When Apple announced the availability of iPhone OS 3.1 and the new features that came along with it, we’re not going to lie — we were pretty excited. Regardless of your feelings about Apple and its products, nearly everyone can agree that the App Store was one of the biggest game-changers in recent history where the wireless industry is concerned. With all of the great things about Apple’s App Store however, come several faults of course — and one of the biggest problems was the lack of a recommendation system. In fact, we’d call it the second biggest fault behind lack of a facility for trial versions of apps.

Then came OS 3.1 and with it, Genius for apps. Woo hoo! Even off the bat we could see that Apple’s recommendation solution wasn’t going to be ideal but at least it was a good start, right? Unfortunately, not so much. As you may have read elsewhere by now, many people — us included — have found Apple’s Genius recommendations a bit lacking so far. In fact, the system is basically laughable at this point. Now, many of you probably already know this but recommendation systems are tricky business to say the least. The technology behind them is extremely complex and the amount of information considered can be staggering. That said, there are many companies out there that have done incredible things with the science of recommendations. Apple probably should have worked with one of them.

Looking at the screenshot above, we’ve highlighted one item in particular — though the subsequent recommendation is nearly as bad. “MobileNavigator Europe based on Camera Genius.” Really, Apple? Suffice it to say, the connection doesn’t immediately jump out at us. We want more control over our camera so that means we probably also want to fly to Europe and find our way around once we get there? Or perhaps with Camera Genius we’ll be taking better pictures so we may want to head across the pond and take pictures while touring Europe?

In browsing through the recommendations on one of our iPhones, there are definitely a bunch in the list where connections can be found. More often than not however, we’re at a loss. “iOutBank Pro (German mobile banking app) based on Camera Genius?” “Death Cab for Cutie (a portal for fans of the band) based on F-MyLife (community where people whine about bad things that happen to them, and then get laughed at)?” “EasyWriter Pro (landscape typing app rendered nearly useless by OS 3.0+) based on AT&T Navigator?” The worse news is that so far, we’re finding that removing bad recommendations and checking out good ones has lead to zero improvement. Long story short: the criteria Apple’s Genius system uses to make its recommendations needs refinement. A whole lot of refinement.

So, iPhone users, our question is this: Did Apple swing and miss with App Store Genius recommendations? Hit the comments section and let us know how Genius is working out for you.

But U2 doesn’t love BlackBerry, nor give a shit about them. That’s the feeling I get after attending the kick-off concert for U2’s 360 U.S. tour. What’s incredible is that after thinking about this strange and odd pairing of two corporate brands, it makes less sense than I even previously thought. For starters, it’s a pretty large investment to be the title and only sponsor for a huge national or worldwide tour — major money. If we had to guess we’d say RIM paid a minimum of $7M and a maximum of $15M. What’s so unsettling is how disconnected RIM was from the event. Sure, there were a couple banners strewn about Soldier Field, but no one noticed. And the folks that did notice didn’t care. Instead of using this opportunity to push their brand forward, it almost seems like just a second thought to throw some quick marketing dollars to try act like your company is doing something in the consumer and “cool” department.

There are really two main reasons to do something as big as this: one is to get a huge return on your investment. If RIM spends $10M (we averaged our guessed figures) and signs up a boatload of new BlackBerry subscribers (or even just does upgrades and sells hardware) there’s a good chance they’d quickly make that $10M back plus more (profit). The second reason which is more likely for a company as large as RIM, is just to have brand presence, reinforce your identity to consumers, and possibly reach a new demographic that you can later market and sell to. But again, I saw enough BlackBerrys at the event. More iPhones than BlackBerrys (everyone was taking videos on their iPhones so apparently everyone in America bought the new 3GS), but still, a shitload of BlackBerrys. And no one is switching to a friggin’ BlackBerry from an iPhone just because they saw a couple dusty BlackBerry banners at a U2 concert.

So I ask again, what’s the purpose of sponsoring a tour like this if you’re going to throw up some lame signage and call it a day? Seriously, there wasn’t a single BlackBerry logo on the main screen on the stage, nothing on the video monitor — zilch. There was a dingy 5×5 ft booth that looked like a hot dog stand converted into something with a BlackBerry logo right outside the stadium and that’s about it. Did Live Nation tell you to bugger off? Did U2 say they didn’t want a brand to be integrated into their show anymore than you were already? If so, this is a pretty shitty investment and makes RIM seem desperate to just find something to get involved with to try and hold on to what’s left of the hype (which is quickly, quickly fading) surrounding the BlackBerry Tour launch. Sure it’s a nice tie-in for upcoming product launches like the Storm 2 and BlackBerry 9700, but there’s zero involvement.

Why didn’t RIM have 10 RIM reps at the venue demoing products an hour before the concert started? Doing giveaways? Getting people excited or at least engaged? Why couldn’t you sell devices and do activations at every stadium/arena on the tour and clean up? You couldn’t even do some RIM accessories with U2 logos on them? Seriously? Do you understand how many drunk 50-year-olds would buy BlackBerry/U2 leather holsters, skins, etc. for their devices at the concert? This might go back to what they could and could not do in terms of licensing agreements, merchandising restrictions, promotional and marketing guidelines, but if so, it was a pretty stupid idea to half-ass something that could have been a major coup for your company and brand in a time when it’s much needed.

For $10M, RIM could have set up shop at 50 college campuses across the country and done hands-on sessions with students showing off how cool a BlackBerry can be compared to Apple’s iPhone. “Look, you can get Twitter on your BlackBerry and you can stream music even while the application is in the background!” or maybe “look how fantastically it integrates with your college email account.” “Look, even Yelp! is on the BlackBerry now and it will even show you where the best place to get chicken wings at 3AM is.” and the obvious sexy angle: “you guys use Macs? No problem. We just launched BlackBerry Desktop for Mac which will sync all of your stuff over so you can use all of your Mac applications you’re used to using. Have fun — import your photos into iPhoto and enjoy the fact that we geo-tag your pictures automatically!”

