News Archive for 08/05/11

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BlackBerry Bold official, beats iPhone to 3G

05/12, 12:00am

BlackBerry Bold

Research in Motion tonight revealed the BlackBerry Bold, the next generation of its full-size smartphones. The black-and-chrome device is RIM's first to support 3G on GSM networks with HSDPA access, and is also the first to build in a higher-resolution display: at 480x320, the screen is as sharp as today's iPhone. The Bold's interface undergoes an overhaul to match and comes with a new high-contrast "strip" interface as well as a much more powerful web browser, which adds CSS and Javascript for more complex sites as well as built-in streaming video support.

iPhone 2.0 beta 5 firmware shows 3G on/off option

05/11, 2:50pm

3G on/off option on iPhone

Apple's latest iPhone 2 beta 5 firmware shows that the company will allow users to turn off access to the faster "3G" network to preserve battery life. The 3G network, while offering faster download speeds, consumes more power and will likely reduce battery life significantly. The screenshot surfaced on an independent blog, along with code references that support the screenshot from the latest firmware (only available to a select group of developers): "Note that this is not fake, it is in the beta 5 .ipsw, but will normally not show up on an EDGE iPhone. Turning 3G on will just crash the phone if you use an EDGE phone. If you do not believe me, then decrypt the beta5 rootfs dmg, and see for yourself in /Applications/Preferences.app/Network.plist ," the developer wrote in his post.