RIM’s mythical sliding device finally got official after years and years of rumors. It’s being released tomorrow exclusively on AT&T and features the all new BlackBerry 6 operating system. We’re talking multitouch, gestures, redone multimedia applications, and a whole lot more. It packs the best camera of any BlackBerry, a touch screen, full keyboard, and even an optical trackpad to help with navigation. Not to mention it has a web browser that is actually usable, and everything is packed in a pretty tight package. We have been using a BlackBerry Torch 9800 for over 5 days, and we’re excited to share our thoughts on it with you.

Hardware

Solid. That’s the first word that comes to mind. The second? Heavy and bulky. I love using this line more than RIM executives have played it out: RIM plans three years out. Unfortunately, they must still be planning for 2007, because the device is pretty thick compared to modern and current smartphones. It’s very well manufactured and doesn’t appear to be cheap, yet… it feels pretty cheap. The casing is a glossy budget-conscious plastic, and the four BlackBerry buttons are glorified piano black plastic. I can’t imagine how stunning a partly brushed gun metal / dark grey stainless steel BlackBerry would be. Cut off the sliding mechanism from the Torch and make the device that thin, and you’d have me seriously interested. Well, you’d have to throw a decent OS on that bad boy of course.

RIM’s optical trackpad makes an appearance here, as it should, and it works great. It’s very clickable, and doesn’t change the course of history — same trackpad you know and love. The four black piano keys are a little tougher to describe. Since each key is attached to its significant other, it is at times a tad bit difficult to accurately press either the send or end key (both on the sides of the device). They’re much smaller than their respective keys on the Bold 9000 or Bold 9700 and give less — they are almost flush with the device — but after some daily usage, it isn’t the end of the world.

It pains me to say this, but RIM has once again changed the location of the microUSB charging/data port. It is now located on the lower left side (at the expense of the left side convenience key). It is pretty ridiculous, but it’s also par for the course when you’re dealing with a manufacturer that can’t even get buddy icons to show up in their AOL Instant messaging application after three years. The 3.5mm headset jack that’s usually present on the upper left side has been shipped halfway around the world to the upper right side, followed by its partners in crime, the up and down volume keys. Below those sit the dedicated camera shutter button — half press to autofocus, full press to snap, snap, snap.

We’ve been using the device for over 5 days, yet we didn’t need more than a couple minutes to determine that the lock and mute keys on top of the device are extremely gentle. Since RIM AT&T doesn’t ship their flagship product with a holster (first time ever, I believe), we can’t tell you how many times the device got unlocked by mistake in our pockets. End of the world? No, but it’s not the best design that’s existed. While we’re talking about design, we’d have loved it if RIM would have pushed their device design identity forward a bit. Unfortunately the Torch looks pretty dated from a design perspective.

As far as internals go, the BlackBerry Torch is meticulously planned out. It uses an Marvell 624MHz CPU, 512MB of RAM (also for application storage), 4GB of internal storage, packs a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash, quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, tri-band UMTS/HSDPA 3.6Mbps, aGPS, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi. For a flagship product, we’d expect nothing less than a 1GHz CPU, though the BlackBerry Torch seems to perform decently with light usage.

Display

Sad. It literally makes me sad — and I’m not phased that easily. It really hits you how bad the screen is when you compare it to a BlackBerry 9700 because of how much larger the 9800 screen is. Text is pixelated, normally crisp images look low quality by comparison, and web browsing is unusable without zooming in constantly. It takes away from the experience, and if there is something RIM doesn’t understand, it’s presentation. With a high quality, beautiful, large screen, you can at least show that you’re playing game to the average user. Unfortunately for RIM, this would mean even more fragmentation with their devices and a higher resolution screen would also highlight their general lack of focus on UI even more. For instance, when holding the BlackBerry button to bring up the transparent multitasking popover (by the way, do you know which BlackBerry application was the first to do a transparent popover?), RIM forgot to make the effect stretch to the edge of the display, so you actually see through the effect on the right side. Huge deal? Not at all, just representative of how Research In Motion overall could care less about the small things that can up and actually make a product.

We also have to say we noticed some wonkiness with the touchscreen side of the display at times. Mostly erroneous touch events when on a phone call (touching the top part of the display set off the lower touch buttons), though we’re not sure if this is a software or hardware issue.

Keyboard

Look, here’s the thing: all of you moaning about having to have a physical keyboard need to suck it up and get used to typing on a capactive screen. It’s what most phones will be in the near future and all in all, it’s superior to physical keys when you look at the big picture. Customizable keyboards and layouts, thinner, more solid, less clunky handsets — everything is moving over to touch and it’s for the better. If you’re an iPhone user and you pick up a BlackBerry (especially the Torch) you literally think to yourself, “What in the hell am I holding in my hands?” It’s that bad.

I have never in my life seen a worse onscreen keybaord than the one RIM included. The fact the phone has a physical keyboard is no excuse, this is an insight into what RIM is thinking, and it’s completely disappointing. The virtual keyboard looks like a Swype Android keyboard without the sexiness. Keys are tough to hit, the symbol shift key is awkwardly placed, and above all, you can’t see what key you’re hitting since the popups that display when you touch a key are practically useless. It’s almost insulting that there’s even a virtual keyboard at all.

Switching gears to the physical slide-out chiclet keyboard: it’s good, very good. RIM usually knocks these out of the park and the Torch’s keyboard is no exception, for the most part. Keys are graciously sized, pretty contoured, infinitely and deliciously clickable (the Torch totally doesn’t pass the typing-in-bed-while-someone-is-sleeping-next-to-you test). The keyboard is modeled after the devices in the BlackBerry Bold lineup, and even carries over some nice design elements; one of them being the chrome struts that serve as keyboard row dividers. If we had to complain about the keyboard, it would be that the keys seem to be pretty hollow and, well, cheap. It kind of sounds like bubble wrap if you run your fingers over them, and they aren’t as luxurious as the original Bold’s keyboard (obviously from a size perspective) in feel. We believe the keys are slightly less raised than a traditional form-factor BlackBerry device, and that’s quite an accomplishment — have you ever used a Palm Pre — but a small part of us yearns for that perfect, perfect keyboard.

Phone

Ah, making phone calls on a BlackBerry. It’s actually pretty enjoyable. Dialing phone numbers on the keypad is effortless (and extremely quick, too), checking your recent calls is straight forward, and calls were generally pleasurable-sounding, crisp, and volume-packed. One exception would be the fact that sometimes calls can sound a tiny bit distorted (mostly the top end) if the volume is up all the way on the ear speaker.

Something that annoyed the heck out of us was RIM’s proximity sensor. It literally is a pulsing/blinking red LED light that is visible to the human eye. Do you see this when you’re on the phone? Not at all, but now that we have seen it, we can’t not notice it when we dial a phone number and bring the phone up to our face. It’s ridiculously amateur-ish and we don’t remember the BlackBerry Storm2 (also a device with a proximity sensor) doing this.

Speakerphone unfortunately isn’t as successful as traditional phone calling on the BlackBerry Torch. It’s volume output was low to acceptable, but callers had trouble hearing us properly most of the time.

