iPhoneuniverse.org

The iPhone 4 is hitting the headlights from the wrong reasons, the new iPhone 4 has a new antenna design and it drops signal if a user puts a finger on the left hand corner. Here’s Apple’s ful letter responde to the problem:

“Dear iPhone 4 Users,

The iPhone 4 has been the most successful product launch in Apple’s history. It has been judged by reviewers around the world to be the best smartphone ever, and users have told us that they love it. So we were surprised when we read reports of reception problems, and we immediately began investigating them. Here is what we have learned.

To start with, gripping almost any mobile phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by 1 or more bars. This is true of iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, as well as many Droid, Nokia and RIM phones. But some users have reported that iPhone 4 can drop 4 or 5 bars when tightly held in a way which covers the black strip in the lower left corner of the metal band. This is a far bigger drop than normal, and as a result some have accused the iPhone 4 of having a faulty antenna design.

At the same time, we continue to read articles and receive hundreds of emails from users saying that iPhone 4 reception is better than the iPhone 3GS. They are delighted. This matches our own experience and testing. What can explain all of this?

We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising.

Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.

To fix this, we are adopting AT&T’s recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone’s bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.

We will issue a free software update within a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula. Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G.

We have gone back to our labs and retested everything, and the results are the same— the iPhone 4’s wireless performance is the best we have ever shipped. For the vast majority of users who have not been troubled by this issue, this software update will only make your bars more accurate. For those who have had concerns, we apologize for any anxiety we may have caused.

As a reminder, if you are not fully satisfied, you can return your undamaged iPhone to any Apple Retail Store or the online Apple Store within 30 days of purchase for a full refund.

We hope you love the iPhone 4 as much as we do.

Thank you for your patience and support.

Apple “

Barclaycard new Rollercoaster iPhone App has been a tremendous success in the App Store, after realising the tricky funny Spinning Streaks App, Barclay’s is inspired to set a new standard of FREE Apps with Rollercoaster Extreme, set in on one of the most beautiful metropolitan city’s in the world New York, your will be ridding through skyscrapers in 3D and collecting points through all the course while avoiding bad targets. Waterslide Extreme another barclays App was downloaded over 12 million times. The game is iPhone 4 ready and is available on the App Store today. You can see a demo of the fun game in the video below.

Spinning Streaks is cool free App available now on the App Store. The aim of the game is to keeps the coins spinning and the poles straight, Spinning Streaks is a game of balance and skill, you will have your balance skills tested trough a various of levels with increased challenge, you will be showing your skills in various places like TV shows and you will making your way to Las Vegas the capital off the Game.  Keeping the coins spinning you will get more points, you do this by tapping on the coins and tapping the poles will make then straight as they start falling, you have to inprove your skills to make your way to the top. The game has simple cool cartoon ish graphics, animation runs very smoothly and is very quick loading. It runs on iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch and 2G iPod Touch and is rating  4+. This is a fun addictive game and is available for free on the App Store.

iPhone 3GS exploit confirmed, jailbreak and unlock coming ‘soon’

And so it continues. Geohot has returned with some help from hacking buddies chronic, posixninja, and pod2g with news that the same “24kpwn” exploit used to cracked open the iPod touch 2G will work on the iPhone 3GS. That means a jailbreak and unlock can be launched just as soon as the existing tools are updated for the iPhone 3GS (which won’t be long). As George Hotz laments,
“On a personal note, I’m sad. Apple, it took me a week to break through your new defenses. And to let us reuse an exploit like that; 24kpwn was so 5 months ago. Although I imagine it must have been painful watching the devices roll by on the assembly line, knowing they all had a hole in them and you couldn’t fix it.”

Apple iPhone grabbed 69% share of U.S. smartphone traffic in May 2009

AdMob serves ads for more than 7,000 mobile Web sites and 2,500 applications around the world. AdMob stores and analyzes the data from every ad request, impression, and click and uses this to optimize ad matching in the network. This monthly report offers a snapshot of the data to provide insight into trends in the mobile ecosystem.

Five days after its launch, the iPhone OS 3.0 represented 44% of iPhone ad requests. In contrast, only 1% of iPod touch requests came from devices running the iPhone OS 3.0.

Worldwide, Apple iPhone’s share of smartphone traffic hit 49% in May 2009, up from 43% in April 2009:

In the U.S., Apple iPhone’s share of smartphone traffic hit 69% in May 2009, up from 59% in April 2009:

These numbers, of course, predate the release of Apple’s iPhone 3G S which was released on June 19, 2009.

Confirmed Again! iPhone 3GS Beats Pants Off iPhone 3G, Android, Palm Pre at Javascript

Once again validating Dieter’s iPhone 3GS vs. Palm Pre web rendering smackdown, MacRumors reports on Medialets‘ latest Sunspider Javascript tests pitting the iPhone 3GS against the iPhone 3G (both on 3.0 and 2.2.1), Palm Pre, and Google Android G1.

As MacRumors points out, not only is iPhone 3GS’ clear, current speed advantage impressive, but the 3x improvement iPhone 3.0 gives the iPhone 3G is most impressive as well.