For $10M RIM could have made a meaningful commercial that demonstrated why a BlackBerry is better than an iPhone instead of Bono on LSD channeling his previous commercial he did for the iPod with Apple. For $10M RIM could have launched an actual developer program where they, you know, focus on making software development easier and better? Maybe have real support and real documentation that makes sense? All RIM has to do is copy Apple and for the most part, they’ll win. Yet they refuse. They start things and never finish them and their follow-through is horrible just like how this U2 sponsorship turned out to be. I was actually a tad bit excited, or at least a little bit hype. “BlackBerry sponsored this entire thing? That’s kind of cool.” Then all I saw were a couple banners like the one above and everyone pleasantly using iPhones. And some dude buying nachos.

Apple’s “I’m a Mac” ads were awesome when they first came out; witty, fun, amusing and effective. Now they’re just plain boring. Cupertino’s creative crew is seemingly running on fumes at this point, and in what we would think is a pretty major spot for the team — Apple’s response to Microsoft’s successful Laptop Hunters ads — it swung and missed big time. The new Apple spot beats the same old virus drum and then in the final movement of this tour de crap, Puddy hands the shopper a card and says, “When you’re ready to compromise, you call me.” Good call guys. In the midst of a recession where the name of the game is compromising luxury for necessity and functionality, that’s the road you chose to take. Grade: F. Hit the jump for the commercial.

Behold, ladies and gentlemen: Bell’s new iPhone! No wait, it’s a pPhone. No… The Palm PrePhone? At this point, we’re wondering if there’s a worldwide (or at least North America-wide) conspiracy amongst creative agencies to ensure that each and every Palm Pre commercial to hit the airwaves is absolute garbage. The good news is that Bell’s commercial at least shows off the phone and its features rather than a painfully odd woman mumbling about walking in the park. The bad news is that it shamelessly and blatantly rips off iPhone commercials. In fact, it rips them off to the point where the agency that put this ad together simply shouldn’t be allowed to work anymore. Ever. The bottom line is that the Palm Pre is a great little phone and it deserves better than this. A little side note: Palm, Bell, buddies… When you’re rocking an App Catalog that currently offers less than 50 apps, you might not want to rip off Apple’s “there’s an app for that” run. Yeah, right now on the Pre there really isn’t an app for anything. Hit the jump for the commercial.

[Via PreThinking]

We love our HTC Hero around these parts… And what would a hot-selling handset be nowadays without 14 different color combinations? Unfortunately for HTC, they seem to have their color codes mixed up. Since we can confidently say a pink handset would appeal mostly to women buyers, this salmon-colored Hero makes no sense.

Powder baby pink and we know of a bunch of women who’d want one. Burnt salmon? No way.

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As fully immersed in technology as younger generations in the US are these days, we sometimes forget that there are still generations and demographics in this country who simply haven’t latched on to tech the way we have. The spunky bunch above who have gathered around a laptop to check out BGR simply aren’t representative of older generations and let us not forget the countless people in this country who cannot afford computers. The simple truth is that there are a magnitude of reasons why someone might not own, use or even know how to use a computer. Apparently however, T-Mobile thinks its poor and elderly postpaid subscribers should be penalized for being unwilling or unable to embrace a digital lifestyle.

According to Tmonews, starting September 12th T-Mobile will begin charging a mandatory fee to customers who have not opted into paperless billing. Notices to that effect will go out with this month’s bills. The fee will reportedly be $1.50 per line, so if you have a family plan with five lines you’re looking at an additional $7.50 each month. For nothing.

Forget the fact that T-Mobile’s online billing system is weak and confusing at best — the simple fact is that paperless billing isn’t for everyone. Carriers charge enough fees without piling on with garbage like this. Now, we’d love it if T-Mobile was doing something like this in an effort to be more environmentally conscious but it is blatantly obvious that this is not the case. If a carrier wanted to encourage subscribers to go paperless for “green” reasons, it would reward those who oblige by giving them a nominal discount, not penalize those who cannot or do not oblige for whatever reason.

If this new paper billing fee becomes a reality and you or someone you know is affected by it, we strongly urge you to contact T-Mobile and the FCC to voice your objections.

UPDATE: The author of the original post emailed us to let us know about a correction to his report. The $1.50 charge is apparently going to be per account, not per line. We still think this stinks — it’s just not quite as pungent now…

Google recently issued a new beta of its infant web browser and while it touts some huge improvements over older builds, we still find ourselves hesitant to give it any real face time on our machines. Let’s start by covering the improvements: First and foremost, Google claims the new version 3.0.195.4 runs over 30 percent faster than previous builds according to benchmark tests. Wow. To jump over 30 percent from one build to the next is nothing short of incredible and in our time spent playing with it, the improvement is quite obvious. Beyond speed, Google has also added some customization options to the new tab page, tweaked the display in the Omnibox, added some basic HTML5 capabilities and added 29 themes just in case the old Google blue bored you. Long story short, the new version offers a pretty respectable bump over previous builds — but we’re still not using it. Why? The answer is simple: one product cannot be all things to all people.

Firefox’s greatest advantage over Chrome is still its open nature and its vast development community. We have about 15 Firefox add-ons we simply could not browse without, literally, and another 10 or so that we could probably live without but really don’t want to. Thanks to the endless stream of available add-ons, Firefox’s behavior and functionality can be tweaked to suit individual users’ needs as opposed to just being a solution that meets the basic needs of a wide range of users. Mozilla has amassed a tremendous community of developers who support its open source projects, many of whom are simply brilliant and more than generous in donating their time and skill to making Firefox a more versatile browser. We’re sure you can see where this is going. We’ve grown accustomed to the versatility Firefox affords and until Chrome or any other browser can manage to attract developers like Mozilla has, they just don’t stand a chance on our machines.

[Via Google Chrome Blog]

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We were pretty clear in sharing our feelings where Palm’s Pre commercials are concerned but just in case our headline wasn’t clear enough for you, we don’t like them. In a nutshell, they make us want to curl up in a corner and cry, not run out and buy a Pre. Gary Koepke is the co-founder of Modernista, the agency behind the ads, and he recently defended his work in an interview with AdAge:

We weren’t trying to creep people out, but one thing I have learned now in this digital age is people can be as rude as they want as long as they don’t have to look you in the face. The Pre is probably being talked about more than other phones right now because of the marketing and advertising, and that’s a good thing. Could the ads work harder to show exactly how the phone works? Yes, but we knew it would be polarizing people to have a woman not shout at them and tell an interesting story.

