iPhone. News and Tips

On 5th of September a Russian mobile operator MobileTeleSystems site announced, that MTS and Apple Inc. signed the agreement about starting the iPhone sales in Russia. The first iPhone will be sold in Russia this year.

It’s very interesting to compare this announcement with the one, that was made by another Russian Mobile Operator Megafon. They are totally identical. What does it mean? Of course that Big Apple Brother is watching all of them and say what and when to do this or that. That means that MTS and Megafon will not sell iPhones, but Apple will distribute iPhones using Russian operators.

If Beeline will put on it’s corporate site the same announcement – call me a prophet.

They say, the Russian fruit-company fans can sign in to register in a queue of those, who want to be the first ones to buy iPhone3G.

The information is still unclear and looks like a rumors, so consult the Megafon operator site for details.

On a grand meeting, dedicated to the iphones.ru portal birthday, SeaBreeze summed up the results of Guess-the-Date-of-Forum-BirthDay competition. The winners was given the iTunes certificates, kindly presented by our partners from iTS.Play portal.

So, here are the awardees!
Moon-Angel can buy as much soft and music as the $30 certificate can permit;
Littlerich enjoys the $20 AppStore certificate;
Larka could create an account with the prize $10 on it.

As you already know, Apple is going to present new iPod Nano and iPod Touch on the 9th of September. There are also rumors spreading, that new iTunes will be announced that day also.

Kevin Rouls, the father founder of this music and application distribution service, said that iTunes will be changed a lot. The main aspects to be upgraded are personal music content management and a way users buy online tracks.

The only we can is just calm down and wait for more detailed comments.

Update by Vlade: Another rumors: they say, there will be a interactive music album function added. That means, that some bonus content will be presented to you on a whole album purchase. That could be some posters, singers photos, lyrics and etc.

Well known blogger iLounge have recently published a number of hot blueprints, where it looks like new iPod’s are pictured.

As we can see, the fourth generation iPod Nano will look like the second one, but the screen will be slightly enlarged.

The iPod Touch Second Edition is looking like an iPhone 3G, but the size will not change a lot. You can also see the volume buttons on the left side of the device and some unusual slot situated at top left cover. Some people think that a GPS module will be attached there.

See the pictures, collect rumors and wait for 9th of September when the exact information will be announced.

The Investor Village engineers spent a month on collecting IMEI numbers of first-gen and second-gen iPhones. The results are available in this table. The research was organized to find out, how many iPhones were sold.

IMEI is a abbreviator for International Mobile Equipment Identifier, a unique for every phone 15-digits number, that completely identifies every mobile, manufactured in a world. It is written into phone on a factory and is used by GSM-operators in identification purposes. They can simply identify using IMEI, where your stolen mobile was put online, even if your own SIM-card was replaced.

Guys from Ars Techica made a table out of this boring numbers.

From the beginning of 2008 there were 2 420 000 iPhone GSM and 5 649 000 iPhone 3G sold, that completes 8 069 000 different iPhones. If we will add this number to 3 704 000 iPhones that were sold in 2007, we’ll get an amazing 11 773 000 iPhones, living their lives in their owner pockets all over the world at the moment.

Some journalists (so do our colleagues from Gizmodo staff) have received the acquaintances to Apple Party, that will be held in San-Francisco on 9th of September.

Does it make you to remember something that was held earlier? What should we wait? Probably A new iPod to be presented in Frisco? Just look at the acquaintance card – the proportions of pictured iPod screen slightly differs from the current iPods (now they are equipped with 4:3 screen). What does the man on the picture handle? And what’s loading on this uncommon screen?

Enigmatic, amazing and exciting… Let’s wait a little for the moment, when Apple will show it’s cards.

An American publisher, that is issuing Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine, decided to point their sight to a sphere, that was left uncovered till this moment. At the end of September the first number of new iPhone magazine named iPhone Life will be issued.

The pilot will cost $25 and will cover a number of aspects, from preparing DVD movies to be played on iPhone and accessories reviews to iPhones hints and tricks and celebrities-meets-iPhone subject.

What is really good, that some virtual bloggers will get a chance to become a real journalists. Or probably you know any different way, how the iPhone news appears in this Interned-wide-wired world leaving the bloggers aside?

And of course you know, all the Russian iPhone news are colecting at iphones.ru and inews76.com (smile).

Here’s a common e-mail from common software user to common software developer.
“Dear Santa Developer, please give me a shareware or uncommercial version of your perfect utility. I really want to try it before I’ll make a decisions to buy it or not”.

The current tendencies in AppStore show, that only 1% of those, who download a lite-version of application, buy it officially. In spite of it, the lite-version of app can be on the top of the ratings, have a hundreds of positive reports. But the full version of the same application will be able only to envy the lite’s popularity…

That totally meets the Arthur Shopengauer’s philosophy. He postulated, that The Happines (an ability to run a software in our terminology) is phantom, because even a man achieves a goal (downloads a lite-version) he doesn’t get a moment of happiness just receiving a satiety and getting bored (leaves an interest to a full-version of app).

Don’t bother the Developers. Let them work in comfortable environment without any stupid requests to give everything and without any charge…

© photo by zerto

On 2nd of September a Russian Megafon mobile operator made the announcement about signing a contract with Apple Inc, that apply to iPhone 3G sale in Russia. The first official iPhone will be sold in Russia this year.

A Digital Jokers Spain-based company started a “Call of The Ctulhu” game porting to iPhone project. The game is based on the cult Howard Lawcraft’s book with the same name.

It should be released this month and will be distributed through AppStore. Jokers at the moment have a number of successful porting of Ctulhu-games, now CTULHU COMES TO iPHONE!

See the video for more details.