OS

BlackBerry operating system 6 isn’t an overhaul of the BlackBerry OS, and while it brings a couple API-level changes, it’s mostly top layer UI modifications. For starters, BlackBerry 6 brings modal popups, press-and-hold gestures, multitouch gestures like pinch to zoom and two finger select, and drum roll please… a WebKit-based web browser with tabs.

In addition to the above, there are a bunch more enhancements: universal search, multiple contact lists (sadly you can’t link duplicate contact entries), a social networking application that can aggregate all your social networks/accounts in addition to posting simultaneously to them, redone multimedia applications, a new camera interface, kinetic scrolling (though we would have liked to see even more of this), a notifications drop down menu, and much more.

In general, BlackBerry 6 seems a bit more cohesive in some ways, yet it seems to be pulled in different directions at times. For instance, the homescreen now combines the entire application icon view with a drop down notification view and a wireless networking view. Think about this, you are pulled in literally different directions by flipping through the aforementioned menus, and for basically no reason. If you want to get crazy, you can actually drop the application drawer up on the homescreen to reveal more than the default 4 icons. You can increase the view to 8 icons, 12 icons, or even slide the drawer all the way to the top if you wish.

Something we’re pleased as punch to see in BlackBerry 6 is faster application downloading/installation. Previously it would take forever to download apps (or anything for that matter), but in BlackBerry 6 the progress bar zips along just fine most of the time, and this is a welcome improvement. The phone also boots much, much quicker (everything is relative, it’s still a good minute or two)

We’re not in love with the multiple categories on the homescreen, though. It seems to add unnecessary complexity to an already complex UI. Now, in addition to the wireless connection menu sliding down, the app drawer sliding up, and the notification drawer sliding down, you can also slide left to right and right to left to flip different categories of application?

Unfortunately for BlackBerry 6, and the BlackBerry Torch, we experienced lag, slowdowns, and the dreaded black BlackBerry clock on multiple occasions, even when we weren’t pushing the phone hard. Simple tasks like marking more than one message as read, or exiting the web browser, or updating the social feeds application, set off that clock of death. Once we had to even pull the battery out due to the phone becoming unresponsive from a simple non-taxing task.

Browser

RIM’s new browser couldn’t have come soon enough. Rumored since the first Bold (we heard they were testing a Webkit browser when they were working on the 9000), RIM’s first real web browser is the best it’s ever delivered. In terms of rendering, web pages actually display as if they should on a desktop — correctly and formatted properly most of the time. Pinch to zoom is a go, and while it’s not as fluid as some other platforms out there, it does get the job done. We can’t say we love how the browser reformats text (RIM says it pioneered word wrap, though we have to say Opera Mobile does a pretty good job of this), but for the most part, tabbed browsing and even thumbnails in browser history are nice touches. We like the fact that when using the optical joystick to navigate you actual see an on-screen mouse cursor, though some of the hiccups with RIM’s browser start to overshadow much of their progress.

Since the BlackBerry Torch isn’t packing a bleeding-edge CPU, and since the core OS is pretty outdated, we experienced many slowdowns in panning and zooming, and even standard web page loading. We actually crashed the browser a couple times loading up our favorite non-mobile-optimized sites. This isn’t even with any sort of Flash 10.1 support whatsoever. We’re not sure how RIM will be able to pull that off at all. Unfortunately, as we said before, RIM doesn’t seem to understand presentation, and the web browsing experience on the BlackBerry Torch is neither completely fluid nor competitive to other leading mobile smartphones for the most part.

Camera

RIM’s 5 megapixel camera is certainly a great improvement over their 3.2 megapixel offering. It takes pretty decent photos, and RIM has completely redone their photo-taking UI. Geotagging photos now has a prominent presence, RIM added scene modes (even face detection, portrait, sports, landscape, party, close-up, snow, beach, night and text modes) even though people most likely won’t use them, and there’s a new photo review mode to check out your latest shot and decide whether to keep it or not.

Unfortunately in a time when manufacturers are competing to see who can capture the highest quality, faster frame rate HD video, RIM fails to join the pack with 640×480 resolution video capture. Video taken on an iPhone 4 or Motorola DROID X could sometimes pass as being shot on a real video device and not a cell phone, but video from the BlackBerry Torch unfortunately can’t.

Battery:

We’ve been pleased by how much battery we can squeeze out of the Torch. Like all BlackBerry devices, RIM knows how to optimize, optimize, and optimize how much power their smartphones utilize, and the Torch is no exception in that regard. We’re not sure if we’d rate the BlackBerry Torch as having better battery life than it’s cousin, the Bold 9700, but we’d say it’s pretty close. It no question can power a moderately-heavy user through a pretty long day, and for a casual user, expect the phone to last more than a day without a recharge.

Conclusion:

We actually liked the BlackBerry Torch more towards the end of our use than we did at first. Once you get into using the device, you slightly warm up to it. With that said, I can’t help but think that the Torch goes against everything that a BlackBerry stands for. Or used to stand for. Simple, pick up and go, and focused. With BlackBerry 6, a touch screen, and a sliding form-factor, the Torch is not simple, it’s not a pick up and go device, and it’s not focused. Just the process of sliding the display up and away from the keyboard and dealing with a touch screen seems extraneous. There is much more work involved to use the BlackBerry Torch, definitely not less.

The device is a decent attempt to keep some of RIM’s current user base happy. Unfortunately, as you’ve read above, in our opinion, it’s not enough to stop the exodus of BlackBerry users switching to Android and iPhone devices for the most part, and it’s definitely not good enough to draw in boatloads of new customers. Definitely not when it’s on display next to an iPhone 4 and a Samsung Captivate in the store. RIM has possibly missed the most crucial and best chance to show the market and their loyal customers that they know what they’re doing.

In a world where things are supposed to get simpler and easier to use, the BlackBerry Torch 9800 unfortunately complicates things. Is it the “best BlackBerry yet”? It’s certainly possible. Though it’s most definitely not the easiest to use, and even RIM’s best product at this point in time seems so far off from being competitive in the smartphone market landscape. Our first photo in the review sort of says it all — it’s a nice phone that is easily overshadowed by something newer, leaner, and much sexier. We’re not sure we’d recommend the 9800 to any new cell phone buyer unless they had a specific need for a BlackBerry. Even then, there’s a good chance we’d recommend the Bold 9700 (or Bold 9700 refresh device) with OS 6 on it. While the BlackBerry Torch isn’t a complete screw-up, it’s far from the Apple-killing, Android-slaying device RIM thought it would be. Unfortunately RIM’s next product has to be a home run for them to continue winning the ballgame, or we’ll start to see some strike outs. If they can’t manage to excite consumers with the next go-around, RIM will most likely be relegated to a low-to-mid end market player, something Nokia certainly knows a thing or two about.

Click on over to our BlackBerry Torch 9800 gallery!

Alright guys, we finally have a BlackBerry Torch 9800 in hand, before launch date, and we figured we’d do the second honors on your behalf. We have chimed in with our first-hand impressions of the new BlackBerry, but now that we have a unit in front of us again, here are a couple more quick thoughts:

• Again, the device is really solid. Construction seems high quality, though there is obviously a “plastic” feel as opposed to something more luxurious. Like metal (aluminum, stainless steel). The rubberized back battery cover, while kind of scares me at first, feels really good when you hold the phone. It’s not overly rubbery, it is something that will probably save many Torch owners from flinging the device out of their palm while carrying it around.
• The screen is depressing. I personally think at this point in time, there is no excuse. It instantly makes the phone not feel competitive, and doesn’t encourage you to use the phone. In fact, it makes me not even want to use the device. Not sitting next an iPhone 4 and a DROID X — no way.
• Love the keyboard. I’m already able to bang out my 80 WPM emails (most likely ones yelling at Andrew).
• Will reserve full thoughts on the OS and UI for our review, but the phone really does feel a bit busy as I mentioned earlier. One of BlackBerry’s strengths has been providing users with that “always connected” feel, but I really think they might have taken it too far with the BlackBerry 6 OS.

