iPhone 4S

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins claims that rapid advancements in the global smartphone market has left Apple trailing when it comes to innovation. Speaking exclusively to The Australian Financial Review ahead of the US launch of the new range of BlackBerry 10 handsets Mr Heins said last week’s launch of the Samsung S4, along with a wave of recent smartphone releases had reeled in the lead Apple used to hold in the market.

Given how many great phones are coming out these days, it's not wonder one of the hottest topics on the iMore forums is iOS vs. Android, or more specifically, the iPhone vs. the latest and greatest Android phones. Every so often community members start to wonder out loud about jumping ship and trying their hands at Google's mobile platform.  Being someone who enjoys new technology myself, I can understand the curiousity, and, of course, the feeling that the grass always greener on the other side. One particularly interesting discussion this week comes from the thread leaving iOS for Android and more specifically, the Samsung Galaxy S4.

Apple has updated Apple.com with a new page, and sent out an email campaign, aimed at telling us just why people love iPhones... and why competing phones just aren't as good. The timing, so soon after Samsung announced the Galaxy S4 is certainly interesting, and feels like it marks a shift in Apple's strategy towards the more aggressive, more competitive product marketing. Apple did a lot of this in the "Get a Mac" days with their "I'm a Mac" and "I'm a PC" character commercials, but it hasn't been a major focus of their mobile campaigns until now.

Mixed into the new webpage and mailer, are lines like:

3DRelams and Interceptor Entertainment have announced that they will be releasing Duke Nukem II for the iPhone and iPad in April. The Duke Nukem gaming series will be fondly remembered by millions of our older gamers as a side scrolling shooter type game with all the carnage and shootimg you could possible wish for.

Interested in iPhone, iPad, or Apple and looking to have some great conversations? Got a burning question or frustrating problem you just want help fixing? Already an expert and eager to share your knowledge? Well, all that and more is just waiting for you in the iMore forums.

Here are today's hot topics:

The iPhone 5S -- or whatever Apple ends up calling it -- is rumored be sporting both NFC and a fingerprint scanner. Chipbond, a Taiwanese company, has apparently been tapped to provide some components of the next iPhone, including touch display drivers, NFC chips, and chips that support a fingerprint sensor. China Times reports:

An early iPhone prototype has surfaced, different from others that we’ve seen before, and much closer akin to the aspect ratio we're now used to in the iPad. It's also caught on camera. While we have previously seen design concepts and renders, it’s rare that we see a development prototype. From early 2005, the prototype has a 5"×7" screen and is two inches thick. It also has a number of ports that would never make it to the final iPhone design. According to Ars Technica:

You get a new iPhone, you add a bunch of push mail accounts, download apps that hit the GPS and light up notifications, you watch a ton of video and play as many games as you possibly can, you do it all over LTE while blaring your Bluetooth speaker, and you curse that the frakken battery doesn't last several days. Matthew Panzarino of The Next Web rightly claims battery life is the iPhone's -- is every phone's -- biggest flaw:

The original Angry Birds game is now free in the App Store. The game that was originally released over three years ago has seen some phenomenal success on every platform that it has been available on. Now for the first time ever, Rovio has decided to make it free.

• Free - iPhone – Download Now
• Free - iPad – Download now