I attended a press conference a few days ago for a high end smartphone brand. Among us were some tech bloggers, IT journalists and a number of lifestyle editors from the glossies. The product manager enjoyed talking about his new baby – one of the top of the line smartphones that recently hit the market. What was rather peculiar was how he made mention of the Apple iPhone and it sounded more like he was trying to justify why his product X had features Y and Z which the iPhone didn’t have.
Raised eyebrows from a number of tech journalists.
After the …read more

Early termination fees, the only wall that bars consumers from becoming scott free from a lock in period to a particular telco is now illegal in California:

In one fell swoop, Judge Bonnie Sabraw of the Alameda County Superior Court has added $72.9 million to Sprint-Nextel’s loss column, and declared early termination fees illegal. Ruling against the service provider in a class-action lawsuit, the judge ordered the company to pay $18.2 million to the plaintiffs, and say goodbye to over $54.7 million, the total amount charged to reportedly over 2 million Californians when they terminated their post-paid plans early.
So does this …read more

Local Macintosh forum PhilMUG has reported that a lady from the Philippines had seen iPhone 3G units being sold at the department store. Of course, these aren’t legit iPhone 3G’s as the rumor is that the units are still going to arrive on local shores in September earliest. These phones were bought from Hong Kong and shipped here (as an aside, Hong Kong airport was recently voted world’s best!)
Saw an iPhone 3G for sale already in Megamall. They had both 8gb and 16gb. They are selling their white 16GB at around 69,500 ($1,544) and their 8GB at 61,500 ($1,366). According …read more

## Reviews are up for the new BlackBerry Bold, the Berry that sorta looks like ye olde BenQ P50 and BenQ Siemens P51 which were both 2006 favorites.
## High tech High Fashion! Here are diamond dipped Nokia 8800 and iPhone 3G units that will surely kill your wallet!
## Ho-hum. 1 million iPhone 3G units sold in first weekend. Doesn’t Nokia sell 4x as much?
## J.T. asks what is to become of the iPhone’s installer.app??

Yup it’s the AT&T guy again but this time he’s in the car. Check out how the iPhone 3G fares on the road with its built in GPS navigation. This makes use of the GPS Maps feature and the search function for commercial establishments. I still think that using the iPhone inside a car is a deadly combination as it really isn’t text-friendly while driving (oops, don’t text while you drive!!). I also noticed that there was no voice overs giving directions on where to turn.

So it’s here. From the delivery guy to the employees cutting open the taped box, to the shelving of the white and black iPhone boxes to the locking up of the storage room. The iPhone 3G is officially here!
Which box are you getting? The white one or the black one?

I mean, what else can you say? In terms of features there isn’t really anything extraordinarily new. And speed? Pfft. There are issues with battery life, which is weird because this is Apple’s second time over.
[news source]

Short answer: YES.
It’s simple really. All it involves is a SIM swap and reconfiguring the iPhone as a current iPhone customer in iTunes. Any geek can figure this out but here’s a demo video to show you exactly how it is done.

This video gives detailed information about AT&T’s iReady Program to help consumers figure out how they can actually go about buying or upgrading to an iPhone 3G on the 1th of July. There are three categories for consumers:
1. I have an original iPhone and I want to upgrade it to the iPhone 3G
2. I want to upgrade my iPhone and I’m eligible for upgrade pricing
3.I want to upgrade my iPhone but I am not yet eligible for the upgraded pricing scheme
If you don’t fall into these categories it means that you aren’t an AT&T customer. But that doesn’t mean that …read more

AT&T has released the official iPhone 3G pricing. We all know about the ultra-cheap $199.00 deal but now its time to go in depth with the catches and fine print.
Here are the plans the iPhone 3G will come with corresponding costs:
AT&T NationSM Unlimited: Includes unlimited Anytime Minutes for $129.99 a month.
AT&T Nation 1350: Includes 1350 Anytime Minutes and unlimited Night & Weekend Minutes for $109.99 a month.
AT&T Nation 900: Includes 900 Anytime Minutes and unlimited Night & Weekend Minutes for $89.99 a month.
AT&T Nation 450: Includes 450 Anytime Minutes and 5,000 Night & Weekend Minutes for $69.99 a month.
Now here’s …read more