Study: BlackBerry has twice the failure rate of iPhone

November 14, 2008 · Filed Under Apple, Gadgets, Iphone, Phones, blackberry, cellphones · Comment 

Apple’s iPhone has half the failure rate of RIM’s BlackBerry in the first year of use, a study carried out by a mobile-phone warranty firm has found. 

The SquareTrade study

Figures from the analyst firm Canalysys, released last week, showed Apple has now overtaken RIM in the global smartphone sales stakes.

SquareTrade had to project their figures for the iPhone’s failure rate over a two-year period, as the handset has not been available for that long — nonetheless, that rate came in at between nine to 11 percent. The equivalent failure rate for BlackBerry handsets was 14.3 percent, with the Treo coming in at 21 percent.

Breaking the figures down, the most prominent malfunctions for iPhone users appear to be touchscreen-related, accounting for a third of all reported issues with that handset. However, 12 percent of iPhone users reported accidental damage to their handsets within the first year of use — the average for other handsets is nine percent.

“It’s likely that any iPhone owner can guess the reason iPhone accidents are so common,” the authors wrote. “After two minutes of handling an iPhone, it’s impossible to escape noticing that the handsets are incredibly slippery. The form doesn’t help, either. The dimensions make for a difficult grip, especially for those with small hands. These two factors conspire to make the iPhone more accident prone than just about any other handset model we’ve seen.”

The report’s authors also noted that fewer than half-a-percent of iPhone owners reported battery problems after a year of use, compared with around one percent for BlackBerry and Treo users.

SquareTrade’s study did not take into account software issues handled directly by the retailer or fixed by firmware updates.

ZDNet UK has requested comment on SquareTrade’s report from both RIM and Apple, but had not received it at the time of writing.

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MySpace Comes to BlackBerry

November 13, 2008 · Filed Under Iphone, Phones, Software, blackberry · Comment 

Poor BlackBerry. It used to be the cool kid on the block, the hipster everyone wanted, and all the gadgets wanted to be. But then the iPhone came along, and now BlackBerry is always one step behind. Where the iPhone is riding a fixie with a top-tube pad, the BlackBerry gets around on a mountain bike. With fenders.

berry-space.jpgAnd so it is with applications. The iPhone is all about the FaceBook, whereas BlackBerry has just got around to hooking up with yesterday’s hot-thing, MySpace. Download the clanky looking application, called myspace for BlackBerry smartphones, and you’ll be able to “share events and experiences as they happen”. Here’s the feature list:

Send and receive MySpace mail

Update your Status and Mood

View and send Bulletins

Add comments

Post your photos

And much more.

BlackBerry even has its own MySpace page (welcome to 2004!) which is typically hard to navigate. Links fire you off to download pages and the BlackBerry store, but there is no way to actually preview any of the “features”. If you do manage to navigate the labyrinthine maze and arrive at the support pages, you’ll most likely end up at the same error page we did.

Obscure, hard to use and frustrating. The more we think about it, the more it seems that MySpace users are going to love it.

Product page [MySpace]

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iPhone Tethering Plan Could Cost $30 Per Month

November 13, 2008 · Filed Under Iphone, Phones · Comment 

Some iPhone owners were lucky enough to have grabbed NetShare from the iTunes Store before Apple buried it under a hill of bluster and lame excuses. The application let you share the iPhone’s 3G connection with other

death-star-att.jpg devices via Wi-Fi.

Last week, AT&T boss Ralph De La Vega confirmed that an official tethering plan is in the works, but he didn’t name a price. Today, Ars Technica reports that the plan will be $30 per month for around 5GB of data — the same as AT&T’s BlackBerry plan. It’s just a rumor, but it seems pretty credible.

But why charge extra? After all, iPhone owners already pay a premium for their 3G connection — shouldn’t they be able to use it as they please? Imagine signing up for internet at home and only being able to connect one computer. Not being able to share your iPhone data connection is a little like not being allowed to connect a router to your cable modem — absolutely nonsensical.

We see this as the last coughing fit before these money-milking plans roll over and quietly die. I remember a few years ago back in England I actually did have to supply the MAC address of my computer to the cable company before that computer could connect. Of course, I gave them the address of my router, but this odd stipulation seems as quaint to us now as the current locked-down mobile data plans will seem in a couple of years time. Enjoy it while you can, AT&T.

iPhone tethering package may resemble BlackBerry plan [Ars]

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Accessory Kits Convert DSLRs into Movie Cameras

November 13, 2008 · Filed Under Cameras, Gadgets · Comment 

DSLR_filmmaker3.jpg

Those Zacuto DSLR Cine kits we mentioned last month? They’re here, and they’re expensive.

