Greg Kumparak
by Greg Kumparak on November 4, 2009

Needless to say, AT&T’s none too happy about Verizon’s “Theres a Map for That” campaign. AT&T first complained about the ads back in October, saying they were misleading. Verizon responded by adding a few extra words and an itsy bitsy disclaimer – but that wasn’t enough for AT&T. Early this morning, AT&T filed a false advertising suit against Big Red, presumably in an effort to get the ads off the air as soon as possible.

This afternoon, AT&T sent out an internal memo regarding the lawsuit, and we’ve obtained a copy.

by Greg Kumparak on November 4, 2009

Look – we’re certainly not the world’s biggest fans of Windows Mobile 6.5, but we still absolutely feel that anyone who has the opportunity to upgrade from 6.1 to 6.5 should certainly do so. If you’ve got a Samsung Jack, we’ve got good news: that “anyone” group now includes you.

by Greg Kumparak on November 4, 2009

539w

So you’ve lurked the blogs, watched the unboxing, and read the coverage, and you just know: you want your Droid. You already know that most Verizon Stores are opening the doors a bit early at 7 AM to get your your fix – but what if you want it even earlier?

We just got word that a very, very limited number of Verizon stores will start peddling the Droid as soon as the clock ticks over to November 6th, from midnight to 2 a.m. The emphasis here is definitely on “limited”.

by Greg Kumparak on November 4, 2009

Seeing as HTC’s CEO Peter Chou sorta slipped up and mentioned this back in October, it’s not exactly, you know, news news – but just in case you were a little bit shaky on the dates, HTC has gone ahead and confirmed that the 1 Ghz, WinMo 6.5-powered HTC HD2 will be coming to the United States “with a major US carrier in early 2010. “

by Greg Kumparak on November 3, 2009

Ack! Talk about bad timing. T-Mobile is just barely off the grill for their guilt-by-association connection with the Great Danger/Sidekick outage of 2009, and now they’re right back in the network-outage spotlight.

by Greg Kumparak on November 3, 2009

When the iPhone OS 3.1 update rolled through town, it brought with it a handful of new features – but it also killed off one, not-so-official feature: unauthorized data tethering on AT&T.

Early this morning, the endlessly ingenious iPhone hacking community released Blacksn0w, a carrier unlock for the iPhone 3G and 3GS. Even if you have no need to plug in a different SIM card than what was originally intended, however, Blacksn0w still has its perks. Namely, it brings the aforementioned unauthorized data tethering right on back.

We’ve just walked through the process, and it went off without a hitch. If you’re interested in doing the same but don’t want to do it alone, we’ve thrown together a handy step-by-step guide, just for you.

by Greg Kumparak on November 3, 2009

Whenever you hear about bugs and exploits being discovered in the iPhone’s browser, Safari, it’s usually the doings of some masterful meddler who devoted hours to unearthing any flaws they could find — not some user casually tapping around the application. Apple’s pretty good at keeping things locked down, and the iPhone’s got enough users that most of the nasty user-facing bugs have been flushed out. Well, except for this new one.

It’s not an incredibly common bug, and it doesn’t seem likely that it would hit most users – but for the iPhone users this newly discovered bug does affect, it could mean huge operator fees.

by Greg Kumparak on November 3, 2009

BeeJive

We BLOOP dig BeeJive on the iPhone. What we BLOOP don’t dig is getting a pop-up push BLOOP notification every 3 seconds just because some of our friends like to type in fragments rather BLOOP than sentences.

Fortunately, BeeJive has recently added a new setting which lets you tweak the behavior of push notifications to be far, far less annoying. The wording they chose to tuck it behind doesn’t make things completely obvious, but it makes a world of difference.

by Greg Kumparak on November 2, 2009

Way back in March, Apple announced that the latest and greatest build of the iPhone OS would open up a whole new world to third parties: richly featured accessories, complete with tie-in software. No longer would accessory makers be limited to headphones, cases, and FM transmitters with hardware controls – now they could make glucose meters, guitar amp controllers, and FM transmitters with onscreen controls! The possibilities were endless.

