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.

We’ve read and heard so many reports about various tests and experiments to “confirm” the antenna problem. But this is by far the most scientific test (at least it looks like) to date. Furthermore, for a mainstream media to boldly not recommend the iPhone 4, that’s something pretty startling. (I mean, after all, Consumer Report risks incurring the divine wrath of Apple Inc…)

Consumer Report found that taping the antenna gap in the lower left corner with “thick, non-conductive material” helped alleviate the problem. A duct tape would work, although it would certainly make the iPhone 4 pretty ugly. Or, you could put the phone in a protective casing, which Apple recommends. Or just hold the phone differently, as Steve Jobs recommends.

Practically every product that Apple has launched has faced some sort of “big problem” that fuels bigger problems like class action suits. This seems like one of the biggest challenge yet. It seems like a pretty fatal mistake if the signal problems are truly due to a design issue. I can’t wait to see how Apple responds to this, and of course, whether there would be an iPhone 4 recall.

Related posts:

1. Of iPhone 4, Signal Problems and Multitasking I just made a discovery, or perhaps shall I say,...
2. One Week After iPhone 3G Apple claims to have sold 1 million units of the...
3. iPad Predates The iPhone It used to be our private joke about how, perhaps,...

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.

So the iPhone users around me will say, since I’m right-handed, why am I not using my right hand? Interesting question. I suppose, holding a phone doesn’t take a lot of strength, nor dexterity. It seems like a secondary activity that can be delegated to the non-master hand, so that my master hand is free to do other things. Like taking notes while answering a call. Type on a keyboard. Open a door. Eat. Hmm, and operate a certain type of heavy mobile machinery while traveling on the road. These other activities are best done with my right hand.

If the iPhone 4 had to be held with the right hand, it seems somewhat inconvenient to carry out other tasks simultaneously.

Then, I saw the connection. The iPhone doesn’t multitask. Neither, probably, do their users. I can just imagine, if an iPhone user were on the phone (held the right way, of course) walking down toward a door, they would hang up the call, return the iPhone to the owner’s pocket (or wherever), then open the door (the right way too) and walk through it. After that, the call can be resumed. Too difficult? Well, basically you should just sit still when making a call. Try not to do any other thing at the same time.

Sounds really silly?

That’s why iOS 4 now has to support multitasking.

Related posts:

1. iPhone 4 Recall ‘Inevitable’ So say crisis communication experts, Professor Matthew Seeger and Chris...
2. Problem With SingTel Mobile Network? Has anyone noticed problems with the SingTel Mobile network this...
3. iDon’t: What The iPhone Doesn’t Do Verizon, a big telco in the US, has started a...

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.

The biggest visual difference with the new iPhone has to be the general form of the device, which has been tweaked somewhat. It has sharper edges now, somewhat similar to the look of the iPad. The back is no longer curved, but is now flat and seems to be glass or ceramic. I think it looks pretty nice, except that there are too many details on the side that makes the device look rather ‘inelegant’, quite unlike the clean look I’ve come to expect from Apple. Maybe this is just the prototype, and it will get cleaned up in the final product.

The new iPhone uses micro-SIM. It’s a bit of a problem, since we don’t use such SIMs in Singapore, at least not yet. I suppose when the 4G does sell in Singapore, the telcos here have to start switching to micro-SIMs.

In the past, we would be somewhat dubious about the reliability of such pre-announcement leaks. But in this instance, Apple has apparently demanded the return of this device. So we can be quite certain that this is at least some sort of prototype for the next generation iPhone.

I’m still not much of an iPhone fan though.

Related posts:

1. iPad Predates The iPhone It used to be our private joke about how, perhaps,...
2. The iPhone 4 – This changes everything. Again. The new iPhone 4 has been announced at WWDC 2010....
3. Second Generation iPhone More details about the second generation iPhone have surfaced. According...

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.

It just simply amazes me how such yester-year’s features can be passed off as “new” and still inspire so much excitement. Wallpaper. Can you imagine that, wallpaper being a new feature? Not now, but soon?

What else is new? Folders. Folders so you can organize your apps. So instead of organizing your 180 apps into a bunch of screens, you could now have 2000 apps in screens and folders. Wah.

Then, finally, the iPhone will multitask. Yeah, finally. But wait a minute. It’s not quite what you’d think multitasking is. What happens is that the iPhone OS will expose a set of services to perform background operations. It’s still not as if the apps can do any arbitrary thing they like in the background. It sounds like an evolution of the Apple Push Notification that was released last year. In fact, it really seems like that, because now there is local notifications… which doesn’t need a central Apple server to push notifications to the phone.

The one thing that looked interesting to me is iAds. It’s not what ‘d consider revolutionary. But it is an improvement in how mobile advertising can work within mobile applications. There’s no Flash involved but just plain HTML5, a point Steve Jobs stressed a couple of times, and it is quite impressive what HTML5 is capable of delivering. You should zoom in to this part of Steve Jobs’s presentation.

