Rumors about the upcoming 3G iPhone are flying high for past few days. Yesterday, Engadget posted the complete hardware specifications of the 3G iPhone and today fake images of black and red iPhone were also posted by many blogs. But web-mobile.net has topped it all off by posting images of unboxed 3G iPhone send in an NDA box by Apple. I am not at all sure whether the images are real or fake. The iPhone in the images has a grey color front with a small video camera near the top of the phone. I just hope Apple doesn’t release the phone shown in the images, I like the black color iPhone better.

Apple will announce the 3G iPhone on 9th, but Engadget is reporting that according to a reliable source, 3G iPhone’s firmware has been released and has been dissected. The phone has quad-band GSM, A-GPS and tri-band UMTS/HSDPA for worldwide 3G coverage. All hardware details according to Engadget are:

RBC’s analyst Mike Abramsky wrote in a research note that either a secondary, entry iPhone model or an unusually low price for the near certain 3G model could accelerate Apple’s sales growth between 50 to 100 percent, resulting in 20 to 25 million iPhone by end of 2008. Such a growth could lead to between $2.7 billion and $5.4 billion in extra revenue for Apple. The demand for new iPhone is also high, around 70% of people in an RBC poll who are interested in the device are first-time buyer of the iPhone. It is largely believed that Apple is working on a smaller iPhone but there is no information about when Apple plans to release such a phone.
[Via Appleinsider]

The LG VX9700 first came to light in March 2008, it is another iPhone inspired device that will compete against the iPhone. Verizon will launch the phone and it will be called “Dare”.  How is paid to come up with all the silly names at Verizon? Well anyway the phone will have a touchscreen with haptic feedback and support EVDO network. The Dare will be released sometime in July, it might be too late by then.

NVIDIA’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said in an interview that iPhone has a great computer chip with a high-performance graphics core, something that helps establish it as the world’s first legitimate mobile Internet device. According to NVIDIA most companies don’t have their own chip designers and cannot design a phone with same interface design and capabilities as the iPhone. Huang says that the new Tegra platform from NVIDIA can help those companies to leapfrog the iPhone in interface design and graphics capabilities. NVIDIA can definitely help companies in designing better graphics technology for mobile phone but interface is a totally different game. Apple is one of the very few companies that designs both software and hardware for its products. NVIDIA is just a graphics chip maker they have no track record of software design. The Tegra demo unit that was show by NVIDIA had very impressive graphics but user interface was really bad. iPhone’s success is a result of hardware design, software design and great user interface and to mimic that will be really difficult for any company.

According to the Gartner Inc. Nokia the worlds largest mobile phone maker lost smartphone market share to RIM and Apple in Q1 2008 compared to Q1 2007. Nokia’s smartphone market share dropped from 46.7% in Q1 2007 to 45.2% in Q1 2008. Where as RIM market share increased from 8.3% to 13.4% and Apple grabbed 5.3% market share for the same period. Sharp and Fujitsu were at 4th and 5th place with 4.1 market share. Total shipment for smartphone grew 29% from 24.94 million to 32.25 million year-over-year for Q1 2008. In US RIM had 42% market share, Apple had 20% market share and Palm was placed third with 13% market share. Apple became the No. 3 smartphone maker even though it had just one model and was selling the iPhone in just five countries. Apple will expand it mobile phone operation after it announces its new 3G iPhone on 9th June. Apple will start selling iPhone in more than 50 countries by the end of 2008 and that should definitely boost its smartphone market share
[Via Bloomberg]

Microdia has release the XTRA ELITE CF world’s first 64GB CF cards. The company will start shipping the card by end of June. The card will have data transfer rate of 300x or 45MB/sec. This will make capturing, viewing, uploading and transferring large image files faster for users. The compact flash cards are normally used in DSLR camera and with 64GB available you can use all the megapixels your DLSR has. Microdia has not announced the price of this card, but it will be in range of $1,000.

Talking to Time Magazine, Matt Murphy – a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers who oversees the $100million iFund said, “iPhone will absolutely be the driver of the post-PC world.” He claimed that the kit needed by developers to build iPhone apps has been downloaded more than 200,000 times, and he estimates that about 1,000 applications will be available to consumers when the iPhone Apps Store is launched with the new 3G iPhone. He further added “If you look at so many of the constraints that have held back the mobile ecosystem, Apple basically takes all of those away and provides an open platform, a great device and a user base that’s rabid for these new kinds of applications.” The 3G-iPhone bandwagon is growing larger and larger everyday. If the details mentioned above are true then nothing is going to stop iPhone from becoming a colossal force (it is already a major force) in mobile communication.