8 months later, what is there to show for it? There’s a $120 car cradle that boosts the GPS accuracy of the iPhone, some fancy running shoes, and.. er.. well, that’s about it. Maybe we’re just expecting too much; maybe the design/review/approval process is even more of a chore for the hardware guys than it is for app store developers. At this rate, though, we’ll be seeing a fourth generation iPhone before we see any more accessories.

Partly for the sake of inspiring would be hardware-makers and partly because we just like to think about this sort of stuff, we’ve come up with a list of 5 (plus) iPhone accessories we’re not-so-patiently waiting for. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

Thank you for reading MobileCrunch, folks.
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by Greg Kumparak on November 2, 2009

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We love you.

by Greg Kumparak on October 30, 2009

sidebysidea

If hype were to be believed, the Motorola DROID is the pièce de résistance of the mobile world; the conclusive creation sent down by the Great Smartphone in the sky to rid us of our woes. It would prepare your breakfast promptly each morning, tuck you in at night, and, maybe — just maybe — knock the iPhone down a notch or two.

Beginning about a week before its launch (largely due to Verizon’s incredibly intense marketing campaign) I began getting calls and tweets from friends and colleagues asking about the Droid. They always had two questions: the first would be something like “What do you think of the Droid?”, followed by “Would you recommend it over the iPhone?” Same questions, each.. and.. every.. time.

I’ve been using the Droid as my primary phone for a few days now, and I think I’m finally ready to answer them.

by Greg Kumparak on October 29, 2009

If your pockets are just beggin’ to be filled with an HTC Hero, your options thus far (assuming you’re in the US) have been limited. You could get one through Sprint or wait for Verizon’s Hero-esque Droid Eris – but either of those options means you’re on a modified, round-bodied Hero rather than the angled, chin-tastic Hero that nearly 70% of our readers prefer. You could import one of the original bodied Heros from the UK – but then you wouldn’t be able to get 3G on any US Carrier.

If you wanted US 3G and an original Hero, you were out of luck – until now.

by Greg Kumparak on October 28, 2009

Our own John Biggs already gave the Verizon Droid a quick hands-on earlier today – but in the endless rush of things, he didn’t get a chance to walk it through a proper unboxing ceremony. Somewhat magically (albeit a bit later than we would have hoped), a Droid also happened to show up on my doorstep this morning, so I went ahead and captured the whole undressing for all to see. Enjoy!

by Greg Kumparak on October 26, 2009

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In just about every other movie or TV show we watch, at least one of the characters (if not half the cast) is rocking the iPhone. For example: Have you seen Chuck? If not, you definitely should — it’s a great show — but it has more Apples than Granny Smith.

Sooner or later, one of these shows is going to have a reason to destroy an iPhone on camera. Up until now, the prop folks have only read had two options: Smash a real iPhone to pieces, or recreate the iPhone in one-off prop form. Depending on the size of the production, either of those options might be a bit too pricey. Enter: the iPhone dummy.

by Greg Kumparak on October 23, 2009


Looks like Verizon might not be the only one getting the Moto Droid. A few days ago, we wrote a post highlighting the fact that a GSM version of the oh-so-hypetastic Motorola Droid (otherwise known as “Sholes” or “Tao”) had cleared the FCC runway. At first, we got a bit excited and misread the details, reading them as if that GSM version of the Sholes had AT&T-friendly 3G bands built in. It didn’t (it was the European GSM version) – but this one does!

by Greg Kumparak on October 23, 2009

X3_3

Hello, gorgeous! What a nice way to wake up on a Friday morning. You roll out of bed to make yourself some eggs, hop online to start the daily rituals, and bam! Shots of the unreleased, Android-powered Sony Ericsson XPERIA X3 are sitting in your inbox.

by Greg Kumparak on October 22, 2009

So there you are, cruising down the road in your new Honda Civic. The sun’s beating down on the arm you’ve got casually hanging out the window, the wind riding up your sleeve. Then that damn song starts blasting out of your iPhone again — you know, the one that you’ve heard 53 times on the radio this week. “No more!”, you think to yourself, “I refuse to listen to this song again. Now, where’s that ‘Next Song’ button?” You jam your finger around aimlessly, searching for an impalpable beacon in the sea of glass that is the iPhone touchscreen. Frustrated, you glance down at the device – and BAM! You just hit a bus full of orphans.

