Apple iPhone 4S arrives in China, 21 other countries next week

Apple on Wednesday announced that iPhone 4S will begin, in 22 more countries next week, including China.

13 January, Apple iPhone will be the introduction of the latest to the following countries: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cameroon, Central African Republic, China, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Grenada, Guam, Guinea Conakry, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands and Uganda.

Apple has launched iPhone 4S in seven countries back in October and gradually added new environment in the months since. The latest group brings the total number of countries which have 4S iPhone to more than 90.

As the fastest growing market for the iPhone, China's most of the country on the list. CEO Tim Cook last year called China "lock" to Apple's earnings. It seems that the Chinese fanboys be ravenous for Apple gadgets, too. In fact, just a week after the iPhone 4S went into sales in individual States, was rumored, the phone was for the more than 2 000 dollars in Beijing markets.

Ticonderoga securities analyst Brian White speculated in a note Wednesday, investors, which Apple timed Chinese iPhone, 4S roll just before Chinese new year (which begins January 23) to give people time to phone as gifts.

Apple products on the market in China have a history of fairly insane. The may opening of white iPhone 4 ended up the fight in the line of outside the Apple flagship store in Beijing. Apple security locked the entrance to the trade, but customers gave a glass façade and broke the door, prompting a complete shutdown for the rest of the afternoon.

After the incident Command required customers to book the white iPhone, than came to buy it. The company uses hotel reservation system for the iPhone 4S for several months here in the States.

For more information about iPhone 4S in revision PCMag, and the presentation below.

For more information from Leslie for her at @ LesHornTwitter.

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Apple flexes its legal muscle as another patent won makes it harder for other smartphone platforms

Have you ever been in the middle of a phone call and had the need to quick switch applications, perhaps to check an address or a location on the map, well unless your using an iPhone, this handy feature might not be around for long.

We’re only half way through the week and Apple have already blocked HTC (and by extension Google) from utilizing a feature already implemented within Android (at least in the US), but now it appears that another such instance could disappear from any smartphone not touched by the hand of Apple.

Apple’s latest patent acquisition, entitled “Portable electronic device with graphical user interface supporting application switching”, is essentially a patent that refers to a smartphone’s ability to switch applications whilst in a phone call. Now that Apple own such a patent, it will become increasingly difficult for any rival smartphone OS’s (primarily Android) to sport such a feature or at least implement it elegantly.

The biggest issue faced by rivals of the Cupertino-based company, are the broad and somewhat vague descriptions of what this patent encompasses. What follows are the terms of the patent itself and CBR’s 5-point breakdown of the key aspects they address:

Portable electronic device with graphical user interface supporting application switching terms
A method, comprising: at a portable electronic device with a touch screen display: displaying on the touch screen display a first user interface for a phone application during a phone call; detecting activation of a menu icon or menu button during the phone call, in response to detecting activation of the menu icon or menu button, replacing the first user interface for the phone application with a menu of application icons including an icon for the phone application and an icon for a non-telephone application; maintaining the phone call while displaying the menu of application icons on the touch screen display; detecting a finger gesture on an application icon in the menu of application icons other than the phone application icon; in response to detecting the finger gesture on the application icon other than the phone application icon, displaying a corresponding application user interface on the touch screen display while continuing to maintain the phone call and modifying the corresponding application user interface to include a switch application icon that is not displayed in the corresponding application user interface when there is no ongoing phone call; detecting a finger gesture on the touch screen display on the switch application icon; and in response to detecting the finger gesture on the switch application icon, replacing display of the corresponding application user interface with the first user interface for the phone application while continuing to maintain the phone call.

CBS’s breakdown of the patent
1. During a call on a mobile device with a touch screen, with the phone user interface showing, the users touches either a menu button or an icon.
2. The device replaces the phone interface with a menu of application icons, including the phone icon.
3. A user’s finger gesture chooses another app.
4. The app’s interface comes up, all the while not dropping the call. The interface includes a “switch application icon” only when a phone call is occurring.
5. The user performs a finger gesture on the switch application icon, taking the user back to the phone interface.

No doubt rival developers will find ways around the issues here, but chances are, it won’t be easy and their solutions, not as pretty. Patent ownership is the hidden war fought between OEM’s, away from the high street marketing and TV advertising. We’ll have to see if this affects the likes of Android and it’s competitors, excluding iOS of course.

Do you find yourself using the app switching in call feature and would it be an inconvenience if you had to change the way you operate your phone? Let us know in the comments.

