the "Droid" brand, and associating "with Google" to anyone who agrees to put its apps on their phone. While the iPhone brand has remained globally famous for going on three years now, Google is making Android an umbrella term that doesn't necessarily mean anything really good or bad while its partners also pick a variety of model names that will only apply to specific markets and or providers.

But the point of a brand is to associate a name with a strong reputation and consistent level of quality. It's not clear how Nexus One will do that for Google, no matter how much success it can generate before Android's attention spotlight shifts to another model. Additionally, by launching the marginally new HTC model with the hubris of "superphone" attached to it, Google risks associating itself with an embarrassing failure that will impede its ability to grab legitimate attention in the future, another similarity it shares with Microsoft's Zune.

Source: AppleInsider

Nokia asks court to bar U.S. imports of Apple's Macs, iPhones, iPods

In a further acceleration of an already bitter dispute, Nokia asked a federal court to bar the importation of Apple hardware. Nokia claims to stop importation Apple’s iPhone, iPod and Mac products. The lawsuit- the second Nokia has filed against Apple in the patent war that broke out last October- coincides with a complaint the company filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission last week.

In the new complaint Nokia claimed that Apple is violating in its products, and looks for a restriction barring Apple from further infringement, as well as damages from Apple. Since the trade commission does not make decisions about monetary compensation, Nokia had to file the federal lawsuit in addition to its objection with the ITC.

The lawsuit claimed that almost every major piece of hardware Apple sells violates one or more of the seven patents. The complete list includes the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS smart phones; the iPod Touch, iPod Nano and iPod Classic music players; the iMac Mac Mini and Mac Pro desktops; and the MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air notebooks.

Nokia thrust off its clash with Apple in October with a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Delaware charging Apple's iPhone violates on ten Nokia patents. In December Apple charged against Nokia that its products violate on 13 of its own patents. In its countersuit, Apple laid out in fiery rhetoric its position on the matter. "Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours," Bruce Sewell, Apple's general counsel, alleged in a statement at the time.

"Nokia has been the leading developer of many key technologies in small electronic devices" said Paul Melin, head of Nokia's patent-licensing efforts, in declaration the company's complaint with the ITC. "This action is about protecting the results of such pioneering development."

Nokia asked for a adjudicators trial in its second claim, and wants Apple to pay compensation, with interest, if the company is found responsible of patent abuse.

Google Nexus Offers Little Competition to Apple iPhone

Whether the marketplace is ready or not, the Big Guns in consumer electronics are about to make their move at the dawn of the New Year.

Next Tuesday, Google is expected to announce its long-rumored Nexus One smartphone. It is undoubtedly designed to run the Google Android operating system for cellphones, which the search giant introduced more than a year ago. Android was envisioned as a major breakthrough in cellphones because it offered an "open" operating system – i.e., one that other companies could use and design applications for. At the time, this strategy was compared to that of Microsoft Windows, which broke the market hegemony of Apple's decidedly non-open OS in the mid-1980s and within a decade, turned Apple into a niche company. This time around, the new Android phones were supposed to break the hegemony of the Apple iPhone.

So far, it hasn't quite worked out that way with Android. A number of cell phone companies – notably Motorola, HTC, and Samsung – have adopted Android and seen impressive sales. However, this time around Apple, though still exhibiting much of its old "closed" and proprietary ways, has learned some important lessons over the last 20 years.

For one thing, Apple understands, better perhaps than any company on the planet, the importance of being not only perpetually innovative – but with a vast and loyal army of Apple fanatics behind it – to regularly take category-busting risks. Thus, the amazing run, beginning a decade ago, of the iMac, MacBook, iPod and iPhone. These landmark (and in the case of the iPod, historic) products not only were ambitious in their goals and beautifully designed, but they also exhibited multiple features that were so innovative that they forced the competition to spend years catching up – and by then, Apple had already moved on to the next breakthrough.

Military theorists like to say that the goal of combat is to get inside your opponent's "decision horizon" – that is, to move so quickly that the enemy can't respond in time before you have moved on to the next victory. That's exactly what Apple, at its best, has done to the consumer electronics world … and in the process has left competitors reeling, loyal customers thrilled, and not least, Apple regaining its lost market share and making its shareholders wealthy.

Online Sales Of iPhone Suspended In New York

In a holiday-shortened week, AT&T has spawned a raft of headlines on the Internet after the company halted online sales of the iPhone in New York City, at least temporarily. The phone is still available to New Yorkers in Apple /quotes/comstock/15*!aapl/quotes/nls/aapl and AT&T stores, however.

