7YK Blog

The news we are about to give you is from an unconfirmed source, but we will find out if this is all true.

We found via iPhone Savior a very cool looking Apple iPhone 3G and one like no other, forget the black iPhone 3G and forget about the white model too and welcome to the all new Christmas special edition Apple iPhone 3G.

There may possibly be a PRODUCT RED Special Edition iPhone 3G for Christmas.

(PRODUCT) RED benefits the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa, and bringing this phone out will be very good indeed for such a good charity.

It is simple for Apple to change the colour to red seeing as the back casing is plastic, the only downside I can see is that Red iPhone’s will be hugely popular so would Apple be able to cope with demand.

The future seems very good indeed for cars and mobile phones but combine the two together and you have something very special.

We saw on Top Gear the other day James May showing of a mobile phone, normally mobile phones come with Bluetooth, cameras, Windows software and many other special features.

Well this particular phone comes with a car; the car is the Renault Megane Coupe Concept.

The mobile phone will control the headlights, open the doors, turns on the funky interior lights and even starts the engine, pretty cool ah.

The only downside is that Renault will never put this car into production which is bloody madness.

I would love to use my iPhone or BlackBerry to control my car. Please watch the Top Gear video below and then let us know what you think.

Opera Software and Meridian group have announced their joining to pre-install Opera Mini on Meridian Mobile’s new Fly E310 mobile phone. Meridian Mobile’s Fly mobile handset is currently available in the UK, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and Russia, and all with pre-installed Opera Mini browser, states a Slashpone report.

Meridian Group and Opera Software joined forces back in April 07 to deliver Opera Mini on most all mobile phone handsets.

Member of the Board of Directors for Meridian Group, Andrew Collinge had this to say: “We aim to provide our customers the best services available. When it comes to offering our customers a fast, secure and cost-efficient Internet service on a mobile phone, the popular Opera Mini browser offers the user an outstanding experience. Accessing the Web could not be easier, as Opera Mini brings the Web to our customers in local languages.”

So what is the deal with GPU and with Apple’s push to bring OpenCL to their Mac OS X “Snow Leopard” revision? Well the answer is it’s all about processing power and speed. You can only get so much from a trad CPU even sporting 2 or 4 cores, however there are in excess of 100 microprocessor cores inside a GPU.

According to a report on guardian.co.uk, the thing is data needs to be served up fast enough to keep up with the speedy GPU processors high speed data crunching, and that hasn’t been standardised as yet, and this is where Apple’s OpenCL tech comes into play.

I know, you are thinking what has this to do with mobile space right? Well as the iPhone uses Mac OS and uses the same underpinnings as Mac OS X, any updates to that codename should be made available to the iPhone as well.

So with GPU processors boasting a huge ten times better power efficiency it will certainly make sense to grab hold of that embedded mobile GPU processor sitting in the iPhone. In other words we are likely to see GPU based processing hit the iPhone sometime in the future, all that’s needed is for Apple to figure out how to port OpenCL into the iPhone’s Mac OS.

An announcement has come from Openmoko that an agreement with Canada based Koolu will mean Koolu will distribute the Freerunner Open Source mobile phone in all the Americas, the EU and the UK with plans allotted to expand globally.

Koolu is known for its innovations in easy to use services like Skype and Google Apps will distribute the Freerunner to developers firstly then to consumers as Google Apps go mobile.

Koolu has also created a unique program within the mobile industry which offers the Neo FreeRunner in a referral program for Google Apps across the globe.

Jim Despathy, president of Koolu says: “Koolu will surround the phone with services and applications to lower the entry point to Internet and telephony access. The phone will reach new markets that are presently not being addressed by traditional phones and phone companies but at the same time bring these phone companies clients they previously could not reach.”

The Openmoko Neo FreeRunner mobile phone is available direct from Openmoko.com for $399.00. Thanks to Intomobile for this information.

Here’s some news for our Yankee cousins, although you may have heard it all before. Congress, responding to constituents who were complaining of ridiculous taxes on their mobile phone bills previously suggested freezing new wireless taxes from being added to monthly wireless subscription costs, but as usual the bill promptly kicked the political bucket.

