Our weekly check-in with the industry news and rumors regarding Apple and its products takes us from discontinuing blue tooth headsets to iPhone rumors. This comes on the heels of a recent iPhone OS 3.0 announcement and the widespread distribution and sales of the new iPod shuffle.
Apple Discontinues iPhone Bluetooth Headset
Apple has thrown in the towel with its outdated $100 iPhone Bluetooth headset. The unit came out in late 2007 and received mixed reviews from a wide variety of tech-themed websites, while consumer reviews and comments were almost universally negative. Many point to the unit’s cost, sound quality, and battery life in the negative reviews, while at the same time applauding its design and build quality. Gizmodo and MacRumors are guessing that Apple is getting ready to launch stereo Bluetooth headphones now that the iPhone and iPod touch will both offer stereo Bluetooth support. Since these types of headphones are nearly impossible to find, you can only guess what price point Apple would enter the market with.
More Next-Gen iPhone Info Leaks
As the weeks go by, more details are being leaked to Apple rumor sites about the next generation of iPhones due to enter the market this summer. This time around, AppleInsider.com is reporting that they have been told from “a person who’s proven extremely reliable when predicting changes” that the next generation of iPhones will have a model that supports video capture. There’s no concrete (or even sketchy) information to support this rumor. The only thing that people have to go by is a published photo by Engadget from inside the beta of the new iPhone 3.0 OS software that has a link to “Publish Video” from the MobileME menu.
The site is all reporting that one of the tweaks will revolve around a significant boost to gaming hardware, which many expect to be Imagination’s new multi-core PowerVR computer chips.
The video rumor announcement comes amid plans that the upcoming iPhone will support even faster Internet speeds to facilitate transmission of video files over the network. AT&T’s Ralph de la Vega said at a news conference that the carrier planned to transition to HSPA in 2009 and deliver speeds exceeding 20 MB per second requiring few, if any, hardware modifications to the company’s existing infrastructure.
Dell’s “iPhone Killer” is Brutally Slain
In a twist of irony that everyone expected, the new “iPhone Killer” from Dell has been universally rejected by cellular carriers as being far too bland and dull to be worthwhile. The phones are capable of running both Windows Mobile and Google’s Android, but simply didn’t interest AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, or Sprint because they are too close to lower-end units they already carry from cheaper manufacturers.
Dell is reportedly going back to the drawing board to design a cell phone with more differentiation that could involve integration of software and/or services.
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