The decision has revived talk about whether AT&T's network can handle the traffic generated by iPhone users, especially in dense urban markets. Owners of the iPhone tend to use the Internet much more than other wireless customers, but existing mobile networks are not designed for such heavy data traffic.

Although AT&T /quotes/comstock/13*!t/quotes/nls/t has beefed up its network, complaints about dropped calls and Internet interruptions seemed to have increased. That's spurred rivals such as Verizon Wireless to mock the quality of AT&T's network in commercials.

In almost any other week, AT&T's effort to limit online sales in New York City might have gone little mentioned. Yet business news is scarce in the last week of December, between the Christmas and New Year's Day holidays.

Dallas-based AT&T hasn't helped its cause with a cryptic and tight-lipped explanation of its action. Several spokespeople have given different media outlets, including MarketWatch, the same response: "We periodically modify our promotion and distribution channels."

Since reports of AT&T's online move surfaced Sunday, a number of people have tried to order the iPhone online using New York City ZIP codes. An effort by this writer to do the same showed that "there are no phones and devices that match your search criteria," according to AT&T's Web site.

A blog called the Consumerist, apparently the first site to report the halt in online sales, said a customer-service representative cited a lack of wireless cell towers in New York City for AT&T's decision. Other AT&T representatives blamed excess fraud or said the online stock of iPhones available to New York customers had been depleted.

Whatever the case, AT&T knows it has to continue to expand its network to match the increased usage by iPhone customers -- 11 million and growing -- as well as 70 million other AT&T wireless subscribers. Brand is critical in the fiercely competitive U.S. wireless market -- as Sprint Nextel Corp. unhappily discovered -- and AT&T can ill afford to see its image suffer. In a worst-case scenario, AT&T might even have to consider raising prices for iPhone customers, who now pay a flat monthly rate for unlimited Internet access.

Ralph de la Vega, AT&T's mobile-operations president, hinted at such a possibility in a presentation to investors earlier this month, though he later said a change in pricing policy is not imminent. He insisted AT&T is merely exploring a variety of methods to reduce the strain on its wireless network.

Discover Spotlight searches--iPhone tip of the week

Spotlight, an advanced utility for searching, migrated from the Mac to the iPhone and iPod Touch, and we should all be grateful for that since it is quite useful. Spotlight also happens to be one of my favorite iPhone features, and this week I'd like to share some of my favorite tips about it.

Access Spotlight

You access Spotlight from the iPhone Home screen by pressing the Home button once when you are on the first Home screen, or by simply swiping left while that screen is displayed.

(Credit: Apple)

If you are on a different screen, press the Home key twice: once to get Home, pause briefly, and again to open Spotlight (or simply swipe left instead of pressing Home again).

Performing a search

You will now be able to search your entire device for apps, songs, and e-mails. Simply start typing the word, name of an app, name of a song, or e-mail content you are seeking, and the iPhone will display it as you type. I have nearly 400 apps and not all of them will display on the 11 available Home screens, so this feature comes in handy when I need to launch an app I cannot see. If you see an app appear in the search results, tap it and it will launch.

Search from inside apps

The following built-in apps have a hidden search feature: Mail, iPod, or Music (on an iPod) apps, and Contacts. In all these apps, to access the hidden search feature you need to swipe down to reveal the Spotlight search field. This search will be performed on data native to the particular app so its scope is limited. For example, in the Contacts app it will only show results from the contact apps database. It does not currently support the capability to search your entire device as Spotlight does from the Home screen.

Now you will have no excuses about losing something, since looking for that honey-do list, favorite song, or important e-mail from your boss is easy with Spotlight.

New iPhone 4G coming to Verizon Wireless in 2010?

According to Digitimes, OmniVision, the supplier of the 3.2 megapixel camera for the current iPhone 3G/iPhone 3GS has secured 5-megapixel camera orders for the iPhone 4G . The iPhone 4th generation  will launch in the second half of 2010.  It will also contain a CDMA chip that allows it to be used on the Verizon Wireless network, if the rumors are true.

Apple launches new iPhones during the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). This year the WWDC conference is expected to be held during June, so that’s when we will find out whether or not there really is an iPhone 4G coming to Verizon. I’m hoping there will be one because I know a lot of people that would buy the iPhone if it came to Verizon.