It’s a very different look and feel for this sector. There’s nobody involved in an iPhone ad, and ‘Your life is on BlackBerry’ — isn’t that great? Instead of having a life? We wanted a middle ground between those two places — what about the people who want a really great smartphone?

Fair enough, sir, but allow us to reiterate our stance in the context of the second portion of the quote above. Putting our “Joe Consumer” hat on for a moment, when we see an iPhone ad on TV, we walk away thinking ‘cool, the iPhone can do tons of great stuff because it has so many sweet apps’. When we see a BlackBerry commercial (aside from the horrible U2 spot), we walk away thinking ‘ok, BlackBerry rocks the business world but it can hang in the consumer market, too. It does it all’. When we see a Pre commercial, we walk away thinking ‘crack’.

But let’s face it — money talks. Television advertising exists to drive sales and if Pre sales to date were anything to write home about, Sprint and Palm would have thrown out some numbers by now. With the top two smartphone brands in the US doing gangbusters — BlackBerrys are still burning up the market and Apple hawked over 5 million iPhones last quarter — it’s no wonder they’re keeping quiet.

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We love you Palm, we really do. WebOS is in a small club of mobile platforms that is as versatile and visually pleasing as it is powerful and it has all the potential in the world… If Palm can manage to sell the handsets that it powers. We still don’t know how many Pres have been sold and analyst guesses range from 200,000 to 500,000 and beyond. What we do know however, is that Palm isn’t doing itself any favors with its faux esoteric, new age TV ads starring a mescaline-addicted albino woman. Love the Pre or hate it, do these commercials really want to make anyone run out and buy a Pre? Palm’s latest ad has this creepy lady babbling over an Ulrich Schnauss track about how her phone can read her mind and how people think she’s crazy. The Palm Pre — you know, the phone they’re trying to sell here — doesn’t even make an appearance until 22 seconds into this 30 second spot. Right. We get the point you’re trying to make, Palm, but we don’t walk away from this ad thinking, “Wow, I really want to buy a Pre because it’s remarkably intuitive and I don’t follow the herd!” No, we walk away thinking, “Wow, this chick needs an intervention.” Hit the jump to check out the commercial and hit Palm execs in the head for letting an ad agency convince them that this run was a good idea.

Ohhhh, Apple. In this latest chapter of the schizophrenic soap opera that is Apple’s relationship with iPhone developers, Apple has rejected Google’s Google Voice application. Here’s why, according to a Google spokesperson:

We work hard to bring Google applications to a number of mobile platforms, including the iPhone. Apple did not approve the Google Voice application we submitted six weeks ago to the Apple App Store. We will continue to work to bring our services to iPhone users — for example, by taking advantage of advances in mobile browsers.

Long story short, Google will be forced to whip up some bootleg web app as it did with Latitude because Apple is, at times, ridiculous when it comes to App Store policies. But the story doesn’t end there. Apparently Google’s rejection prompted Apple to sift through the Store and remove third party Google Voice apps with little or no warning. The reasoning? They duplicate features already found on the iPhone such as the dialer and SMS. Apparently these apps didn’t duplicate the aforementioned features when they were first approved months ago… But they do now.

That makes perfect sense of course, and maintains the same position Apple has taken with the approval process from the start. It’s not like Apple would approve 300 browser apps that duplicate the features of Safari… Or approve a bunch of calculators that duplicate the features of the Calculator app… Or approve a thousand weather apps that duplicate the features of Apple’s Weather app… Or approve a bazillion to-do list apps that duplicate the features of Notes… And so on.

In the end, what we really want to know is this: since Apple is pulling GV Mobile, VoiceCentral and the like from the App Store — thus ceasing development and blocking support (why would a dev support an app he/she can no longer make money on?) — will Apple be refunding the purchase price of these apps to customers at its own expense? Yeah we doubt it, too. If you’ve purchased a Google Voice app and would like to request a refund at Apple’s expense however, we most definitely urge you to do so. Just don’t hold your breath for a response.

Bottom line… Jailbreak.

UPDATE: A few people have hit us to let us know that GV Mobile is now available in the Cydia Store. We imagine others will follow suit soon enough — so once again, jailbreak.

I want to start this off by saying I have nothing but love for RIM the company. Probably my favorite tech corporation in the world, they’ve created an incredibly unique product that practically replaces the need for drugs for most people. What’s even more fascinating, however, is how RIM (to the pleasant surprise of a lot of us early users) has managed to take a corporate-focused product and service and blow down doors in the consumer world. From the BlackBerry 7100, the first consumer-oriented device, to the eye-catching BlackBerry Tour (it’s business through and through, yet it will be an incredibly popular consumer phone on Verizon and Sprint), it’s clear that RIM has done everything right to this day.

So, what’s the problem you’re asking? They have probably the best back-end infrastructure for mobile communication on the planet, awesome phones that can go head-to-head with high-end smartphones, consumer marketing, a huge consumer fanbase, and practically every businessman (or woman) has one on their hip. One word is where RIM fails so miserably it isn’t even imaginable: software.

You have to look at the big picture here… for what RIM is working with (an incredibly miserable Java OS with so much security and encryption and smoke-blowing APIs) they’ve hit the jackpot. Their OS architecture is fantastic, their use of security is what makes them so trustworthy. But, as each handset release comes closer and closer, people start to see the bigger picture. And that’s the fact that RIM’s OS is more than antiquated, it’s borderline laughable. But it works, you’re thinking, so what’s wrong? I’ve been saying this for years, but it wasn’t designed to do anything the BlackBerry does now. Imagine scotch taping car parts to a 200hp engine and see how far that gets you. Obviously, it’s just a viciously rough metaphor, but we believe a correct one.

There’s so many limitations to RIM’s OS, and even RIM’s data network that it offsets all the wonderful things they’ve managed to accomplish. Remember when people were so excited over leaked shots of OS 4.6 and I said somewhere it was just a theme? Well, was I wrong? Oh, look! OS 5.0! What changed? 99% nothing. Some functionality is added here and there, but the mobile phone landscape has changed so drastically in the last two years, that RIM, admittedly known to planning “three years out” looks to be unable to see the proper direction to head.

