CarrierCompare: The iPhone app your carrier doesn’t want you to see

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) – A new app hit the iTunes store Friday morning that your carrier probably isn’t too thrilled about.

It’s called CarrierCompare . Developed by Boston-based startup SwayMarkets, it allows you to see which carrier offers the best service for your iPhone in any given location.

The crowd-sourced app is simple to use. After you touch the start screen, the app takes about 15 seconds to analyze your network for signal strength, response time and speed. It then compares your result with other nearby results on the other two national carriers’ networks.

The display is intuitive, telling you where your carrier ranks compared to the competition.

Sounds pretty simple, right? But iPhone carriers Verizon, ATT and Sprint have successfully kept that information out of the public’s view — until now.

Carriers rigorously test their networks and their rivals’ networks, hiring third-party surveyors to perform comparisons. However, those surveys are almost always performed under non-disclosure agreements.

Each carrier provides its own coverage map to customers, and some even offer a street-level view. (Here are the maps for Sprint, Verizon and ATT.)

But that still doesn’t give users the kind of precise detail that CarrierCompare provides — and the carriers certainly don’t offer up direct, pinpoint comparisons against the competition.

“There is an imbalance of information out there,” said Amos Epstein, founder of SwayMarkets. “Each carrier knows its own network and hires people to drive around in trucks to measure its rivals’ service as well. But they haven’t gone as far to release data that’s tangible and useful to the consumer.”

Carriers also get that data from apps they make handset manufacturers install on their devices. Sprint and ATT use an app called CarrierIQ, which sends that kind of information — and more — back to the carriers.

After landing in the crossfire of a giant controversy around the secrecy of that data, CarrierIQ urged its carrier customers to release that information to consumers. So far, none have done it.

Calling CarrierIQ “a cautionary tale,” Epstein said CarrierCompare is designed to make visible metrics that are typically hidden from consumers’ view.

The app tracks three data points.

“Signal” represents a granular, numerical interpretation of service bars, which gives a more accurate reading than a one-through-five bar graph representation.

“Response” measures how long it takes for the network to respond to a request. It’s an important metric for Internet use, such as Web browsing, posting pictures to Facebook and downloading apps. A lower response time indicates a better result.

“Speed” is in indicator of how much information the network allows your phone to download in a second. Good 3G service can be as fast as 2 Megabits per second during non-peak hours, and 4G service can be more than five times faster than that.

Here’s the catch: The app is only as good as its crowd-sourced data. SwayMarkets has a starting data set pulled in from its previously released NetSnaps app, but CarrierCompare will only become really useful if a critical mass of people adopt it.

Right now, the app only performs the one function — touch and compare. But within a few weeks, the SwayMarkets team said CarrierCompare will become much more dynamic.

When the second version is released, the app will allow users to collect network comparison data in the background, while other apps are in use. That will let the app detect network information throughout a user’s day and produce an analysis on the best carrier for that specific users, factoring in things like their typical commute route and work location.

That “set it and forget it” capability will also allow users to check in every once in a while and see how their their network is holding up

CarrierCompare is on sale for $1.99, and an ad-supported version is available for free. The app is only available on the iPhone for now, but the SwayMarkets team said Android versions are in the works.

Copyright 2012 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Article source: http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/science_tech/carriercompare-the-iphone-app-your-carrier-doesnt-want-you-to-see

Apple’s iPad Reaches Out, Will Go on Sale in 21 Countries

Apple said today that its third-generation iPad, released in the U.S. and nine other countries last month, will start being sold in an additional countries 21 countries this month.

Image via CrunchBase

Consumers in South Korea, Brunei, Croatia, Cyprus, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malaysia, Panama, St Maarten, Uruguay and Venezuela can buy the tablet starting on April 27. Users in India, Israel, Colombia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, South Africa and Thailand will have to wait until April 27.

Apple CEO Tim Cook introduced the new touchscreen tablet, which adds a faster processor, high-resolution display and support for high-speed wireless networks, on March 7, saying it will usher in the “post-PC era” as more consumers opt for a portable mobile device for viewing content, surfing the web and checking their email. Apple said more than 3 million were sold in the weekend after it was released. The company offers six models, starting at $499.

Sales of the iPad, which accounts for about 20 percent of Apple’s sales, are expected to help drive a 47-percent jump in sales in the quarter ended in March, to about $36.3 billion (though some analysts are predicting sales as high as $41 billion.)