Zacuto makes baseplates for movie cameras onto which can be bolted, strapped and hung all manner of accessories, from shoulder mounts to counter-balances to a rather fetching set of handlebars. The new kits, however, are designed to work with the new breed of movie-shooting DSLRs, specifically the Nikon D90 and the upcoming Canon 5D MkII.

There are a few advantages to shooting movies with these cameras: You get access to a huge range of (by movie standards) cheap lenses which can produce a shallow depth of field for a very filmic look. And the bodies themselves, while they’re not exactly budget models, are a lot less expensive than the equivalent dedicated video cameras.

Zacuto, though, didn’t get the memo. It’s four new kits range from $660 (DSLR Docu Kit) up to almost $5000 (DSLR Filmmaker Kit), and while the top end Filmmaker setup incudes everything, even a Lunchbox and a Universal Donut (!), the Docu kit is literally just a baseplate and a couple of metal poles.

We’re likely coming at this from the wrong angle. Compared to accessories for still cameras, these kits are exhorbitant. Compared to the prices movie makers are used to, though, this is small change. Available now.

Product page [Zacuto via Photography Bay]

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ComicZeal: iPhone Comic Books Done Right?

November 13, 2008 · Filed Under Iphone, Software · Comment 

ComicZeal is another application for reading comic books on the iPhone and, despite being a little rough around the edges gets things pretty much right. Back in August we took a look at two other comic readers for the iPhone but they both failed on one essential point: They split the pages into individual frames, leaving the reader unable to enjoy more complex, dramatic page designs.

sphone1.png

Comic Zeal lets you read whole pages in the same way as Mobile Safari lets you read whole web pages: You just pinch to zoom in. And although the iPhone’s screen is a little small for the medium, reading comics with Comic Zeal works surprisingly well.

We had a quick chat with the author of the application, Emiliano Molina.

blocks_image_8_1.jpgFirst, the features. Comic Zeal comes pre-loaded with some public domain titles — Out of This World, Racket Squad and Romantic Adventures. You can also download a lot of free “Golden Age” comics direct to the iPhone for some retro reading. This last lets you browse the cover art on a wooden bookshelf.

Far more useful is the ability to add your own comics. Or it would be, if it worked. First you need to install Python (a programming language) on your computer and use the free ComicZeal Creator application to convert your comics (in either cbr or cbz formats) into a form that the iPhone app can use. Then you need to fire up the open source application SyncDocs, which will do the work of transferring the new, smaller comics to your iPhone.

Assuming you do manage to get through this meandering journey (I didn’t), the actual process of reading comics is pretty slick. Pinch to zoom, swipe to turn pages, and press once to bring up a navigation menu. That’s it, and it works well, although the page-turn animation is a little unsettling the first time you see it — new pages slide in from the right, but at the same time your finger-swipe moves the existing page around. The app even remembers where you left off in the comic, so you can come back later.

If you’re happy rolling up your sleeves to get things working, then the $2 app is cheap enough to play around with. If you want to read your own comics on the go, and you want it to be iPhone-easy, we’d suggest you wait a little while for the computer end of things to mature.

We asked Emiliano a few questions about the birth of Comic Zeal, the problems of synching files between iPhone and computer, and whether comic books have an electronic future.

Gadget Lab:2.png Syncdocs is a little janky. Is it Java? Any plans for a native OS X app?

Emiliano Molina: SyncDocs is Java, we originally had a web-based process for getting the comics into the iPhone but it had a couple of shortcomings. First it only allowed for transfers of one comic at a time, and second, it could be difficult to set up the networking. Even worse for us it made it look as though the networking problems people were having were due to ComicZeal or ComicZeal Creator.

As I was wondering what to do a post went up on the Apple developer forums about SyncDocs. It’s an open source software project which is used by a number of apps.

I gave it a go and found it easy to install and very functional, it’s very reliable and the configuration is a breeze. Since we started using it our support emails have gone down dramatically.

It’s also cross-platform, which is great, but it also means that it just doesn’t look like a Mac app.

GL: Viewing full sized comics works surprisingly well. Any thoughts on the iPhone as an official delivery platform for comics — ie. Marvel and DC actually selling comics through the iTunes Store?

EM: I’d love to see that happen (hey, lets ALL use ComicZeal), but the problems here are not really technological any more.

I KNOW ComicZeal doesn’t match the experience of reading a real paper comic, but it does give the user options that paper comics don’t. You can read one-handed on a train, you can take your whole collection on holiday, you can read a comic as many times as you want and it won’t be damaged.

The roadblock is the required change in business models for comic publishers. They are not experts in digital distribution, it must scare the heck out of them to think that their wares can be replicated time and time again with no cost, and there is no copyright protection methods that truly work. What are they going to do?