You can throw $1,000,000,000 at developers but you won’t get any if your OS, tools, and documentation are so bad, and that’s really in the end a lot of what I’m getting at. I was laying in bed at around 3AM early one morning recently, looking through the iPhone App Store and I came across EA’s Tiger Woods Golf. $6.99, why not? Wait, it’s 150MB? Wow, it must be good. I clicked purchase and literally 4 minutes later, Tiger Woods was installed and up on my screen. Granted I was on a high-speed Wi-Fi connection, but it made me realize more than ever that RIM has the most uphill battle of their lifetimes. When a BlackBerry application over 500k is considered “large”, something’s wrong. When TweetGenius is one of the first BlackBerry applications to do fun, unique things like transparent overlays, consistent shortcuts, and a straight forward UI, something is wrong.

The reason why this is so frustrating to me and I’m guessing many is because RIM literally almost has it all. They’ve got it! They are 90% there but that last 10% has become the most important. If you take Apple for example, and see their shortcomings, and then what they’ve done to fix them, it’s remarkable. It’s a completely different DNA than RIM’s but it’s working. In two years Apple has practically matched Research In Motion in almost every consumer area while having the most advanced mobile operating system with the most advanced mobile SDK on the planet. If Apple can do this in just two years and RIM has stood still, no one thinks that’s a problem?

The reason RIM works is because it’s the entire package, if you will. Hardware, software, infrastructure, corporate integration, security, etc. People want simplicity, ease of use, but more than ever they want more than they need. Stupider people are smarter and expect more, smarter people are stupider and expect more. RIM delivers the same tired package in new hardware and people are starting to catch on. App World? Seriously? From every single developer I’ve spoke to, it’s a non-starter. It basically doesn’t exist to them in terms of a sales channel — it’s practically like 1% if that.

What consumers don’t do is look forward. They look at what’s put in front of them. It’s the exact opposite for the manufacturer and thus why it’s so difficult. Look back two or three years and the Bold and Storm might seem incredibly innovative, consumer-focused, and sure to be hot sellers. And they were and are, but look ahead three years and tell me point blank you have confidence that RIM knows how to steer this ship. I don’t, and that’s being incredibly honest. It’s not me being negative, it’s objectively looking at the landscape and evaluating things. I want RIM to succeed, I want RIM to make kick ass products. I’m just frustrated that RIM is going through hardware like it’s nobody’s business yet fails to deliver on the things that everyone wants. Screw business people, screw consumers, everyone wants a WebKit-based browser. It’s inexcusable RIM doesn’t get it. It’s inexcusable that people put up with a 2003 operating system with so many limitations and restrictions it would make Ahmadinejad jealous. I don’t think RIM is going anywhere, they as a company are incredibly successful, but once they start to lose the consumer market which they worked so hard to get, it’s a downward shift.

Here’s a list of RIM’s models followed by Apple’s in the last 3 years:

RIM: 8110, 8120, 8130, 8800, 8820, 8830, 8300, 8310, 8320, 8330, 8220, 8230, 8900, 9000, 9500, 9530, 9630.

Apple: iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS.

There’s a good and bad part with knowing things in advance. For instance, people might hold off on purchasing a new BlackBerry if they know a newer and better one is being released in a couple months, and this hurts a company’s current product cycle. On the other hand, if someone on Verizon sees a Tour being released two months from now, they might rethink jumping ship or switching to a different device on Verizon. And the cycle continues. Looking at RIM’s upcoming products for the next 6-12 months is simply a rehash of current limitations and shortcoming in smaller and sexier packages. The BlackBerry 9020? It’s a Bold in a smaller, sexier package. Nothing else is different. The BlackBerry Storm 2? It’s the same device with maybe improved screen tech. The BlackBerry Magnum? As hot as a hybrid touch screen/QWERTY device would be, it’s still a BlackBerry that can’t pull up a webpage to save its life or play a real game or have any sort of desktop-class application running.

These things won’t change, the core OS hasn’t changed, and RIM has had no reason to change it. Why mess with success, right? Well, if you happen to be Research In Motion, you might have to start changing things up or newer and better operating systems like the iPhone, webOS, and Android are going to eat their lunch and their applications, too.

I’m fortunate enough to be able to have every phone I want on every carrier and that gives a person an incredible amount of clarity when picking the superior products. I use an iPhone 3GS and a BlackBerry Bold everyday, both on AT&T. But to tell you the truth, in the past when people ask me what device would I choose if I had to only pick one, it would hurt my brain. There was just no way to choose. But unfortunately or fortunately, that decision has become clearer and clearer. I don’t think I’ll ever give up my BlackBerry, I’m pretty sure you’ll always find one on my hip in an OEM RIM leather holster, (yes, holsters are cool as shit) but when me of all people starts truly questioning how a company as successful and brilliant as RIM is going to keep up with the next 2-3 years, you’ve got a big, big issue.

I’ll close by saying that the market is still wide open and this doesn’t mean RIM is or ever will go anywhere. It’s just something to keep an eye on and see how the best to ever do it will react to competitors’ advances, innovations, and of course, their software.

When it comes to branding, marketing, advertising, PR and the general concepts surrounding efforts to sell stuff, Apple is one of the best in the business — hands down. Love Apple products or hate them, there’s really no question it knows how design an attractive product and make it even more attractive using marcom. As such, the company is always meticulous with the messages it delivers, the wording it chooses and the quality of its marketing/advertising — well, almost always.

Its latest product, the iPhone 3GS, is a smash hit. It launched this past Friday in fewer countries than the iPhone 3G did last year and still managed to sell over a million handsets in its opening weekend — more units than its predecessor in fact. Remarkable. There is a major fault in Apple’s new handset however, that we likely wouldn’t have seen under Stevo’s watch: the branding. Yes, we’re sure Jobs played a major role in naming the device and we can’t believe “3GS” is what the crew in Cupertino landed on but considering how peculiar and unfriendly to search engines the name is, one would think the company would take particular care in referring to the handset. Nope. According to Apple, the official name of its new handset is “iPhone 3GS”. Fair enough. Take a look at Apple’s website at the time of this writing however, and you’ll find no less than a hundred references to the “iPhone 3G S” — with a space between the “3G” and the “S”. Crazy. This is also how the handset was presented when it was introduced earlier this month: “3G S”.