With the latest improvement in read/write speeds and continues fall in flash memory cost for Solid State Drives pressure has increased on hard drive manufacturers. To combat this pressure, Western Digital is working on a 20,000 RPM Raptor hard drive that will increase the read/write speed of the hard drive to new levels. The new hard drive will be very similar in design to the recently released VelociRaptor hard drive. The 2.5” drive will use a custom 3.5” case that will be design to have better heat transfer, increased noise reduction and improved vibration damping. It will be needed for a drive rotating at 20,000 RPM in a 3.5” enclosure. The hard drive is in early development stage and my might see a prototype in Q4 2008.
[Via Bit-tech]

The official 3G-iPhone release is just three days away and a photo from Mactalk.com.au reveals that an Australian reseller has received an NDA proofed box with the following warning from Apple:
SUBJECT TO TERM OF NDA DO NOT OPEN UNTIL TUESDAY JUNE 10TH, 2008
It is almost certain that Steve Jobs will unveil the new 3G-iPhone on June 9th during his keynote at WWDC 2008. MacTalk speculates that the box may actually contain a demo model of the 3G iPhone that the reseller can use to promote the 3G iPhone and its release date for Australia. Apple has signed deals with Vodafone and SingTel to bring iPhone in Australia later this year. May be it is later this month rather then later this year for iPhone release in Australia.

Philips has developed a 3D 52” LCD HDTV that doesn’t require glasses for 3D viewing. The LCD TV has 1920 x 1080 resolution, 2,000:1 contrast ratio and 8ms response time. The TV uses the WOWvx technology that is described by Philips as “2D-plus-depth”. The technology depends on footage being coded with depth information; the information is translated into nine different views and rendered in real-time by the display hardware. Philips expects the 52” display to be available in Q4 2008 and they haven’t announced any pricing information.

O2, the exclusive iPhone carrier in UK, is being told by Apple to prepare for a major announcement on 9th June. The date coincides with the beginning of WWDC 2008, where Apple’s Steve Jobs will give keynote presentation on the same date. It is believed that he will announce the 3G iPhone at the conference. In another 3G iPhone related news, CrunchGear has received a tip that AT&T is beginning to train its retail staff in preparation for the next generation iPhone. In a previous report it was suggested that Apple might start selling the 3G iPhones soon after the announcement. Well all signs are pointing towards a 3G-iPhone launch on Monday, the only question left is, when will we be able to grab one?

Asustek CEO, Jerry Shen, presented a 2008 Eee family roadmap that included an upcoming all-in-one desktop, 42” LCD Eee TV and the Eee Box that everyone knows. The all-in-one Eee desktop will have screen size between 19 to 21-inch and include a built-in TV tuner. The starting price for this new all-in-one desktop will be around $500 and it should be available by end of Q3 2008. The other product shown in the presentation was Eee TV, a 42” LCD TV that will include Linux-based PC. The Eee TV will cost around $200 more than comparable 42” TV and it will also be released by end of Q3 2008. Asus is trying to build a complete brand on the success of their Eee PC mini-notebook and they are releasing some very interesting products associated with the Eee brand.

It is no secret that many customers prefer XP to Vista and have asked Microsoft to continue selling Windows XP beyond its scheduled June 30 expiration. Replying to a question, at an event on Tuesday, about extending the retail sales of XP beyond June 30, Ballmer said Microsoft’s licensing policy allows for customer to install the previous generation of Windows should Vista not impress them. He further added, customers get both; I don’t know how you can do better than getting both. PC makers like Dell, already offer their business customers the option of pre-downgrading from Vista to XP. Now it looks like, Microsoft is doing all this just to boost their sales figures for Vista, as last year, less than 50% computers sold had Vista on them. By selling Vista licenses and let users downgrade to XP, Microsoft can write the sale off as Vista license sold.

Wall street analyst says that there is 50-50 chance that Apple will introduce new multitouch devices at WWDC. “We believe there is 50% chance that a new form factor will be introduced, marking Apple’s entrance into the emerging “MID” market,” American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu wrote in a report. “Our sources indicate 4-inch and 7-inch touchscreen devices beyond prototype stage that are a cross between a Mac and iPod touch.” It has been rumored for quite sometime now that Apple is working on a handheld device that will be slightly larger than the iPhone and iPod touch and will have a multitouch screen. According to Shaw Wu it is inevitable that Apple will bring more touchscreen devices to market and he bets somewhat on an introduction at WWDC. Shaw Wu also believes that there will be two models of the iPhone at WWDC, the 3G iPhone for $399 and $499 and a revised 2.5G version that will sell for $50 to $100 less. In just three more days, we will come know exactly what Steve Jobs will announce at WWDC.