While we put together the full review, we have to ask — who’s getting one, and who’s passing?

Click on over to our BlackBerry Torch 9800 gallery!

We’ve had our hands on the AT&T Captivate for the last several weeks, so we thought it was just about time for a proper review. AT&T’s version of the Galaxy S has a vibrant (pun intended) 4-inch Super AMOLED display, 1 GHz Hummingbird processor, 7.2 Mbps capable HSPA radio, 5 megapixel camera with 720p video recording, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 and much more. The device is running Android 2.1 with some serious UI customizations from Samsung. What’s the verdict? Hit the jump to find out!

Size/Form

Describing the size of a phone is always a difficult task as it is largely subjective. In our DROID X review we described Verizon’s latest Android flagship device as “not too big,” and here we can say that the Captivate’s dimensions (4.18” x 2.5” x 0.39”) and weight (4.5 ounces) are — for us — just right. The phone feels extremely thin in your hand and it feels feather light for a phone its size. It easily fits into jean pockets, has smooth but not rounded edges, and really is quite handsome.

The form of the Captivate is slightly different from other Galaxy S models being released in the States. We’ve heard a lot of you in the comments describe it as “less iPhone 3GS-ish” and we would say that is fairly accurate. The phone has a less rounded body and ditches the large home button that is on the European model of the Galaxy S. While the phone’s front and sides are constructed from plastic the back battery door — complete with carbon fiber print — is made of metal. We usually are a little sheepish on phones with plastic bodies, but the construction of the Captivate feels really solid. All the buttons are tight and don’t wiggle or yaw, and the lines on the phone are extremely tight and well-placed. The two things that we would say are out of the ordinary, or unique to the phone’s form, are the micro-USB port (which has a sliding plastic cover to protect it) and the way you access the battery (that is by pulling down on the bottom rear plate of the phones frame). Neither of these two things are a negatives (we actually kind of like the sliding USB cover) but they are features that make you say: “hmm, that’s different.”

Screen

Let’s just get this out of the way. The screen is by far the phones best feature. The Captivates 4-inch WVGA Super AMOLED display is bright, like really bright. Colors explode off the screen, watching movies is a treat, and the extra screen real estate makes browsing the web really enjoyable. The resolution is 480 x 800 and displays 16 million colors, for those of you wondering. The touch sensitivity on the device is very good, although we did have lag issues with certain keyboard layouts (that we’ll cover later in the review). Samsung’s Super AMOLED display and the iPhone 4’s Retina display could battle to the death for the top smartphone screen crown… and we wouldn’t care who won. Both screens are simply amazing.

Camera

One of the big gripes about the Captivate’s camera (aside from the fact that there isn’t one on the front of the device) is that it lacks a flash of any kind. And that won’t be an issue for most. We’re not sure what Samsung did with the software in this thing but whatever it is: Bra. Vo. The 5 megapixel auto-focus camera takes really sharp images indoors and out, and holds its own in moderate light settings. The camera includes a 4x digital zoom feature and has several modes to shoot in: Single, Beauty, Smile Shot, Continuous, Panorama, Vintage, Add me, Action shot, and Cartoon. The camera also has geotagging (not on by default), anti-shake (not on by default), and a plethora of other options and settings ready to be tweaked. We enjoyed using the camera, and unless you often take pictures in dark settings that require a flash, we think you’re going to enjoy it as well.

Outdoors - Sunlight - Close Range - Default Camera Settings

Indoors - Moderate/Low Light - Close Range - Default Camera Settings

Video Camera

The video camera, much like the still camera, works really well. You’re not going to be disappointed. The video camera defaults to shooting in 720 x 480, but we know you… you’re going to crank that baby up to 1280 x 720 for some 720p recording fun. Video playback is smooth, with no lags or jagged frames, and the camcorder seems to autofocus very effectively. The audio quality during video recording is also surprisingly good. Not quite as good as the DROID X, with its three microphones, but better than the iPhone 4. Audio is crisp, maybe a little high on the treble, but clear and totally acceptable for a smartphone video camera. The camcorder also shows you a live on-screen counter of just how large your video is getting (which we find very useful), and has a setting labeled ”fit to MMS” you can turn on before recording.

Phone

The phone is pretty standard, no real frills or thrills here. We wish there was some sort of visual voicemail system built into the device, but if you have Google Voice (if not we recommend signing up) that can easily be taken care of (thanks Android!). The speakerphone is loud and the sound is very accurate (this goes for media playback as well).  Sound from the earpiece is not quite as clear as that emanating from the DROID X or iPhone 4, but it isn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination. Not much else to elaborate on here, moving along…

Email

Email is obviously something that we rely on heavily, and unfortunately our Exchange email experience wasn’t all that great on the Captivate. You can view, read, and compose email just fine (although Samsung’s UI customizations make the compose screen feel crowded) but you can’t file messages into folders. You can view standard Exchange folders such as Drafts, Trash, and Sent, but you are unable to view folders you’ve created. This is something we rely heavily on. Also, email on the Captivate seems to come in 2-3 minutes slower when it is on Wi-Fi. We had an iPhone 4 and the Captivate setup to check the same Exchange and Gmail account with push enabled. If Wi-Fi was on, the Captivate would have a 30 second to two minute delay as opposed to the iPhone 4. Turn Wi-Fi off and the problem goes away. Not deal breaking, just something we noticed and thought we would pass along. The Gmail application that is bundled with most Android phones is present on this handset, runs as expected, and works as advertised.

Software Customizations

This is where our personal style preferences and subjectivity really start to creep into the review. We don’t really care for Samsung’s TouchWiz 3.0 customizations featured on the Galaxy S series… we prefer stock (or at least more stock) Android. The home screen is great; seven customizable screens, widgets, pretty standard. But there is this four icon dock at the bottom that you can’t customize Apparently you can change them. It has Phone, Email, Browser, and Applications or Home (depending on where you are in the OS) located in it by default. The Captivate has three software keyboards to choose from: a Samsung keyboard, the stock Android keyboard, and the SWYPE keyboard. The Samsung keyboard (which is on by default) does not offer any kind of spelling correction — which we feel is a must have feature on a soft keyboard — and also doesn’t have a button to invoke Google’s awesome voice-to-text system. The SWYPE keyboard is standard, and the stock Android offering is the one we’ve been using.

We’ve been able to get the Captivate to lag and /or hang when using voice-to-text or trying to navigate around the device very quickly. We’re fairly sure this isn’t an Android or hardware issue, but rather an issue with the UI that Samsung has running on top of Android. It isn’t reproducible 100% of the time, but it happened frequently enough that we wanted to mention it. Plus, it is pretty frustrating to see a brand new phone do this. Software hindering great hardware.

