phones

Man reportedly dies from phone battery blast

A Chinese man has died after a cell phone battery exploded in his chest pocket, according to the Associated Press and other news sources.

Xiao Jinpeng, a welder, reportedly died while working at the Yingpan Iron Ore Dressing Plant in Gansu. A county official told the Xinhua News Agency that the welder had a Motorola phone in his pocket. Colleagues quoted by the agency said the phone was apparently exposed to high temperatures. Xiao suffered broken ribs, and rib fragments pierced his heart, according to reports.

A Beijing spokesman for Motorola, however, is quoted by the Associated Press as saying … Read more

Countdown to Camp iPhone

In my summer camp days, we did things like swim, play Capture the Flag, and fashion crafts out of Popsicle sticks and Elmer's Glue.

Traditions get turned slightly on their head when an uberhyped phone and grown-up geeks are involved. This weekend, Adobe Systems is hosting a summer camp of a different kind--one for developing iPhone applications. Yes, that's right: a whole three days of nothing but stirring Web developers into an iPhone-related frenzy.

Adobe's swank San Francisco offices are set to host about 250 engineers, designers, iPhone owners and anyone else with a knack for … Read more

iPhone hack enables wireless without AT&T

Norwegian researcher Jon Lech Johansen, aka DVD Jon, has found a way to activate the iPhone via Windows without subscribing to an AT&T wireless plan. After using the hack, some Internet features, such as YouTube, may still not work. What you do get is use of the wide-screen iPod and Internet access through the Safari browser.

Details can be found on Johansen's So sue me blog. There, Johansen lists several values and offsets that he says must be entered in the itunes.exe file. This requires the use of a hex editor. A new host entry must … Read more

With failures like this, who needs success?

Scott Bourne and Liana Lehua at The Apple Phone Show nail the FUD factor at work in TheStreet.com's Scott Moritz's ridiculous post on the iPhone sales figures.

Despite Moritz's claims that the iPhone missed the "whisper number" of 1,000,000, the real Street seemed pretty pleased with the launch.

We are amused at how desperate the haters have become. Trying to spin the iPhone launch into anything other than an amazing business success is the act of a person who is simply and utterly delusional.

Indeed.

Sunnily sent from my iPhone--pic e-mails from the beach

Yesterday, my friends Max and Zach and I were like the Three Amigos, but instead of sombreros we were armed with our iPhones. And instead of adventures with El Guapo, we were doing battle with AT&T's El EDGE network, the network the iPhone defaults to when it can't connect to an active Wi-Fi connection.

Our brave amigo adventure began when we decided to celebrate the Fourth by heading north of San Francisco to hang out at Stinson Beach. We got our fill of sun, surf and sand. During hours in the sun we got out our … Read more

iPhone Chess (iPhone App)

Maybe the next version of Apple's iPhone will have games, but for now only a few have been ported to iPhone by developers. iChess lets you play the classic game against an AI opponent. One word of warning: if you set the level of the AI too high, you're going to be waiting for a long time to make your next move.

iPhone link: http://ec2-72-44-51-230.z-1.compute-1.amazonaws.com/ichess.html

NYTimes River (iPhone App)

This Web site might as well have been designed with the iPhone in mind. NYTimes River allows you to skip the unwieldy New York Times front-page navigation, laying out top news stories as they come in. When you find one you want to read, just click on the link to get to the page.

iPhone link: http://nytimesriver.com/

Web site link: http://nytimes.com/

Before you activate your iPhone, read this!

I was casually cruising the news sites yesterday when I came across a story about porting "ineligible" numbers to AT&T and iPhone. I clicked on the story because I know some of the people who lobbied for and won the rights to treat phone numbers more like personal property you own than corporate property you rent. I was right with the author until he said (without comment or outrage):

On that screen, enter your name, Social Security number, and your current billing information and home telephone.

Say WHAT!?

Apple and AT&T are demanding customers reveal SSNs to activate their iPhones. That should be the lead of every technology and business article written this week. If you don't believe me, read on.… Read more

Glaskowsky held hostage-- Day 5

Ever since Friday night, I've been staying away from the Apple store just down the road. And the company store at the Apple headquarters down the road in the other direction, just in case they have the things too. And the two AT&T stores I drive by on my daily commute.

Basically, I'm just staying at home when I'm not at work. And when I am at work, I stay away from the water cooler.

This minimizes my risk, because seeing an iPhone in person might be bad. For my wallet, anyway.

The problem is … Read more

Shooting with the iPhone

In our effort to put the iPhone through its paces, we took a few photos using the camera. For the most part it did well, but it had trouble with overly bright environments, while distant objects looked a tad too fuzzy. Also, because it doesn't offer a flash or any image-editing options, night shots looked somewhat poor. Colors showed well, however, even if whites were a little too soft. Our iPhone camera slide show has all our shots, while our iPhone review gives you the full analysis of the handset's performance. And to see how the iPhone compares … Read more