Tech QQ

Gartner just released it’s Q3 report over mobile and smartphone sales. Mobile phone sales are up 35 percent and smartphone sales are up a whooping 95 percent and now totaling 19.3 percent of overall mobile sales.

Hardware wise Nokia is dropping about 10 percent market share. Apple continue to flourish with almost twice as many units sold as last Q3, but only increasing market share slightly. HTC is more than doubling the amount of sold units compared to last Q3, and almost doubling the market share.

Looking at the figures from an OS perspective the rise of Android is clear. Even though some have had very good sales (Apple) and other still doing quite decent (RIM) it’s obvious that Android is the strongest trend. Symbian is loosing almost 10 percent market share, RIM although selling over 3 million units more is still loosing 4 percent market share. Apple gaining about 1 percent market share even though doubling sales. Meanwhile Android sold over 19 million units more than last Q3 and thus increased market share by 22 percent to 25.5 percent.

This changes the placings in the top 5 sold units by OS category making Symbian still no1 at 36.6%, Android second at 25.5%, iOS third at 16.7%, RIM at 14.8% and at fifth place Microsoft Windows Mobile at 2.8%.
I’m predicting that Microsoft will rise considerably from the 2.8% to Q32011 with the sales of Windows Phone 7 driving their sales.

Windows Phone 7 so far is a very good OS, and has great potential with good performance and a steady influx of new apps to it’s marketplace. However, there are still a few things that feel very “v 1.0” about it so Microsoft needs to keep development pace up and start getting patches out there.

I’m very interested in seeing if the WP7 update process will be as good as the regular Microsoft PC OS updates, if so they’ll have a major advantage over competition. However, they need to start using it soon!

A friend sent this Taiwanese animation. Even though my Taiwanese is a bit rusty these days, I still found it amusing and feel I should post it.

It's the antenna saga in animated for...

A very good friend of mine said he had ordered a case for his new iPhone 4, mostly cause the phone just felt very fragile with all that glass totally exposed around the corners.

But it seems you aren't safe even if you fit your great looking new iPhone 4 with one of Apple's own 29$ bumpers, but you can always enjoy the stylish upgrade while it lasts...

Just had to post this as it made me chuckle.

Featuring Apple’s unibody design, iHand is precision-carved from a single piece of European beechwood. So it’s lighter than a standard medical prosthesis, yet 12x stronger. You can grip iHand either of two ways: by placing your fingers around its palm, or by grasping the aluminized Extender that telescopes from the wrist socket.

Rumors of a man turning in his phone to an AT&T have been reported by BGR. The reason you can see below.


Apparently the phone had caught on fire when it was being hooked up to a computer. Apple said, when in contact with the store, that it looked like a faulty port and wasn't the users fault.

Two weeks have passed and no upgrade for the iPhone 4 as promised have been delivered.

Now it seems Apple have confirmed for Gizmodo (are they still talking to each other??) that the upcoming software update won't fix the antenna issues as first stated on Apples forums.

The software fix is coming withing a few weeks they now claim, but it will only fix the erroneous bar representation of the coverage.

Too bad, so sad. With all the hopes and dreams crushedwe advice the following:

• get a couple of meters of duct tape and wire around your phone
• some band aid on your fingers (see below)
• try to cover that left corner in your favorite color nail polish

In an official letter Apple announced that the antenna issues are an illusion. The illusion is courtesy of faulty software and a erroneous formula used to calculate reception strength.

The sudden drop pf 4-5 bars that some people experience when holding the phone over the small band in the left lower corner, is only due to them not having good coverage to begin with. They do admit that there is a small loss of reception when holding the phone, but that the people that see those sharp drops already has a bad reception.

In reality the reception should only show a bar or two, and the drop should be a bar or so, but the faulty formula makes the phone show 5 bars instead of 2.

I'm guessing the Steve will put some developers in the dog house now...

Nokia is poking fun at Apple and the Steve at their official blog. Describing many ways you can hold your Nokia on, without experiencing any signal loss.