One thing we were really excited to see on the DROID X was a passcode timer. The timer allows you to sleep your phone and not require a passphrase, or pass-pattern, for a set amount of time. This feature is not present on the Captivate and is missed. By default, the screen dims after 30 seconds and if you have this feature enabled you are required to put your pass-pattern in every time (there is no option to use an alpha-numeric passcode).

One of Samsung’s customizations that we did like was in the contacts application. If you swipe to the right on a contact (think iOS deleting gesture) your Captivate will call that contact, swipe to the left and you text message that contact. It is a pretty clever use of the swipe motion and makes dialing/texting from your contacts list infinitely easier.

Like most Android phones distributed by carriers, the Captivate comes with software that you aren’t going to want. For example: AT&T Navigator is on there, and can be utilitzed for $9.99/month… even though Google Navigation is free, better, and… um, free! Again, this isn’t a problem specific to the Captivate, but since AT&T FamilyMap, AT&T Hot Spots, AT&T Maps, AT&T Music, AT&T Navigator, and AT&T Radio take up the first 6 out of 7 spots on your first page of apps, the issue gets exacerbated. You can’t put the applications into folders but you can re-order them (or switch to an alphabetized list view) so that helps a little.

Official Specs and Pricing

The official spec sheet for the Samsung Captivate looks like this:

• 4.18” x 2.5” x 0.39”
• 4.5 ounces
• 4 inche WVGA 480 x 800 pixels Super AMOLED, displaying 16 million colors
• Talk time 5 hours 50 minutes, standby 300 hours
• 7.2 Mbps UTMS/HSPA cellular radio (850/900/1900/21000 MHz)
• 5.0 megapixel autofocus camera with 4x digital zoom
• 720p video recording (MPEG4, ACC, ACC+, H.263, H.264)
• 16 GB ROM
• 512 MB RAM
• micro-SD card expandable up to 32 GB
• Bluetooth 3.0
• Wi-Fi (b/g/n)
• A-GPS
• Android 2.1
• 1500 mAh removable battery

Conclusion

The device’s heavily customized UI really does tax the phones list of impressive resources at times. And for this reason alone we are not overly impressed with the Captivate. This phone could be a case study of how marginal software can taint the experience of an amazing piece of hardware (we’re talking about TouchWiz 3.0, not Android).

This is Samsung’s first serious play at a high-end, top-of-the-line Android smartphone, and it is a great start. In our opinion the Samsung Captivate would make a great smartphone for those who are new to the world of Android or those who aren’t Android purists. In other words, for most it will do…

Let’s face it, these days buying a smartphone is about compromise. You are going to have to prioritize your lists of smartphone wants against your lists of smartphone needs and render a decision. If an amazing screen, solid camera/camcorder, and the Android operating system are the top three items on your checklist, consider this phone a winner. If, like us, you are looking for a little more refinement from your smartphone, you might want to hold off until this bad boy is updated to Android 2.2 (or gets rooted) and re-evaluate.

One of our Apple sources has been communicating some internal Apple information to us, and from what we’ve been told, this weekend could be big. Currently, if you go to an Apple retail store and can’t find an iPad or iPhone 4, Apple will offer the ability to reserve one for you. These are “Priority Lists” and contain your name and information in addition to the specific device and configuration you want. These lists allow Apple to determine how to manage their channel inventory or possibly ramp up on production. Here’s the big news we’ve been told… Apple is apparently incredibly interested in clearing out these waiting lists, and if our tipster is correct, they’re aiming to do it by this weekend. We have been told that stores have lists that could be anywhere from 500 to 1500 or more customers waiting for iPhones, and anywhere from 250 to 750 customers waiting for iPads. Apparently all Apple stores have asked employees for an “all hands on deck” approach this weekend, somewhat similar to that of Apple product launch days. We have even been informed that Apple stores might open early on Sunday to accommodate extra traffic. Lastly, our source let us know that clearing out these lists could result in the sale of up to an additional 500,000 to 1,000,000 iOS devices in just a few short days.

Thanks, Lindsey S.!

Fresh out of the rumor oven, still warm. Engadget is reporting that the Motorola DROID 2 could launch on Verizon Wireless as soon as August 12th. The tech site quotes a “trusted source” who also detailed that the 12th could be some sort of “soft launch” — as a full DROID creepy commercial media blitz is not set to kick off until the 26th. There was also mention of a Star Wars special edition DROID 2 with a picture of R2-D2 on the back of the phone. If the report is accurate, August 12th is just 23 days away… who’s excited?Read

Today, RIM announced an update to its BlackBerry Locate Service that will allow developers to use GPS-free cellular triangulation to acquire location information in their apps. As RIM states:

Users can be indoors with no GPS coverage, but your app will still be able to guide them to restaurants or points of interest (POI) around them. Although the accuracy of the fixes obtained from the Geolocation service may not always be as high as with GPS, it has use cases for apps that require highly accurate GPS fixes as well as apps that do not. Apps that require high accuracy can use this service to quickly show the user an approximate location while it waits for a more accurate location fix using GPS. This can offer a huge user experience improvement. For applications that do not require high accuracy, this service can be leveraged as a simple yet effective mechanism to provide location information.

Obviously this technology is not new, as it has been in use by many platforms for quite some time, but it is nice to see RIM continuing to add functionality to the BlackBerry platform, and we know from first-hand experience, that this is a very, very useful service for BlackBerry developers.

Read

We just received a juicy tip about the HTC DROID Incredible software update schedule that we’d like to share. One of our strategically placed Ninjas was kind enough to pass along an email from HTC that read as follows:

I wanted to pass along that the upcoming Incredible MR will also include Froyo (originally it was going to be two separate MRs).

We are targeting the end of the month/first part of August. As a reminder, below are the highlights:

• Froyo
• 802.11 n
• 3G Mobile Hot Spot
• HTC Widget: Email
• HTC Widget: News
• EAS Updates
• 720p Video Recording
• Amazon MP3
• Skype
• My Verizon

Obviously, the news here is that the Incredible update that began rolling out this weekend will — in all likelihood — be halted, and a sexier, Froyo-inclusive update will be pushed out in the coming weeks. The update will also include 802.11n Wi-Fi support, 3G Mobile Hot Spot, 720p video recording, and more. Not bad news for Incredible owners. What do you think? Is Android 2.2 worth an extra few weeks of waiting?

Bought a shiny new Motorola DROID X? Well, for the most part, it’s one rock solid beast of a handset, but we’ve been informed there is a pretty low to medium size privacy flaw (depending on your point of view), and have verified it ourselves. The Motorola DROID X actually will show text message and call history logs, even if you have deleted those items from the phone, via its contacts history function. All you have to do is scroll over to contact history in the contacts app and you’ll find the deleted information there. The issue doesn’t persist after an entire phone wipe, but it’s still a little disconcerting that any threaded text message conversations or recent calls would still show up after deletion. Check out our video after the jump for a quick run through of what we’re finding with text messages. We have reached to Verizon to find out if this is something they’re aware of / working on fixing, but we’ve also been told this is visible on other Motorola handsets, and it looks like it’s tied to the BLUR interface.

