The iPhone’s built-in camera has gotten a lot of flack for being less-than-perfect, but for some of us who have grown used to the worst of the worst, the iPhone’s camera is like a breath of fresh air. Sure, it could use a zoom lens, significantly better low-light capabilities, and mo’ megapixels, but it does a pretty decent job for most users.

read it here arstechnica.com

IN A BRIEF POST Saturday at the US progressive website Daily Kos, the writer who goes by Scout Finch* tells “the tale of one tough little Iphone.”
While traveling on business for several days, she was delighted to see that one of the hotels along the way had a laundry room.

read it here theinquirer.net

You’ll recall that around Wednesday or Thursday of last week AT&T began offering free Wi-Fi access to iPhone users at select Airports, Borders and Starbucks locations. The Internet was quite giddy over the concept of the deal which seemed like a nice way for the locations to get more iPhone toting customers into stores.

read it here zdnet.com

This past Friday, my iPhone inadvertently slipped out of the case and hit the concrete sidewalk. The glass panel front cracked like a spiderweb in the upper corner, and a single vertical crack went from top to bottom.

Apple told me that if I let them bill my credit card $245, they would send me an empty box, I would then put in my phone and send it back and they would forward along a “refurbished” phone. So at $245 plus shipping and plus tax, I figure it would be just over $300 to fix the problem.

read it here pogue.blogs.nytimes.com

As competitors come up with copycats, Steve Jobs may have a much grander vision in mind. Even as Research in Motion and Palm target Apple’s touch-sensitive wonder phone, the broad outlines of Steve Jobs’ grand strategy for wireless domination are coming into focus.

read it here newsweek.com

AT&T Inc. is offering free wireless access to iPhone owners at several thousand of its public hot spots, including those it recently acquired in a deal with the high-end coffee shop chain Starbucks, users in the U.S. reported today.

Fueled by an initial report on MacRumors.com that described the free hot spot access, numerous users on Apple Inc.’s own iPhone support forum related their experiences at Starbucks, which boasts wireless at more then 7,000 of its U.S. stores.

read it here computerworld.com

Rockville, Maryland — In a just-released survey report, ChangeWave takes a close-up look at the features consumers love and hate most about their iPhones and BlackBerrys.

This report is a follow-up to a previous ChangeWave Smart Phone survey showing a rapidly evolving two-horse race between the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and the Research In Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry – with second tier players like Palm (PALM) and a host of others being pushed to the sidelines.

The previous report showed excellent consumer satisfaction levels for the two smart phone frontrunners – with Apple sporting a 79% Very Satisfied rating for its iPhone models and RIM grabbing a highly respectable 54% rating for the BlackBerry.

But what is it about these two brands that have consumers so very satisfied?

read it here changewave.com

AT&T Inc. has adopted a new Internet and messaging plan for the Apple iPhone designed to help people who are deaf or have a speech or hearing impairment stay connected.

San Antonio-based AT&T (NYSE: T) is the exclusive provider of voice and data services for the iPhone.

read it here bizjournals.com

Apple may be preparing to add iPhone (and iPod touch) functions to connect to and play media from nearby iTunes sources. Citing an “anonymous tipster,” TUAW reports that code found in the latest firmware release points to a new iPhone application called iControl, which it says could be part of Apple’s own plan to release new software applications based on forthcoming iPhone SDK.

read it here macnn.com

The US Patent and Trademark Office published several of Apple’s patent approvals today, all of which relate to different aspects of the iPhone’s functionality. The first patent that has been approved deals with organization of the iPhone’s interface, mainly to reduce the clutter of adding too many visual elements to a document. The patent indicates the use of nested interface elements, for example, clicking a button to bring up a menu with operations that the user may perform.

read it here appletell

AT&T Mobility continued its steady growth during the first quarter of the year, reporting customer additions on par with the previous year and gains in customer revenue that helped push the carrier’s revenues up more than 17%.