The key function on any Nokia device is its ability to make phone calls. After all, that’s why we know them universally as mobile phones (or smart phones, feature phones or mobile computers – though the same grip styles work for those, too). One of the main things we’ve found about the 1 billion plus Nokia devices that are in use today is that when making a phone call, people generally tend to hold their phone like a…. well, like a phone.

According to Apple employees a firmware fix for the reported "death grip" issue on the new iPhone 4 is planned. Some one stated early this week as eta.

But later on those comments were pulled form the Apple forums. So that could mean that some one spoke too soon, or without mandate. If people are unlucky it could mean that the theories were right, that this is strictly a hardware issue and can't be fixed.

Let's stay positive and hope they're able to sort it with a firmware upgrade, as it would be sad to see the entire first batch suffering from this issue. But some how I don't think the Steve has the same smile nowadays as he had on the picture up top...

The last 24 hours the interwebs been buzzing on how the iPhone 4 might have some kind of antenna problems going on.

From Insanely Great Mac:


The assumption is that the problem occurs when you touch both the antennas with your palm and hence conduct electricity in between them. The WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth antenna is on the left side, thus the greater issues when people are holding this in their left hand and connecting to the entire face of this antenna with their palm.

Walt Mossberg, a reviewer for the Wall Street Journal, said he has been in contact with Apple and that they are working on a fix. But if this is indeed a hardware issue then it might not be so easy to fix...

No worries though, there is a very simple solution to the problem for you that already have spent your hard earned cash on a new iPhone 4 and are suffering from this problem:

Some week ago some guys at iFixYouri decided to drop test an iPhone 4 mockup they had gotten. And they managed to break the glass.

Everyone kept saying that it wasn't the real thing, that the chassis was more unstable since it had no innards and that the front didn't have the real enhanced glass panel that the final version would have etc etc.

But now they gotten their hands on a real device, and managed to prove that it can break as well. Sure it took them four tries. But the height and the surface dropped on is nothing special. This means it could probably happen to your device too, so be careful out there with your brand new spanking iPhone, because it's not bulletproof as the Steve might led you to believe...

Great iPhone 4 spoof commercial, very informative too I have to say.

In the UK, Orange has released their upcoming iPhone 4 plans.

For the 16GB version, on a 24 month contract
Initial cost, Monthly fee
Free, 75£
89£, 40£
119£, 35£
169£, 30£

For £30, customers will get 150 minutes and 250 texts.

The guys over at iFixYouri managed to get a hold of a iPhone 4 case, no hardware inside but the glass was said to be the real deal. They managed to drop it from three and a half foot's height, and this was the result:

Let's just hope that the case wasn't made of the same material as the iPhone 4 is actually going be produced in, as this isn't really the "20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic" kind of material that the Steve was talking about when he presented the device.

WWDC kicked off today with an opening from the Steve. He talked a bit about his iPad then commenced to the new and totally unexpected(NOT!) iPhone 4.

All the leaks we've seen over the last few months turned out to be true. Sadly enough it meant almost no surprises. There is not a doubt tho that Apple has produced a very high quality device with some very alluring features. Among the many new features I think I'm actually most impressed with multitasking support and the new screen, as previously stated it is indeed 960*640 compared to the "old" iPhone 3GS that was 480*320.

UPDATED! The poor guys at Apple must be wondering who left this one and in what bar this time around. It seems that these pictures have been published on a Vietnamese site, but as how they got their hands on it I don't know.

The reference I found was to a site at taoviet.vn, but my Vitenameese is so rusty I couldn't get much info out from a visit there. But as the serial states it's probably a pre-production ex and what kind of OS (if any) it's running is still a question.

Here are some pictures to enjoy.
A video of a guy handling the new iPhone 4G has been released.

It seems a Vietnamese buissiness man bought this ex in the US for $4000, and the site reports that there were more items for sale as well.

Here's a picture showing the disassembly of the unit.

More info to be gotten at Taoviet, Engadget and TGDaily.

Jon Stewart has a few thoughts about the Apple - Gizmodo affair in The Daily Show.
Funny stuff, check it out below!