Apple probably  sold between 12 to 13 million iPads in March (or as many as 812,500 a day), thanks to the new iPad as well as demand for the year-old iPad 2. Apple cut the price of the older model by $100 — giving it a starting price of $399 — to win over cost-conscious buyers.

As for the iPhone, Apple may have sold as many as 33 million. The iPhone, which now represents more than half of sales, got a boost from new buyers in China following a distribution deal for the iPhone 4s with China Telecom in early March.

Apple will announce  fiscal second quarter results on April 24, and everyone will be listening out for clues as to when the next iPhone — the iPhone 5 — will be released. Gene Munster, of Piper Jaffray, thinks it will be sometime this summer. But he says it almost doesn’t make a difference, as customers in the market for a new smartphone will likely wait for Apple’s new model instead of buying a rival phone.

“The reality is the “when” question doesn’t matter for shares of Apple as we believe consumer demand for the iPhone is captive,” Munster wrote in a report last week.”Buyers are unlikely to go out to buy a different phone if launch is not until October.”

After touching $644 last week, Apple’s shares were trading down today at $584.98 at 2:08 p.m. New York time on the Nasdaq.

 

 

 

Article source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2012/04/16/apples-ipad-reaches-out-will-go-on-sale-in-21-countries/

iPhone 5 headset, 7in iPad, and new iTunes, rumour round up

Apple is planning this year’s late summer music product refresh. Scratching the rumour machine, its plans could include improvements within iTunes, an upgraded iPod touch, a 7-inch iPad/iPod touch hybrid and a new headset combining iPod shuffle-like music playback with Bluetooth which should work like a dream with iPhone 5.

The iPhone 5 headset — an iPod shuffle Apple’s latest patent filing (Wireless headset with integrated media player) takes the iPod shuffle and transforms it into an essential item for any iPhone user. The description is of a device which integrates a Bluetooth headset, microphone and MP3 player.

The headset can be pre-loaded with music over USB, so you get to play music even when you aren’t carrying or don’t own an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

As reported by Wired, Apple already has patents for headsets which switch the music off when you take them off your head, for advanced noise cancellation for headset mics and more. However, as Wired notes the design of this device reflects that of the Bluetooth headset Apple briefly offered in 2007. This makes it possible development of this product isn’t happening, but if it is, now is a perfect time to field a solution like this.

Why? Because there’s approximately 316 million iOS devices in use worldwide. That’s a huge market for an Apple headset, particularly one that integrates strongly with iOS 6, including the capacity to cue up tracks using Siri voice controls if the headset were twinned with an iPhone, for example.

The patent description includes a small display and start, stop and record buttons. The description also includes the capacity to listen to your voice messages.

That you can just use the headset at those times you might choose to leave your iOS device at home is an additional fillip, and means many in the low-end music player market (such as it is, these days) will choose an Apple headset just because they want an iPod or iPhone.

And, of course, it isn’t much of a stretch to imagine a pair of compatible video glasses being bought into this equation at some future point for augmented reality applications and movie playback. Apple has been working on video goggle solutions for years.

The promise of iTunes 11

iTunes has seen lots of evolution since its original incarnation as the audio-focused Soundjam application, (History fans will know Apple acquired the software from Casady and Greene and morphed it into iTunes.) These days iTunes combines media management and acquisition tools, along with device management.

It is to be hoped Apple will be focusing on performance in the software, in an ideal world the device management features would morph into a second application in order to make the software run more smoothly, certainly reports claim the company is focused on under the hood improvements at this stage of development.

iTunes 11 will, of course, support iOS 6 with its iPhone 5 support, Apple Maps, Siri, iCloud and other interesting improvements. Content discovery will also be improved across apps, music and media as the company deploys discovery technologies acquired when it purchased Chomp.

The iTunes Store seems set for  redesign, with a focus on user-friendliness. Previous reports have claimed plans to introduce a Spotify-competing music streaming service within iTunes. The introduction of LTE support within the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 could underpin such a service, enabling users to stream whole chunks of music while on the move: likely including all the music you own via iCloud and music you don’t possess in exchange for a small fee.

Apple is also focused on making iTunes more interactive, which will hopefully include Facebook support for its never-used “social network for music”, Ping.

Finally, conjecture suggests iTunes may also gain new micro-payment options, in which users would be able to pop small amounts of cash into an account for use when making NFC transactions using an iPhone 5 as an iWallet.