However, according to RCR News, a new bill has been proposed which would in essence ban any new wireless taxes from being instituted in the next five years. Senator’s Olympia Snowe and Ron Wyden put forth the bill which would declare a year moratorium on mobile phone taxes from being added to the ever growing list of state and local wireless taxes.

Senator Wyden said: “Americans are being hit hard with rising costs for gas, health care, and food for the dinner table. Americans need to know that their cellphone bills won’t be the next cost to spiral out of control. Keeping our telecom infrastructure cutting-edge keeps our economy moving and helps the millions of Americans and businesses who depend on affordable wireless services.”

Furthermore the top dog wireless carriers even support with Verizon applauding the proposed legislation.

The Apple iPhone 3G seems to be having a few problems, no really? Yes, especially with the GPS hardware apparently. The iPhone 3G’s GPS hardware gets into trouble when connected to the AT&T 3G network.

The guys at iPhone Atlas report that some iPhone 3G users are moaning about inaccurate GPS positioning when the 3G data setting option is turned on.

As most know, the iPhone 3G uses aGPS which is assisted GPS so means the mobile network aids in positioning the mobile handset and giving the GPS hardware less to deal with. This means super fast GPS lock on.

However, it appears that some iPhone’s are receiving conflicting data from the 3G data network and the built-in GPS receivers thus leading to incorrect GPS positioning.

So here’s a fix from the iPhone Atlas guys: Go to settings, general, network, enable 3G and toggle off. Next locate yourself using the iPhone 3G’s GPS receiver, and then go to settings, general, network, enable 3G and toggle on.

This should now make your iPhone GPS accurate. However, if it doesn’t work drop us a comment saying so.

It would appear that Sony Ericsson is finally just about ready to release the long overdue PlayNow Arena mobile media store in one or two European locations. Seems to be several of these online stores popping up now that the Apple App Sore is online.

Anyway, SEMC Blog has grabbed the stats and a few screens on both web based and mobile based versions of the Arena client, although it bets the question as to why Sony Ericsson has taken so long to get this underway.

So, PlayNow is a unified portal for purchasing images, music, and games, great, but not exactly original is it? It’s vaguely interesting that many modern Sony Ericsson mobile handsets should have a tight integration with it out of the box.

N-Gage can use the excuse the gaming community aspect took longer than anticipated to build out, but PlayNow is not much more than a glorified store so should have easily been released ages ago.

So Apple is bragging the iPhone 3G has jumped over the magical million point, which is all well and good, but what does that actually mean? As always the answer is in the details, so yes we’ll give Apple the fact that the original iPhone only took 74 day to reach that particular milestone, but it was available in far less countries.

There are some referenced being spoken apparently that Apple is making reference to the number of iPhone 3G’s sold to its carrier partners rather than to actual users, which could bring the definition of “sale” under scrutiny, although Cupertino perspective would make sense as Apple’s payday does end with the carriers.

Now here is something quite interesting, Engadget has got hold of a few stats on number ports in and out of T-Mobile USA handled by a national carrier. What they have is data of the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G launches.

Here’s the ting, in excess of 1000 ports in total, ports to AT&T represent under 40% of the company’s total outflow during the days surrounding the launch of the iPhone 3G whereas virtually 70% last time round.

Also there were about the same amount of inbound ports from AT&T during the same time which means T-Mobile lost no ground because of the Apple iPhone 3G launch.

Yesterday AT&T announced that the new AT&T Navigator Global Edition the software which provides navigation capabilities is to extend its reach in 20 countries.

AT&T’s Navigator Global Edition coverage areas on AT&T powered smartphones will include most of Western Europe, North America and the U.S, the Caribbean along with the six cities in China which will be hosting the Beijing Olympic Games.

Senior vice president, Mobility Marketing and Operations for AT&T’s wireless operation, Jeff Bradley says: “The introduction of AT&T Navigator Global Edition is just another example of how AT&T is the nation’s leading provider of international wireless services. AT&T not only gives customers the ability to use their mobile phones in more countries than any other U.S. carrier, they now can use our robust GPS-based navigation offering whether at home or abroad to easily get from point A to point B or to find and get directed to a local business or service.”

Probably good news for the globetrotting business people out there which is who it looks like AT&T are targeting for a healthy $19.98 monthly charge as not to get lost worldwide.