Once at the top of the smartphone pack, Microsoft’s current mobile operating system, Windows Mobile, has quickly fallen from grace. Luckily the juggernaut in Redmond, WA decided finally to do something about that. You call it whatever you’d like — a restart, a do over — but Microsoft has entirely changed course with Windows Phone 7, and they have broke most everything in the process. That means old Windows Mobile applications won’t work, the entire OS has been redone, and practically nothing from the user’s perspective has been carried over. A good thing when you’re now playing in a world of Androids and iPhones. We have been testing out a non-final, never ever going to be released to market Samsung prototype Windows Phone 7 device for a week, and we’re excited to let you know what we think of the operating system.

Hardware

We’re not going to review the actual hardware we received since it will never see the light of day, but we can talk about the hardware requirements and what that means for the platform. Microsoft has a reportedly over 200 page document that details what’s required of the hardware powering Windows Phone 7. Some of that includes a minimum of a 3.7″ 4-point capacitive multi touch display, 5 megapixel camera, 1GHz CPU, all memory must be built-in (it can be microSD, just not user accessible), dedicated graphics chip, and three hardware buttons on the front. That would be the back, Start, and search buttons.

That baseline is pretty high end, and other chassis specifications will be a little more relaxed. Chassis 2 will apparently support other hardware configurations like slide-out keyboards, and we assume chassis 3 might allow for lower-to-mid specs, but the last part is just our assumption. Having a baseline requirement is a great thing and it’s nice to see Microsoft taking more a stance with this new platform. We all can remember the mess that Windows Mobile became (we’re talking hardware).

User Interface

If you were to call Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 OS UI minimalistic, you’d be right. Even if our sentence wasn’t. The thing is, sometimes when using Windows Phone, things are so minimalistic, that it actually feels a bit too lonely and open. Don’t get us wrong, it’s nice to feel like you’re not constrained to a certain window or foreground app, but at the same time, we can’t help but feel that there could have been so much more done.

At the bottom of every application are Microsoft’s action buttons. These are contextual buttons that offer added actions in almost every application on the phone. The thing is, they’re pretty standard, and not that user friendly. At least not for us. We’re not sure why Microsoft decided to implement and design something that actually gets in the way instead of helping. For starters, we found them to be tiny and poorly placed. Unlike Android where you have a menu key and a nice big popup of additional actions, Microsoft’s approach is to have a tiny, tiny area reserved for these buttons at all times, wasting screen real estate while also cluttering up the view with pointless circles that are almost laughably small. The one saving grace is the ability to expand this action button view, but we can’t but feel like it would have been better all around to move all the action buttons over, and let the user expand / close it when necessary.

Let’s take the homescreen for instance… Apple’s homescreen is pretty straightforward. You have app icons and you have folders which contain apps and they are all the same size, and that’s about it. Android has the same basic logic, except you can add widgets, add shortcuts to different menus or applications, and even add live moving wallpapers among other things. Microsoft basically reinvents the mobile phone homescreen, and we’re not sure we’re in love with it.

Other annoyances with the UI? The scrolling. There’s a very slight rubber-banding effect, but what happens is, when you get to the bottom or top of a scrollable list, the scrolling stops short and the content then sort of mashes up slightly. It’s not that elegant, and especially on this not-amazing prototype phone, it looks pretty bad and pixelated.

Something else would be the fact that threaded text message conversations are all the same color. So, your messages and the other party’s messages are all the same color which makes things a bit difficult to tell apart. We also can’t stand the fact that the top upper status bar which contains the time, battery level, signal strength and other status icons, is basically hidden from view for the most part. You can have these icons show at will by tapping the always-present time in the upper right corner, but it’s not that reassuring having this stuff hidden by default for freaks like us.

One last thing that really bugs us with the UI is that there is no application switcher. At all. On a BlackBerry you can hold the BlackBerry key, on Android devices you can hold the Home key, and on the iPhone you can double tap the home button. Just simply navigating back, back, back, back and back doesn’t really cut it, and during every day usage, it got tired quick.

Home Screen / Hubs

Microsoft’s new Hub interface is decent attempt to centralize different application data in a clean and pretty fluid manner. Apps will be able to create their own hubs, as will OEMs and carriers, but they’ll have to follow some design guidelines that Microsoft has created. Yes, Microsoft will be limiting the scope of what third parties can do with hubs, and we think that’s a great idea. Thing’s like the navigation, and apparently even fonts will look uniform from hub to hub.

Hubs are a great idea in general, but the homescreen, filled with hubs, just comes off feeling unfinished and unpolished. Microsoft was sure to mention to us how they wanted the OS to just naturally speak for itself with clean, modern fonts and lines, and not be overloaded with fake 3D UI elements like drop shadows and the like. The thing is, it really comes off as feeling a little too plain for us, especially with the all black default color scheme. If you try and remedy that specific problem and you flip it the setting to use white instead of black, the phone is so bright that it’s basically unusable.

You could argue the homescreen is the most important part of current smartphones, and in our view Microsoft really falls short here. It’s definitely dynamic at times, but it’s underwhelming for the most part and it sort of cheapens the other positive areas of Windows Phone 7.

Zune / Music

If you’re a fan of the Zune music player, you’ll no doubt be enthralled with the Zune app on WP7. It’s clean, functional, and very hip looking. In fact, Windows Phone 7 is basically modeled after the Zune UI (in our view at least, since we didn’t see WP7 debut until after the Zune). It contains everything you’d want in a music player nowadays, like video / music video support, podcasts, a built-in radio, and the Zune Marketplace.

We’ve never been huge Zune fans over here, but we do have to say using the music player on WP7 was a really pleasant experience. We’d absolutely put it second to Apple’s iPod on their iPhone. It is miles ahead of anything coming out of RIM or Android at this point, and it’s great to see a phone that is just as focused on multimedia as it is on say, email.

Phone

We’re not going to lie, we really have no idea how people actually let the phone app get this far. When you first launch the application, you’d except to be at the keypad, so you can actually make a call, right? No. You’re presented with the recent call history list. Just text splattered on the screen. No problem, you’ll mosey on over to settings and change the default view so the keypad shows up. Ah, problem there. You can’t make that change because it’s not an option. So to make a phone call, you have to go into the phone and hit one of the poorly-sized action buttons below to bring up the keypad to make a phone call.

Another annoyance? Let’s say you do for some reason want to actually call someone on your recently called list, so you don’t have to bring up the keypad this time. Just tap the phone number in the list, and off you go. Not quite. Microsoft links the recent calls to “profiles” not numbers. It’s the most insane thing we’ve ever seen. If you tap on the caller in the list, you don’t dial the phone number, a profile view slides in and you then have to determine which number to call from there. Ok fine, but if you got a call from just a phone number, and not someone in contacts, it won’t bring up the profile, it will just dial the phone number. Again, not quite. It will still bring up a profile view, but this time offer default options of calling or texting that number. A simple long press gesture could have solved these problems in our book. Long press to get options to text the number, save it to your contacts, or anything else. It’s another little missed UI piece of the puzzle that gets really apparent when you use the OS a lot.

Actual phone calling works fine enough, though it can be a little confusing at times. Unfortunately Microsoft tries to be a little too hip by showing the background as transparent, and we just don’t know what purpose this solves but a cheap UI effect. In our minds, you’re either actively in the phone call (foreground), or the phone call is minimized (top status bar). But to have the phone application in the foreground not take up the whole screen and the view below it to be transparent doesn’t really flow much. Maybe we’re being picky, but with already frustrating calling experience, we’d have liked the phone application to just be a phone.