That’s in keeping with many of the ways in which NFC transactions are being tested globally. Many of these tests support small payments for small items, such as drinks at Starbucks and public transit fees. If Apple does move ahead to the iWallet, I suspect many of these new features will be launched in the US first.

New devices

It seems inevitable the iPod touch will be given a new processor, in keeping with the most recently-introduced iPhone 4S. This also implies some form of limited support for Siri.

There’s also been a crop of recent claims Apple has a plan to introduce a 7-inch iPad. This could also be marketed as a dedicated iBook reader and aimed directly at Amazon’s Kindle Fire — a not unreasonable move, given the recent move by the DOJ to launch an investigation into Apple’s relationship with publishers.

So there you have it, all the latest rumor, speculation and fantastical dreams as Apple approaches its late summer music product refresh. Have you heard any more claims which may inform this debate? Let us know in comments below.

Got a story? Drop me a line via Twitter or in comments below and let me know. I’d like it if you chose to follow me on Twitter so I can let you know when these items are published. 

Article source: http://www.macworld.co.uk/ipad-iphone/news/?newsid=3351292&pagtype=allchandate

iPhone 5: What to expect of the 2012 edition

iPhone 5: What to expect of the 2012 edition

Although the world is yet to see a true 4G network, anywhere in the world, the LTE brings up the closest alternative to it. According to the International Technology Union (ITU), the 4G should be able to offer a maximum of 1Gbps of downstream data and 500 Mbps of upstream service. However, the most advanced LTE network offers up 70Mbps of downloading. Due to the relaxation from ITU, cell phone carriers all over the world are allowed to use the 4G moniker with LTE and HSPA+, which is a slight on-paper upgrade to 3G HSPA.

Improved Battery

The iPhone 4S was release in some dramatic situations. Steve Jobs was on death bed and four days after the release of the 4S, he died of the pancreatic cancer he had incurred five years ago.

However, the calamities aside, the new iOS device had its own miseries to handle. One of them was the battery drainage that heavily aggravated its sales figures. Though the problem was identified as a bug in the iOS and a follow-up was released in the following days, battery problem again surfaced at the fronts of the iOS device.

The battery timing has been an issue with the iPhone, whereas other iOS devices, iPod Touch and iPad offer marathons of battery timing. Now that Motorola has offered a long lasting beast in Droid Razr Maxx, Apple has new challenges to meet for the release of the iPhone 5.

Other expectations

Among other not-so-worrisome expectation for the new iPhone are a new and improved Siri, with a more versatile vocabulary and a vast pool of instructions and suggestions. The screen, though sports the sharpest resolution in the market, still lacks the oomph of AMOLED and Super LCD, should be made more glowing and colourful.

http://www.sananews.net/english/iphone-5-what-to-expect-of-the-2012-edition/

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iPhone 5 is in disguise at Apple headquarters and will have 1 Gig of memory

iPhone 5 is in disguise at Apple headquarters and will have 1 Gig of memory

“Apple has internally seeded a prototype next-generation iPhone with the iPhone 4 design,” Mark Gurman at 9to5Mac confidently declares. That seems to be geekspeak for “some Apple employees have a prototype iPhone 5 that looks like the iPhone 4.”

With the assurance of an experienced rumorster, Gurman doesn’t bother to cite even an anonymous source for this conviction.

“The actual next-generation iPhone is specifically said to not include the iPhone 4/4S design, but Apple is testing these new devices in older casings to throw off leaks,” Gurman says. The passive tense “is…said” raises the obvious question of who, exactly, said this. But let’s not get bogged down by Lamestream Media concerns over things like reliability of sources and, you know, facts.

“The purpose of the prototype iPhone that we heard about is to test a variation of the ‘A5X’ chip in an iPhone,” Gurman continues. “The A5X processor in the new iPad was specifically built to drive the new Retina Display, so that chip wouldn’t make much sense in an iPhone.”

The principal change in the new iPad’s dual-core A5X is the addition of a quad-core graphics processor. It drives not just a Retina Display, which the iPhone 4 and 4S also has, but a much larger 9.7-inch diagonal Retina Display, with more pixels than a high-def TV. So, if that doesn’t make sense for an iPhone, then what would the A5X “variation” be? Gurman doesn’t speculate and apparently neither did his source, or sources.

“Like the A5X-powered iPad, these new iPhone prototypes are packing 1GB of RAM,” he declares, again without any attribution.

