It’s official: sixteen months after the launch of the last iteration, Apple CEO Tim Cook has just taken the stage to announce the next iPhone. It’s called the iPhone 4S.

… and it looks exactly like an iPhone 4.

Uncharacteristically for Apple, official word of the iPhone 4S actually crossed the wire a bit early when the page for Apple’s store in Ginza, Japan mentioned the device.

The whispers around the rumor mill constantly contradicted each other regarding Apple’s next iPhone. Some foresaw the iPhone 4S; others saw an iPhone 5 on the way. Some claimed it’d be both. If an iPhone 5 is on this year’s launch calendar, it hasn’t been mentioned yet at this event.

The specs disclosed so far:

• Dual-core A5 CPU, said to be “2x as fast at CPU tasks”
• Dual-core graphics, up to “7x faster than the previous iPhone”
• Battery life estimates: 8 hours talk time on 3G, 14 hours on 2G. 6 hours of browsing on 3G, 9 on Wi-Fi. 10 hours of video playback, 40 hours of music.
• Theoretical download speeds of 14.4Mbps (as opposed to 7.2 on the iPhone 4.) Interestingly, Schiller called out Motorola, LG, and HTC for calling these speeds “4G”.
• World Phone (in other words, the one model will handle both GSM [like AT&T] and CDMA [like Verizon], and it should work well in most countries around the world)
• 8 megapixel camera (Photo resolution: 3264 x 2448). The camera also takes advantage of image processing on the A5 chip, enabling stuff like Face detection and 26% more accurate white balance.
• 1080p video recording with real-time noise reduction and video stabilization (!)
• Voice-controlled personal assistant. You can ask things like “Will it rain in Cupertino?”, or “Can you find me a Greek Restaurant in Palo Alto?”, or “What’s the time in Paris?” and it’ll answer accordingly. This is the culmination of their purchase of Siri back in 2010 — and surprisingly enough, they’re keeping the “Siri” name.
• Available in black or white
• Pricing 16GB for $199, 32GB for $299, or 64GB for $399. This is the first time Apple has offered a 64GB iPhone.
• Will be offered in the US by AT&T, Verizon, and most notably: Sprint!

“Let’s talk iPhone” reads the banner above today’s iPhone event in Cupertino. Newly minted CEO Tim Cook glossed over some pretty impressive iPhone statistics in introductory overview on the phone, namely that the iPhone 4 has sold one half of total iPhones sold since it was introduced late last June.

“The iPhone has 5% share of the worldwide market of handsets,” Cook revealed. “I could have shown the bigger smartphone numbers. But we believe over time all handsets become smartphones.” Emphasizing that the mobile phone market is 1.5 billion units annually Cook noted, “An enormous opportunity for Apple.”

Cook went on to state that 93% of Fortune 500 companies are testing the iPhone on an enterprise level and that it ranks first in customer satisfaction among smartphones, according to JD Power and Associates. “The iPhone is pummeling the competition,” he said, emphasizing that there was more coming on the iPhone later in the talk, obviously.

As Cook began the announcement emphasizing the Chinese Apple Store foot traffic, namely 100K visitors on opening weekend in Shanghai, (“six stores in China now — we will do more!”) it’s worth noting that the burgeoning Asian smartphone market is opportunity enough.

This morning at Apple’s iPhone event in Cupertino, Apple’s Senior VP of iOS Software Scott Forstall took the stage to fill in the rest of the details regarding iOS 5 before they moved on to talk about new hardware.

iOS 5 will launch to everyone on October 12th.

For those who need a recap, the top 10 features of iOS 5 (as hand-picked by Forstall himself):

• Notifications: A replacement system for iOS’ otherwise antiquated alerts system
• iMessage: A free to use, iOS-to-iOS SMS replacement
• Reminders: user creatable time/location based reminders
• Twitter integration
• Newsstand: Apple’s in-house distribution system for iPad magazines
• New and improved camera (One click access from the lock screen, red eye removal, cropping, rotating, etc)
• Game Center (Recommendation engine, Achievements system)
• Improved Safari browser (Faster, lighter, tabbed browsing on iPad, and the “Reader” content scraper)
• Mail.app improvements
• PC-Free (Activation without iTunes)

Also hugely important to iOS 5, but mentioned later in the presentation: iCloud, Apple’s photo/document/data syncing solution. It stores your photo stream, backs up your contacts, keeps a catalog of all the apps you’ve ever purchased, and can store documents and files from third-party apps. iCloud will launch to everyone on October 12th, as well. Everyone gets 5 GB for free, while 10 GB, 20 GB, and 50 GB plans are available for $20, $40, and $100 per year respectively.

