3G Baseband Tool from iphonedev on Vimeo.

nokia takes on iphone??

LONDON — Nokia, the world's top mobile phone maker, launched its free music package on Thursday, issuing a challenge to Apple's dominance of the digital music market.

The Finnish firm also launched its first touchscreen phone 5800 XpressMusic to rival Apple's popular iPhone.

Nokia said at an analyst and media event in London it would start selling the phone shortly, pricing it at the equivalent of $395 excluding subsidies and taxes, which it said was roughly half the price of the other main touchscreen phones on the market."The price and positioning of the product may result in substantial demand and will undoubtedly put some pressure on Apple," said Ben Wood, research head at CCS Insight.

The price means consumers in large markets will get the phone for free from operators when agreeing to sign a contract. The company also will be able to make a dent in emerging markets.

"We expect it to be listed with most of the (mobile phone) operators," Jo Harlow, head of music phones, told Reuters in an interview.

Nokia said all major music labels and most independent labels will offer their tracks as part of Nokia's "free" music bundle "Comes with Music," raising the total number of tracks to around 5 million.

"Apple's days of dominant digital music retailer outside the United States are numbered, if they don't do anything radical," said Rob Wells, head of Universal's digital music business.

Apple controls slightly more than half of global digital music sales through its iTunes store.

Nokia said it aims to offer the music service next year on Apple's home ground in the United States, the world's largest music market.

"In a market where price and selection are so much more important than brand to consumers, Apple cannot count on retaining users when competing with an offering which seems free to the end user," said Strategy Analytics' David MacQueen.

"Comes with Music" and similar products from other hardware vendors could help the music industry make up for falling CD sales and cut illegal downloads.

Crowded field
The battle for mobile music is increasingly crowded. Sony Ericsson launched its music package this month in Sweden, and South Korea's LG Electronics plans a service similar to Nokia's.

Nokia's package will differ from others on the market since users can keep all the music they have downloaded during the subscription period of 12 or 18 months. There are no charges for tracks downloaded as the cost is bundled to the phone price.

Analysts and music industry players said Nokia's offering could bring free music to millions of consumers and change the music industry significantly.

"The introduction of mobile handsets featuring unlimited music downloads out-of-the-box will bring about a fundamental change in the way the mass-market consumes digital music," said Rob Lewis, chief executive officer of British digital music firm Omnifone.

Push into services
The music download package is Nokia's first major push into the services business. Last year the company unveiled a revamp of its whole organization, aiming to build a new business from to internet services combat slowing growth in sales of handsets.

Nokia has acknowledged the impact Apple has made on the industry with its iPhone over the past year, saying the Cupertino, Calif.-based computer and consumer electronics company had done the mobile phone industry "a big favor."

"We have a new, credible competitor in this business," Nokia Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo told the Churchill Club on Wednesday, a speakers' forum for Silicon Valley civic leaders.

"Of course we need to be able to respond to any competitor and we will."

Nokia will launch the package in Britain, the world's third largest music market. United Kingdom retailer, Carphone Warehouse, will start selling the products on Oct 16.


Analysts said the choice of a relatively cheap model was a clear indication Nokia was trying to win over consumers who often are not paying for music but getting it through file-sharing sites on the Internet.

"If you have access to everything, what's the need for pirated music?" said Universal's Rob Wells.

BlackBerry takes on iPhone!!!

After months of rumors, the Storm—the first-ever touchscreen BlackBerry—is finally official, and it's set for Verizon Wireless (exclusively, for now) later this fall. Read on for the details.

Verizon hasn't coughed up a hard-and-fast release date for the Storm—nor any pricing details, for that matter—but this much we do know: It'll pack in dual-mode CDMA and GSM radios for full-on world calling, 3G access (both EV-DO Rev. A and HSPA), GPS (along with turn-by-turn directions), Bluetooth (including the A2DP profile for stereo Bluetooth headsets), and a 3.2-megapixel camera with flash and autofocus.

Measuring 4.4 by 2.4 by 0.55 inches and weighing in at about 5.5 ounces, the Storm (which is also set to arrive in Europe through Vodafone) looks to be roughly the same size as an iPhone or the upcoming T-Mobile G1, so it should be reasonably pocketable.

The centerpiece, of course, will be the Storm's 480 by 360-pixel, 3.25-inch glass display, which will support multitouch (good for two-finger gestures, a la the iPhone). Even better, though, is a feature that RIM calls "ClickThrough": a design that lets you "distinctly feel the screen being pressed and released with a gentle click" for a "highly intuitive experience." Sounds promising, but whether the Storm's display actually delivers the tactile experience that's missing on the iPhone and the G1 remains to be seen (or felt, I guess); I look forward to trying it out in person. Update: Click here for initial ClickThrough impressions from the Web; so far, so good.

In addition to the multitouch display, the Storm will also come with an ambient light sensor, along with an accelerometer that'll automatically turn the screen when you hold the phone sideways. Speaking of which: When it comes to entering text, holding the Storm in a landscape view will give you a full QWERTY touch keypad, while in portrait mode you'll get a SureType keypad (or the same layout as on a BlackBerry Pearl).