Mini-notebooks are the new craze in computer industry and Dell has been almost silent about their upcoming mini-notebook. According to the latest news Dell has decided on a late summer release date, the delay is caused by the unique keyboard that Dell will use for these laptops. The new keyboard drops the function key allowing other more frequently used keys to be slightly larger. The new mini-notebook will have a 9” screen, three USB ports, VGA output and 5-in-1 memory card slot. Dell has confirmed that the laptop will be available in three different colors and will be targeted at students and users looking for a low-cost notebook. It is believed that the new mini-notebook will be called “Inspiron Mini” and will be priced below $500 mark, may be $499.

Sanyo has released an updated Xacti HD1010 camcorder with a new “Face Chaser” feature that can recognize and keep in focus up to 12 faces simultaneously. The camcorder can take videos at 1080i resolution and images at 4-megapixel. The HD1010 has 10x optical zoom, 40MB of internal storage, SDHC card slot, 2.7” foldout LCD viewfinder and stabilization for both video and images. Video can be captured at up to 60fps in MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 format. Video and image capture can work side by side and you can take seven images per second in continuous shooting mode. The camera comes with a base station that supports HDMI, component, composite and S-video outputs as well as charge the camcorder. The Xacti HS1010 will be available in July for $800.

iLounge has posted diagrams of a touchscreen display that a Taiwanese company claims is being used in an upcoming iPhone. The diagram shows two touchscreens, one is 2.8” and the other is 3.2” touchscreen, making both the screen smaller then present 3.5” screen found on first generation iPhone. The displays were developed by Host Optical and are described as “projected capacitance touch panel”, which according to the company have no significant aging effect and are more durable. According to iLounge the 2.8” screen might be used in upcoming iPhone mini/nano but not in 3G iPhone that will be announced on Monday. The interesting thing about this new display rumors is that it clearly shows that Apple is working on more than one iPhone design and very soon we might see a smaller sized iPhone. To get more information about the touchscreen diagram visit iLounge’s website.

Apple announced today that they are now offering movies for sale and rental in Canada and UK. The prices for iTunes movie sales in Canada are CAN$9.99 for library titles, CAN$14.99 for recent releases and CAN$19.99 for new releases. Movies for rental in Canada will be available for CAN$3.99 for library titles and $4.99 for new releases, for high definition a dollar will be added to rental price. There is a catalog of more than 1,200 movies to buy or rent for Canadian customers. iTunes UK will sell catalog titles for ?6.99 and the new movies will cost ?10.99. Movie rental for UK will be priced ?2.49 for library titles and $3.49 for new releases. High definition will add ?1 to the rental cost. There will be more than 700 movies available for UK’s customers to buy or rent. The best part of the deal for both Canada and UK is that customers get 48 hours to finish movies after they start watching. I hope Apple will very soon allow 48 hours limit for US customers also.

NVIDIA on Tuesday announced nine new graphics cards for laptops. The new GeForce 9M series will use a new multi-core graphics engine that will make the graphics cards 40% faster and five times more powerful for video encoding and decoding compared to the present 8M series cards. The 9M series will have better color and contrast for video and images. It will also support DIsplayPort, HDMI 1.3 and MXM 3 format for notebook graphics. The top of the line 9650M GS will have 32 processing cores with 625MHz core clock speed, 128-bit memory bus and up to 512MB of memory. The 9600M GS, 9600M GT and 9500M GS will share the same number of cores but with reduced core clock speeds and memory clock speeds. The 9500M GS will have the lowest clock speed of the three graphics cards at 475MHz. THE 9500M G will have 16 cores compared to 32 cores in the four cards above. At the lower end there will be four graphics cards 9300M GS, 9300M G, 9200M G and 9100M. The 9300M GS will have 8 cores with full 128-bit memory bus where as the 9300M G will have double the number of cores but just 64-bit memory bus. The 9200M G will have 8 cores with 64-bit memory path. The last in the lineup 9100M is an integrated graphics card for low-end laptops. Laptops based around the new GeForce 9M lineup will start appearing in summer.

