A report today in Bloomberg citing two unnamed sources claims that Verizon Wireless will be getting the iPhone in January. Yes, Verizon, iPhone, January. Naturally, all the companies involved are declining to comment on the record, but Bloomberg sounds pretty confident in the report thanks to their two sources “familiar with the plans.”

This information is close to what the Wall Street Journal was reporting back in March which stated that a CDMA (the type of network Verizon uses) iPhone would be entering production later this year to be released at some point after that. There have been many earlier reports as well. Some dating back years — and some of those may have very well been negotiating tactics by Apple to score a better deal when re-upping with AT&T.

But these latest reports seem to sync up well with recent maneuvers AT&T has been making to ensure they lock in customers for another two years with the new iPhone 4. AT&T allowed many iPhone 3GS buyers to upgrade to the iPhone 4 for the fully early — months early, in some cases. This was either AT&T being nice or them trying to lock users in to a new two-year contract. I’ll let you make up your own mind on that one.

The company also recently upped the early termination fee when you sign a new contract. That way if you do want to break the contract, say if a certain device were all of a sudden offered on another network, you’ll have to pay more to do so.

But the exact nature of Apple and AT&T’s exclusivity agreement has never been fully known. Depending on which report you’ve read in the past couple of years, it was either going to end in 2009, 2010, or 2011. But that deal has undoubtedly been amended along the way. And again, AT&T’s maneuvers of late suggest they may know it could be ending sooner rather than later.

While Apple has for the most part said the right things about the relationship in public, you hear time and time again that they’re not pleased with some of AT&T lackluster performance. Apple CEO Steve Jobs even publicly said as much recently, but noted that the network should improve soon. Perhaps by “soon,” he meant January, when the company can offload a ton of users to a new network.

Still, it’s a little odd that Apple would go with Verizon as their second carrier ahead of someone like T-Mobile, which also runs a GSM network, and as such, wouldn’t require a complete re-working of the iPhone hardware. But Apple undoubtedly also knows that Verizon is the big catch in the U.S. market as they are still the largest carrier, and the one that is perceived to have the best actual service.

Verizon has also been heavily aligning itself with Google’s Android platform in recent months — a move which Apple can’t be too pleased with. Perhaps Apple wants to make the move to Verizon before Android has too strong of a foothold there.

Overall, it’s clear that if Apple does actually want to compete with Android in terms of numbers (which it’s not yet clear that they do — they may prefer to make more revenue per device sold instead), they’re going to need to move beyond AT&T. The network is quite simply its biggest inhibitor to growth at this point. Android phones, meanwhile, are on all the major carriers. The iPhone is still far outselling any single Android device, but put them all together, across all those networks, and it simply will be very hard for Apple to match that volume the way things are currently.

Something else to think about: if the iPhone (presumably the iPhone 4) is coming to Verizon, does it mean the iPad will too? Perhaps Apple really did intend to use the 3G iPad as a parting gift for AT&T — on top of giving them a few months exclusive on the iPhone 4. Remember, the iPhone on Verizon doesn’t mean it won’t be on AT&T too, it just means it won’t exclusively be there anymore. Apple still has to maintain a relationship with AT&T going forward as they will continue to be an important partner regardless.

The January timeframe for a Verizon iPhone could make sense as Apple likes to do big events in January. In previous years, that’s been Macworld, but this year it was the event to unveil the iPad. Don’t be surprised if Apple holds another iPad event in January 2011 — but this time the “one more thing” just may be a Verizon iPhone. The ultimate “Boom!“

God I hope so.

Last March, Adobe and Google jointly announced that Flash Player would soon come built in to the latter’s Chrome browser, eliminating the need for users to download, install and update it separately.

On Thursday evening, Google released Chrome 5.0.375.86 to the Stable channel on Linux, Mac, and Windows, with a fix for a number of security issues. More importantly, the integrated Flash Player has now been enabled by default.

