Last week, a brief tweet from Mobile Review’s editor-in-chief, Eldar Murtazin sparked a rumor that Taiwan-based manufacturer Foxconn had received orders to build the next-generation iPhone. This week Toshiba has announced their 64GB NAND flash chip — the largest capacity in the industry. Is this what Foxconn will be stuffing into future iPhones?
Apple has doubled the capacity of the top-of-the-line model in previous updates. You’ll remember that the curent iPhone contains either a single 16GB or 32GB Toshiba NAND module. We’re not in charge of production at Foxconn, but it seems that six months is enough time to produce a pile of these. This is speculation, of course, but speculation is fun.
After Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of AT&T Mobility, stated earlier this week that he wants iPhone users to limit their data usage the web exploded with anger. The New York Times sided with AT&T, but others thought that was bogus. Now Fake Steve Jobs is getting in on the action. Fake Steve is telling iPhone users to go crazy with their data usage this Friday, December 18, to teach De La Vega a lesson in for trying to stifle his customers contract-given-rights for unlimited data usage.
Subject: Operation Chokehold
Good news, everyone! The target date for Toyota’s Prius plug-in hybrid (PHEV) is slightly less out of reach than the 2012 window we heard prior: according to Autoblog, it’s now set for late 2011 and the price is deemed “affordable.” Back to the present, as a tease to the world at large, the company’s planning to produce and ship just under 600 of the models over the next six months. That breaks down to around 230 for Japan, 200 for Europe, and just 150 for the ‘States. Government agencies, corporations, and universities are the primary recipients, and interestingly, half of those Euro-bound cars are going straight to Strasbourg, France. The only catch is that it looks like the autos will be sticking with its flashy, hyper-blue paint job — not that we mind one bit, but we can see that bugging a few people out.
Outside of the occasional leaked roadmap, one of the best ways to predict the future of consumer electronics is by looking at the evolution of the components within. Take this Toshiba NAND package for instance. While the launch of a 64GB embedded NAND flash memory module (the highest capacity in the industry) that combines sixteen 32Gb NAND chips fabricated with 32nm manufacturing processes might sound a bit boring, consider its uses. As you’ll recall from the iPhone 3GS teardown, Apple’s lovely uses either a single 16GB or 32GB Toshiba NAND module depending on the model purchased. The fact that Toshiba is now sampling its new high-capacity chips with mass production set to begin in Q1 2010 hints at what we can expect from the next-gen iPhone rumored to have landed in Foxconn’s lap. That’s enough capacity for 1,070 hours of recorded music (at a 128Kbps bit rate), 8.3 hours of 17Mbps high definition video, and 19.2 hours of 7Mbps standard definition video according to Toshiba’s calculations. The iPod touch, you’ll remember, differs by using a pair of NAND packages for a total of 32GB or 64GB of flash today. Anyone for a 128GB iPod touch? Check the module’s internals after the break — fascinating stuff, really.
Continue reading Toshiba announces 64GB NAND packages: Apple winks, gives a nudge
Developers are learning that iPhone users want sophistication and features in their apps, not watered-down functionality. A report in GigaOM shows that not only are companies finding that slimmer isn’t better when it comes to apps, but that one company is actually changing their business model based on what they found out about how iPhone users were using their app.
Travel search service Kayak based its first iPhone offering on the assumption that a mobile user would most likely use the app if her flight had been canceled and she needed a replacement reservation. As a result, the initial app didn’t have features like flexible date search.
Uh oh! It looks like there’s shipping delays and availability issues with 27 inch iMacs. It’s reported that these delays could be due to graphics issues with the GPU. Several Apple resellers are citing shipping delays when trying to order the models.
Apple made a brief statement to CNET tonight acknowledging the delays, but iMacs are showing a two week shipping delay on Apple’s online store, which might mean you won’t be able to purchase one in time for the holidays.
Those Googlers are apparently having quite a bit of fun with their new Google Phones (aka Nexus One). From the looks of it, they’ve set up some sort of holiday game that’s a twist on the game memory. But the catch is that you can only access this game from the Nexus One, any other device will be forwarded to the standard Android homepage.
If you visit this URL, you should see a quick flash of the game’s rules before you’re redirected. But if you’re on the Nexus One, the rules page would remain. It reads:
Look familiar? For a story that broke on Twitter it’s only fitting that the first reported picture of the mythical, magical “Google Phone” (AKA, Nexus One) would appear there as well. The tweeted image above appears courtesy of one Cory O’Brien, an account manager at a San Francisco Bay Area marketing agency that does not list Google as a client. That note of caution aside, the image above is an exact match to that leaked HTC Passion / Bravo image from October, only this time lacking the HTC logo on the top-side bezel. Besides the pic, O’Brien tweets that the “Google Phone = iPhone + a little extra screen and a scroll wheel. Great touch screen, and Android.” Granted, none of this is confirmed yet, but with Google releasing so many of the devices as part of its “mobile lab” concept, well, we expect to see plenty more sightings in the run up to the rumored January launch.
Update: A quick search for “nexus one” on Google’s Picasa photo service reveals several pictures taken with a camera pegged as the HTC Nexus One in the EXIF data. The very first of these geotagged 2592×1944 pixel (that’s a 5 megapixel sensor folks, hardly “weirdly large” as described by TechCrunch) images were taken by user Bradley (who just happens to be a Picasa friend to Sergey… hint) in the SF Bay Area on November 27th. A few are clearly lit by an onboard flash as well. In fact, many of the pics appear to be taken from within Google’s offices and at Google sponsored events. The quality is not exactly spectacular and that won’t likely change in the final product because even Google’s bound by the laws of physics when it comes to tiny cellphone sensors.
They may not let you actually drive the car James Bond-style, but it looks like there will be some apps for the iPhone and BlackBerry launching alongside the Chevy Volt, with apps for other devices apparently also a possibility. That word comes from Chevrolet’s soon-to-be-retiring VP Brent Dewar, who unfortunately had little to say about the apps themselves, but did briefly flash the above slide during a presentation at the LA Auto Show last week. The apps will apparently let you control when the car charges, however, and even include integrated real-time features from OnStar, which should include things like electricity rates from utility companies by the time the Volt rolls out.
[Thanks, Dave]
Transactional advertising network provider Adgregate Markets, a finalist at the 2008 TechCrunch50 conference Adgregate Markets has struck a monumental deal with NBC Universal to power the media conglomerate’s mobile commerce ad campaign.
Adgregate?s ShopAds enables customers to shop and complete secure transactions within Flash-based ad banners. The mobile version of these ads are similar. NBC is using ShopAds to advertise, publicize and sell the DVD release of movie Inglourious Basterds within rich media ad-units on mobile devices. Greystripe, which recently got an $2 million infusion from NBC Universal, will include the branded ShopAds on its rich-media mobile ad network.