HTC announced HTC Touch Pro, a business version of the highly anticipated Touch Diamond that was launched last month by HTC at a press conference. HTC has added a slide out QWERTY keyboard to the original Touch Diamond design. The phone actually looks almost identical to the HTC Diamond and uses the same touch interface called TouchFLO 3D. This Windows Mobile 6.1 based device comes with 2.8” touch screen, 3.2-megapixel camera, 512MB internal memory and microSD card slot. For connectivity the phone has HSPA, Quad-band GSM, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS. The phone uses a new five-row QWERTY keyboard layout to help improve typing on a small keyboard. The phone comes with a built-in TV out functionality allowing users to deliver PowerPoint presentation without the need of a computer. The phone is 0.7” thick and weighs 5.8 ounce. The Touch Pro will be released in summer for Europe, Asia and Middle East, while North America will get the Phone in Q4 2008.

TUAW is reporting that Apple may be working to seed developers with an early build of Mac OS X 10.6 at the WWDC. Apple won’t be adding any new significant features to 10.6, their main focus will be on “stability and security”. TUAW further adds that Mac OS X 10.6 may go gold master by December 2008 and might ship in January 2009 at Macworld Expo. With 10.6 Apple will stop supporting the PowerPC platform and will have just 64-bit support. We will come to know whether Apple will announce Mac OS X 10.6 in just 4 days. But I don’t think Apple will announce a major OS update without any significant new features. Steve Jobs is a true showman and without significant new features he won’t let any cat walk out of Apple’s door. Additionally present Mac OS X 10.5 is not at all bad at either stability or security; hence, I don’t think these will be the only two areas where Apple will focus for development of the next major OS X release. Lets wait and see what Steve has up his sleeve for Monday’s keynote.

Microsoft has released Windows Sideshow for Windows Mobile Development beta. Windows SideShow was introduced with Windows Vista, it supported a secondary screen for viewing information without opening the main device. SideShow allows wide variety of devices to retrieve information from your mobile PC or desktop computer. For example, you can check program guide in Windows Media Center by using a display on your remote control. One of the most obvious uses of this technology would have been using a mobile phone screen to get information from the computer, but Microsoft didn’t implement this technology in its mobile OS till now. Today, all that changed as Microsoft released the first beta of Windows SideShow for Windows Mobile Development. Windows SideShow for Windows Mobile Developer Preview v0.01 is an application for Windows Mobile 5 and Windows Mobile 6 Pocket PCs and Smartphones that allows you to use your Windows Mobile device as a Bluetooth SideShow-compatible device. You will be able to view information on the phone as well as control your computer using the phone’s interface. When you are out of range or when the computer is off, you can view the information sent to the phone previously. The developer preview is only available in English and requires .NET Compact Framework 2.0 to work on the device.

Cnet is reporting that Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs will launch the iPhone applications on Monday and the App Store for iPhone applications will be up and running the same day. Cnet got their information from a source at a software company that is working on native iPhone applications. The source also added that the iPhone 2.0 software, which is required to deliver official applications through the App Store, would also be available for download on Monday. Apple will definitely show the 3G iPhone and App Store on Monday, but we have to want and see when they will be released. Most likely both will be released very soon after the announcement on Monday.
[Via Cnet]

Intel today at Computex revealed four series chipsets for its desktop processor lineup. The four chipsets introduced are G43 Express, G45 Express, P43 Express and P45 Express. The G45 chipset will include the new integrated graphics accelerator X4500HD, which will make the chipset capable of full hardware acceleration of most HD video formats up to 1080p. The X4500HD will also improve 3D graphics and will add support for DirectX 10 and OpenGL 2.0. The chipset will have support for the DisplayPort and HDMI outputs. The G43 Express chipset is basically a scaled down version of G45 chipset, most of the features will remain same on both the chipsets. The P43 Express and P45 Express will come without integrated graphics card and will support dedicated graphics cards. The major difference between the two chipsets is that the P45 will support two PCI Express 2.0 slots for dual video cards (for high-end gaming) where as P43 will support single PCI Express slot. All the new chipset are designed to support DDR3 memory of up to 1,066MHZ and will have a low-power mode that significantly drops power use when paired with the new 45nm processors. The chipsets should start shipping in Q3 2008.