The iOS 5 update will work on the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 1 and 2, and iPod Touch (3rd/4th gen).

Tim Cook started today’s iPhone announcement off with some Apple stats, and he had a lot of good news. First was their growth in the retail sector, where Cook focused on the new stores in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Cook’s headline stat was that while their store in LA took a month to reach 100,000 visitors, the Shanghai store did that number on its opening weekend.

Next was the Mac. OS X 10.7, Lion, has sold more than six million copies — which he notes is 80% more than Snow Leopard, and furthermore a number it reached ten times faster than Windows 7. He didn’t mention that Windows 7 sold an additional 455 million copies or so after that, but hey.

The growth of Apple’s MacBook and iMac lines was also a topic of discussion. Cook noted that Apple computers grew at six times the rate that PCs have, and that the MacBook Pro and iMac are the best-selling laptop and desktop in the US. Total install base right now? 58 million.

On the iPod front, a device many feared would have its original form factor discontinued today, Cook noted that Apple has sold a total of 300 million iPods. The iTunes store has expanded to encompass 20 million songs, and users have downloaded 16 billion of them.

Perhaps more impressive is the fact that Apple has sold 250 million iOS devices. That’s iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads — and we’ll do a breakdown of those sales numbers later. The iPhone 4, he says, makes up more than half the iPhones they’ve sold, and is the number one smartphone in the world.

There’s more coming, including the actual news of the day. Stay tuned.

[image: Engadget]

If there was still some shadow of a question in your mind over whether or not the iPhone 4S is real, doubt no more. Apple’s Japanese online store has outted the iPhone 4S, along with a launch date of October 14. First spotted by MacRumors, the page offers a “Learn More” link, but unfortunately clicking through only gets you to iPhone 4 information.

According to the blurb (as translated by Google), the iPhone 4S launch will begin at 8 a.m. on that blessed Friday morning. Last year the sequence of events looked something like this: The iPhone was announced on June 7, went up for pre-order on June 15, and launched in-store on June 24. Based on that, I’d guess that pre-orders will begin Friday morning, October 7. It’s tough to speculate based on history since Apple is clearly changing things up so much this year (two phones, Fall launch, etc.), but either way we’ll have our answers in the next hour or so.

Update: So it turns out I guessed correctly. Pre-orders begin October 7, and in-store availability begins October 14.

Oh, look! What do we have here? A tiny glimpse at what is arguably the hottest Android phone of the year, the Nexus Prime? Leaking in such a way that doesn’t really reveal much, while simultaneously showing off one of the device’s greatest specs (the wonderfully high resolution screen) and teasing the phone’s overall design? On the morning preceding the announcement of the next iPhone? What a crazy coincidence! (Note: italics used for lack of any superior indication of sarcasm.)

Still, obviously planned “leaks” aside: drool.

The guys at GSMArena nabbed the shot, seemingly showing the edge of the Prime while the device sits in a debug readout mode.

Things to note in the picture:

• Rumors have pinned the display on the Nexus Prime as being “720p”. This photo suggests that the resolution is actually 1184×720 (whereas true 720p is generally 1280×720) — but that’s presumably because it’s not properly counting the pixels used by the software buttons below and the status bar at the top.
• It also suggests that the Nexus Prime’s display will come in at 320 dpi (dots per inch), putting it just ever-so-slightly below the iPhone 4′s 326 dpi retina display.
• Rumors have previously suggested that the Prime would have an almost comically huge 4.6″ display. Assuming that the resolution actually is 1280×720 and the onscreen DPI counter is correct, the math for that works out. A 4.6″ display running at 1280×720 would have a DPI of just over 319
• On screen software buttons!

Real? Fake? Given the almost-too-good timing and the convenient framing of the image, I’d bet the bank, the farm, and the pigs on the former. Either way, we’ll find out the Prime and Ice Cream Sandwich on October 11th.

Apple is less than 24 hours away from announcing the next iPhone. Unlike previous announcements, this show will be intimate and small, held at Apple’s HQ rather than a large venue like the Moscone Center. Most important, Steve Jobs isn’t headlining the show; although, if rumors are to be believed, he might make a cameo. Apple’s latest commander and chief, Tim Cook, is expected to lead the charge at what will likely amount to one of the biggest Internet traffic days of the year.

