MacRumors

Valleywag reports that Sacramento, California law firm Kershaw, Cutter & Ratinoff (KCR) has begun soliciting iPhone 4 customers for their experiences with signal loss when holding the device in a specific manner.

KCR is currently investigating potential problems with the release of iPhone 4.

If you recently purchased the new iPhone and have experienced poor reception quality, dropped calls and weak signals, we would like to hear from you.

The firm is offering telephone, email, and live chat contact options for customers as it presumably begins looking to launch a class action lawsuit against Apple.

KCR gained some fame last year for its class action suit filed late last year against Facebook and social gaming company Zynga over scammy "special offer" ads in Zynga's popular games.

Apple's response to the signal issues and prospect of class action lawsuits is not yet known, with initial comments from CEO Steve Jobs and Apple brushing off the issue being followed by a "stay tuned" comment from Jobs suggesting that some sort of action may be taken.

Apple has begun been shipping their bumper cases for the iPhone 4. Several readers have been posting photos of their iPhones in the various bumper colors: White, Pink, Green, Blue, and Orange. iPhone 4 accessory manufacturers got an unexpected boost when Apple released a statement last week recommending the use of a case for the iPhone 4 if you suffered from signal attenuation issues.

As usual, there are a large number of 3rd party case manufacturers who are ramping up their production. Several early models are already on the market, but many others are still pending.

Grovemade is offering a particularly eye catching bamboo design for the iPhone 4. The design is more cosmetic than protective as the FAQ reports that the case may not survive a severe impact.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, if you're looking for hard core protection, Ballistic recently announced their Ballistic HC Series case for the iPhone 4. Designed for severe conditions, the case design is said to have 4 layers of protection and a built in screen protector.

As previously reported, AT&T retail stores were unable to offer walk-in sales of the iPhone 4 until today (June 29th). Starting at 7am, customers should (theoretically) be able to walk into local retail AT&T stores to purchase the iPhone 4. Lines, however, have already started forming at AT&T stores across the country. 20 people have been reported at one AT&T store in Las Vegas, and a quick twitter search shows more people waiting across the country.

If you aren't willing to wait in line (again), AT&T has also updated their website and is now offering online ordering.

Yesterday, Apple announced that over 1.7 million iPhone 4s sold in the first three days on sale, making it the most successful launch in Apple's history.

Update:

We knew it had to happen. One developer has made a video demonstrating their Flashlight app for the iPhone 4. Unlike the countless Flashlight apps for the original iPhone which simply turned the screen white, this new app actually makes use of the LED camera flash on the iPhone 4. What we won't know is if this runs afoul of any of Apple's App Store rules. The developer, however, is planning on submitting it to the App Store.

Meanwhile, individuals have worked on unofficially installing Apple's iWork and iMovie apps to other iOS devices. The iWork apps are presently iPad only while the iMovie app is an iPhone 4 exclusive. Aside from some formatting issues, Pages seems to work fine on the iPhone 4. There have been hints that Apple is planning on bringing the productivity suite to the iPhone.

Meanwhile, Redmond Pie posts a video of iMovie running on the iPhone 3GS. It is said to be running "almost perfectly". One person even got it running on an iPhone 3G -- though with some crashes. The findings are interesting in that we had speculated that iMovie might have required the higher RAM and faster processor of the iPhone 4.

Earlier this month, a screenshot highlighting the iPhone's ability with iOS 4 to open attachments in external applications hinted at the possibility of a release of an iPhone version of Apple's iWork productivity suite. The screenshot was quickly replaced with one mentioning iBooks instead of Keynote, although many continued to wonder whether it was a marketing mistake or a product development revelation.

A new discovery on Apple's site again points to the possibility of iWork for iPhone. The mention comes on a number of Apple's international online stores, including sites in Canada, the UK, and Australia. When ordering unlocked iPhones through Apple's online stores in these countries, customers are presented with the option of adding AppleCare to their orders. Clicking the "Learn more" link for AppleCare on the ordering page reveals additional information on the program, with a section devoted to software support specifically mentioning "Using iWork for iPhone and other Apple-branded iPhone apps" as a topic for which users can receive assistance.

