iPhone

Apple is still dancing around an iPhone deal with perhaps the biggest prize remaining in the iPhone universe: China.

We've been down this road before with China Mobile and Apple, but IDG News Service managed to corner China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou on Tuesday, who said that "(Apple CEO) Steve Jobs and I hope the iPhone will enter China as soon as possible." Still, there's no agreement to officially get the iPhone 3G onto the largest mobile network in the world.

There are plenty of iPhones in China, but they didn't come in through the … Read more

The rollout of the iPhone 3G has seen a large increase in the iPhone's global Web share, according to figures released Monday.

The figures, collected by Web analytics company Net Applications, show that in June 2008, before the launch of the iPhone 3G, the iPhone had 0.16 percent share of the operating system market, as measured by OS detection during Web browsing; and in July, it had 0.19 percent.

However, as of September 1, the iPhone had 0.3 percent of global market share, an increase of 58 percent in one month. According to Net Applications, this was due to the July launch of the iPhone 3G.

"The release of the iPhone 3G has brought large gains in Web-browsing share," said a Net Applications report. "Prior to the launch, iPhone usage share had leveled off, but has since resumed its upward trend."

In the operating system market, Microsoft Windows has had dominance for many years. However, a Net Applications report showed that dominance steadily, if slowly, decreasing. Whereas in October 2007 Microsoft Windows had 92.49 percent of the operating system market, in August 2008 that figure had dropped to 90.66 percent. … Read more

There's been a lot of speculation lately about whether iTunes is a boon or burden to album sales.

Kid Rock has sold more than 1.7 million copies of his latest album, Rock and Roll Jesus, with no iTunes presence at all. And last week, Warner Bros. pulled Estelle's new album from iTunes in the U.S. in hopes of spurring physical sales. (The plan appears to have failed miserably.)

Apple is striking back before this scattered practice turns into a trend. According to Music Week, the company is working with alternative rock band Snow Patrol on an … Read more

Apple CEO Steve Jobs seems very responsive to customer e-mail these days.

Gizmodo has obtained another e-mail supposedly sent from Jobs' iPhone, claiming that Apple and AT&T want to officially bring "tethering" to the iPhone 3G.

Lots of other carriers and handset makers offer ways to wirelessly hook your laptop up to your smartphone, and use the data connection of the phone to get on the Internet. But Apple and AT&T scuttled one early iPhone application called NetShare that was designed to do just that.

One Gizmodo reader claims to have asked Jobs why … Read more

Canadian cell phone carrier Rogers Communications is extending its iPhone data plan promotion another month, as it tries to figure out how best to price data plans for smartphone users, CBC reported Thursday.

Rogers, Canada's exclusive iPhone carrier, will offer the 6-gigabyte data service for $30 a month for all smartphone users, including Apple iPhone users, and laptop air cards.

The promotion, which was launched with the iPhone 3G's July 11 debut, was set to expire at the end of August. The carrier offered the special promotion after customers complained about a similarly priced plan that offered only … Read more

A plausible scenario for the iPhone 3G reception problems has emerged: it's a power thing.

RoughlyDrafted reported Thursday that a source with AT&T blamed "faulty" power-control software inside the iPhone 3G for the dropped calls and poor reception that owners have been experiencing since the device was released in July. In short, the iPhone 3G demands too much power--more than is necessary--from a local cell tower to maintain a connection, and when multiple iPhones try to glom onto the same tower, the problem snowballs.

The iPhone OS 2.0.2 software update was designed to fix … Read more

As you may have heard, everyone's favorite little phone that can has kind of a big bug that kinda sorta makes it, oh, seem like you might be protected when, in fact, your "hysterical" buddies poked holes in your entire pack of prophylactics with pins and didn't tell you until after spring break.

So, yes, it's a bad bug and, yes, Apple needs to fix it post haste. Which, of course, is license for everyone to freak out.

InfoWorld's Peter Sayer sagely notes:

One way to avoid such unauthorized access to e-mail messages or … Read more

French owners of the iPhone 3G are irate over Orange's practice of capping their 3G download speeds at a rate far slower than what their neighbors can access, but are in for a speed boost.

The carrier has apparently backed off its decision to cap iPhone 3G downloading speeds at 384Kbps, according to a report from France-Info. AppleInsider tracked the furor that arose after French iPhone 3G owners started comparing the speeds of their iPhones with their German neighbors, and discovered that iPhone 3G users on T-Mobile's German network were seeing speeds far greater, up to almost 2Mbps.… Read more

A new series of tests coming out of Sweden appears to absolve the iPhone 3G's antenna from blame over the phone's reception issues.

A Swedish tech publication known as GP conducted a series of tests this week on the antennas of iPhone 3Gs belonging to users reporting reception issues, as a follow-up to an earlier test on an iPhone 3G that was connecting to 3G networks as designed. In both cases, the iPhone 3G antenna was functioning normally and emitting a strong signal, leading GP to conclude that the iPhone's hardware is not the culprit.

The GP … Read more