To be honest, we can’t remember ever having seen Apple fail so massively in this department. It may seem trivial but companies take branding extremely seriously for several reasons and all of these reasons play key roles in the marketing/sales processes. Apple is cleaning up its site and changing “3G S” to “3GS” but even now there are still a few omissions. The screen cap above was taken this morning and it shows less than a quarter of a page with four mistakes alone.

So welcome back, Mr. Jobs. Time to get to work.

Do you see anyone you know standing in that line? Today is the day to pack up your toys, gadgets and snacks, and head out to Apple/AT&T/Rogers/Fido/Carphone Warehouse or wherever else if you didn’t order your iPhone online to be shipped. After all, it’s either lines today or a test of patience down the road. Be sure you are well prepared and are up to date on pricing and details on grabbing your iPhone; we wouldn’t want to see anyone turned away after spending an entire morning or afternoon (or both) braving the elements, wherever you are. After all the pics and updates we’ve given you, everything has finally culminated to this moment. Let us know what lines in your area are like — if there even are lines in your area — and how easy or difficult it was to leave the store with your shiny, new iPhone 3G S in hand!

And so it begins. Not even 24 hours after the Palm Pre announcement, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse assumed the roll of Buzz Killington when he explained Sprint’s lack of high-visibility Pre advertising to investors. According to Hesse, Sprint “didn’t intend to advertise [the Pre] heavily early on because we think we are going to have shortages for a while” and that it “won’t be able to keep up with demand for the device in the early period of time.” Okay, so let’s get this straight. Sprint didn’t heavily advertise the Palm Pre — the handset that is supposed to turn things around for the company — because Hesse & Co. are afraid of pissing people off if they might have to wait a few weeks for their phones to arrive? Hesse, buddy, shortages can often be an amazing way to pique the general public’s interest. It worked with the first iPhone, it worked with the Storm and it sure as hell worked with the Wii. It won’t work for the Pre however, if no one knows the handset exists. Ugh.

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Oh boy. In the past there has been a lot of talk about Nokia’s upcoming flagship N97 and why it has some difficulties keeping its apps up and running, and now we have official word as to the likely reason — it’s powered by an ARM 11 processor that clocks in at a limp 434MHz. Seriously. While we know it’s not always about how many MHz a processor has but how efficient the processor itself is (as well as other components), this is a flagship handset we’re talking about here. After all, the N97 will likely command an insane price tag up around $800 with a processor that only has a 65MHz advantage over the hum-drum 5800 XpressMusic. And If you want to get even more snooty, here’s a little food for thought:

• BlackBerry Bold – 624MHz
• HTC Magic – 528MHz
• HTC Touch Pro2 – 528MHz
• Palm Pre – est. 600MHz
• Samsung i8910 – 600MHz

C’mon Nokia!…

[Via Engadget Mobile]

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According to a new email blast AT&T is currently in the midst of sending out, the company has been hard at work in 2008 and through Q1 2009 improving its service in the New York metro area. In fact according to the email, the carrier added 75 new cell sites across New Jersey, New York and Long Island during the 15-month period. Specifically, AT&T lists the following areas as key improvements in 2008:

• Along I-78 in Hunterdon County west of Exit 11 and between Exit 33 and I-287 in NJ
• Aong the West Side Highway from 7th Avenue to West 10th Street in Manhattan
• The Sprain Brook Parkway from Route 100C to 100 and I-684 near Goldens Bridge in Valhalla, NY
• The Long Island Expressway near Exit 51 in Huntington Station, NY
• Perrineville, Prospect Plains, Union Valley & Applegarth Roads all in Monroe Township in Middlesex County, NJ
• Main Street and Ocean Avenue in Northport, NY
• The Southern State and Sagtikos Parkways in Bayshore, NY

A few more areas are also listed as recipients of even more recent coverage improvements:

• The NJ Transit line in Glen Rock, NJ
• Todt Hill Road in Staten Island
• Howells Road and the Sunrise Highway in Bayshore, NY
• Greenwich Village from Washington Square Park to East 12th Street, Central Park South
• The Upper East Side from East 82nd to East 91st Street in Manhattan

While we applaud AT&T’s continued efforts in the region, we’re still hearing from an unending stream of readers, colleagues and friends wondering what is going on with AT&T’s service in the NYC area. Of course people love to complain much more than they do praise so to be fair, we also talk to plenty of people in the area who live and die by AT&T’s service and seemingly have no problems at all. Consider this an informal third party survey — those of you with AT&T service in and around New York… How’s it hanging?

Hit the jump to see the full email and then hit the comments section to be heard.

Hip hip huzzah! BlackBerry App World has been with us for over three weeks and no doubt a lot of the World’s 25 million BlackBerry users have jumped on the wagon and taken it for a spin or two around the block. But after playing with it for a while, we’re quite sure that there are plenty of people whose puppy-love infatuation quickly turned to irritation. Why? Errors, bugs and high costs aside, it’s likely that App World users discovered the reality that BlackBerrys have a bit of an issue when it comes to dedicated application memory. This, coupled with the infamous memory leaks that sadly seem to be oh so prevalent on every BlackBerry model since the Pearl 8100, make for a device that isn’t anywhere near capable of handing as many apps as competing smartphones. Put simply, the more contacts, phone logs, saved messages and of course installed applications a user has on his or her BlackBerry, the less free memory the device has to dedicate to new apps.

It really doesn’t take much of effort at all to eat away at the 128MB of app memory on both the Bold or the Storm. In fact, we took a peek at one of the Bold’s at BGR HQ that was running OS 4.6.0.247 and found that it had a paltry 4MB of application memory left. After a battery pull it jumped up to 20MB but then quickly started its descent. The saddest thing is that this Bold only had a Twitter app (more on this some other day), Google Maps, Viigo and a few IM clients installed.

