i Phone BUY

Sprint Music Store to cancel PC song downloads

(Credit: Sprint)

After October 15 2008, Sprint customers will no longer be able to download songs to their PC from the Sprint Music Store. Right now if you purchase a song over-the-air from the Sprint Music Store to your mobile handset, a …

Our friend Jens Chr Brynildsen, a Flash expert who maintains a number of resources for the standard including Flash Magazine, has reportedly confirmed with Adobe Systems’ senior director of engineering, Paul Betlem, that Flash is coming to the iPhone. However, Betlem says that “Apple calls the shots as to when …

Samsung's new U430

(Credit: Samsung)

Almost a year after it gave us the Samsung SCH-U410, Verizon Wireless rolled out a successor model with the Samsung SCH-U430. Announced Tuesday and available immediately, the SCH-U430 has a standard flip phone design in basic black. On the exterior you’ll also …

Our friend Jens Chr Brynildsen, a Flash expert who maintains a number of resources for the standard including Flash Magazine, has reportedly confirmed with Adobe Systems’ senior director of engineering, Paul Betlem, that Flash is coming to the iPhone. However, Betlem says that “Apple calls the shots as to when …

The Samsung Pixon is one loaded camera phone.

(Credit: Samsung)

To us, the Samsung Pixon’s name sounds like it was chosen to reflect the phone’s camera capabilities, sounding something like a mix between “pictures” and “megapixels.” And in any case, we like the name better than “Innov8″, which …

With the open source nature of Google’s Android platform, there should be no shortage of games available when it goes live in a few weeks. If you’re waiting for really high profile games though, you’ll have to keep waiting–for now.

According to a story posted at Pocket Gamer, …

(Credit: Gadget4all.com)

If you don’t believe in landlines and you do believe in sensible shoes, stop reading now.

Gadget4all.com is selling a phone designed to look like a pink high-heeled shoe. Fortunately, it doesn’t double as a real shoe, as the slant on this thing could …

RIM BlackBerry Bold

(Credit: RIM)

Perhaps you’re like me and starting to wonder if the RIM BlackBerry Bold is just a mythical creature like Bigfoot–spotted in the wild a number of times but yet to be captured, or in the Bold’s case, released. The smartphone was announced way …

If recent blog posts about the increase in capacity of CompactFlash cards and small-size hard drives make you wonder what’s in store for your mobile phones, then I have some good news.

(Credit: ScanDisk)

On Monday, SanDisk announced its new microSD high-capacity (microSDHC) card that offers up to 16GB …

Nokia E71

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

Over the recent months, I’ve received a fair share of e-mails asking the same question: Will a U.S. carrier ever pick up the Nokia E71? Well, it looks like some of your wishes may come true.

According to Engadget Mobile, AT&T …

(Credit: ZTE)

ZTE on Monday announced the U990, the world’s first HSDPA TD-SCDMA mobile handset (TD-SCDMA is a 3G mobile standard in China). It claims seamless transition between EDGE/HSDPA and TD-SCDMA, which is a good thing for those who do business in China. The U990 is a touch-screen …

As usual this time of year, Samsung continues to make headway in the FCC list. Because the Federal Communications Commission has to certify every phone sold in the United States, not to mention test its SAR rating, the agency’s online database offers a lot of sneak peeks to those …

The latest software update appears to have improved the iPhone 3G.

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

Recently, I asked iPhone 3G owners to tell me if the 2.1 software update had fixed the widespread issues with dropped calls, short battery life, and faulty 3G connectivity. Now, just over a week later, I’ve wrapped up your comments.

At the time of this writing, we received 56 comments (I had to discount a few because they weren’t on topic). While this is an entirely unscientific survey, almost half (48 percent) reported significant improvements in all areas, 20 percent reported no positive changes, and 32 percent said that it fixed only a few issues while leaving other problems unchanged. I’ve included a sampling of comments after the break.

As for me, I have to fall in the neutral camp. On the upside, backups on our iPhone 3G review model are quicker, contacts load faster and application crashes are nonexistent. I never had many dropped calls, so I didn’t see a change there, but the keyboard lag has improved as well.

On the downside, however, I haven’t seen much a battery life improvement at all. Still I can only get a day’s worth of battery, even if I leave it resting on my desk for a few hours. Though one satisfied reader said he was happy that his iPhone 3G now lasted a full day rather than a few hours, I still think that’s unsatisfactory.

What’s more, I’m still wondering exactly how the update changed the 3G feature. In its release notes Apple promised that 2.1 would bring “improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display.” So what exactly does that mean? Like my colleague Dong Ngo, I’ve seen a few more bars on my display but the 3G reception seems to be about the same.

Finally, some readers said that after the 2.1 update their iPhone started fetching e-mail far less frequently. I’ve haven’t seen a change in that area so please tell me if you have.
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