The iPhone is twice as reliable as the Blackberry after one year of ownership, a new study by SquareTrade finds.
Wow. I was a Treo user for years (WinMo and Palm OS) so I know the issues these devices can have in terms of reliability-- first hand. Having used the iPhone since its launch in 2007, I can confidently say I agree with this study. I have not used a BlackBerry for an extended period of time, so I don't have first hand experience with what can happen to one, however, I have discussed this topic with the support team at my place of employment and they concur that even the fabled BlackBerry runs into issues over time.
This is big news for users that are looking for a reliable device that don't have the patience for the potential troubles other devices can have in the Enterprise (well, even non-Enterprise environment for that matter). The study is broken into a few different subgroups including:
Malfunction rate after 12 months
Malfunction rates since purchase
Probability of problems based on type (battery, call quality, etc)
Distribution of malfunction per 100 incidents
This heralds greatly for the iPhone which had the lowest incidents in all categories except the touchpad/screen/keypad category. This includes: Includes burn-in, screen spots, dead pixels, and touch screen dead spots. This is higher for the iPhone due to the reported problems from first-generation iPhones. I have personally not encountered any of the issues listed here, but hey, maybe I am lucky. The study does mention that the iPhone 3G does not appear to have any of these problems like the first generation did.
All in all, this is excellent news for the iPhone and Apple, congratulations! Read the full report after the jump!
I watched the recent Apple iPhone commercial, the one featuring Loopt that promised to keep me in stronger, better, faster contact with all my similarly teched-out friends, and immediately fired my iPhone to download it.
But guess what? It didn't show up in the App Store. Dieter was kind enough to send me a direct link, so I clicked on that, and know what happened? I got a pop-up telling me Loopt wasn't available in the Canadian App Store.
Today on the forums be sure to help burgman make a decision, 8GB iPhone or 16GB iPhone? My take on that is the more the merrier. With my first iPhone I made the mistake of going with the 8GB only to find out that I wanted more! Chime in on that thread and help a fellow member out!
This is a huge coincidence since we just had our App vs App: Shazam vs Midomi on TiPB. I love these commercials since they are so simple and really show what the iPhone can do. Well, since I think most carbon-based life forms know what the iPhone is, it is time for Apple to show how the App Store's apps can make a difference in your life.
It was a simple enough contest. Buy Puzzlotto from United Lemur and try to solve it. Every day that passed without someone winning added $1000 to the pot, with a upper limit of $30,000.
Turns out, however, it only lasted 8 days. Says United Lemur:
Dave H, from Portland, is our new Puzzllotto Champion! Once the independent judges are done verifying, Dave will receive the Champion's Trophy and $8,000 in prize money. Congratulations once again to Dave!
Might idea for a contest from a mighty company for a mighty game.
Last week both CrackBerry.com and WMExperts found themselves on the cusp of major releases -- the BlackBerry Storm, BlackBerry Bold on AT&T, the HTC Fuze on AT&T, not to mention a few others on the Windows Mobile side. So while everybody has been anticipating new devices, all of the editors at SPE are anticipating something else that will be starting on November 17th. The hint is right up there in the picture!
Read on for the full skinny on what's been happening around SPE!
This week: Google Earth, Contest updates, iPhone developer noodling, and your emails. Listen in!
(Update: If you're hearing weird things happen at about halfway through, your Podcast downloader is especially aggressive and caught an upload that somehow managed to get 2 of our SPE podcasts mixed wrongly. GarageBand FAIL. We've uploaded the proper version -- delete the podcast from iTunes (or whatever podcatcher your use) and re-subscribe to get it.)
Dying for an external keyboard on your iPhone? Well, you're in luck! This proof of concept shows that if you're an electrical engineering genius -- or more likely a teenager -- you can hack together one of your very own! Engadget says this solution involves Ruby code on a jailbroken iPhone, so it's definitely not plug n'play (or better yet, Blue Tooth!) so for now only the hardcore need apply.
When Apple began their recall program for the iPhone 3G AC adapters, some noted that the massive packaging the new adapters were sent in seemed to be running in stark opposition to Apple's newly stated "greener" goals.
Ginormous would be one word for them. Wasteful, another.
Could things have changed however? While we received three of the huge boxes only a couple of weeks ago, this week we received two much smaller padded envelopes instead. Did Apple and/or their shipping company respond to the concerns, or just realize how insane the previous packaging was?
Anybody else getting the newer, slimmed-down packaging? Anyone still getting the huge boxes?