So what can be done about this? Well, for starters, RIM could not only bring its devices into the modern age by giving them 512+ MB of application memory, but it could also do something that we’ve been clamoring for for the longest time and allow users to install applications to their memory cards. And no, we don’t buy it for a second when RIM says it can’t do this securely (surely they can encrypt a microSD card).  Other than that, RIM could put some serious work into its aging OS because for the life of us we cannot think of any other platform that has so many updates to fix major bugs and niggles (it seems like for each new device there is a new update, be it a leaked private beta or an official update from a partner carrier, each and every week like clockwork).

Truth be told, we think RIM can be pretty ass-backwards at times, especially considering that it spends a meagre 7-8% on R&D while its competitors spend the 11% industry standard, but it does make a damn fine product nonetheless, one that we couldn’t live without. All in all, it’s just such a shame to think that it can’t do apps right.

There are many who would argue that Palm’s future success rides on the shoulders of of webOS, if not the Pre itself. While it most certainly seems like an exciting device, there are plenty of skeptics out there. Even those who were lucky enough to parade around with their units weren’t that impressed when they first got the handset. A recent survey conducted by ChangeWave Research is now showing that prospective smartphone buyers are looking to RIM or Apple first — of 4,292 adults surveyed, only 4% showed interest in purchasing a Palm Pre according to the poll. The most popular choices were BlackBerry, getting 37% of the vote, and the iPhone with 30% of the surveyed group. Add to that the fact that Sprint will be the Pre’s exclusive carrier and you have 1% of respondents who said they would be willing to switch carriers. Of course we don’t know how ChangeWave found its test group and we trust you guys much more — how many of you are going to pick up the Palm Pre, and are willing to switch carriers to do so?

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Now that CTIA 2009 has come and gone we wanted to take a step back and reflect on what was most definitely a show unlike any CTIA in recent years. It was great to hit the floor and catch up with a bunch of companies to talk tech of course, but anyone in attendance will tell you the show was slow. Very slow. Painfully slow. Hell, even Billy Crystal didn’t bother to show up. An interesting though unofficial note: The vendor count was up this year — significantly — or so we were told. Attendance was way down however, as was the amount of newsworthy announcements from the big boys. Blame it on the economy if it helps, but the number of new (and potentially significant) handset announcements from big manufacturers at the show can be counted on one hand. With three fingers.

Luckily there’s already a light at the end of the tunnel as this Summer we’ll definitely see things pick up. Palm will finally let people touch the Pre — and maybe even buy it. The BlackBerry 9630 will be out and we’ll be hitting you with info about the next up and coming handsets from RIM. HTC will have released the Touch Pro2 and the Touch Diamond2. Apple will be dropping a new iPhone or two… Things will be exciting again and hopefully enough momentum will be generated to help the industry as a whole begin to rebound. In the meantime, like the guy in front of us at Al Gore’s keynote, we’ll all be doing our best not to fall asleep.

Now that the preliminary site for RIM’s upcoming application store “BlackBerry App World” is up, we’ve got a lot on our minds and we’re sure you do as well. Our first dose of shock comes from the pricing structure, which is absolutely horrible. To quickly rehash the image above, you’re looking at a nine-tiered structure that starts at $0, jumps to $2.99 on Tier Two and then adds $1 on each subsequent tier until tier nine is reached with prices capped at $9.99. Now, many people have expressed a great deal of sticker shock that paid apps are to start at $2.99 and we can’t help but agree that forcing such an expensive price floor is a practice that can only harm App World and interest in BlackBerry apps in general. With that said, we do understand that there are many forces at play that help dictate the price. Supply and demand obviously plays a role in but with roughly 21 million current ‘Berry users — many of them corporate/government/etc and restricted from downloading any applications — there simply isn’t that high of a demand as there is for Apple’s App Store or even Nokia’s upcoming Ovi store. Perhaps the supply side of things is affecting the price more so than demand. It is worth nothing that while RIM has been pushing its gear way further into the consumer market and more applications have come out (some pretty novel ones, we might add), the BlackBerry platform is not one that is easy to develop for.

RIM is a very paranoid company and does not give developers too much access to the API out of fear that the security of the device, OS or servers will be compromised. This means that to create a good application, a lot of skill, time and money is required — costs that developers are more than willing to pass on to the end-user. In addition to this, to submit an application to App World costs $200, something we strongly feel should be done away with as it not only punishes those who are about to bring a great deal of money to RIM from all of their hard work, it will also serve to discourage hundreds of developers who have the skills but not the money to pay an exorbitant fee. Removing or drastically reducing this fee and having RIM bear the initial costs of hosting an app will certainly add downward pressure on prices.

RIM, buddy ‘ole pal, you need to look long and hard at a free market pricing system in which market conditions push prices to equilibrium. It can only serve to benefit us all.

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Word broke out over the weekend that Microsoft had sent letters to ex-employees asking for repayment of severance package overages. Apparently damage control was able to beat the Grinch out of HR because the company apparently decided to do the right thing. Microsoft human resources chief Lisa Brummel says the company is reversing its course of action and contacting those who received the notice to advise them that repayment is not necessary. About 25 ex-employees were overpaid and 20 were underpaid due to the error. We’re also glad to hear the workers who were underpaid will be compensated for the amounts they were due. Lesson learned for Microsoft: There are some cases where accounting errors can’t, or shouldn’t be fixed and this is one of them. The former employees who spoke up can also give a nod to the media for spreading the news like wildfire and bringing it to Microsoft’s (and everyone else’s) attention.

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It’s no big secret that industry awards are often nothing more than a sham with awards earmarked here and there so that each company can walk away with another excuse for a bad press release. Some of the awards given out this past Tuesday at the Global Mobile Awards in Barcelona however, are making us scratch our heads more than usual. We don’t mean to single out any companies in particular, but when we saw that RIM’s SurePress got the nod for the Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough we were absolutely flabbergasted. Breakthrough in what way? And don’t give us that whole “precision typing and navigation enables a whole [sic] range of applications and features that have not been possible on a touchscreen mobile device” spin that some random PR intern cooked up.

We honestly struggled for a long time to think of a single application for the Storm that is better than any of the alternatives for other touchscreen handsets and we simply couldn’t do it. Now before some of you go off and start whining about how “BGR hates BlackBerry” you should know how untrue that is — there’s room enough in our hearts and on our belts for all phones. If you knew how many BlackBerry devices we’ve owned (and still own) collectively, you’d know how much we love the ‘Berry. The simple fact of the matter is the more time we spend with SurePress the more frustrated we get with it.