As Stephen Shankland over at CNET points out, built-in Flash was previously only available in the developer and beta releases of the speedy WebKit-based browser, and the release to the Stable channel means the integrated plug-in is now available in its mainstream version.

The update comes a mere two days after Google re-enabled the integrated Flash Player plug-in by default in the Beta channel after disabling it for some time.

Not only is Google giving Adobe’s Flash technology another vote of confidence (Flash Player 10.1 for Mobile, which was announced earlier this week, will be rolled out on Android 2.2 phones first), but the integration also means any updates to Flash Player will be delivered directly via Google Chrome’s updating system, ultimately minimizing security risks that tend to surface when one uses outdated software and components.

Yes, I was one of the lucky few who managed to place my order through AT&T’s website on pre-order day.  The iPhone arrived earlier this afternoon and here are just a few of my first impressions. The iPhone came with its usual accessories minus the SIM tool, which is a pain, but I had one left over from another iPhone so it wasn’t a big deal.  I don’t understand why Apple didn’t include one this time since I did have to remove the SIM card for activation.

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Read the rest of My First Impression Of The iPhone 4

© Frank Catalano for Just Another iPhone Blog, 2010. | Permalink | | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: iPhone 4

The world’s most wanted device is now in the hands of the world’s most foremost tinkerers!

It sure is.  The guys at iFixit have done it again.  They’ve got their hands on an iPhone 4 and torn it apart while casting their expert eyes over every millimeter of its innards.  Their excllent teardown post on it provides a mountain of detail on what’s inside the new iPhone, and also on their process for taking it apart so expertly.

Here’s the first bit of happy news that jumped off the page for me:

While we’re not too busy, let’s talk RAM. Unlike the iPhone 3GS and iPad, which are both equipped with 256 MB, the iPhone 4 has a whopping 512 MB!

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Read the rest of iPhone 4 Teardown Confirms 512MB of RAM, Lots More Details

© PatrickJ for Just Another iPhone Blog, 2010. | Permalink | | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: iPhone 4 hardware specs, iPhone 4 specs, iPhone 4 teardown

Excited to hear the news, I quickly popped open my “Mail, Calendar, Contacts” settings and turned it on to test it out…

I sent myself a test email from work and within 30 seconds the Mail icon lit up with a new badge. Glorious, glorious push GMail!

To set up your own iPhone or iPod Touch, check out the instructions from Google Sync.

Now, if only Google could implement it’s own free version of “Find My iPhone”…

ADR was located on 1600 Market St in Philadelphia. The office building was your typical Philadelphia office building, and their office was located on the 38th floor. If you go there without instruction, you may be a little lost. Why so? Because there is no office of American Data Recovery on the 38th floor, but rather a Competitive Computer Solutions. Having trouble finding Competitive Computer Solutions too? That’s because they don’t have an office either. Instead, they have space inside another company’s office, called JuriStaff Legal Staffing.

This seemed a bit sketchy to me, but I proceeded anyway. I dropped my drive off with the receptionist of the other company that promised to deliver my message to the appropriate person. And then I waited… and waited. It’s amazing how time slows down when you’re constantly thinking about something important. Three hours can seem like an eternity and a full 24 hours… unthinkable. And so just about a day later, I received a call that my drive was in the process of being analyzed.

I didn’t mention this before, but ADR requires a $100 deposit upon delivering your drive. It simply ensures that their time is not completely wasted should you choose not to use their services, which you have the chance to do.

Another day passed and I received word that my data was intact and that they were 99% sure they could recover everything. After the initial estimate they’re able to tell me if they need to ship the drive to a special facility for damaged drives. Luckily, my drive was not damaged. The next step was to send me a file list to show me what they’ll be able to recover. I received the list in a nice HTML web app that made it easy to navigate. To my shock, and comfort, everything of importance was on the list. Unbelievable! I might have made the right choice with the specialist.