Related posts:

1. One Week After iPhone 3G Apple claims to have sold 1 million units of the...
2. iPhone 4 Recall ‘Inevitable’ So say crisis communication experts, Professor Matthew Seeger and Chris...
3. The Most Spectacular iPhone Update With the just announced upcoming iPhone OS update, Apple’s iPhone...

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.

The iPhone 3G S 32GB will cost between $0 and $658 at M1, and between $0 and $668. The contract subscription plans range from $198 to $36 for M1, and $205 to $38 for StarHub. It looks like M1 edges out slightly. At the lowest price plan, M1 offers 10GB data, while StarHub offers only 1GB data.

Notably, the lowest price plan from M1 is itself quite attractive. There is no where you could get anything like it from other telcos, or even M1 themselves without also getting an iPhone to go along. It’s almost like the iPhone purchase would be subsidizing the subscription plan.

It looks like M1 is a winner with the latest iPhone offers.

I wonder if SingTel would be making adjustments to their prices. Anyone who would want to get an iPhone with SingTel would already have done so, so there might not be much incentive for SingTel to reduce their prices, except perhaps, to curb the success of M1′s and StarHub’s iPhone sales.

For consumers, it will be nice if all telcos make adjustments to their usual subscription. All of them make special voice+data bundles for iPhone. There is no reason to exclude other smartphone users from getting onto the same voice+data bundles.

Update (8 Dec 2009): It seems that SingTel has announced that they will also be revising their iFlexi plans.

Update (8 Dec 2009): It seems StarHub wants to do better. They’ve upgraded the 1GB bundled data in their lower priced plans to 12GB of bundled data, beating M1′s 10GB data bundle. Good competition. Let’s hope it spills over to non-iPhone plans too. I’m not going to keep updating this blog post about the latest developments…

Related posts:

1. SingTel Announces iPhone 3G Prices Hello, Singapore. SingTel has announced their iPhone 3G prices. You...
2. StarHub to Sell iPhones StarHub has announced that it will be starting to sell...
3. Singapore iPhone 3G S Prices Revealed Hello, Singapore iPhone fans. SingTel has decided the penance you...

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.

Related posts:

1. M1 to Sell iPhones Local telco M1 is set to become the second carrier...
2. M1 vs StarHub iPhone Competition M1 and StarHub have officially announced the launch of the...
3. 3G iPhone Selling Price in Singapore Even though the new 3G iPhone will sell for quite...

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.

I’ve also been fond at mocking the iPhone. It has set a high standard for itself, but unfortunately, it’s features have fallen short of expectations. With the latest iPhone 3G S launched this year, I’d say the phone has made a lot of improvements. But so many others have also improved in the time it took the iPhone to get to where it is. I wonder where Apple will take the iPhone to next year.

If you ask me, I think the Motorola Droid looks like a good spec’ed phone.

Related posts:

1. The Most Spectacular iPhone Update With the just announced upcoming iPhone OS update, Apple’s iPhone...
2. The iPhone Software Worries Me I know nowadays phones are becoming like computers, which means...
3. 3G iPhone is Announced Apple has announced the much anticipated 3G iPhone at WWDC...

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.

Related posts:

1. The Most Spectacular iPhone Update With the just announced upcoming iPhone OS update, Apple’s iPhone...
2. Can I Suan the iPhone Again? Steve Jobs just shared with the world what is coming...
3. Why iPhone 3G Users Need The iPhone 3G S I heard that the iPhone 3G’s camera wasn’t all that...

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.

If you take up the iFlexi “Apple” plans, the 16GB iPhone 3G S will cost $60 less than the 8GB iPhone 3G did, and the 32GB iPhone 3G S will cost $70 less than the 16GB iPhone 3G did. Prices range from $0 to $678 for the 32GB iPhone 3G S, and $0 to $548 for the 16GB iPhone 3G S, depending on what price plans you pick.

But if you take up the usual SingTel subscription plans, the price points have remained the same, i.e., 16GB iPhone 3G S will cost what the 8GB iPhone 3G did, and the 32GB iPhone 3G S will cost what the 16GB iPhone 3G did. But there are more price points now, due to a greater variety of subscription plans. The 16GB iPhone 3G S will cost from $0 to $698 and the 32GB iPhone 3G S will cost from $0 to $848.

Head over to the SingTel Shop website to get the full details (I’m not posting the direct URL link since it will probably become invalid pretty soon).

I’m not much of an iPhone fan. But I’ll admit that specs-wise, the iPhone 3G S seems like a respectable phone. It is a bit pricey. The camera is not good enough for me. I’ll like to have a real keyboard too. Otherwise, the iPhone 3G S looks like a worthy consideration. (However, I’ve already decided to go with the Nokia N97. Check out my iPhone 3G S vs Nokia N97 comparison.) If you’re interested in the iPhone 3G S, SingTel will start selling them this Friday, 10 July 2009 at 8pm, at ComCentre (Exeter Road).

Related posts:

1. SingTel Announces iPhone 3G Prices Hello, Singapore. SingTel has announced their iPhone 3G prices. You...
2. M1 vs StarHub iPhone Competition M1 and StarHub have officially announced the launch of the...
3. iPhone 3G Non-Contract Price Revealed More information about the non-contract price of the iPhone 3G...