We would love for a company to come up with a touchscreen that issued the same sensation one feels when typing on a physical keypad, but until it happens with a capacitive keypad we plain and simply aren’t interested in it. Why? Because technology such as SurePress slows down even the most basic tasks. Typing a quick email on the Storm can be rather frustrating as half of the time typing any text requires that you momentarily pause while the screen “clicks” and resets to its natural position, thus allowing you to type the next character. It’s definitely something that some people can live with, but we bet you would be shocked at the number of times we hear from people who have a Storm along with other touchscreen devices like the Touch Diamond, Omnia or iPhone and say they can no longer stand the Storm because of its keypad.

If only RIM would have set its sights less on trying to outdo Apple (denying the fact that RIM wanted the Storm to be an “iPhone” killer is preposterous) with gimmicky technology. It could easily have selected a pre-existing capacitive touchscreen and created a heavily modified OS to better suit it. Had it chosen to do so, we think RIM would have hit one so hard it might have hit the lighting at Tigers Stadium. But instead RIM wasted time, money and credibility because it tried to do something that it just isn’t ready for or fully-capable of doing. It’s a damn shame too, because we were really rooting for RIM to have a unanimous hit on its hands.

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You wouldn’t know it from coverage of this year’s MWC in Barcelona but Motorola actually is hiding in a booth at the show. No, really. Truth be told it’s a great-looking booth with a new layout, shiny new graphics and an attention-grabbing design. So what did Moto bring to show off in Barcelona? A diamond-crusted Aura, a whole bunch of Wi-Fi and LTE networking equipment and a handful of already-announced handsets. In other words, its mobile business is struggling, to say the least, and the one new handset Motorola launched at the biggest mobile show of the year is a $7,000+ phone, 50 of which will be manufactured and maybe 15 of which will actually be purchased. Strategy at its finest.

We know Motorola has some exciting new kit coming out in 2009. We scooped a whole bunch of sexy new handsets late last year – a couple of which we’re now hearing will pack Android. “Plan ahead.” The company’s mobile business is becoming less significant by the second so if you were in Moto’s shoes, wouldn’t you want to make a splash at MWC? Maybe you’d pull a Sony Ericcson and do what it did early in the Xperia X1’s life. Show it off but don’t let people touch it. Do something… Anything… Get people talking about Moto and perhaps even a tiny bit excited about an upcoming Motorola phone. But alas – unless you’ve got $7,000 and a penchant for gaudy gear or an engineering degree and a penchant for infrastructure, you can move right along. Nothing more to see here.

Apple fans are once again beginning to voice concerns over the lack of demo / trial versions and odds are pretty good these complaints will fall on deaf ears. Apple apparently sees its policy allowing developers to add “lite” versions of apps to the App Store as a viable solution and this stance isn’t likely to budge any time soon. The truth of course, is that lite versions are the worst possible answer. Forcing developers to maintain two active versions of the same app is ridiculous at best, especially when the concept of a software trial is about as old as Betty White. Why not just create a self destruct timer mechanism?

Provide a trial download on each app page and have the trial version auto-expire after five or seven days. When the trial life runs out, the app will open one last time to inform the user of this and a link will take the user back to the app page in the App Store. Sounds simple enough. Would it take time to implement? Of course – everything takes time and resources but the ends would certainly justify the means. Would it be cracked? Of course – but considering it takes all of one click to crack an app now, that should be the least of Apple’s concerns. Besides, we’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: 999 out of 1,000 times, people who use a cracked version of software would not pay for it even if they had no other choice. It’s just the nature of the beast. So what do you guys think – does this sound doable or should we just shut up and go back to moaning about lack of copy / paste?

From the time it was released until today, one of the many gripes about the iPhone is its lack of video-recording capabilities (and MMS and copy/paste, we know). For the time being, only those who jailbreak their iPhones can enjoy video recording with apps like Cycorder. While nothing has been confirmed yet, it would appear as though those iPhone patents that set the Internet on fire just a week ago reveal details that could hint at video for the iPhone. Alexander Wolfe of InformationWeek did a bit of digging into Apple’s patent documentation and has come up with some pretty interesting data that everyone else (including those who have done some serious analysis of Apple’s patents) seem to have missed. The patent states:

“The device supports a variety of applications, such as one or more of the following: a telephone application, a video conferencing application, an e-mail application, an instant messaging application, a blogging application, a photo management application, a digital camera application, a digital video camera application, a Web browsing application, a digital music player application, and/or a digital video player application.”

Does this mean that Apple is planning on bringing video to the next generation iPhone? Maybe. Or maybe it could be covering all their bases, just in case. One can hope, right? What the patent also reveals is that video-conferencing could be in store for the future as well:

“In some embodiments, the functions may include telephoning, video conferencing, e-mailing, instant messaging, blogging, digital photographing, digital videoing, Web browsing, digital music playing, and/or digital video playing. Instructions for performing these functions may be included in a computer-readable storage medium or other computer program product configured for execution by one or more processors.”

Right now, all anyone can do is speculate. The patent does show signs of potential for video-recording, video-conferencing and a host of other cool features; whether or not these features will actually come to fruition remains to be seen. We’ll just have to hope Apple doesn’t plan to sit on these patents and twiddle its thumbs.

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If you’ve ever been to The Bay, Canadian Tire, Future Shop, Tim Hortons, Zellers or just about anywhere else that screams hoser, you’ve probably seen the work done by Brofort. Back in early 2007 just after wireless number portability (WNP) came to Canada, Brofort was being courted by TELUS which was very keen on having Brofort and its $10,000 – $20,000 CAD per month account leave CDMA arch rival, Bell. Brofort was eventually offered a deal to its liking which included an overage charge of $0.10 CAD per minute, so it signed on the dotted line.