But perhaps Gurman is relying on the same source that told him, way back in September 2011 that the about-to-be-announced iPhone 5 (which turned out to be the iPhone 4S) would for sure definitely absolutely have 1GB or RAM.

“The new [to-be-announced] iPhone features Apple’s dual-core A5 processor like the iPad 2 for even faster performance, better gaming, and drastically improved graphics,” Gurman wrote then. “Apple didn’t stop there though. Unlike the iPad 2, the new iPhone packs 1GB of RAM, according to a source familiar with the SOC’s manufacturing.”

The great thing about insisting year in and year out that the next iPhone is going to have 1GB of RAM or more storage or a more powerful processor is that, eventually, you’ll be right.

iPhone 5 will have a 3.99-inch (diagonal) screen. Give or take.

Finally. A rumor you can believe in.

Well before the disappointing yet wildly successful iPhone 4S, the technoglitterati have been predicting or demanding a big-screen iPhone. How big, you ask. Well. Big.

The problem with a bigger screen is that iOS applications would have to be redone. Now comes a suggestion, beautiful in its simplicity, which suggests how Apple could increase screen size without forcing developers to rework apps: change the aspect ratio of the iPhone’s screen.

In a post at the Verge, with some intriguing illustrations, modilwar develops an idea first posed by a caller to one of the Verge’s online chats, one Timothy Collins.

Currently, all iPhones have had a 3.5 inch display with 3:2 aspect ratio, with iPhone 4 and 4S having the same Retina Display resolution of 960 x 640 pixels.

If Apple kept that resolution but increased the diagonal screen size to 4.0 inches, it “significantly reduce the ppi to 288″ which as modilwar notes is “well below the 300 mark Apple as touted as retina [display] quality.”

But. … If Apple changes the aspect ratio to 9:5, you could create a screen that would retain the same dimensions and pixels on the shorter side – 1.94 inches, 640 pixels – but the longer side would get…longer: to a smidgen over 3.99 inches, and 1,152 pixels. “I’m sure Apple PR could round this to 4,” modilwar writes.

The result: a 20% increase in the number of pixels compared to iPhone 4 and 4S. That would add another row of app icons on the homescreen, and as the mockups show, significantly increase space for everything from app screens to typing messages. It might also mean that the next iPhone’s external dimensions could remain the same.

iPhone 5 will have a unibody design, just like the MacBook

Apple will pass on glass for the next iPhone and go with a body formed of the same material used in beer cans.

A stock market analyst, traipsing around Taiwan and China talking to component suppliers predicts the next iPhone will have an aluminum unibody design, just like Apple’s MacBooks. So wondrous will unibody be, that “This new, sleek look will be the most important reason that consumers decide to upgrade,” gushed Brian J. White, the traipsing analyst, who works for Topeka Capital Markets. His speculation was in a “report to investors” issued this week, and picked up by various tech news sites, including AppleInsider.

AppleInsider’s post was picked up by still others, such as Simon Thomas, at 3G.co.uk, who cited the Website as a “reputable source” for the unibody rumor, even though all AppleInsider did was parrot White’s comments.

But in any case, the unibody would demolish one of the “major criticisms” of the iPhone 4S, says Thomas. “One of the major criticisms aimed at Apple’s iPhone 4S is that it looks identical to the previous model, which meant it was hard for people to realize [sic] you’d splashed out on a new iPhone.”

Rollup thought that, too. What is the point of buying a new smartphone if the people you want to impress can’t even tell it’s new?

Apple machines the MacBook casing from a single block of aluminum [the process is shown in an Apple video]. Apple execs say the process lets them create an extremely strong but thin and elegantly simple casing.

Based on his chats with the Far East suppliers, White “believes the next iPhone will have a larger screen, which he sees as being 4 inches. He also expects the device will have high-speed 4G LTE connectivity, just like the new iPad,” according to AppleInsider’s Neil Hughes.

The iOSsphere is recycling the iPhone Alumination rumor. Last September, in the run-up to the announcement of what turned out to be iPhone 4S, Hughes wrote of another Wall Street analyst’s prediction that that phone would have an aluminum unibody, echoing speculation that began in March of 2011. In January 2012, Rollup noted that Boy Genius Report’s Jonathan Geller “has learned” that the next iPhone will have an aluminum backplate with a rubberized edge.

http://www.sananews.net/english/iphone-5-is-in-disguise-at-apple-headquarters-and-will-have-1-gig-of-memory/

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