Email

As huge Microsoft Office fans, using the email app on Windows Phone 7 is nothing short of fantastic. It’s simple, easy to use, feature-packed (especially if you’re on an Exchange 2007 or 2010 server), and really enjoyable. It’s one of the only default apps to use a white color scheme instead of black, and it really looks great. Emails are organized in the hub very cleanly, with all, unread, flagged, and urgent sections that are flickable.

The transitions here work very well for the most part, but it’s a little overblown at times and kind of wastes time if you’re really hoping to and from emails in a hurry. Unfortunately, in this non-final version of the OS, PDF attachments were not supported. We’ve reached out to see if that will change in the first shipping Windows Phone 7 handset. There are little things we’re not in love with on here, but they are pretty small… we don’t like how there is no status bar for attachment downloads, it just says “Downloading” with no visualization of how much time or amount of data is left to download, we also don’t like that by default, emails sent from the handset aren’t immediately available in the sent folder. You have to manually sync the folder to view emails sent from the phone. Seems a little counter-intuitive. One last annoyance we stumbled across is that even with specific rules set up in Outlook 2010 on an Exchange server wit Outlook open, messages can slip through the cracks. It’s not every message, and it’s not the end of the world, but we haven’t seen this happen on an iPhone, BlackBerry, or Android handset even once.

Something incredibly stupid with the email app, is the inability to remotely search for emails. With Microsoft launching this feature in Windows Mobile 6.1, and basically every other smartphone OS supporting it, it’s pretty amazing how it isn’t included. You’re limited to whatever is locally stored on your device to search through. Microsoft did let us know they were open to revisiting this, so we’ll have to see if it changes in the near future. For the meantime though, this really takes away from a great email application.

Keyboard

We absolutely love the keyboard on Windows Phone. It’s so… clickable yet still virtual. It really flies, the predictions and corrections are awesome, and it’s almost as good as the iPhone’s keyboard. The iPhone has a more functional layout, and better access to symbols and corrections, but Windows Phone’s keyboard is just about there, and easily our favorite second best software input device on a smartphone platform. Unfortunately, there’s no multi-touch capability on it, but it’s still very solid.

Browser

The mobile web browser is a tricky one. In our view, Apple still holds the crown, regardless of whether Android has taken over in raw Javascript performance. It’s a whole package kind of thing, and with RIM currently out of the picture, the only two competitors are the aforementioned. Microsoft’s browser is fine, but it’s far from pleasurable to use. It’s not the most elegant browser (there might just be some software bugs that will be fixed in the first shipping handset) and we at times had some pages that didn’t render properly, and were a little janky after scrolling through them. The browser supports tabs, and has a simple thumbnail view to hop back to an open page, or close the open tab. There are favorites and a history view, and to be honest, that’s about it. Bing search is built into the navigation bar, though search results don’t populate in real-time like on Android and iPhone platforms. All in all, the browser was fine, but didn’t have anything that was lust-worthy. We still prefer Google’s and Apple’s mobile browsers.

Productivity

Microsoft’s bread and butter is of course Windows and Office. So, what would a Microsoft mobile product be without a great implementation of Office? Windows phone 7 has its own Office 2010 hub complete with Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and SharePoint access. Combine that with the great email app (we can call it Outlook), and you’ve got a pretty powerful mobile productivity software suite. Easily the best mobile Office experience, and why shouldn’t it be?

Social Communication

Windows Phone is pretty social right from the out of box experience. You can link your Windows Live, Facebook, and Exchange accounts as you glide through the first time set up process. Windows Live, Facebook, and Exchange contacts are all integrated together in the main people view. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to control what shows up here, or limit it. For instance, we’d love Facebook to sync to our existing contacts in our address book and link up, but there is practically no interest in seeing every single Facebook friend listed in the people view. We have no found a way to filter out contacts by services or even groups and that’s kind of frustrating.

Facebook status updating is built right into the device, but sadly your choices are only that and your Windows Live status. Twitter is nowhere to be found here.

The photos hub is interesting as it’s an aggregated view of your local and remote photos, and sharing photos is a relatively easy task if you can figure out how. When tapping on an individual photo in a single view, nothing happens. You’d think there would be some overlay that pops over with action buttons, but you actually have to tap and hold the photo to accomplish this. Once there, however, you are greeted by a lot of sharing options. You can email the picture, upload it right to Facebook, send it in an MMS, or upload it to Windows Live SkyDrive.

Conclusion

It should be clear to everyone that Windows Phone 7 as a platform is not finished yet. The first handsets aren’t rumored until September, October, or November depending on what site you’re reading on which day, and the handset we have been using for a week won’t ever be released and is meant only for developers to test apps on actual hardware. However, we have been playing around with WP7 for enough time, and the OS is well-enough along that we have got a great feel for it, regardless of any minor improvements before the first handset launches. Microsoft has no doubt broken course and gone in an entirely new direction, something that many people wish RIM would do, and we applaud them for that. They have created a brand new mobile operating system packed full of clean, modern, and sometimes even beautiful design elements.

We liked using the OS in general, though the experience for us felt a little too much like our time using the Microsoft KIN 2. The tiled homescreen seems a little too constrained and boxed in for us, and the non-frills design approach actually left the handset menus and navigational elements feeling bare and unfinished, rather than pure and unaltered. Not having any sort of menu for hoping back and forth between applications hampers your every day usage, and the animated transitions also start to feel old pretty fast. For a phone that was made from scratch and started on after the first iPhone was introduced, and for a phone that’s not even in market yet, it unfortunately in our view falls short. There’s practically no real innovation we can see with Windows Phone 7. It’s a decent mashup of some already pioneered features like aggregated status updates linked with your contacts, customizable homescreens, and a mobile apps and music marketplace, but we’re not sure that’s enough to push WP7 ahead of the three big juggernauts. It’s a fantastic featurephone, but as a truly competitive smartphone platform, we’re just not sure at this point in time.

There is no killer application on Windows Phone 7, and we can’t see an overwhelming reason to use one instead of an iPhone, BlackBerry or Android handset. Whether Microsoft’s OS updates to the platform will be enough to change our minds in the future is up to them, but for now, they’ve created a decent mobile operating system from scratch, but it unfortunately still has that Microsoft feel. And that’s not the best thing sometimes.

With Apple publicly stating specific handsets are susceptible to the same kind of antenna attenuation as the iPhone 4, and RIM and Nokia chiming in, we wanted to know what you guys are finding. Can you reproduce the same effect on your handset? Here is a handset that Apple didn’t specifically call out, the Verizon BlackBerry Bold 9650, and you can see it takes a nice hit when we hold it pretty firm in our hands. I’m pretty sure this has always happened, but I’m not sure I noticed until now. Plus it’s on Verizon. *Gasp*

Apple has — surprisingsly — posted the complete video from today’s iPhone 4 antenna press conference. If you want to hear what you probably already have heard, straight from the horse’s mouth, hit up the read link and enjoy.