Right in the moment of all of my joy, I received the quote for how much the total bill was going to be and I had to make a choice: Pay $1000 for all of my important data, or bail and lose my $100 and find a new way to get my data back.

Ahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!

After screaming about the horrible situation I was in, and the horrible situation that anyone would be in if they lost or deleted some important data, I decided that I just need to follow through with this and learn a really expensive lesson.

Just before I sent my confirmation over, I called Dustin and asked for a breakdown of the $1000. After all, if I’m going to pay that much money, I want to know what I’m paying for. Dustin told me that he was not able to provide me with it, that the boss just gives them the quote to pass on. I didn’t think that was an acceptable answer, so I asked to speak to his manager. That is when I met Brett. I explained to Brett that I wasn’t talking to him to complain about anything, but just that I was writing a blog about my experience and that I wanted a breakdown of what I was paying for. Brett immediately replied that he was able to help me and that he would email me what I was looking for.

Thirty minutes later I received a call from Brett. He told me that he reviewed the quote I was given and for the work that was being done it seemed kind of high. He said he’d call me back with a new quote. And that’s exactly what he did… 30% off to be exact. I don’t know if it was that I spoke to a manager, or if it was the fact that I was writing a blog about it, but I was very happy with the 30% off. He said that the $700 isn’t something that breaks down, that it’s just a combined figure of difficulty and time. I was ok with this after 30% off. I immediately sent in my confirmation for them to begin the final process.

Here is a breakdown of what I paid and what I received for my money:

$100 Initial quote — I received great customer service; they were always available and eager to answer the phone. They analyzed my drive and provided me with a file list of everything they could recover.

$600 remaining cost — I received my original drive, a new hard drive containing all of the recovered files from my original drive, and an external USB enclosure to use the new drive. It was shipped to my house via Fedex.

Overall I was extremely happy with the result of this whole experience. Granted, I never want to have to pay $700 and use a specialist again. However, knowing that if I do need a specialist that they’ll be able to follow through on their claim, is very nice. I highly recommend American Data Recovery if you find yourself in a similar situation, sketchy office and all!

In order to safeguard myself from ever having to do this again, I purchased this: Buffalo Technology LinkStation Pro Duo 1.0 TB (2 X 500GB) Network Attached Storage LS-W1.0TGL/R1 (Black). Now everything is back to the way it was before, and I have scheduled backups running onto my new network attached storage device.

This debacle is over.

UPDATE: Brett read the article and wanted to follow up with some information he thought I would find valuable. Again, another instance of how great the customer service of this company is:

Buffalo network attached storage devices use a proprietary Linux operating system that makes data recovery much more proprietary and expensive. While they are handy and really nice, If you were to have a failure on that complex device (which we see all the time) data recover would be between $3000 – $6000. While your backup option is good, I want to have you make sure you check your back ups and make sure the back up data is good. Also, make sure everything you need is being backed up, sometimes important files are skipped when using automatic back ups so simply verify that everything important to you is actually being backed up. Last, back ups are a second copy. Do not delete the data on the original drive unless you have 2 copies of your data elsewhere. If you live by the 2 copy rule, you should never have to use our services again. I hope this helps and thank you for the nice blog.

Here is the changelist from this release:

• Added back the onclick events for the deck builder buttons (they were removed after I added the card hiding ability)Changed the SQLite depenendency on deck builder to work with Mono
• Fixed a bug with the static paths not working in deck builder when it was launched from EmptyGee
• Added back the magic icon for the main application
• Added registry settings to the installer

http://code.google.com/p/emptygee/

This version is now functional in Linux and OSX through the use of Mono (http://www.mono-project.com).

In order to do this, I had to change three things:

1. I was forced to switch from a WCF client/server model to a traditional TCP client/server
2. I needed to change the SQLite dependency to a managed-only version
3. I needed to fix my file system access code to be cross platform

Give it a try!