Brussels, Robin Bollen, Aug 24 2010.

I must admit something. I have bought my iPhone 4 in another country then where I live. I bought it in France via the Apple Store and I live in Belgium. Why? Because it was one month earlier on the market there. What about my warranty?

iPhones in Belgium are exclusively sold through the mobile provider MOBISTAR. Let’s first check with Apple’s website if I have warranty because it is an Apple iPhone and not a Mobistar iPhone. I checked http://www.apple.com/benl/support. There I find the link “Check your Service and Support coverage”. Here you have to type your serial number.

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That is the advice we can give you. Before walking out of a store that is far away from your place do the check, just in case. One of our faithful readers send us the following story.
He went form Belgium to Paris to buy 2 iPhone 4s because in Belgium they are not available at the moment. These iPhones are carrier unlocked, you can use any MicroSIM you like. Once he was back home, he discovered that one iPhone could be activated when connecting to iTunes but the second one not.

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Robin Bollen, Brussels, August 7 2010.

One of my buddies went for a city trip to London a few days ago. One of the highlights was the visit of the famous Regent Street Apple Store from the Royal Family. To his big surprise there was a huge queue in front of the store going all the way inside to the iPhone 4 collection desk. The people were told by the Apple Store employees that the queue had a waiting time for several hours but that there was an iPhone 4 for everybody in line. It was the second big shipment that came in apparently.

The introduction of the iPhone 4 is a fact in Belgium. Quite some people have tried to get their hands on one, but not too many succeeded. For example in Antwerp the rumor goes that there were 65 iPhones for the people who queued sinds midnight (see pics below) and only 15 for the morning queue.

In another Mobistar shop in Mortsel there were only 11 but there where 16 preorders, so -5. I checked out some shops in the capital Brussels.

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Brussels, Robin Bollen, June 18 2010

When even my girlfriend tells me my new iPhone has a big antenna issue, I know that the media has gone too far. Every Apple fanboy has watched the Antenna keynote by now and is drooling over Apple’s 100 Million dollar antenna facilities. Let’s talk about my experience with the iPhone 4 and it’s connectivity.

I tried to simulate the drop of bars by holding the iPhone in the death-grip and indeed, it switched from 3G to EDGE in my house. It was exceptional to have 3G during my test anyway, I only have sometimes 2 to 3 bars 3G here. Note that I live quite close to the European Institutions in Brussels where you would expect top reception.

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Today the French Mac site www.macbidouille.com is reporting price info for the new iPhone 4G. Are you sure you are holding something strong?

The iPhone 4G 16 GB for € 629 or $768
The iPhone 4G 32 GB for € 739 or $902

This implies that the iPhone 4 is carrier unlocked in France. Furthermore only the black model can be pre-ordered there. I don’t know about you but I find this very expensive. The iPhone 3GS 32GB I bought last year in Brussels, did cost already € 675. This is another € 64 extra plus € 4 for iMovie makes it around € 68 more expensive. This is about a 10% price increase.

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Apple® today announced it will debut its iAd mobile advertising network on July 1 on iPhone® and iPod touch® devices running its iOS 4 software platform. iAds combine the emotion of TV advertising with the interactivity of Internet advertising, giving advertisers a dynamic and powerful new way to bring motion and emotion to mobile users. iAd will kick off with mobile ad campaigns from leading global brands including AT&T, Best Buy, Campbell Soup Company, Chanel, Citi, DirecTV, GEICO, GE, JCPenney, Liberty Mutual Group, Nissan, Sears, State Farm, Target, Turner Broadcasting System, Unilever and The Walt Disney Studios. Apple has iAd commitments for 2010 totaling over $60 million, which represents almost 50 percent of the total forecasted US mobile ad spending for the second half of 2010.*

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This image is emailed to us, by a reader that left his iPhone in the car for a few hours in the hot sun. The iPhone was difficult to touch and almost in melting sate. Luckily it has shut itself off into this mode. That brings the question, does the iPhone have a temperature sensor?

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The Brussels based Nomado Telecom has recently created software that permits you to make unlimited free calls on your iPhone or iPad, using innovative Voip technology.
People are calling it the “Voip Revolution” but what exactly does this mean and how is it going to change the way we make phone calls?

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Brussels, Robin Bollen, May 11 2010.

The long awaited Sygic Aura recently hit the App Store street and we were lucky enough to get a test version (1.15). Remember that Sygic Mobile Maps should have been the first iPhone Turn-by-Turn Voice Guided GPS app for the iPhone if it wasn’t for a nasty App Store bug, which gave Navigon the official title.

Sygic Mobile maps has been good reviewed and received by the community for producing a solid GPS app based on TeleAtlas Map technology. I have used the app for thousands of Kilometers without any problem. In the mean time, the competition has also improved their applications with many updates and new features. TomTom is one of those that have improved a lot, although some payable options are still expensive.

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