If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it — right? We know countless reviews of the iPhone 3G S may begin with that cliché, but there’s little chance you’d find a better way to describe the strategy that Apple has just put into play with its latest smartphone. In many ways, the 3G S is a mirror image of the iPhone 3G; externally there’s no difference. It’s inside where all the changes have happened, with Apple issuing a beefed-up CPU, new internal compass, larger capacities for storage, and improved optics for its camera. More to the point, the release of the 3G S coincides with the launch of iPhone OS 3.0, a major jump from previous versions of the system software featuring highly sought after features like cut, copy, and paste, stereo Bluetooth, MMS, tethering, video recording, landscape keyboard options for more applications, and an iPhone version of Spotlight. At a glance, what Apple seems to be doing is less a reinvention of the wheel and more like retreading the wheel it’s already got (and what a wheel, right?). So, do the iPhone 3G S and OS 3.0 tweak the details in just the right places, or has Apple gone and gotten lazy on us?

To read the full review by Engadget click here

BlackBerry Curve ‘outsells iPhone’

Reuters

The BlackBerry Curve moved past Apple Inc’s iPhone in the first quarter to become the best-selling consumer smartphone in the U.S., research group NPD said yesterday.

Research In Motion (RIM), which already dominates the corporate smartphone market in the United States, also had three of the top five best-selling consumer smartphones in the period, with the Storm at No. 3 and the Pearl at No. 4, NPD said.

T-Mobile’s G1 ranked No. 5.

The iPhone was the top-selling consumer smartphone in the U.S. in both the third and fourth quarters of 2008. The Curve was second and the Palm Inc’s Centro was third.

NPD credited a “buy-one-get-one” promotion by Verizon Wireless — a joint venture between Verizon Communications Inc and Vodafone Group Plc — for helping push the Curve past the iPhone.

“The more familiar, and less expensive, Curve benefited from these giveaways and was able to leapfrog the iPhone, due to its broader availability on the four major U.S. national carriers,” said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at NPD, in a news release.

The iPhone is only available through AT&T Inc. Apple launched its second-generation 3G iPhone last July.

RIM’s consumer smartphone market share climbed 15 percent from the previous period to nearly 50 percent in the first quarter, as Apple’s and Palm’s share both fell 10 percent.

More than half of RIM’s 25 million subscribers now fall into the non-corporate category, according to the company.

But the smartphone battle is just starting to heat up. Apple is widely expected to unveil a new iPhone in the next few months, while Palm’s highly-anticipated Pre smartphone is set to launch during the second quarter.

The smartphone market as a whole continues to grow, even as the larger handset market stagnates. The devices made up 23 percent of U.S. handset sales in the first quarter, NPD said, up from 17 percent in the year-ago quarter.

Shares of Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM rose 3 percent in late afternoon trading on the Nasdaq to $74.43. Shares of Cupertino, California-based Apple were up 3.4 percent to $131.63 on the Nasdaq.

Check out our prices for these two gadgets:

Apple iPhone 3G:
Click Here

Blackberry Curve 8900:
Click Here

The 3G iPhone has finally arrived–a year and a half after CEO Steve Jobs first confirmed rumors Apple would indeed be making one of those fancy mobile phone things.
Since then many iPhone clones have been born–many with fleeting lives–and the mobile industry has done a whole lot of waking up and smelling of coffee.

But we’re not about to sit here going gaga over the gadget, sleek though it may be. There are plenty of functions and features where we feel Apple could up its game–so here are 10 things we’d like to change about the 3G iPhone:

1. No keyboard…
The touchscreen is certainly the best on the market but it’s never going to be everyone’s bag, certainly not if you are a touch-typist. Plenty of mobile bloggers out there would jump at the chance to pair some kind of Bluetooth keyboard (foldable and/or otherwise) with their iPhone.

2. The camera needs more megapixels…
2.0 megapixels is camera phone 1.0 when you consider there are mobiles out there that are pushing eight megapixels now. And while we don’t expect Apple to stretch itself that much we’d like at least three megapixels–and a better lens please. The camera also has no flash, so photography in low-light conditions is a no-no.

3. Still no cut and paste…
We’re children of the internet and life without cut and paste is like living with one arm tied behind the back–especially when it comes to swapping the web’s official currency: URLs. Apple is reportedly ‘working on the issue’–but it hasn’t delivered yet. Read the rest of this entry »