Now if anyone remembers what a nightmare WNP was when it first came out in Canada, it sometimes took a few weeks to get everything worked out. Brofort did get some bills from Bell after it left for TELUS, but it figured this was “par for the course” and just got them credited each month until Bell finally left the company alone and realized it had moved on. But seventeen months later, Brofort began to pay close attention to its bills from TELUS and noticed that they had started creeping up into the $20,000 CAD range, roughly double what the company was spending when it first signed up with TELUS. Why? TELUS began charging them $0.30 CAD per minute outside of its pool of minutes, or 300% of the rate quoted. Now this sort of thing would cost the average consumer quite a bit of money but considering Brofort routinely goes over its pool by 40,000 to 60,000 minutes each month, this is a huge amount of money that TELUS is overcharging the small company. But there was just one problem – the contract that Brofort and TELUS had signed omitted the overage rate of $0.10 per minute, allowing TELUS to disregard the quoted rate completely. To date, the omission has lead to approximately $75,000 CAD in unanticipated costs for Brofort.

Some may be quick to lay blame upon the Brofort as company officers had signed the contract without having noticed the omitted overage rate, but the fact of the matter is this contract was signed under false pretenses. Even a senior accounts manager from TELUS Business Solutions who was involved in the proposal is backing up Brofort but still, TELUS is refusing to budge on the overage charge and and is instead giving Brofort a bureaucratic run-around.

So what is Brofort to do? Well, for the time being the company is stuck with TELUS unless it wants to pay termination fees of $20 CAD per month for each month remaining on its contract, per line. Considering it has approximately 60 lines with TELUS and about 18 months left on its contract, Brofort would have to pay the carrier over $21,000 CAD to cancel and port over to another provider. Quite a price to pay for having been deceived. The alternative, a court battle, would certainly be far more expensive and time consuming. Let this be a warning however, to small businesses currently in talks with TELUS – cross your T’s, dot your I’s and use a fine-tooth comb before signing anything the cunning carrier sends your way.

NOTE: This post has been updated to reflect the fact that the signed agreement between Brofort and TELUS does not specify on overage charge of $0.30 CAD per minute. Instead, the quoted rate of $0.10 CAD has been omitted and no rate is provided in its place.

Plenty of time has passed since the Palm’s Pre announcement at CES earlier this month but we still don’t mind when new coverage pops up – especially if HD videos are involved. In this interview with Palm’s VP of Design Peter Skillman, we also get to see Palm address the Nokia N95 in relation to the Pre for the first time. Skillman is very tactful in his criticism of the N95 8GB Serko hands him and describes the industrial design of the Nokia handset as having “a lot of topological complexity” compared to the sleek minimal design of the Pre. Allow us to translate if we may: N95, old and busted. Pre, new hotness. In all seriousness though, we still love the N95 8GB we have laying around somewhere, or ‘Black Betty’ as we call her, but Skillman’s assessment is mild. Symbian fans should just be thankful he didn’t get into the meat of things and compare the handsets on an OS level. Hit the jump for the full video.

[Via Engadget]

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There you have it folks, the mystery Palm phone and OS are no longer a mystery and the world has now received its first glimpse at Palm’s hopeful savior. First impressions mean everything and for the time being it’s safe to say we were supremely wowed. Seriously, did you ever imagine you’d see the day when Palm would release a handset and OS combo so perfectly evolutionary and well designed? Once the initial high wears off however, we’re all brought back down to reality – a reality where Palm is a company on the verge of falling apart and the Pre represents what is likely the first in a series of handsets that will make or break it, literally. Is this sharp little piece of kit up to the task?

In another world, the Pre might very well devastate competitive offerings. Without having held the device of course, the hardware looks gorgeous and the new OS looks like it could just be the closest thing to a masterpiece we’ll see in 2009. What’s more, any web developer with a few 101 classes under his/her belt will be able to develop apps for Palm’s new OS with little or nothing new to be learned. The biggest wild card now however, might just be Sprint. By tying itself to a struggling carrier, Palm placed all of its eggs into a very, very fragile basket. Sure, there are pros and cons; an obvious pro is that the Pre will become a huge tool for Sprint. Sprint will invest tons of time, money and other resources into launching and marketing the Pre because, well, what else does it have going on? A WiMAX launch in Podunk, Iowa (calm down, that was a joke)? The Pre will be Sprint’s golden boy and it will get all of the love and attention Palm could ever imagine. Ok, so what’s the problem?

The major con, which is equally as obvious as the benefits mentioned above, is that Sprint is hemorrhaging subscribers and struggling more than any other US carrier to stay afloat. It is losing money like a Lions fan who can’t stop betting on the home team and short of recent layoffs, it is showing no signs of turning the ship around. By partnering with Sprint on this launch, Palm has basically created a relationship where each major player is standing on shaky ground. Does Sprint have a good network? Of course it does – blazing data speeds are nothing new to Sprint subscribers. There are tons of other factors however, such as customer service woes, spotty coverage and a Vista-like stigma that will prevent many from even considering the Pre when it is launched later this year. No, the Pre will certainly not result in a tremendous surge of business funneling through from competing carriers as the iPhone did for AT&T. Last time we checked, Palm fans are hardly as cult-like and fanatical as Apple fans and Joe the Plumber simply doesn’t care that much – that’s why he carries a RAZR.

We want the Pre to be a success, there’s no question. In fact, you can be sure you’ll find a few of these bad boys roaming the halls of BGR HQ. We also want Sprint to figure out how to plug all of the cracks in its dam. The issue here is that there may just be too many hurdles blocking Palm’s path to success and in its current state, Palm is most definitely no Dayron Robles. We can only hope that Palm managed to ink a good deal with Sprint that will allow them to bring its new handset to other carriers before it’s too late and upcoming competitive handsets make Joe the Plumber forget all about the Pre.

In a move guaranteed to attract well deserved controversy, Andy Burnham, Britain’s Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, has publicly stated that delegates from the British government hope to meet with members of the Obama administration to pitch the idea of creating a content-based rating system for all English-based websites. Essentially what Burnham is proposing is having the internet follow the same rules as British TV where it is against the law to air violent programs before 9pm. But since the internet is very different in nature from TV, Burnham suggested that a time-based filter be created in which websites must block “offensive” and “violent” material. For extra precaution, ISPs would be asked to offer rating-based “child-safe” packages in which it is only possible to access websites that are pre-approved as inoffensive and appropriate for those of a young age.

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