read it here rcrnews.com

Apple Inc is in talks with Immersion Corporation to licence Haptic Technology for its iPhone. Immersion Corporation on Thursday announced that they have appointed former Apple executive Clent Richardson to the position of President and CEO.

read it here palluxo.com

Apple touts some impressive specs for the battery in the iPhone—up to eight hours of talk time, 250 hours of standby time, six hours of internet use, seven hours of video playback, and a full day of audio playback. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t list the battery life for a particular situation that I run into about twice a year: battery life during periods of extended redialing.

read it here macworld.com

Sun continues to pursue talks with Apple Computer to have Java applications run on Apple’s iPhone while acknowledging a third party’s efforts toward the same goal.

“We’ve expressed our intent to do this and our desire, really, to work with Apple to build a JVM (Java Virtual Machine) for the iPhone and we’re sort of moving forward with that,” said Eric Klein, Sun vice president of Java marketing, this week. The JVM could run Java applications.

read it here infoworld.com

The 3G iPhone will be announced June 9, the likely date of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ keynote at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference, analysts said in research notes on Thursday.

The 3G iPhone will be the “first of an impressive wave of new products” from Apple, wrote Citi analysts Richard Gardner and Yeechang Lee. They also expect an updated Mac laptop and iPod lines. The Apple conference is scheduled for June 9-13 in San Francisco.

read it here computerworld.com

Apple Inc.’s attitude about unlocked iPhones hints that the company will abandon its business model of grabbing a piece of mobile carriers’ revenues in order to make its goal of selling 10 million smart phones this year, an analyst said today.

read it here computerworld.com

Apple Inc (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) expects to hit its goal of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008, Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said on Wednesday.

read it here reuters.com

Owners of Apple’s iPhone will now have access to 260 hours of classic ITV programmes via the iTunes store.

Brideshead Revisited is just one of the programmes to be found on iTunes.

read it here mobilemarketingnews.co.uk

Apple(R: 65.23, +1.69, +2.65%) today announced financial results for its fiscal 2008 second quarter ended March 29, 2008. The Company posted revenue of $7.51 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.05 billion, or $1.16 per diluted share.

read it here foxbusiness.com

Although some have been critical of Apple over the past year about its decision to block third-parties from creating applications for the iPhone and its reluctance to bring much-desired functionality to the device, the company has turned the tide and is doing everything right.

Over the past year, Apple has learned quickly that the cell phone business is extremely difficult to be successful in and realized that its tried and true tactic of keeping its device closed off to outside companies is not the best way to do business.

read it here cnet.com

Do you know what the best selling themes are at the BBGeeks Store? I’ll give you a hint: They copy the theme of another popular PDA. Yeah, I’m talking about iPhone themes.

It just puzzles me that someone with a BlackBerry would spend money to make their phone look like an iPhone.

read it here bbgeeks.com

A recent patent filing indicates that Apple is getting closer to adding its own instant messaging client to the iPhone.

The filing is titled “Portable Electronic Device for Instant Messaging “, and covers methods for sending, receiving, and viewing ongoing conversations. The proposed GUI is similar to Apple’s current interface for SMS.

read it here pcworld.com

AT&T Inc., the biggest U.S. telephone company, said first-quarter profit rose 22 percent on sales of the iPhone wireless handset and savings from job cuts after the $86 billion purchase of BellSouth Corp.

read it here bloomberg.com

Here we are months away from the launch of the first Android hardware, and Google along with the Open Handset Alliance is gearing up for the war against Apple and the vaunted iPhone. However, given the recent revelations regarding Google’s approach to quality control, or lack there of this war may be over before it even gets started.

read it here androidguys.com

With 9 billion video downloads last year over wireless, business and cell networks are becoming overwhelmed Be careful what you wish for. The iPhone has realized the old promise of the mobile Web. But it’s not clear whether the wireless networks can handle the load.

read it here infoworld.com