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One of our reliable Apple connections (not Jason Burford) just let us know some pretty fantastic news. It’s been widely assumed that Apple will start to roll out their FaceTime real-time communication protocol to more and more of their mobile devices (and possibly their computers), but until now, we’ve been in the dark on how this will actually work. After all, there are no phone numbers to call on an iPod touch or iPad. Here is how we have been told FaceTime will work on non-iPhone devices:

It’s actually pretty simple… Your Apple ID will be registered with your device/s, and that will allow other Apple devices to start a FaceTime call using your email address. Apple will also reportedly make use of push notifications to deliver these incoming FaceTime connection requests as we have been informed there is a push notification detector tied into the FaceTime frameworks in the new iPhone OS 4.1 beta. We’re not sure how Apple will handle an iPod touch trying to connect to a FaceTime session on an iPhone as it seems Apple would still require you to use the iPhone’s phone number, at least that’s how it seems currently. In all reality though, we’re pretty confident Apple will make a straight forward and unified way of talking to every eventual FaceTime-enabled Apple device or computer, and it might be an Apple ID, or possibly something else down the road.

One of our Verizon Wireless connects sent us in a pretty nice document just moments ago… It’s Verizon Wireless’ summer device catalog, and we have it in its entirety. What’s most surprising is the inclusion of the Motorola Droid 2, a device Verizon Wireless has not announced, taking basically center stage on some of the pages. Thanks to the Summer / Fall catalog, we do have some confirmed specifications on the Motorola Droid 2: 8GB memory card preinstalled, 5 megapixel camera, 3G Mobile Hotspot functionality, and 1GHz CPU. There is also confirmation of the Pantech Jest, the Samsung Intensity 2 makes an appearance, as well as the Verizon Wireless Salute, and finally the Samsung Gusto rounds off the feature phones. The entire device catalog is in our gallery ready to go!

Click on over to our Verizon Wireless Summer device catalog gallery!

Velocity Micro has just announced a series of eReader tablets that aim to be functional, multimedia friendly, and most importantly affordable; say hello to the Cruz. Ranging in price from $149 to $299, the Android powered devices offer a plethora of features and options to fit your needs, and perhaps most importantly your budget. Hit the jump for the full press release with all the specs.

Velocity Micro® Announces a Family of Android™ based color E-readers and Tablets

Cruz line launches with 7” color Cruz Reader™, 16:9 Cruz Tablet™ and kid-friendly Cruz StoryPad™

Richmond, VA – July 13, 2010 – Velocity Micro, the premier builder of premium, high performance desktop computers, notebooks, and peripherals, announces the debut products from a captivating and affordable line-up of Android powered mobile devices. Taking e-readers light-years past e-ink, the Cruz Reader features a sleek design, touch screen display, and tons of multimedia features. The Cruz Tablet offers the same multimedia capabilities as the Cruz Reader with more storage and a multi-touch screen. Perfect for kids, the Cruz StoryPad offers a touch screen, interactive content, and intuitive interface. Best of all, the Cruz line starts at just $149.

“Since 1992, Velocity Micro has been dedicated to building remarkable consumer electronics,” said Randy Copeland, President and CEO of Velocity Micro. “With the development of the Cruz line, we were able to take those enthusiast sensibilities and package them for the mainstream consumer to create a product that’s not only amazing, but affordable as well.”

At under one pound and about a half inch thick, the $199, 7” Cruz Reader goes everywhere you do, making it perfect for students, avid readers, frequent flyers, and techies. Additional features such as video playback and web browsing provide a much richer experience than traditional e-ink readers at a more reasonable price than a tablet.

Key specs and features include:

• Crystal clear 4:3 ratio, 800×600 full color touch screen display – ideal for viewing ebooks and magazines, plus web pages and movies
• Google Android Operating System
• 802.11b/g wifi and full Web browser support
• High res video and high quality audio playback with no proprietary content restrictions
• Built-in Dictionary, Notepad, Calendar, Alarm Clock, Contacts, Games, and other useful apps
• Built in accelerometer, tilt activated
• Enough built in storage for hundreds of books
• USB and SD card slot for upgradable storage, including a 2GB SD card
• Up to 10 hours of use and over 24 hours of standby time, with a replaceable battery
• Access to over 2 Million ebooks via included Borders E-book library portal application
• Access to the Cruz Market™, an open content portal for downloading apps, magazines, and videos from a broad array of content providers.

At $299, the Cruz Tablet offers a truly mobile experience at an affordable price, finally giving consumers an Android-based tablet alternative.

Spec and feature upgrades include:

• 7” 16:9 ratio, 800×480 capacitive display – great for viewing widescreen video
• 802.11n wifi for faster wireless connectivity
• Integrated microphone for voice recording
• 4GB of built in storage with an 8GB SD card in the box for additional storage of high res photos, video, and music

Rounding out the Cruz line, the $149 Cruz StoryPad packs tons of multimedia features into a kid friendly, drop resistant package, letting children read, learn, and interact using a simple and intuitive touch interface. Features include:

• 7” 4:3 800×600 full color touch screen display
• Simplistic and intuitive navigation
• High res video and high quality audio playback
• Preinstalled audio book content – reads classic stories as the child follows along
• SD card for additional storage
• Available in pink, blue, and green

The Cruz Reader and Cruz StoryPad will be available from most major retailers and direct from Velocity Micro in August with the Cruz Tablet following on September 1st. For more information or to sign up for e-newsletter updates, visit www.CruzReader.com.

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Kudos to the iPhone dev team as member @Planetbeing has successfully unlocked the iPhone 4. The proof is in the picture above, which shows Bell Canada as the carrier for the iPhone 4, an impossible situation made possible by a successful carrier unlock (as the iPhone 4 has not been released in Canada). Eager iPhone 4 owners looking to duplicate this task themselves will have to wait, as the tools for the unlocking are not yet available for public consumption and most likely won’t be until after Apple releases it impending “antenna fix” update. Stay tuned and we will let you know when the unlocking tools finally drop.

Thanks to all who sent this in!

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Rumors have started to fly around the internet about an iPhone 4 recall, and this got us thinking… while we think a mandatory recall is very unlikely (as the iPhone 4 isn’t much of a safety concern), this is now a no win-situation for Apple.

When accounts of the iPhone 4’s reception woes first began to surface — shortly after the device’s release — Apple instantly denied the problem. We heard things like, “There is no issue,” and “All phones have some signal degradation depending on how you hold them,” and so on. Apple’s initial strategy seemed to be to deny the existence of an issue.

After the initial wave of consumer complaints came some expert testimony. People with RF engineering backgrounds and fancy degrees began stating that due to the way the iPhone’s antenna is engineered, grasping the phone “incorrectly” could cause the RF emission from the antenna to convert into heat, thus losing or diminishing the signal. To this Apple’s response was the admission of a “shocking” software error that causes your iPhone 4 (and presumably all other iPhones) to display the wrong number of “bars” in your signal meter.

Now, onto the latest — and perhaps most damning — round of critiques. Consumer Reports, a highly respected company in the United States, has confirmed through laboratory tests that the root issue with the iPhone 4 is a design problem with the antenna. The findings have resulted in the iPhone 4 receiving a “not recommended” rating from Consumer Reports, even though it otherwise tested as one of the best smartphones on the market. This morning, a member of the Consumer Reports team was on CBS’ The Early Show, demonstrating to Harry Smith how to “fix” your iPhone with a piece of duct tape. Ouch.