If only you had Faceplant’s EasyPlay! EasyPlay for the iPhone and iPod Touch wants to save buses full of orphans by enabling full iPod playback control via no-sight-needed gestures.

by Greg Kumparak on October 21, 2009

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This just mysteriously appeared on our doorstep. The return address on the label leads to Verizon’s PR company, Weber Shandwick. We’re going to do a video unboxing in just a second – in the mean time, any guesses as to whats inside?

by Greg Kumparak on October 21, 2009

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Gameloft just sent over this teaser trailer for an upcoming title, “Chuck Norris: Bring on the Pain”. Sure, Chuck’s a bit late to the iPhone game if he’s looking to milk this meme for all it’s worth – but we had to share the video with you, or he’d burst through our office wall and roundhouse kick us in the face. We didn’t want that to happen.

by Greg Kumparak on October 20, 2009

Their seems to be two distinct camps when it comes to the Motorola Droid. One group looked at it and said, “Wow! That is a gorgeous phone!”; the other looked at it and said, “Wow! That is a horrendous phone!”.

I, personally, am in Camp 1 – I think the Droid is pretty stunning. The same can not be said for Motorola’s other Android phone for Verizon, which just leaked all over the place.

by Greg Kumparak on October 16, 2009

Kingston just released a second generation of their super-compact memory card reader line. Being that there isn’t all that much to say about it, I decided to give it a quick run-through on video. Let me know if you dig it – I love doing video stuff, but just don’t know whether or not people enjoy it.

Also: Don’t do drugs, kids.

by Greg Kumparak on October 16, 2009

sholes

Last night, a bunch of strange tips slammed our inbox, all talking about the Motorola Sholes (otherwise known as the Tao, or more recently, the Verizon Motorola Droid.) “Motorola just tried to sneak the Sholes through the FCC!” they read, highlighting the fact that in this recent report, Motorola only mentions Sholes by name once – and it’s about as subtle of a mention as can be. But that, in itself, isn’t what seemed strange. What was strange was that the Motorola Sholes already cleared the FCC last month, in Verizon-ready CDMA form.

So we looked a bit closer, and sure enough, there they were: GSM frequencies.

by Greg Kumparak on October 14, 2009

Man, you’ve gotta love these things. I’ve yet to see one of these leak out showing any shortcomings for the primary device – but I guess that’s really the point. It’s not so much a comparison chart as it is a “You should probably avoid talking about stuff outside of this list” chart.

by Greg Kumparak on October 14, 2009

Just days ago, iPhone hacker extraordinaire geohot released blackra1n, a tool for jailbreaking the iPod Touches and iPhones (including the 3GS) running OS 3.1.2. Alas, it was only available for Windows users.

Just two days later, geohot and the rest of the endlessly impressive iPhone hacking community have it all up and running on OS X.

by Greg Kumparak on October 13, 2009

Oh hell yes. Custom GelaSkins. This is something I’ve wanted since I was slapping GelaSkins on a Helio Fin two years ago.

For those who might be unaware, GelaSkins are fairly durable removable “Skins” (read: stickers) that you can slap onto your device to make them more “you” whilst adding a bit of protection. Up ’till this point, though, however “you” your device was was limited to how well the images in GelaSkin’s catalog matched your tastes. While they’ve got a pretty awesome inventory of artwork (mostly made up of robots and emo girls with funny proportions), there’s nothing quite as “you” as an image you provide – and now you can do just that.

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