Yesterday, NVIDIA officially launched their Tegra platform that will directly compete with low-end Intel Atom processors. The Tegra line is a system on a chip, which includes an 800MHz ARM11 CPU, GeForce GPU, image processor, video processor and controllers for the complete system. The products based on Tegra will run on Windows CE and Windows Mobile initially. Even though the Tegra chipset is 1/10th the size of Intel’s Atom processor and uses very low power, it can run games like Quake 3 at 40FPS and will support full HD resolution. NVIDIA will release two Chipsets – the Tegra 600 and the Tegra 650 in second half of 2008. Starting price for devices based on Tegra platform will be around $200 and the screen size will range between 4” to 12”. The company expects devices like PMP, GPS, MID and Mini-notebook to start using the chipset by end of 2008. Smartphones based on the platform won’t be available before 2009.
[Via Engadget]

Apple today officially launched their back-to-school promotion, offering a free 8GB iPod touch to student and educational customers who purchase a qualifying Mac. Apple will offer $299 rebate when you buy a Macbook, Macbook Pro, Macbook Air, Mac Pro or iMac along with an iPod at the same time and it should appear on the same receipt. The $299 rebate will effectively cancels the price of an 8GB iPod touch, though the rebate can also be applied towards the purchase of 16GB and 32GB models also. Apple also gives you the option of selecting 8GB iPod nano but you will get only $199 rebate back. The back-to-school promo starts today and will end on 15th September. For more information about the back-to-school program visit Apple’s promotion website.

Hynix today showed the ultra small flash memory chip that will improve the capacity of portable media players and other devices based on flash memory. The company designed the new flash chip using three-bits-per-cell technology that not only increased the capacity to 32 GB but also decreased the over size by 30 percent. Most of the multi-level flash memory produced today is based on two-bits-per-cell technology, resulting in a 4GB flash chip. As the highest capacity flash chip available today is 4GB, companies like Apple stack multiple flash chips to achieve higher capacity for their media players. A 32GB chip will decrease the overall size of the media player and also decrease the power consumption, as a single chip will require less power compared to multiple chips. Sandisk and Toshiba are also working on three-bits-per-cell technology and will announce their products based on the technology in second half of 2008. Hynix will start mass production of the new chips in October.
[Via Electronista]

Last year, when IBM first talked, about MRAM in detail, most of the tech world would have never thought that they will see a chips based on the technology with in one year. But today Toshiba has announced that its work on magnetoresistive random-access memory is almost ready in form of postage stamp size 1Gb (gigabit) MRAM chips. Toshiba uses a technique called spin-RAM, which manipulates the memory’s magnetic polarity using electric currents making it stable against heat fluctuations. Toshiba sees MRAM completely replacing DRAM by 2015. Compared to DRAM, the MRAM is quicker and more power efficient. The MRAM can hold data even when the power supply is turned off. This feature of MRAM will help in designing Computers that would be able to boot up instantly. Toshiba has not said when they plan to start large-scale production of MRAM chips, but they will start sampling MRAM chips by end of 2008.

Leander Kahney of Wired has posted that the upcoming 3G iPhone will be 22 percent thinner and will have better battery life with up to 8 hours of talk time. The 22 percent decrease in thickness will make the phone mere 9mm thick. Making it the thinnest smartphone available. According to Kahney the phone will have twice the memory (16GB and 32GB) and would include GPS. Leander cites that the information was received through a programmer at a major software publisher. Though he adds that he has not confirmed the integrity of the information offered by the programmer. We will come to know the exact size and shape of the 3G iPhone within a week. Till that time keep your self entertained with all the iPhone rumors flying around the blogosphere.

According to the latest data from market research firm IDC iPhone’s Q1 2008 market share dropped to 19.2 percent from 26.7 percent it had in last quarter of 2007. RIM’s market share jumped from 35.1 percent in Q4 2007 to 44.5 percent in Q1 2008. Palm also saw an increase from 7.9 percent to 13.4 percent for the same period. In fact every smartphone maker saw an increases in market share except Motorola and Apple. However, considering year-over-year all the smartphone makers lost market share. RIM had 48.7 percent and Palm had 23 percent market share for the same quarter last year. This drop in market share for all the companies is attributed to Apple’s iPhone. Apple introduced the iPhone in June last year and with in six months the iPhone has gained almost 20 percent of smartphone market share. I think the decrease in iPhone market share is because everyone is waiting for 3G iPhone. Apple had said last year that they are working on next revision of the iPhone and will release it sometime in 2008. According to IDC the market share numbers are expected to shift dramatically in the summer quarter between July and September, as both RIM and Apple will release 3G capable handsets.

Western Digital announced today that they have started shipping 320GB Scorpio Black hard drive for notebook computers. This hard drive is the largest capacity, 7200 RPM hard drive sold by Western Digital for laptops. To increase performance further this SATA drive comes with 16MB of cache. Western Digital claims that this drive is comparable to 5,400 RPM drive in power consumption and quietness. The company has also added safe parking technique for the read/write head, which avoids damage when the drive is switched off or in the event of a drop. The 320GB Scorpio Black drives will be available for $249.