2011 won’t be a year just about the iPad. Apple’s AirPlay will be saturating the market this summer with dozens of speakers, docks, and receivers designed to wirelessly stream your tunes in lossless glory. Today, Philips, Pioneer, and JBL have all announced speakers and receivers that all support Apple’s wireless sharing capabilities, and we’ve got press releases, prices, and more after the break.
Posts tagged with "iPhone"
Here Come The AirPlay Systems: Phillips, Pioneer, and JBL Announce New Products
SK Telecom Gets iPhone 4, CDMA?
Update #2: MacRumors and others report the iPhone 4 on SK Telecom is a CDMA one. We’ll see.
Update: It looks like Electronista incorrectly reported the iPhone 4 on SK Telecom was CDMA, and has updated the article. We indeed noticed the lack of CDMA details, and as also noted by our friends over at SetteB.it the iPhone 4 on SK Telecom will be a GSM unit because of the mention of a SIM slot in the device’s FAQ.
As reported by Electronista, South Korean carrier SK Telecom has officially announced they are bringing the iPhone 4 to South Korea on March 16 with online and retail store pre-orders starting on March 9. Although no technical details have been provided by Apple or SK Telecom’s website in the press release, it is widely believed that the CDMA version of the iPhone will be released in South Korea, thus ending the temporary “exclusive” availability of the device on Verizon Wireless’ network in the United States.
“SK Telecom is proud to offer iPhone 4 on the nation’s top network,” said So Jin-Woo, President of Platform Business and Co-CEO of SK Telecom. “Our customers will benefit from flexible tariff plans tailored to their unique usage needs along with a high level of customer care.”
Customers may pre-register for iPhone 4 beginning March 9 at 7:00 a.m. at SK Telecom’s official online store, T Smart Shop, or at one of 1,500 authorized SK Telecom T World retail stores.
Full pricing and availability details for iPhone 4 in Korea will be available soon.
The release of the CDMA iPhone on a network outside the United States opens, of course, to the possibility of other countries getting the CDMA device relatively soon. For instance, it was rumored that China Mobile might be getting the iPhone (and LTE) this year – a great opportunity for Apple to expand the iPhone’s addressable market in Asian countries typically relying on CDMA networks instead of GSM. Apple’s move to South Korea could also mean big trouble for manufacturers like Samsung, which has maintained a strong grip on the market in the past years.
The launch comes late into the iPhone 4’s lifecycle but could have a major impact on the spread of Android in the country. Although KT has sold over two million iPhones since it began carrying the iPhone 3GS in November 2009, its role as the third-largest carrier has limited its reach and, similar to AT&T’s US exclusive, given Android free rein.
A teardown of the CDMA iPhone revealed the device is running a dual GSM-CDMA chip with worldphone capabilities, and yesterday it was reported a software hack can make the CDMA Verizon iPhone run on pay-as-you-go US network Cricket.
#MacStoriesDeals - Tuesday
Happy Fat Tuesday, it’s Mardi Gras season again! Here are today’s deals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get ‘em while they’re hot!
Google Launches Instant Previews, Available for iOS
A few minutes ago Google announced the availability of Instant Previews for mobile devices, a new way to quickly preview the contents of a webpage by simply tapping with your finger on a magnifying glass icon next to search results. Instant Previews, perfectly compatible with the iPhone and iPod touch, allow you to flick through a series of thumbnails for a specific webpage like in the iOS photo app, without actually following the link in Mobile Safari.
As soon as you tap on a link from the visual preview gallery, Mobile Safari will open the webpage. Hit the back button, and you’re brought to the gallery again. The animations are very neat and fluid from what we can see now, and there’s even some kind of rubber-banding elastic effect when you scroll thumbnails. Sadly, there’s no support for Instant Previews in mobile Youtube videos – just webpages.
For example, if you’re looking for a webpage that has both photos and descriptions, you can use Instant Previews to quickly identify these pages by navigating across the visual search results with a few swipes of your finger. Or perhaps you’re looking for an article, a step-by-step instructions list, or a product comparison chart—with Instant Previews, you can see easily spot pages with the right content without having to navigate back and forth between websites and search results.
iOS 4 or later is required for Instant Previews, and you can try them on your iPhone now. Promo video and another screenshot below. More information available here. Read more
Pocket Casts: A Full-Featured Podcast App That Doesn’t Need iTunes
Last week I decided it was about time for me to subscribe to some podcasts I had been keeping an eye on, but never really considered as an option for my free time. Podcasts are so 2001, I know, but I’ve never subscribed regularly to any of them. Plus, I have noticed a dramatic increase in the quality of tech podcasts lately, mainly thanks to the empire built by 5by5’s Dan Benjamin and a few other gems like Minimal Mac’s Enough or Shawn Blanc’s Today. I have to admit, though, that it was the B&B Podcast (also by Shawn Blanc and Benjamin Brooks) to convince me to go ahead and finally enter the podcasting scene as an active listener. Read more
Jailbreak Hack Puts Verizon iPhone on Pay-As-You-Go Network
Not so popular over here in Italy but apparently widely recognized in the States, pay-as-you-go networks allow you to get a phone from shady stores / individuals with pre-paid credit to consume at your own needs. Personally I prefer to keep my iPhone in safe waters with a proper subscription and data usage, but there’s some people who really prefer the pre-paid option over a more “secure” carrier offer. As noted by Engadget, it is possible to make the CDMA Verizon iPhone run on Cricket’s pay-as-you-go network, but you’ll have to jailbreak your phone, install some utility to set up the process and let a Cricket guy flash the device’s memory for you. Hmm. Would you trust that?
Still, it’s possible. Check out the video proof below. Read more
Socialcam, The “Instagram for Video”, Now Available. Our Review
A few weeks ago we talked about Socialcam, a new iOS and Android app from the creators of Justin.tv that’s aimed at revolutionizing the mobile video sharing space by offering a friendly user-experience heavily inspired by the current winner of mobile photo sharing apps, Instagram. Socialcam is finally available for free in the App Store and, after some quick tests, I can say this new app / service has a lot of potentialities to become the “Instagram for video”, but it needs a series of refinements in the settings to allow users to upload videos at the quality they want.
The strongest selling point of Instagram, in fact, is that it’s easy to use and, while images get compressed to enable faster uploading times on WiFi and 3G, users won’t notice the decrease in quality thanks to the filters provided by the app. Filters in Instagram are both a nice photographic addition and a way to “hide” the fact that photos are compressed at lower quality. Socialcam, however, doesn’t come with filters and videos are heavily compressed even when uploaded through WiFi. From what I’ve seen so far, this will make most videos look crappy on the iPhone 4 which, by the way, can actually do HD video recording. Socialcam should definitely offer some settings to allow users to upload and wait for the quality they want, as this could be great for videographers willing to share their creations on the go. Read more
TinyVox Is A Social Tape Deck For Your iPhone
We typically don’t do audio recordings in replacement or in conjunction with our written reviews, but I’ll make an exception. TinyVox is a very cool social tape deck for your iPhone or iPod touch that enables you to record audio in high or low quality, then publish those audio bits to social networking sites like Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.
#MacStoriesDeals - Monday
Super sweet Mac App Store deals today! Here are today’s deals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get ‘em while they’re hot!