All the people like iPhone. Even those, who are making clones of this cult mobile phone. A Meizu M8 miniOne device was announced f year and a half ago, and according to rumors, it’s going to walk out the darkness to the customers. Here are the details: Windows Mobile platform, 3 megapixel camera, 8 Gb. You can see the video to understand what it will be a device.

The release date is still not announced.

A recent market research, that is being committed four times per year, has revealed, that iPhone’s users are making http-queries to web-sites for five times then Windows-based telephone web-surfers make one. It means, that there are five web-pages downloaded to iPhones while only one page has been watched using WinMobile gadget.

a 2007 year statistics

a 2008 year statistics

And only a year ago iPhone was losing positions to Windows-based platforms – it was 0.01 percent behind pro-Microsoft web-browsers. And now Apple-made phone left Windows Mobile devices behind – they are still sitting on the same place.

And don’t forget, that iPhone is only a newborn, a one year old device, and Windows mobile is in senior school, yes, it’s 12 year old! And this result was achieved in spite of the fact that you were supposed to buy iPhone only from USA-based operator and only with contract!

The only words we can say while looking at all of this facts, are “A piece of apple…”.

A well known game author Adikus, who created Pool and Backgammon apps, announced that he leaves the game development business. He will not support his old projects and will not create any new ones.
Nobody knows, what will he do in a nearby future. But he left a nice present for all the people who bought at least one of his games for 1.x.x firmware. Now all of them are available in 4th Installer at RipDev repository.

Thanks to scorpios33 for information given.

While zerto describes us all the news in AppStore catalogue, our iPhones.ru author Evgeniy Shelenkov decides to begin a new review series. It’ll be about apps and games from “must-see” category.

The first one will be a Tap Tap Revenge named game, Evgeniy puts a 5 mark on it.

Tap Tap Revenge is a remake of original console Guitar Hero game. A player should tap notes, flying on the strings of guitar and sometimes shift his iPhone to catch a note he wants. That’s really interesting both playing the game and also watching the man playing it.

All the newbies can walk through the Tutorial to understand how to play the game. Here are the gameplay features in a nutshell. There can be two types of notes to play with. The first ones look like a circles, you are supposed to catch them tapping the border of the screen. The second ones look like an arrows. To catch them player must shift the iPhone in the direction of target arrow-type-note. The more notes you hit – the higher score you get. If you miss a note, you score decreases. There is bonus system in the game: you get higher scores if you successfully release a combo – hit a number of notes without any miss.

The previous version of the game (it was named Tap Tap Revolution) had a bug inside – you couldn’t load any new tracks. In Tap Tap Revenge you can upload the track using in-game interface. You can choose them by difficulty level – Easy Tracks, Medium Tracks, Hard Tracks, Extreme Tracks.

The last scene is highly exciting, but it’s really hard to get inside a Top Scores List. Now there are 37 tracks available, and one or two new are released every week.

The game is supposed to be played in single player mode. But you can share your iPhone screen with a mate to play together, that’s not that comfortable. It should be better to compete using Wi-Fi interface, but we think, the developers will enable this feature in the nearby future. And, don’t forget, that’s the only disadvantage of exciting an successful game.

“Must have”! Without any doubts!

Yes, and it’s totally free.

[iTunes link]

A new application appeared in Cydia, that allows to transfer contacts from one iPhone to another using Wi-Fi wireless access point without. Just select a contact you want to transfer, point the program to the target iPhone and send it.

See the video for more details.

On 28th of August the American Patent Bureau had published a patent number 20080204426. Remember this number, probably in a year or two this patent number will become legendary. On all of the 52 pages of this patent there’s a description of censor display computer, supporting multitouch technology.

All the pictures are clickable.

As we consider, the main idea of this technology is an ability to work with sensor display using combinations of simultaneous touches.

As you have already understood, the patent is registered to “one fruit company”, based in California, US.

Yes, we know, that there should be a lot of time to go until we’ll enjoy seeing the first real prototype, but on 28th of August Apple Company presented a new dream-machine to hundreds of Mac- and iPhone- users. And it really worths waiting for that device – it should be something incredible!

The official QuickOffice developers blog have been just updated with a QuickOffice’s iPhone version coming in a nearby future.

The QuickOffice Pack is a number of utilities designed to work with MS Office documents on a mobile platform. For example, it became most popular on Symbian based smartphones and communicators. The main feature of application set is an ability both to view the documents and to edit them. Yes, the most of iPhone owners are not using MS-version of office packs, but we should communicate with the other world in a some way… So, let’s wait a little for the release of this useful pack.

Dev Team thinks about every iPhone owner. These guys don’t sleep or eat, just working all day and night long to help us manage our iPhones. Recently we saw information about WinPWN release, and now they are announcing a new QuickPWN available for download here.

Happy Birthday, iPhones.ru!

Yesterday the iphones.ru blog (you know, we are the English-based version of this web-site =) ) celebrated it’s second Birthday! The English-language staff are also greeting iphones.ru, all the people who takes care about getting the most fresh and interesting iPhone news. And of course, our special greetings to the site’s founder and Super-Duper-Chief-Information-Officer – SeaBreeze. Congratulations. Bro!

SeaBreeze comments: Thank you =) Now the site stepped into it’s third year of existence, and the forum into the second one. In 2006 something happened that made me to create an iPhone internet-project. Yopu know, there was no an iPhone that time. I bought the iPhones.ru domain, where a headphones internet shop was hosted. Of course, there was a risk to become a pseudo-site about non-existing mobile phone. But I believed in Apple… and six months later the Company officially announced an iPhone. That was really great!

And here’s a first news, that was posted on iphones.ru (of course, in Russian) =)

iPhone: the new rumors.