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?

Other phone manufacturers did not sit still waiting for Apple to catch up. In the two years that Apple went from the original iPhone to the iPhone 3G S, many other new smartphones have come to market. For Nokia, one of the significant milestones is the introduction of their first touchscreen smartphone, the 5800 XpressMusic. The flagship N97 followed about a half year later. Both phones run the Symbian S60 5th Edition software platform.

How does the iPhone 3G S stack up against the N97?

Physical Form: The iPhone 3G S measures 115.5 x 62.1 x 12.3 mm, weighs 135 gm. The N97 measures 117.2 x 55.3 x 15.9 mm, weighs 150 gm. The N97 is slimmer, but taller and thicker, and a little heavier too. The N97 is inevitably thicker and heaver as it is a side-slider design and a real built-in QWERTY keyboard. The construction is surprisingly good and solid. The iPhone is a solid block. With nothing to slide or move, no (almost) buttons to push, you’d expect it to be solid.

Phone Connectivity: Both the iPhone 3G S and N97 have all the works. Quad-band GSM, tri-band UMTS. 900 MHz UTMS replaces the 850 MHz UMTS frequency for certain N97 markets. Both phones offer 802.11b/g WLAN. The iPhone 3G S sports Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, while the N97 supports only up to Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR. Both phones support Assisted-GPS. I understand that the HSDPA function on the iPhone 3G S will support up to 7.2 Mbps download speed, which puts it ahead of the N97 which supports up to 3.6 Mbps only.

Other Sensors: Both phones feature accelerometers (orientation sensor), digital compass, proximity sensor and ambient light sensor.

User Interface: The iPhone 3G S is entirely dependent on the touchscreen interface, with virtual keypads and virtual keyboards. The user interface is quite smooth and fluid, but how good it may be, some people will find it easier to work with a real keys. The N97 is also touchscreen.

Camera Functions: The N97 wins with a 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and dual-LED flash. The iPhone 3G S only has a 3 megapixel camera with no flash. Both phones support geo-tagging, and they both record video at VGA resolution with 30 fps. The iPhone 3G S lacks a secondary camera like the N97 to use for making video calls. I suppose video calls aren’t all that important anyway. To date, I’ve not made a video call other than for the sheer fun of seeing it work.

Battery Life: The iPhone 3G S boasts 12 hrs and 5 hrs of 2G and 3G talk times respectively, which is somewhat comparable to the N97′s 9.5 hrs and 6 hrs. In terms of standby time, the N97 wins at over 400 hrs compared with the iPhone 3G S’ 300 hrs. The N97′s video playback time is weak at 5.5 hrs compared with the iPhone 3G S’ 10 hrs, but it scores better with 40 hrs music playback compared to the other’s 30 hrs. I guess, in general, their battery performance can be said to be comparable.

Display: Both phones sport a 3.5″ display. The iPhone 3G S has a 480×320 resolution, which looses out to the N97′s 640×360 resolution. The iPHone 3G S uses a capacitive touchscreen which is more touch sensitive than the N97′s resistive touchscreen. But the N97′s resistive touchscreen technology enables you to use a stylus.

Under The Hood: Both phones have built-in 32GB of flash memory (the iPhone 3G S is also available in a smaller 16GB version). However, in most other techie data sheet specifications, the iPhone 3G S will win out: 256MB of RAM vs 128MB for the N97, 600 MHz ARM1176JZF CPU vs the 434 MHz ARM11 CPU (not sure how the CPU can be compared directly…).

The iPhone 3G S and N97 are somewhat comparable phones in overall features and capabilities. In fact, the N97 looks surprisingly like the iPhone 3G S too. The smooth, shiny surface, mostly occupied by its large display, looks quite similar to the iPhone 3G S from afar.

But the two phones are each different enough to cater to different target users. If camera photography is important to you, you will go for the N97′s better camera optics and flash light capability. No doubt the N97′s dual-LED flash is nothing spectacular compared with Xenon flashes on other camera phones, having a flash is always better than not having any at all. The higher resolution display is an advantage for viewing photos and videos.

I’ve not actually played with the iPhone 3G S, since it isn’t available yet in Singapore, but from my experience playing with the iPhone 3G, I’d say that the user interface is smooth, slick, and somewhat fun to use. The N97 interface will be familiar to any Symbian user, although it could be a little complicated to first time users.

As with all first release software, the N97′s software currently still has a few kinks that need sorting out. Hopefully we will be seeing a more responsive and stable software in future updates (which are always free). If you want the fun-ness of the Apple user experience, simple idiot-proof user interface, then go for the iPhone 3G S.

Related posts:

1. Apple iPhone vs Nokia N95 8GB Yes I know the Apple iPhone has hit the streets...
2. iPhone 4G for $5000 iPad fever is passing, it’s now back to iPhone 4G....
3. The iPhone 4 – This changes everything. Again. The new iPhone 4 has been announced at WWDC 2010....