They can’t sell digital comics at the same price as paper ones, they can’t reach the same audience with them, the iPhone and iPod touch are great sellers but the overlap of people who own them and people who buy comics may not be great.

Something else worth considering is this, what’s in it for them? Can publishers make more money by selling digital comics? If you buy a paper comic, will you pay more to get a digital version? If you don’t buy a paper comic, are you likely to buy a digital version?

GL:phone5.png There are a lot of slick iPhone apps with terrible Mac and PC back ends. Why?

EM: That’s because every developer is being forced to do it from scratch, by themselves. It’s huge time sink and very difficult to get it right. Assuming that all the software works perfectly on both ends, the user would still need to set up a wireless network between their PC and their iPhone. It’s the only way to move data between them that doesn’t require a web-server. Of course, for a lot of types of data the user won’t trust a web server they don’t own anyway so you’re back to a wireless network.

What we need is for Apple to come up with a way for us to use the iTunes sync framework.

GL: Anything else?

EM: Next up on the to-do list is a way to sort comics on the iPhone. When we came up with the requirements for ComicZeal we thought users would have around ten comics on the device. Delete them as they read them, put new ones on as needed. It turns out that users want to keep most of their collection in ComicZeal, so we had to add support for batch downloads - thanks SyncDocs - and now we need to provide a way to sort hundreds of comics.

Product page [ComicZeal]

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BlackBerry Storm to Hit Verizon on Nov. 21

November 13, 2008 · Filed Under Phones, blackberry · Comment 

Bbery_storm

It’s official. The first touchscreen phone from BlackBerry maker Research In Motion will be available nationwide on Nov. 21 through Verizon Wireless.

The BlackBerry Storm will be available for $200 after a $50 mail-in rebate and with a two-year contract.

The Storm will have a 3.2 inch screen, built-in GPS, touchscreen navigation, media player, 3.2 megapixel camera, video recording capability and access to an App Center along the lines of iPhone App Store or Google Android marketplace.

The launch of the phone comes just three weeks after RIM released the BlackBerry Bold through AT&T. The keypad-based Bold, which was supposed to debut in the summer, was much delayed and is now effectively available for free through Wal-Mart after a $200 rebate discounting the entire cost.

Meanwhile, in the last few days Verizon and RIM have been burning up the airwaves with nationwide television ads of the Storm. But getting consumer attention for the device during the holiday season won’t be easy.

The Storm will compete with Apple’s iPhone, which is priced at $200, and with T-Mobile’s recently launched G1 phone, the first to carry Google’s Android mobile operating system. The G1 will cost $180 with a two-year contract.

What RIM is hoping will set the Storm apart from its competitors is a touchscreen that mimics the ‘click’ tactile response that comes with typing on a keypad. The phone also offers feature such as cut and paste of text that the iPhone lacks.

An early review of the Storm by Wired.com pegs it as the first touchscreen device that could truly be a stiff competitor to the iPhone, though it is unlikely to ever match the iPhone in terms of its “cultural cache.”

Photo:Daniel Salo for Wired.com

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Cameraphones with 12-Megapixels Coming Soon Says Sony

November 13, 2008 · Filed Under Sony, cellphones · Comment 

 Mobile phone cameras are set to get more powerful as the race to see who can deliver the most megapixels is on.

Sony_cmos_sensorsSony has said it will commercialize a new image sensor that could deliver up to 12.25-megapixel resolution.

The latest sensor is designed to meet the increasing demand for better cameras inside mobile phones, says Sony.

The company also announced that it will produce two additional sensors, a type 1/3.2 CMOS image sensor with 8.11 effective megapixel resolution and a type 1/4 sensor with 5.15 effective megapixel resolution. (Complete explanation of sensor types is here.)

Sony said it will also produce compact lenses to make it easier for the cameras to be integrated with phones. The company will make two modules, a type 1/3.2 lens module with the 12.25 MP resolution sensor and a type 1/3.2 lens module with 8.11 MP resolution sensor. The modules have lens and auto focus functions and are the industry’s smallest and thinnest, says Sony.

Miniaturization of mobile phone camera technology has become important as phones are getting smaller. But the process of shrinking the components challenges the image quality and camera sensitivity.

Sony says its new image sensors can improve sensitivity levels and offer a high signal-to-noise ratio, even while the number of pixels increases.

Sony rival Samsung has already released a 10-megapixel camera phone in Korea. By comparison Apple has a 2-megapixel camera for the iPhone, while the latest BlackBerry Storm touchscreen phone to be released on Verizon Wireless later this month will have a 3.2-megapixel camera.

Complete Specifications for the Sony Sensors 

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