Cell Phone Today

Sunday, July 18, 2010

HTC: Droid Eris complaints nothing compared to iPhone 4

EXCLUSIVE: HTC starts its fightback against Apple

While HTC hasn't yet come back with an official comment in respect to Apple's decision to highlight the Droid Eris' performance at its emergency press conference, it was happy to let Pocket-lint know about how many of its customers have complained about the Droid Eris.

If you remember, the Droid Eris was one of the handsets featured in the Apple press conference, now dubbed the Antennagate conference, with Steve Jobs and Apple singling it out over more popular handsets like the all metal bodied HTC Legend, and the metal chassis built HTC Desire or HTC Nexus One.

So what percentage of people have complained?

"Approximately .016% of customers," Eric Lin, the company's global PR and online community manager exclusively revealed to us before adding that "we have had very few complaints about signal or antenna problems on the Eris."

Admittedly it's not as hard hitting as Nokia or RIM's "Apple's attempt to draw RIM into Apple's self-made debacle is unacceptable" statement, but hopefully that's still to come.

We will keep you posted.

Read our HTC Droid Eris review.

Source - Pocket-lint

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Nokia: 'we prioritize antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict'

Nokia's looking to ride the mojo of any negative fallout from today's Apple press conference, slipping out a rather fascinating statement this afternoon. The gist of it is that Espoo's keen on letting everyone know how much blood, sweat, and tears they've poured into perfecting their antenna design strategy over the years, going so far as to say that they "prioritize" it over the physical design of the phone if they need to in order to optimize its call performance -- an opinion moderately different from the "we want to have our cake and eat it too" philosophy espoused by Jobs today. In closing, Nokia acknowledges that a "tight grip" can mess with the performance, though they say they've done a bunch of research on the ways their phones are typically held so that the antennas are placed optimally. Interestingly, there was a stink not long ago about the severe signal degradation some E71 users were seeing when they placed their hands on the lower rear of the phone -- but you can't win 'em all, we suppose. Follow the break for the full statement.

"Antenna design is a complex subject and has been a core competence at Nokia for decades, across hundreds of phone models. Nokia was the pioneer in internal antennas; the Nokia 8810, launched in 1998, was the first commercial phone with this feature.

Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying human behavior, including how people hold their phones for calls, music playing, web browsing and so on. As you would expect from a company focused on connecting people, we prioritize antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict.

In general, antenna performance of a mobile device/phone may be affected with a tight grip, depending on how the device is held. That's why Nokia designs our phones to ensure acceptable performance in all real life cases, for example when the phone is held in either hand. Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying how people hold their phones and allows for this in designs, for example by having antennas both at the top and bottom of the phone and by careful selection of materials and their use in the mechanical design."

Source - Engadget

Apple Tried To Buy Palm Before HP Won The Bidding War -- And RIM Completely Blew The Deal

The race to buy Palm earlier this year was fast and hot, with the company's bankers contacting 16 companies about the deal, including five serious potential suitors.

HP won the bake-off, acquiring Palm for $1.2 billion in late April.

But other companies involved in the talks included Silicon Valley's increasingly competitive rivals, Apple and Google, as well as BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, we have learned from a source familiar with the negotiations.

According to our discussions with this person:

Apple was mostly interested in Palm's huge library of intellectual property and patents (450+ patents on file, another 400+ applications on file). And unlike some other bidders, Apple even seemed committed to funding Palm's operations, perhaps to challenge RIM's dominance in the keyboarded segment of the smartphone industry, our source says. (There's a bunch of problems with this idea, such as the idea of Apple supporting two rival app platforms, but that's what this person says.) Ultimately, Apple didn't bid high enough, while HP offered an amount the board couldn't say no to. (Recall that Steve Jobs tried to buy Palm years ago in its first life, too, when it was owned by 3Com.)

RIM basically had the deal in its hands and "had to work incredibly hard to blow it," our source recalls. RIM initially came in higher than HP, but HP upped its bid, our source says.

Google, likely interested in Palm's intellectual property, supposedly only wanted it because Google thought Apple might want it. But Google supposedly didn't know Apple was actually bidding for Palm, so it didn't proceed.

Nokia, bizarrely, wasn't anywhere near the deal. That may prove to be a stupid move, which we'll expand on later.

How does this compare with what is publicly known about Palm's deal process?

In May, Palm filed a long merger proxy with the SEC, detailing how it decided to sell itself -- including the part where it was in contact with 16 potential buyers -- and how HP and four other anonymous companies pursued it. ("Company A," "Company B," etc.)

In summary:

"Company A" offered $600 million in cash and didn't raise its bid. We assume this is Apple, making its lowball cash bid but not getting into a bidding war.

"Company B" proposed to acquire Palm in a stock-for-stock transaction, but also said that its "proposed transaction would take at least several months longer to close than is customary." We assume this is Lenovo, the Chinese PC maker that was reportedly the "leading candidate" for Palm in mid-April.

"Company C" first wanted to acquire patent rights from Palm, then later tried to buy Palm as a whole. It originally offered $6-7 per share, but after more diligence, lowered its bid to $5.50 per share. We assume this is RIM.

"Company D" contacted Palm to discuss an intellectual property transaction but did not make a proposal to acquire Palm. Discussions continued intermittently and fizzled out. We assume this is Google.

HP then ended up acquiring Palm for $5.70 per share, and is now in the process of shaping Palm's WebOS platform into its own operating system, for tablets, mobile devices, and printers.

Source - Business Insider

HTC Desire HD to feature 4.3 inch screen, 8MP camera and October launch?

HTC seemingly has another super spec'd Android model on the way. There is some speculation that the Taiwan-based company is planning a follow-up to the HTC Desire called the Desire HD. This handset is said to come out of the box with Android 2.2 under the hood, an 8MP camera that captures HD video, 4GB of internal memory and the omnipresent 1GHz Snapdragon processor. Like the HTC Legend, the Desire HD is said to have a "uni-body aluminum design" and will support XviD videos and offer SRS surround sound. While this handset could end up being known as the Desire HD, it has a nickname of the HTC Ace. October seems to be the popular choice for when we might see this launched. No carriers were mentioned although the first-gen Desire will be launching in the States on two regional carriers-U.S. Cellular and Cellular South as we have reported-sometime next month.

source: CNET