Naturally, messaging will doubtless be one of the Storm's strong suits. Expect full-on BlackBerry e-mail support, complete with push e-mail and access to POP and IMAP e-mail servers. Also on board: SMS, picture and instant messaging.

The Storm will also come with full-on Office document editing—including support for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents—courtesy of DataViz Documents to Go. Of course, plenty of other BlackBerry applications are already available, and there's word that a branded BlackBerry store is on tap, similar to Apple's App Store and the Android Market.

Besides its 3.2MP camera, the Storm is set to arrive with full HTML Web browser (double-tap to zoom, tap and slide to scroll), a video and music player, with Verizon promising smooth, full-screen video playback. There's also a 3.5mm jack for your earphones, 1GB of internal storage, and a microSD expansion slot for another 16GB of flash memory.

All in all, sounds like a formidable package, although something's missing if you look carefully: Wi-Fi. Ugh.

So, what do you think? Likes and dislikes? Any guesses on the price? (I've heard $199 with a two-year contract, but that's not official

iPhone 2.2 Update Brings Google Street View to Maps?!!

After being sent out to developers last week promising only "compatibility testing" enhancements, the pre-release version of iPhone software 2.2 is starting to spill its secrets. The folks at Mac Rumors have dug up evidence that appears to indicate Google Maps' Street View finally making it into the Maps app, after popping up in the regular mobile Maps applications for non-iPhones as well as, of course, Android, with the cool Compass view feature. On top of Street View, they've also uncovered a few other new features, including the ability to disable the text auto-correction feature while typing.

Pretty cool iRing design by Victor Soto

Apple lovers, keep in mind this is just a concept and not coming to stores any time soon so don’t go asking for it at the Apple store just yet.

The iRing, a concept design by Victor Soto, is meant to connect to the iPhone or iTouch via bluetooth. (although the iTouch doesn’t have bluetooth right now) It would control functions like volume, move back and forward through you songs or media, and mute. All this through touch sensitive controls on the surface of the ring; it also employees a lock mechanism so you don’t go changing the volume because you moved your hand.

A bit ahead of it’s time in terms of actual implementation, but I believe it is a nice idea on what the future can hold for device control. It was made with the Apple products in mind, but imagine music systems and TVs that can be controlled this way.

Imagine never running around the house trying to find the TV remote, it is always in your hand. I surely want to imagine that.

Is the ipod going to be nomore??!!

Woz is no stranger to iPhone Dev Team hacks. Some of you may remember his visiting the Dev Team’s ridiculously easy 1.1.1 jailbreak that required absolutely no PC or Mac at all…just a web page visit to: http://jailbreakme.com


In an surprisingly frank and fresh exclusive interview with the Daily Telegraph, Steve Wozniak has left us some new gems of wisdom regarding the past, present, and future of Apple. Among his thoughts on Apple's fanboyism, stock overvaluation, upcoming products, and the iPhone limitations, the most surprising is his prediction that the iPod success will die soon, just like the Walkman and transistor radio did:

The iPod has sort of lived a long life at number one. Things like, that if you look back to transistor radios and Walkmans, they kind of die out after a while. It's kind of like everyone has got one or two or three. You get to a point when they are on display everywhere, they get real cheap and they are not selling as much.

I have to agree with him that eventually, these wonderproducts die, although looking at the numbers, it seems that it still has a lot of life inside because the consumer electronics market that saw the Walkman and the transistors radio are not the same as today's. But obviously, Apple sees the same thing and the iPhone and iPod touch are efforts to keep the momentum going.

He also had some words for the fanboys out there who never question Apple's decision and defend its failures no matter what:

[Steve Jobs and I] don't like the fact that it's a bit of a religion. I would like to have the users influence the next generation. With a religion you're not allowed to challenge anything. I want our customers to challenge us.

Amen. But maybe some customers are challenging Apple already in products like the iPhone which, without an SDK, saw a flourishing industry of not-official third-party applications that are still coming out to solve the cellphone development's limitations. Woz compares the iPhone SDK limitations to Google's Android in the interview:

Consumers aren't getting all they want when companies are very proprietary and lock their products down. I would like to write some more powerful apps than what you're allowed.

Indeed, Señor Woz, indeed. Head to the Telegraph to check out the rest of this:[Daily Telegraph]

well well.....;)

So welcome to my new page ive been buisy trying to get it togethter and as you can see its comming together nicely . already the first day and already i have came accross some good news for everyone using the 3g iphone the DEV TEAM is now on there way to trying to software unlock the 3g iphone although it seems that the hack actually shuts down the baseband chip’s SPI bus and renders the iphone usless they stated on there page: DEV TEAM-"We’ve been exploring different ideas with the 3G unlock, but this past weekend one of us hit a big snag. For whatever reason, all of our poking and prodding of the 3G baseband caused it to finally have a breakdown. After one specific exploit run, all of a sudden our baseband stopped responding to the OS. Even after multiple restore attempts, we were plagued with errors" DEV TEAM ALSO STATED: "Somehow our software hacking had caused the baseband chip’s SPI bus to stop responding (so it looked like a hardware problem). Even though BBUpdaterExtreme reported the correct baseband version, it failed basic tests like memtest." you can check out the links on my lower portion of this page and go directly to the DEV TEAMS PAGE for the full story. so stay tuned as i continue to put this page up and take care.:P