Zit Seng's Superwall

So say crisis communication experts, Professor Matthew Seeger and Chris Lehane, quoted by mainstream Consumer Reports. The widespread complaints about the iPhone 4 antenna problems were confirmed in a lab experiment by Consumer Report, leading to their recommendation against the iPhone 4.

The lab experiment, which involved connecting several iPhone 4 to simulated cell towers in a radio frequency isolation chamber, showed that signal levels fell as much as 20dB when the lower left corner of the phone was covered.

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I just made a discovery, or perhaps shall I say, saw a relationship between the iPhone 4 signal loss problems, the way the phone is held, and multitasking. You’ve probably read about how the iPhone 4 encounters some problems with its cellular signal strength when held in a certain way. Steve Jobs answer was to simply not hold it that way. It seems that the iPhone 4 works better if held in the right hand. Well, I started to think about how I held my hand phone. Hmm. I use my left hand.

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iPad fever is passing, it’s now back to iPhone 4G. Guess what? The next generation iPhone 4G was “discovered”, then bought by Gizmodo’s parent company , Gawker Media, for $5000. It’s an expensive iPhone, but perhaps not that much considering the “news” value of this unannounced product.

The new iPhone 4G looks to have a camera flash, a bigger lens for the back camera (and hence perhaps a higher resolution camera), a front-facing camera, and a higher resolution screen.

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Steve Jobs just shared with the world what is coming with the latest iPhone OS version 4.0. In a media presentation lasting about 1 hour, a couple of the simply amazing features were demonstrated by Steve Jobs, Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall. Really amazing features like, ahem, being able to set a wallpaper for your home screen. Yes, for the first time ever, iPhone users will soon be able to customize the background of their home screen. I’m sure they will spend countless hours deciding which denim texture to adorn their iPhone screen with. Steve Jobs took no less than 90 seconds to show how wallpapers are selected in his demonstration.

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M1 and StarHub have officially announced the launch of the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3G S. Sales will commence on Wednesday 9 December 2009. The prices of the phones as well as the specially priced phone subscription plans have also been announced. Prices are remarkably different from those of SingTel. There is also some differentiation between M1 and StarHub.

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StarHub has announced that it will be starting to sell the Apple iPhone later this year. M1 already earlier announced their deal to sell the Apple iPhone, also slated to commence by year end. These sales will break SingTel’s monopoly over the offering of these phones since 2008. Neither M1 nor StarHub has announced pricing of the phones and subscription plans. With the iPhone now generally available through any of the telcos in Singapore, we can imagine competition to heat up.

Verizon, a big telco in the US, has started a commercial and an ad campaign to attack the iPhone. It’s really hilarious. iDon’t have a real keyboard. iDon’t run simultaneous apps. iDon’t take night shots. iDon’t allow open development. iDon’t customize. iDon’t run widgets. iDon’t have interchangeable batteries. Everything iDon’t. DroidDoes. See the DroidDoes website, or the commercial on YouTube.

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They’ve waited a long time. For iPhone customers on the AT&T network, finally, MMS has arrived. You’d have thought that the US would be more technologically advanced in these sort of things, but MMS has only just rolled out on 25 September 2009 for them. Yeah, all of us in the rest of the world… MMS is nothing new.

Hello, Singapore iPhone fans. SingTel has decided the penance you have to pay for your iPhone craze. It’s not cheap. Existing iPhone 3G users are being slapped a $600 or $300 upgrade fee for those who have completed 6 – 12 months or 12 – 21 months of their existing contract respectively. But there is good news for new iPhone 3G S wannabes. The new phones will cost slightly less than they did when the iPhone 3G was launched.

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Perhaps you’ve already heard all about it. SingTel will start selling the iPhone 3G S in Singapore on 10 July 2009 (see SingTel Shop announcement). I think this iPhone 3G S will finally be what the iPhone is meant to be. It is two years late in coming, after the iPhone 3G launched in 2008 and the original iPhone in 2007. Ignore all the Apple marketing for a moment, the iPhone 3G S now finally has all the major features that everyone has come to expect of a smartphone. That’s great, but how does it stack up against other smartphones?

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