SlashGear Week In Review - Week 25 2010
Another week come and gone and last week was a big one with new iPhone 4 stuff and lots more. Monday Dell executives confirmed that a Chrome OS notebook was in the works. I am looking forward to seeing how well Chrome actually works.
Apple released iOS4 for the iPhone 3GS and 3G handsets Monday. There have been reports that the OS makes the older smartphones sluggish. Adobe Flash Player 10.1 was made available for mobile platform partners early in the week. This is the full meal deal for Flash, not a pared down version like Flash Light we had before.
Amazon cut the price of the Kindle eReader to $189 early in the week. The device started at $259 when launched so the new price is a significant discount. Some folks were not at all happy when it was learned Tuesday that Apple's privacy policy allowed partners and licensees to access location information on the iPhone, which would also tell them where however carrying the device was.
Once updated to iOS4, the iPhone 3GS will work with the iPad keyboard dock. It is bad enough having to use the iPad in portrait mode on the keyboard dock the iPhone would be horrible. iOS4 for the iPhone 3G and iPod touch was jailbroken with the redsn0w hack. There is no word on when iPhone 3GS users might get the jailbreak hack.
Some pics of the Samsung Vibrant smartphone tipped up early in the week. The device is supposedly set to launch on July 21. Apple has reported that it sold 3 million iPads in 80 days. The things are increasing in demand.
Walt Mossberg posted up his review of the iPhone 4. Mossberg figures that Apple delivered a worthy update that will keep the device at the front of the smartphone pack. We went hands on with the Parrot AR.Drone this week and the thing is so cool. I totally know what I want for Christmas.
Ifixit has torn down the iPhone 4 to see what is on the inside of the thing. The device was found to use Gorilla glass and have the digitizer and LCD glued to the glass. Analysts have suggested after cobbling together things that Jobs and Apple have said that the App Store is operating at near break-even. The analyst figures its grossing $189 million.
If you were hoping for a white iPhone 4 bad news surfaced mid-week that the white version wouldn't land until July. The white iPhone 4 are said to be harder to produce than the black version. The Motorola Droid X went official on Wednesday. The device has a big 4.3-inch touchscreen and will ship with a 16GB microSD card.
A few bad things about the iPhone 4 were learned this week. Some displays were having discoloration issues, many folks reported poor reception when holding the device just right, and not only can you shatter the front glass, but you can shatter the rear too. We went hands on with the Motorola Droid X Wednesday. You can check out the hoard of pics and video we took during the hands-on here.
We unboxed our iPhone 4 on Thursday. We really liked the iPhone 4 and provided lots of pics for you to peruse. Apple announced Thursday that the discoloration that some users are seeing on their display is an adhesive residue. The issue will supposedly fix itself.
Apple has also offered some clarification on the poor reception issues that some users are seeing. The solution to the problem is to hold it differently according to Steve Jobs. OWC offered up an interesting device this week called the Data Doubler that replaces a MacBook optical drive with an extra HDD. OWC claims it will work with any drive up to 9.5mm tall.
The Droid X was torn down on video Friday. There wasn't nearly as many parts inside there as I thought there would be. Thanks for reading this week's edition of the Week in Review!