New iPhone or iPod Touch? Start with These Free Apps

If you’re staring down at your shiny new iPhone or iPod Touch wondering which apps to try first, Here is a list of great applications that I enjoy. I’ve attempted to include some of the popular free apps, most of which I use often but it isn’t exhaustive by any means. In fact, I welcome you to chime in with your own essentials in the comments of this post.

Happy holidays, and enjoy that new iPhone or iPod Touch!

• Appmodo
• Tap Tap Revenge 3
• Bouncedown
• Paper Toss
• Eliminate Pro
• Little Runner
• IMDB
• Backgrounds
• BubbleWrap
• Remote
• AT&T myWireless
• Fake Conversation
• Facebook
• Bump
• MySpace Mobile
• Twitterrific
• Loopt
• Pandora Radio
• Shazam
• Doodle Buddy
• Google Earth

Apple iPhone coming to Vodafone on Jan 14

But shoppers hoping for a price war between the major network operators will be left disappointed – Vodafone's cheapest deal for Apple's 16GB iPhone 3GS works out more expensive over the lifetime of the device than any of its competitors.
People signing up to Vodafone's £40 per month, 18-month contract also have to pay £89 for the iPhone itself, meaning they will have spent £809 on the phone and monthly payments by the time their contract expires.
O2 and Orange, which also offer the iPhone, are a significantly cheaper than Vodafone, but there is just 84p difference in price between the two: a 16GB iPhone 3GS on O2's £29.38 per month, 18-month contract will cost users £713.82 over the lifetime of their device, including the £184.98 initial outlay for the phone; the same handset on Orange's £29.36 per month, 18-month contract will cost £712.98 over its lifetime, including an upfront cost of £184.50 for the handset.
Supermarket giant Tesco, which started selling the iPhone last week, represents the cheapest deal for shoppers, who can choose between a 12-month or two-year contract. The cheapest monthly tariff is just £20, but shoppers will have to pay a whopping £320 up front for the 16GB iPhone 3GS.
The number of free minutes and texts available varies between networks and tariffs, and will be a key consideration for shoppers as they try and decide which contracts represent the best value for money for their needs.
But mobile phone experts have warned that purchasing decisions may boil down to more than just cost. O2's network, which has suffered frequent crashes in recent months, has gone down again, leaving some iPhone users unable to make or receive calls or surf the internet.
"Consumers who were hoping that with four networks vying for a share of the iPhone market that a price war would ensue, are likely to be disappointed, particularly those who have been holding out for Vodafone's announcement in the hope of picking up a New Year bargain," said Ernest Doku of mobile phone comparison site Omio.
"The networks are battling on the fronts of quality of call reception and data usage limits, rather than the cheapest deals. It will be interesting to see if their stance changes in the New Year, when the feeling is that the real battle for market share will commence."

Next year's iPhone

An analyst describes the smartphone innovations he expects from Apple in 2010.


In a note to clients issued Wednesday, Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster suggests three ways Apple (AAPL) can stay ahead of the coming wave of smartphones powered by Google's (GOOG) Android OS.

• Build an iPhone for Verizon. Munster continues to believe there's a 70% chance Verizon (VZ) will get an iPhone before the end of 2010. The value of more than doubling the phone's addressable market — i.e. adding Verizon's 89 million U.S. subscribers to AT&T's (T) 82 million — would more than justify the cost of manufacturing a CDMA iPhone, according to Munster.
• Give the iPhone a battery that lasts longer than one day. "Apple has introduced advanced battery technology with its portable Macs," he writes, "and we expect the company to dramatically improve the iPhone battery life with the next several hardware launches."
• Turn the iPhone into a digital wallet. Munster predicts that future iPhones will have built-in RFID (radio-frequency identification) technology, allowing them to make retail payments with a single swipe.

"We've just scratched the surface" in terms of apps and accessories, says Munster, who has an interesting take on Apple's continued resistance to Adobe (ADBE) Flash. He sees it as a slightly Machiavellian move with strategic implications.
"Apple has built a moat around their apps," he writes, "in part by excluding Flash, preventing app developers from building apps in Flash and porting them to all mobile platforms."
UPDATE: On Twitter late Thursday, Eldar Murtazin, the Moscow-based editor of Mobile Review, posted this cryptic note: "Foxconn received order for next generation iphone." Foxconn is the trade name of Hon Hai Precision Industries, which manufacturers most of Apple's products.