Apple is rather tardy releasing this latest iPhone, missing its traditional summer launch date by a good two months. However, if the rumor mills are to be believed, there, the new iPhone will be very similar to the old iPhone – except where it isn’t. We compiled all of the rumors here along with stating the viability for each. Some are wide-eyed, others are realistic, while some are pure fanboy fantasy.

Argument

• Numerous leaked SKU line ups with iPhone prototypes that are made of just plastic rather than glass and aluminum found in Brazil.
• Apple would completely disrupt Android and Windows Phone 7 by selling a new iPhone at $100 or less.
• The iPhone 4 still packs enough computing power for most users.

Objections:

• Unsubstantiated leaks cannot be trusted

Judgment: The stars just seem aligned for this one. The iPhone 4 is still a hot phone despite being over 15 months old. Apple just needs to repackage the current hardware into a less expensive body to completely demolish the competition.

Argument:

• Countless thinner cases have leaked over the previous months all purportedly built for the next iPhone.
• Every successive iPhone has been thinner than the previous.
• Apple likes to keep design cues constant between products and so the next iPhone will look similar to the iPad.

Objection:

• None, it’s a pretty solid claim

Judgment: Apple has never released a product thicker than the previous model and won’t start with the next iPhone.

Larger screen

Argument:

• The iPhone 4′s 3.5-inch screen is tiny compared to recent superphones from Motorola, Samsung, and LG.
• Leaked cases signal that the next iPhone will be physically longer and wider. A larger screen is logical if the size of the iPhone is increasing.
• Our own research has shown that a larger screen is “likely.”

Objections:

• Larger screen could mess with apps designed for the smaller screen

Judgment: Apple cannot ignore the current popular trend of larger screen sizes. As long as the phone is thinner, a larger screen will not make the phone feel any bigger.

Argument:

• Apple has always pushed the limit with its LCD implementation.
• Edge-to-edge glass would give Apple something to tout over just using a larger screen.

Objections:

• Likely higher manufacturing cost, which would cut into the profit margin
• Could lead to more broken screens

Judgment: Not likely just yet. Apple pushes the limit but only as far as its financially viable.

• NFC is the next big thing and already a feature on leading Android handsets
• An NFC-equipped iPhone would further the advancement of mobile payments

Objection:

• Current NFC radios are separate microchips and not integrated into a unified communication chip, which requires PCB real estate and extra battery power
• Apple could be waiting until the payment companies make a lucrative offer to them

Judgment: Apple tends to incorporate non-proprietary tech only after its viability is proven. So that’s a “No.”

Argument:

• Apple tends to include a faster CPU with each iPhone release
• iOS 5 will likely benefit from a faster, dual-core CPU

Objection:

• More powerful CPUs tend to decrease battery life

Judgment: It’s very likely the next major iPhone will have the A5 CPU. However, Apple might stick with the A4 for a mid-model refresh like the rumored iPhone 4S

Argument:

• Leaked cases and bezels show an elongated opening/button
• Touch-sensitive bezels allows for new controls, multitouch gestures

Objections:

• Completely changes Apple’s “Keep It Simple, Stupid” design
• Could break current apps

Judgment: Don’t start designing your next Kickstarter iPhone case project around this rumor. Apple will likely stick with its traditional home button.

Argument:

• MP count has increased with every new iPhone release
• An 8MP photo previously appeared with iPhone 5 metadata
• Megapixel counts are unfortunately a comparison point between different phones

Objections:

• Higher megapixel counts does not necessarily improve picture quality. Apple knows this. Hopefully.

Judgment: Camera sensors are constantly shrinking in size while increasing in MP count. Expect a higher count sensor but not necessarily an 8MP version.

Argument:

• The next iPhone will use Qualcomm Gobi Baseband and run on both GSM and CDMA networks
• Dual-mode phones have shown up in developer’s usage stats
• Would allow Apple to makes/sell just one version, decreasing manufacturing costs
• Allow Apple to sell a completely unlocked iPhone. Buy one from the Apple Store and activate it however you want
• Carrier independence is a huge selling point

Objection:

• Dual-mode mobile radios are still very rare
• R&D cost could make it financially unfeasible

Judgment: It’s hard to say. The upsides are huge for both Apple and consumers, but dual-mode radios are not widely used. Apple tends to use highly-available and therefore, high margin components.

