Some big-wigs over at AT&T have apparently confirmed some juicy (we’re not certain that’s the best word to describe it, but we’re going to use it) rumors about Apple’s plans for this summer. The word is that it’s going to be big and it’s going to revolve around a new iPhone coming out in mid-June. Yeah, it’s closer than we realized. Based on what we’ve heard, it looks there are some things you should take note of.
First, of course, is that AT&T has said that the new-iPhone-June-release is about to become an annual holiday just below Christmas in marketing and hype potential. The new iPhone will be faster and have a more “seamless experience” (probably because it will have the new 3.0 OS, but that doesn’t sound as good as “seamless” and “experience”). There will also be a UVerse iPhone application that will allow control of your home DVR. Kind of cool.
The supposed source from AT&T also said the $99 3G netbook will also hit stands this summer. They say it won’t have a Windows OS, so we’re thinking Linux. Kind of a given, but still something to speculate about. We’re certain there will be plenty more rumors before June comes so you can check back often to get the latest juicy details.
For more information, see the smartphone review site. For more Applicious news and rumors, check out these other blog posts:
Apple Rumor Follow-Up: Throwing LG & OLED in the Mix
iTunes to Offer Video and Movie Titles in HD
Apple Rumor: New iPhone, iPod, IFPGA, & iPr
New iPhone to Be Released in Mid-June?
Play Xbox Games on Your Cell Phone?
And the gaming alternatives keep coming today. Mobile gaming isn’t anything new, but the quality has never been up to par with the latest generation consoles. ARM plans to change that, as early as the end of this year.
ARM graphics product manager Remi Pederson recently promised that their new mobile GPUs, slated to come out at the end of this year, will make Xbox 360 gaming possible on a cell phone. The Mali-200 and Mali-400 are said to bring 4x to 16x anti-aliasing, and soon OpenGL ES 2.0 to mobile handsets. Purported to run 16 million triangles a second and 275 million pixels a second, the Mali-200 GPU certainly won’t have a problem running Flash and Java games.
The Mali-400 will come in single-core on up to quad-core GPU configuration, supposedly able to scale to 1080p resolution. HD viewing on a mobile phone sounds pretty sweet. The good news is ARM isn’t (yet) tethered to any specific manufacturer, so we could see this functionality and performance in multiple cell- and smartphone brands by later this year or early next year.
Nokia N86 8MP Slider Phone
The N86 8MP has a 2.6-inch 240 x 320 QVGA OLED display, onboard Assisted GPS with Nokia Maps, WiFi 802.11b/g support and Bluetooth. It comes with 8GB internal storage capacity. You can expect a 3.5mm headphone jack and built-in stereo speakers. The phone runs S60 3rd Edition, FP2.
Nokia N86 8MP supports tri-band 3G HSDPA/HSUPA networks. There are 900/1900/2100 and 850/1900/2100 versions, that will be available in Q2 2009 for about Euro 375.
Transcend SDHC HD Video Cards
LG Arena KM900 touchscreen phone
The Arena KM900 supports 3G HSDPA 7.2Mbps mobile network and WiFi connectivity. It has also A-GPS support with geo-tagging function. THe phone plays DivX and Xvid video files and offers FM tuner and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
LG will be available in March in major European markets. It will be available in silver and black titanium colour schemes.