So here Apple sits. The Cupertino company first denied the antenna problems then admitted to there being some sort of software problem that had to do with reception perception. Meanwhile, the rest of the iPhone universe – lovers and haters alike, as well as Consumer Reports – has come to the conclusion that the issue with the iPhone 4 is definitively hardware and design related. So what about some sort of voluntary recall?

Occasionally, if done properly, a voluntary recall can earn a company some good will with its customer base. However, for Apple, that ship has long since sailed. Apple is going to release some sort of software patch for the iPhone 4, and if that doesn’t remedy the issue, here are Apple’s options.

1. Do nothing. Stick with the stance that there is no antenna issue with the iPhone 4, remind users that holding all smartphones a certain way will cause signal degradation, and deal with the impending lawsuits. Refute the concrete evidence and try to ride out the public relations nightmare.
2. Do some sort of voluntary recall of the first wave of iPhone 4’s. By doing this it would be admitting that, at best, the company was wrong and did not fully understand its own product, or at worst, it lied to its customer base. Deal with the backlash, and still potential lawsuit, and move on.

These are the choices that Apple has left itself through its management (read: mismanagement) of this situation. Neither option is all that appealing, and it leaves Apple with a pretty unenviable decision.

Sprint’s CEO Dan Hesse sat down with the Financial Times and re-confirmed the wireless provider’s option to pursue LTE if and when the time is right. According to Hesse, Sprint and Clearwire are in the enviable position of having access to ample 4G spectrum that is able to support LTE on top of the current WiMAX network. This over-abundance of 4G spectrum, and the possibility of deploying LTE, is causing analysts to re-consider the potential for a merger between Sprint and T-Mobile. Rumors of a merger between Sprint and T-Mobile surfaced in 2008 but the talks reportedly stalled because the two companies use two very different and incompatible wireless technologies (*cough*Nextel*cough). If both carriers adopt LTE, a merger is more likely as Sprint would receive a boost from T-Mobile’s 33 million subscribers and T-Mobile would gain much needed access to 4G spectrum. Hesse acknowledged that there was a “logic” to the merger but failed to comment on the possibility that the two wireless providers are in discussions.

[Via Phonescoop]

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The Unofficial Apple Weblog is reporting that moderators of Apple’s support forums are deleting discussions and links to the Consumer Reports study released yesterday. The report stated that CR could not recommend the iPhone 4 due to an antenna glitch that the company feels Apple needs to fix. Users are reporting that more than one thread (TUAW reports six) have been deleted from Apple’s forums thus far; you can check out the cached version of one such discussion here. The iPhone 4 antenna situation is a PR nightmare for sure, and, for whatever reason, Apple seems hell-bent on making it worse.

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What’s better than giving away one iPhone 4? Giving away two of them, obviously. We saw that some of you didn’t like that the winner of the iPhone 4 actually already had purchased one for himself (unbeknownst to us), and since we value every single one of you out there, we thought it would be fair to do another giveaway. That’s right, we’re giving away one more iPhone 4, and the rules are basically the same. Here are the official contest rules:

• To officially enter into the giveaway, drop a comment below explaining how badly you want a new iPhone 4 and why!
• If you use Twitter, shoot us a follow! Our username is @BGR.
• If you use Facebook, become a fan of our BGR Facebook page.
• We’ll run the giveaway for a little over a week, until Wednesday, July 21st at 11:59PM
• Please enter once and only once, multiple entries will disqualify you

Good luck. Again!

Why do we love South Korea? Because it has Seoul, of course. The YONHAP News Agency is reporting that the Samsung Galaxy S has sold over 300,000 units, in just 19 days, on South Korea’s largest wireless carrier; SK Telecom. Samsung declined to comment on the worldwide sales figures of the Galaxy S, which is also out in parts of Europe and Asia. However, last month Samsung President Shin Jong-kyun said his company expected sales of the Gally S to top 10 million units. How many of you are planning on picking up the Galaxy S in one of its many flavors?

Thanks, Kenny!

[Via BriefMobile]

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Apple’s iPhone is one step closer to officially landing in China. According to China’s Telecommunication Equipment Certification Center, a WiFi-enabled version of the iPhone was finally approved for a network access license. The image accompanying the approval notice suggests that the older iPhone 3G or 3GS and not the iPhone 4 will be the first to officially launch in the world’s largest mobile communications market. Look for the official confirmation to come from either Apple or the expected carrier China Unicom in the very near future. Until then, there is still the very active grey market for wanna-be iPhone owners in China.

[Via WSJ]

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Microsoft seems to be in a bit of a pickle – it has a fancy, schmancy OS in Windows 7 but a majority of its prized business customers are still clinging onto the now nine years old Windows XP operating system. On Monday at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference, Tammi Reller, the CVP of Microsoft Windows, dropped the bomb that 74% of business PCs are still running Windows XP. The reason for this slow adoption was not provided but presumably it has to do with the poor reputation that has plagued Windows Vista and possibly its successor Windows 7, which, thought its not being adopted, has fared better than its counterpart in the reputation department. Economics may also play a part as businesses have apparently been slow to upgrade hardware with the average business computer boasting of 4.4 years of faithful service. Rather than take a pessimistic view, Microsoft is putting a positive spin on this circumstance and viewing it as an opportunity to compel businesses to jump into the latest generation hardware and software. Microsoft is pretty upbeat- according to CEO Steve Ballmer, the software giant expects to sell 350 million Windows 7 licenses in 2010 alone.

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Phil McKinney, VP and CTO for HP’s Personal Systems Group, was at the MobileBeat 2010 conference on Monday showcasing some of HP’s innovative products. One product receiving a good amount of attention is a low-power, mylar-based flexible display capable of playing video. McKinney offered a tantalizing morsel for webOS diehards by stating that “these are the kinds of display technologies that will change what we think of in form factors, both in products from Palm with flexible displays, and with HP.” Good news for Palm and webOS supporters as these comments indicate again that HP is in for the long haul with webOS and  is looking to integrate the mobile OS into products that are coming soon as well as those that are years away.

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comScore traffic data is out for the month of June, and according to Citi analyst Mark Mahaney, the most recent figures reveal that Netflix’s traffic is soaring. The number of visitors to Netflix’s website has jumped 46% year-over-year for the month of June and 34% year-over-year for the second quarter. This huge jump in traffic is presumably due to ballooning usage of Netflix’s popular online video streaming service which lets Netflix customers watch movies and television episodes on their PC, Mac, or the iPad via an Internet connection. With Blockbuster potentially headed to bankruptcy, VUDU and Boxee still trying to sign distribution deals and content partners, and other services like Hulu Plus and RoxioNow still in the early stages, Netflix will continue to post impressive statistics as it retains its position as the king of online video subscription services.

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Nick Jones of Gartner published a brief research note on his blog that paints a bleak picture of Symbian. According to Jones, Symbian is still the dominant platform, but it is losing market share at an accelerating pace as rivals like Android and iOS continue their upward trend. Jones is equally bearish regarding the future of Symbian and points to a product roadmap that is filled with features like audio policy packages, WiFi direct, and other similar additions that are of little interest to consumers. He even goes so far as to suggest that the Symbian Foundation should invest in some skunkworks projects or launch a design contest as a contingency plan in case Symbian^4 fails to deliver as promised. Wow. So what do you think, is this admonishment undeserved or does the Symbian Foundation and Nokia need a wake up call?

Thanks, johnny99!

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