An 80-year-old Parisian pensioner, Rolland Caufman, claimed his iPhone screen began cracking in his hands a week after he bought it.

“I went out shopping, with my iPhone in my left pocket, when I suddenly felt it heat up and start vibrating — even though I never use the vibrate setting,” said Caufman. “I took it out of my pocket and held it to my ear — and saw the screen crack up like a car windscreen.”

In another case, a 26-year-old security guard, Yassine Bouhadi, said he suffered an eye injury when the screen of his iPhone suddenly shattered.

In all, ten French iPhone users have now come forward claiming their handset screens have either cracked or exploded without explanation.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company insists the exploding screen cases were isolated incidents. It has sold more than 26 million iPhones since it first debuted two years ago.

“We are aware of these reports and we are waiting to receive the iPhones from the customers,” said Alan Hely, Apple’s European head of communications. “Until we have the full details, we don’t have anything further to add.”

But France’s consumer affairs watchdog, the DGCCRF, is still launching an inquiry to determine whether Apple’s flagship device poses a threat to consumers.

Additionally, the European Commission has asked the other EU nations to report any iPhone-related problems.

“We just need to monitor closely now and see if these are isolated incidents,” said Helen Kearns, the Commission’s spokeswoman. “We’ll be vigilant and if necessary we’ll take further actions.”

Three years ago, similar lithium-ion batteries made news when Sony voluntarily recalled millions of laptop batteries after they caused laptops to possibly overheat and catch fire.

Experts blamed part of the problem on the increased demand that sophisticated portable devices are placing on batteries.

Since batteries were first manufactured on a large scale in 1991, consumer electronics have become over 200 times faster — outpacing developments in battery technology.

We all know that App Store is bursting at the seams with whatever apps you might think. It´s certainly one of the major aces up Apple´s sleeve, but what we are amazed to find out is what a cashflow it generates. According to an AdMob´s recently announced figure, customers of the online store download software that´s worth $2.4bln per year. AdMod also compares it to the sales volume of Android Market that is currently estimated at the meager $60mln per year. There is a catch though – App Store is actively used by not only iPhone lovers, but iPod touch owners as well, although the former seem to be more active managing to generate revenues of nearly $125mln a month alongside of the $5mln reaped by Android app developers. Well, the whole thing adds up, since the iPhone is the most popular cell phone in the US and the service offered by AdMob is aimed at the same market, meaning these guys probably know what they are talking about. Moreover, it seems that half of all iPhone owners download at least one app per month, while this holds true for just 19% of Android fans.

source: Gigaom

Don’t limit yourself to the usual FM transmitters when it comes to playing your iPods through the car head unit of your vehicles. Thanks to Sinjimoru, there is a new and stylish way of docking and enjoying the stored music you have for in-car mobile enjoyment.

Sinjimoru introduces the iDeck, a car-pack suited for people who are fond of listening to tunes on their iPods. The iDeck actually comes in three parts: a car-pack delivering music through a magnetic head in the cassette deck of a car, a cradle for an iPod, and a charger supplying electricity through the cigarette lighter jack.

To date, the iDeck has sold over 3,000 units since its launch in April of this year. The iDeck is slated to be in attendance at the CIETEC2009 in Tokyo this coming October and the CES2009.

(Source) Aving

Through the iPhone OS 3’s support for third-party hardware, this device transforms Apple handsets into full-fledged satellite radios. It is designed to operate via the car cigarette lighter to allow you to listen to all XM and ”The Best of SIRIUS” channels. It also charges your iPhone or iPod Touch while listening and plugged in.

The Sirius XM Skydock for the iPhone or iPod Touch retails for $119.00. No clue on when it would be available and has yet to gain full approval from the FCC. For now, it has been granted preliminary approval and is being further evaluated.

(Source) Press

The guys at Engadget spent time playing with the 3GS after reading a post in a Chinese forum that the phone handled 1080p video of up to 30Mbps bitrate. They had various success – 10Mbps 1080p video played back fine, but 20Mbps 720p was stuttering, and the audio decoder is not bug-free yet as well. HD playback is not officially supported so bugs are to be expected, the important bit here is that the hardware is capable of HD playback.

A bit of googling quelled our biggest concern – will the iPhone 3GS be able to output the video after having decoded it? There are composite and component cables for the iPhone but still no HDMI cables. Nonetheless, the answer seems to be positive – component video cables are capable of handling up to 1080i/60Hz video.

