AT&T is one of the oldest phone companies in the country. In fact, at one point it was such a large company that the government decided to break it up into pieces. Now, decades later, AT&T is once again nearly as large as they once were, but they aren’t quite as dominant. However, one area where AT&T is still a major player is in the cell phone business. ATT carries the best cell phones.
There is no debating that AT&T carries the best cell phones. Why can I say that? Two words: Apple iPhone. It’s a game changer and you can’t write about AT&T’s phone lineup without mentioning it. It’s just that good. Of course there are others too, and we’ll get to those, but you gotta start with the iPhone. (more…)
Making cell phone comparison can be tricky. Most of the time when comparing two phones, unless you are comparing both phones on the same service provider, and both phones have the same intended objective, you are really comparing apples to oranges. For example, comparing the brand-new iPhone 3G to a two-year-old basic Nokia phone doesn’t make any sense. Obviously the iPhone would be way more expensive, but at the same time would provide more features. The Nokia phone would be much cheaper, but Would provide much less functionality. So what would be the better buy? That is not an easy question to answer. (more…)
It shouldn’t surprise anyone who uses it that Gmail is the most useful, and among the most popular of all free e-mail services. Yet, if you have a mobile phone you realize how many of those great features you really miss using a mobile phone e-mail client. However, there are a select few phones that really do the whole Gmail service justice.
The most obvious of course, is the new phone from T-Mbile and Google. Since this built by Google and Google software, it just makes sense that e-mail integration with e-mail service works very well. If you want, you can use either the built-in e-mail client and access GMail via push mail, or You’ve access Gmail directly via the web browser. Personally, I think setting up Gmail using the IMAP protocol so that changes are made automatically across all devices works extremely well. This is also my preferred option, using the iPhone. (more…)
Seth Goldin has a fantastic idea for a killer iPhone app that is just itching to be made. It’s a very simple idea, but it would be very tricky to do on anything other than an iPhone. Basically the idea is to have a program that will tell you exactly the route you should take by monitoring the traffic jams and such that other users are observing.
Creating a service using a traditional traffic monitoring system where you would pay for people or contractors would be prohibitavely expensive. Thus, most systems that track traffic end up being not terribly responsive or accurate. Using the power of crowds could really provide excellent data to build a system from and the way that Seth has thought about it is really right on. The iPhone could just send its GPS data back to the server every so often when driving as its giving directions and that would give the server enough data to monitor the traffic. (more…)
A few details about version 2.2 of the iPhone firmware have emerged. According to the Digital Earth Blog, it will include Google StreetView, an expected move since it was recently released for Google Maps Mobile (Nokia, etc) and is part of Android.
In addition, you’ll finally be able to disable auto-correction on the keyboard. I personally hate it, so I’ll be happy to get rid of it.
Beyond that, they’ll be including support for Japanese emoji icons, which has been blamed as part of the reason for the slow iPhone adoption in Japan.
No word on Background Push Notification in this update, nor a release date for it.
This is pretty slick. Starting with firmware 2.1, specially coded mobile websites can be designed to run just like your other apps! If you are on a site that supports this, you simply save the app to your home screen, just like you’ve always done. When you tap the icon, the page will load in a clean window (no Safari wrapper), and it loads very quickly (no wrapper, less overhead).
For you webmasters out there, changing your site to support this is very easy. Simple add these three lines of code to your page header area:
According to engadget, the 32GB iPhone might be here as soon as next week. Considering the 16GB model came out of nowhere in February, this certainly seems possible. In fact, I’m a little surprised we haven’t seen the 32GB model yet.
Shortages of the 8GB iPhone are becoming more widespread, which is fuel speculation of the 32GB arrival. This is possible, or it might just be a resource shift as Best Buy gets rolling. Either way, we’ll find out soon!
It’s another great innovation for the iPhone that every other phone has had for about 8 years — an “at a glance” home screen.
Right now, it’s just a patent application, but it looks pretty nice. As an iPhone user, I can certainly see how this kind of screen could be useful.
On the other hand, they’ll need to be very careful about the privacy implications. It was less than a month ago that they had the big issue with people being able to bypass the security code, and this appears to have a similar issue. Based on the sketch, you can see recent information (calls, texts, voicemail, etc) without unlocking the phone.
That being said, I’m sure Apple is keeping that in mind and will find a way to make it work that pleases (almost) everyone.
Google has just released a nice update for Google Maps Mobile, including StreetView and walking directions! This update is for Blackberry and other Java-enabled phone for now (no Symbian or iPhone yet), but other devices are coming soon.
You can download the update at google.com/gmm, or watch the video below for more info:
