Apple's research and development team houses some of the most brilliant minds in technology today. Even the inventions that don't make it into consumer products are worth dozens of ohs and ahs.
The latest patent uncovered by the folks at Patently Apple is no different. The filing, submitted back in 2009, describes a method of allowing a user to steer light beams in different directions to effectively produce a new private viewing option...
Stacey Higginbotham got a tour of AT&T's Foundry space in Plano, Texas on Wednesday. Not only did the GigaOM author get to rub elbows with the carrier's SVP of application and service infrastructure John Summers, she also got to witness their LTE in action.
LTE stands for Long Term Evolution and has been a popular choice for 4th generation technology among wireless carriers. Verizon deployed their LTE service late last year, and other than a few hiccups, the service has been widely popular. So how will AT&T stack up?
There's been all sorts of mutters, speculations, and guesses surrounding the next iPhone. Some of the ideas sound great, while others sound pretty terrible.
Needless to say I think we all have our own personal wish list of things that we would like to see on the next iPhone, so I thought I'd share with you a few of mine. Obviously, these are just wishes, not necessarily realities, but hey, it's nice to dream, isn't it?
My first wish for the next iPhone is none other than...
Big Red's Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo is no stranger to leaking iDevice information. You might recall the comments he made last month during Verizon's quarterly earnings call, claiming that Apple's next smartphone would be a global device.
Reuters is reporting today that the CFO has once again been dishing the dirt on Apple's upcoming gadget. Shammo told Reuters about upcoming changes to Verizon's data plans and reaffirmed some details about the next iPhone...
Cloud-talk has become the equivalent of a tacky sitcom; it seems to be on every channel. I suppose it's for a good reason though, especially with Apple's WWDC event coming up in just a few weeks.
The Cupertino company is expected to expose its secret cloud storage service at the developer's conference next month. Though iCloud rumors have only recently began to heat up, Patently Apple is suggesting it's been a work in progress for quite some time ...
If you have more invested in Apple than just what you paid for your MacBook, you've probably already heard the news. MarketWatch is reporting that China Mobile has reached an agreement with Apple regarding a future iPhone on their network.
China Mobile is home to over 600 million customers and has yet to offer Apple's smartphone. It seems though, that chairman Wang Jianzho doesn't expect that to be the case much longer...
Several online news outlets have been reporting in the last 12 hours that Apple has signed a deal with EMI Music, the fourth largest music group in the world. Apple definitely seems to be putting the final pieces in place for its cloud-based music service.
Reports surfaced last month that Apple had completed their cloud service, and had reached a licensing agreement with Warner Music Group. If the above information holds true, that just leaves Sony and Universal left, which sources say could sign on as early as next week...
The current iPad 2 is good at a lot of things. It's extremely thin, easy to use, and lightning fast. It's no wonder why it continues to be a consumer favorite. However, the device could also use some serious upgrading in some categories, camera quality being one of them.
The current version of Apple's tablet has a camera capable of shooting 960 x 720 pixel photos, that's 0.7 megapixel. Apple's latest iPhone is sporting a camera that takes 5 megapixel photos, why the big difference?
The Cupertino company set out to make the iPad 2 thin. Not just thin enough to impress folks, but thin enough to call itself one of the slimmest tablets around. In fact, it lead that category until Samsung went back to the drawing board with their Tab 10.1 and shaved a few more centimeters off the top.
But contrary to popular belief, being thin has its disadvantages, and in this case it cost the iPad 2 a decent camera. Obviously due to design restraints, the camera module that Apple used in the iPad 2 had to meet certain size requirements. At the time there must have not been a decent sensor that fit the bill, so they used the same one that's in their 4G iPod Touch.
Well 9to5Mac is reporting today that OmniVision has unveiled a 5MP camera sensor, that is smaller than its predecessors. Since the digital imaging solutions company happens to be the main supplier of camera sensors for iDevices, it's likely that we will see this (or something similar) in future Apple products.
"The OV5690 offers best-in-class low-light performance and image quality while also enabling 20 percent thinner camera modules..."
Not only does the camera take 5MP stills, it records video in full 1080p. The current iPad camera records video in 720p, so the upgrade would be quite noticeable. Since the camera seems to be one of the tablet's biggest downfalls, it would be logical to assume Apple is looking to upgrade it in future iterations.
What do you think of the current iPad 2 camera? Would you get an iPad 3 if the camera quality was improved?
Following other reports that Apple won't introduce an LTE-enabled iPhone until at least 2012, Digitimes has chimed in to affirm that there won't be an iPhone introduced with 4G speeds this year.
Besides the fact that Apple stated it wasn't planning on LTE adoption in the near future, the industry has indicated that bringing 4G to the iPhone simply isn't feasible right now. After the fifth generation iPhone is released this fall, it is expected that the sixth generation iPhone will have LTE support in 2012.
Apple has slowed production and lowered its expected shipment volume of the GSM and CDMA iPhone 4. This move is expected to correlate with a new iPhone release in September, with production of the new device starting in August.
The dubbed 'iPhone 4S' is expected to have an 8 megapixel camera made by OmniVision and Largan Precision. It is also rumored to sport a A5 dual-core processor with support for T-Mobile and Sprint...
We've heard several rumors that the next iPhone will have Near Field Communications (NFC) abilities. Apple itself added fuel to the gossip-fire when it publicly announced the hiring of NFC expert Benjamin Vigier. NFC technology can handle anything from unlocking car doors, to wirelessly paying for goods and services.
It's expected to be the future of mobile payment systems and has already been imbedded in multiple Android phones. Many folks have been back and forth on whether or not Apple would include NFC in its next iteration of the iPhone, but BGR seems to be pretty confident that it will...
The notion of the next gen iPhone being a "4G" device has been debated for quite some time. Originally, it was thought to be a possibility that the next iPhone could bring 4G/LTE data speeds, but then Apple made a statement during its last earning's call that 4G would "force a lot of design compromises" that the company "was not willing to make."
A recent update to AT&T's marketing strategy changed the requirements for a device to be labeled "4G," and it was thought that the next iPhone would fall under these requirements. Now, another analyst from BMO Capital is stating that Apple won't release on iPhone with 4G speeds until at least 2012.