Okay, some quality will be lost during the progressive to interlaced conversion but the limitation to 1080i seems to be of an entirely different nature – a legal one. While video transmitted over HDMI can be DRM-protected, analog video cannot, making it easy to copy and negating the usefulness of all those content protection schemes.

Still, 1080i offers great quality and 720p and 1080i content is much more common than 1080p so most of the time it’s not even a problem. Of course nothing is certain until it’s official, but it seems that the iPhone 3GS just might be capable of outputting HD video. And most (if not all) LCD TVs have component inputs so keep your fingers crossed.

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EISA – the European Imaging and Sound Association – announced its 2009-2010 awards for mobile devices and greenness. More than 50 prominent tech magazines from all over Europe got together to judge this and here are the results.

The European Camera Phone award was snatched by the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD. If you thought the Samsung Pixon12 was a sure-win – EISA was looking at overall performance, and 8 megapixels of still resolution and 720p/24fps video were enough to nail it. The 3.7″ 360×640 pixels AMOLED screen was also noted among the phone’s strongest point.

Samsung i8910 Omnia HD

The European Music Phone is… the Sony Ericsson W995. EISA looks at not only combining the most desired and technologically advanced features but value for money as well, things most likely to be appreciated by enthusiastic public. It seems this is what tipped the scales towards the W995.

Sony Ericsson W995

The European Business Phone award went to the Nokia E75. We guess the E71 would have felt right at home the the top of the ladder in this category as well, but we guess technically it’s not a 2009 model and the Nokia E75 was noted as extremely well designed and capable of fulfilling all communication needs. Robust build quality and long battery life were also major factors in the decision.

Nokia E75

The European Smartphone award may be a surprise to some – in this category the iPhone, and more specifically the iPhone 3GS, is King Kong standing on the Empire State Building, with countless of other phones buzzing around it while trying to shoot it down. Try as they might, the “iPhone-killers” still have a way to go, as the iPhone still clutches the beautiful maiden of user-friendly, simple but sleek UI. According to the EISA, the 3GS is a huge leap forward, even if it doesn’t seem like it at first glance.

Apple iPhone 3GS (artwork has no connection to the official EISA awards panel and is purely fictional)

The ever-growing importance of companies becoming eco-friendly also got a nod from EISA, and while there were plenty of eco phones that were either light-weight versions of normal phones (mostly in packaging) or low-end phones, the LG KM900 Arena won the European Green award by being the “greenest fully featured mobile phone on the market today”. The retail package is said to be the best in terms of eco friendliness as were the build components of the phone itself. The emphasis seems to be that “feature-rich” and “green” can fit very comfortably in the description of one phone, no compromises necessary.

LG KM900 Arena

Sure, some people won’t agree with these awards. The iPhone platform for example was patted on the back for having its smart function upgraded. Indeed those were just holes in the core functionality that begged for plugging for quite some time now, but Apple have done a nice job in updating the software platform to a more mature level.

If you’re interested, you might as well check out last year’s EISA awards and see what we were up to last August.

Source: Mobile Devices panel, Green panel ]]> http://www.text2fans.com/iphone-3gs-awarded-the-euro-smartphone-2009-title-by-eisa/feed/ 0 http://www.text2fans.com/tomtom-for-iphone-is-finally-here-no-word-of-the-car-stand/ http://www.text2fans.com/tomtom-for-iphone-is-finally-here-no-word-of-the-car-stand/#comments Mon, 17 Aug 2009 20:30:31 +0000 admin http://www.text2fans.com/?p=74

Today TomTom has finally released their voice guided turn-by-turn SatNav app for the iPhone. The app was the only featured SatNav software at the presentation of the iPhone OS 3.0, but it’s the last to arrive.

TomTom for iPhone is available in four regional packages – New Zealand (94.99 US dollars), U.S & Canada (99.99 US dollars), Australia (79.99 Australian dollars) and TomTom Western Europe (139.99 US dollars). Yeah, life in iEurope is expensive, we know!

Unfortunately, the TomTom press release doesn’t say a word about the Car Kit bundle, which includes a charging car stand for the iPhone. Let’s remind you that it was recently spotted in an online store at a pre-order price of about 200 US dollars.

Official UI screenshots from the TomTom GPS software

So, Navigon were first to release their SatNav software called Mobile Navigator, then it was Sygic’s turn followed by iGO MyWay 2009 and finally TomTom rounded up the expensive SatNav solutions offered by the majors. Perhaps Garmin will jump on the bandwagon as well, but we are yet to hear about that really.

You can also check out this video of the TomTom for iPhone uploaded on YouTube.

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