• The next iPhone will have powerful voice controls built by Siri called Assistant, which Apple bought last year for $200m
• The voice controls would outclass Android’s with more natural navigation paths
• These function would need beefy hardware like the rumored A5 CPU, which creates an up-sell point for iPhone 4 owners

Objections

• None, really. Seems like a logical step for iOS.

Judgment: It’s hard to predict future iOS features, but more beefy voice controls are probably on the road map.

Really? Could this video really show the iPhone 5? Probably not. The video’s authenticity is tipped by several subtle clues. But the video is still worth watching. The creator clearly knows his way around video editing software and deserves major props for this timely video. It’s good and I want it to be real.

The hints are subtle and a few could be just artifacts of the low-quality recording. For instance, the size of bezel on either side of the screen seems to slightly shrink and grow throughout the video. The user’s finger placement is also relative to the iPhone 4′s smaller 3.5-inch screen. He seems to unlock the phone and launch apps by using a screen smaller than what’s shown in the video. Finally, as GSMarena notes, the dates on the home screen and lock screen do not match and the game starts prior to the user hitting the screen. So yeah, the video is clearly not real.

Or the video could just be an attempt to hype the game: ECA Rock(s) Rider.

Apple is set to announce the next iPhone this coming Tuesday and edge-to-edge glass is one of the major rumors concerning the next release. Most other rumors point to a completely redesigned casing as well, but as shown in this fake video, a larger screen is completely possible in the current iPhone frame. And it looks great, too.

So remember that one time I said that Samsung was planning on stepping up its game against Apple? That was no joke. In the same court that granted an EU-wide injunction against three of its Galaxy smartphones, the Hague Court in the Netherlands, Samsung has asked that the iPhone and iPad get pulled from shelves.

Rather than being based on design (like Apple’s GalTab injunction request), this complaint is based solely on 3G technology patents held by Samsung and is aimed specifically at the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and both generations of the iPad. Within the request, as seen by Webwereld, Samsung claims that all four of those products infringe on four different Samsung patents. The preliminary injunction request asks that Apple be banned from trading, importing or selling these devices within the Netherlands. Past that, Samsung also wants all current iPhone and iPad models pulled from store shelves.

The four patents in question are the same ones that Samsung has brought against Apple across much of the globe, including the U.S., France, Japan, the U.K. South Korea, and Germany. They are essentials patents, which means that they cover technology necessary to the industry as a whole. With essentials patents, the right holder must license the patents to third parties without discrimination — this is known as FRAND terms.

Samsung has recently said that Apple was “freeriding” with regards to Samsung patents, and this may very well be the point at which Samsung cashes in. Obviously, a few bucks here and there from Apple would be nice, but what Samsung really needs is an injunction of some sort on any iProduct. As I mentioned in my earlier post, there’s very little chance of a settlement unless Samsung can prove to Apple that it won’t be knocked around. A ban on the iPhone or iPad would be ideal, whereas a licensing agreement is really just a continuation of this whole dramatic mess.

Apple’s lawyers have set up a hearing in which both companies can discuss the FRAND licensing issues. This would allow for talk of an injunction to fall by the wayside, as Apple and Samsung would merely have to negotiate licensing fees. Of course if Apple refuses to take the licenses (which would be a shocking decision), then Samsung can move forward with its injunction request.

If you had your heart set on taking some rad video of your skateboarding moves but spent your hard-earned dough on an iPhone 4 instead of a GoPro camera, you’re in luck. A graphic designer from California has designed a beefy enclosure for the iPhone 4 that is compatible with all of GoPro’s action-friendly mounts.

The iPhone 4 has a solid camera built into it, but the glass plates on both sides meant there was a limit as to how extreme your life could be while carrying one. The Action Case takes care of that: it’s made of a durable polypropylene plastic and is held together by a set of stainless steel pins.

Friendly warning: the Action Case isn’t waterproof, so while you can definitely mount your iPhone on your surfboard, you’re almost certainly going to regret it. Also, the touchscreen is left uncovered (for obvious reasons), so don’t go thinking your phone is suddenly Superman.

The Action Case isn’t going to win any style awards, but that’s really not the point. You stick your phone on a GoPro mount, attach it to… well, anything really, and let the cool footage start rolling in. Backers who pledge over $49 get first dibs on an Action Case, while each successive level after that nets you different GoPro mounts with which you can go crazy.

At time of writing, only two backers have thrown their money at the Action Case, but the project has another 38 days to hit the $25,000 mark. It could be worth checking out, if only to please the broke, iPhone-toting snowboarder in your life.