Ripped Angry Birds compatible with other Nokia S40 phones

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We all know how popular the Angry Birds game is. And back at Nokia World when the S40-running Asha 300/303 were announced to come with the popular pig-bashing game pre-installed, fans of the platform loudly rejoiced.

However, it was not clear whether Angry Birds would run on older S40 devices. Well, worry no more – it works and it’s good to go for you to try out.

One of our readers managed to get hold of an Asha ROM and extract the 1.8MB .jar file of Angry Birds. Furthermore, he went on and installed it on his own Nokia X3-02. And guess what? According to him, it works great and it’s quite playable, too.

The game consists of 15 levels as it’s only a demo version, but nevertheless it’s great for every S40 device owner to be able to play it. Here are some not terribly great photos of how the game looks like on the X3-02.

If you want to try it out yourself, our tipster has kindly provided a link to the game’s .jar file for you to install. Head over to this link to download the game. Don’t forget to share your experience with it in the comments below.

Thanks, Shaunak!

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AppId is over the quota

FIFA 12 kicks off the holiday season on the Xperia PLAY, coming to other Xperia’s soon [VIDEO]

December 2nd, 2011 byAlex

Android, Gaming, Mobile phones

Get your studs out and put your favourite kit on, because FIFA 12 comes out today on the Android Market, assuming you own a PLAY that is.

Yesterday we spoke with EA Mobile’s Andrei Lazarescu and Alexandru Ruse alongside Sony Ericsson’s Tim Harrison (Head of Content and Marketing) to talk not only about the latest iteration of FIFA, but the PLAY as a mobile gaming device and its place in the mobile market as it is today, 8 months on from launch.

First off let’s talk about the game. The FIFA franchise should be no stranger to any gamer with an appreciation for the sports genre as a whole. A mainstay of soccer titles only really rivaled by the Pro Evolution family (which saw its mobile contender come exclusively to the PLAY early last month). The full fat console version of FIFA 12 (that’s FIFA Soccer 12 to those of you in the US) launched back in September but this mobile variant has had to wait in the wings for its debut.

We’ve had a bit of hands on time with it and it certainly impressed off the bat, with some pretty engrossing gameplay once a match really got underway, and this coming from a gamer who doesn’t typically like sports titles. The PLAY’s hardware doesn’t seem to struggle either which of course is key and character animations as well as gameplay run smoothly.

Close up shots do reveal a lack of the fidelity in the character models, but it’s to be expected when you take into account the typical way you’d view the game on that 4″ display. The gameplay is fluid and fun, the commentary varied and interesting and with a host of options like Leagues, Cups, Quick Match and Daily Challenge, there’s enough to potentially keep players coming back for quite some time.

FIFA 12′s trailer showing off what PLAY owners can expect from this new timed exclusive

Andrei and Alex have been involved with the mobile versions of FIFA for a few years now and were keen to explain what it was that makes FIFA 12 so special.

“This year fans can expect greater gameplay depth, authentic commentaries, updated team formats, the world’s top leagues, and new replay systems and stadium, designs to make for a more powerful FIFA mobile experience” Andrei explained.

The PLAY’s hardware came in to question multiple times throughout the conversation but the two seemed confident that it was a solid gaming platform to develop for and will be for some time to come.

Alex mentioned that, “We were pretty amazed by the PLAY’s performance during development. It really is a very powerful device. I don’t think it will become obsolete in a year’s time – developers won’t really build for one super high-end device and upgrading game engines takes time too.”

So from those behind FIFA 12, there’s concrete support and confidence at releasing such a mainstream title on such a unique platform as the Xperia PLAY, but there might be more to this than meets the eye. Not only has the PLAY recently taken a hefty price drop for the holiday season, but top tier titles such as FIFA 12 are not only exclusive to the PLAY but for a limited time free. Sony Ericsson clearly want to push the PLAY as this year’s stocking-filler of choice, but it’s a choice that will be left up to the consumers.

If you are lucky enough to own an Xperia PLAY you can pick up a number of EA titles for free right now as part of their “Get in the Game” promotion, including FIFA 12, but the festive generosity doesn’t appear to stop there. FIFA 12 will also become available to the newest members of the rest of the Xperia family (the Arc, Arc S, Neo, Ray and Pro) in the not too distant future, despite their lack of hardware controls. The exclusivity deal is set to expire next February and the price tag of zero will no doubt expire even sooner, so be quick (get the game here) if you want to be first on the pitch.

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