A release of iWork for iPhone would not be a tremendous surprise given that Apple has already created iPad versions of Keynote, Pages and Numbers, although the iPhone's smaller screen size would undoubtedly introduce additional challenges for content creation and editing.

Amazon today announced the launch of embedded audio and video clips for its Kindle eBook application for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced a new update to Kindle for iPad and Kindle for iPhone and iPod touch, which allows readers to enjoy the benefits of embedded video and audio clips in Kindle books. The first books to take advantage of this new technology, including Rick Steves' London by Rick Steves and Together We Cannot Fail by Terry Golway, are available in the Kindle Store at http://www.amazon.com/kindleaudiovideo.

As an example of the utility of the feature, the press release points to travel guides such as Rick Steves' London, which contains an embedded audio walking tour of the city.

"In the new Kindle Edition with audio/video of Rick Steves' London, the embedded walking tours allow customers to listen to Rick as they explore the sites of London," said Bill Newlin, publisher, Avalon Travel. "Rick's narration adds depth to the reader's experience, while listeners can follow the routes more easily with the text."

The update brings a new weapon to Amazon's arsenal in the increasing arms race among eBook retailers looking to lure readers to their platforms. Apple's iOS platform is serving as a major venue in which the competition is playing out, with all of the major participants including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Apple itself deploying dedicated applications for their services.

BusinessWeek reports on new teardown research from iSuppli estimating component costs for the entry-level 16 GB iPhone 4 at $187.51, up slightly from the $178.96 figure for the 16 GB iPhone 3GS at its launch last year.

"Over the years, the iPhone has generally tended to hover in the $170-to -$180 cost range because Apple seems to be trying to hit some kind of budget," Kevin Keller, who helped conduct the iSuppli teardown, says in an interview.

According to iSuppli, the new iPhone's most expensive component is its screen, with the so-called "Retina" display clocking in at $28.50.

As with all of iSuppli's analyses, the component costs do not cover such expenses as software, research and development, distribution, and patent royalty costs that cut significantly into Apple's apparent profit margin. Also unknown is exactly how much Apple is receiving in subsidies for each iPhone 4 sold, although various reports and guess have placed it somewhere between $300 and $450.

iSuppli's report notes that the component costs for the iPhone 3GS, still available in an 8 GB form priced at $99, have dropped to $134 from the $179 figure at last year's launch. While the decline is primarily due to component cost declines that are natural in the technology industry, it is unclear whether the figures are comparing today's 8 GB model with last year's 16 GB model, in which case some of the price difference would be due to the smaller about of NAND flash memory required.

Apple today announced sales of over 1.7 million iPhone 4s through Saturday, covering just the first three days of sales.

Apple today announced that it has sold over 1.7 million of its iPhone 4 through Saturday, June 26, just three days after its launch on June 24. The new iPhone 4 features FaceTime, which makes video calling as easy as one tap, and Apple's new Retina display, the highest resolution display ever built into a phone, resulting in stunning text, images and video.

"This is the most successful product launch in Apple's history," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "Even so, we apologize to those customers who were turned away because we did not have enough supply."

Saturday marked the end of Apple's third fiscal quarter (and second calendar quarter), and thus sales from Sunday forward will be included in Apple's next fiscal quarter, due to end in late September.

For both the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G, Apple announced sales of over one million for their respective launch weekends. It took 74 days for the original iPhone to move one million units.

Apple continues to note that iPhone 4 will move beyond the initial launch countries of the United States, UK, France, Germany, and Japan into an additional 18 countries by the end of July: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

Given the amount of criticism that Apple has received for their curated App Store, it should be interesting to see that Google's unmoderated solution for Android is not without its own criticisms. CNet reported on the high potential for abuse in the Android marketplace:

About 20 percent of the 48,000 apps in the Android marketplace allow a third-party application access to sensitive or private information, according to a report released on Tuesday.

While most of these apps are not malicious, spyware is said to be a growing problem. Google denies it being a real issue, however, and points out that users must explicitly allow applications to get access to the data. While true, Jon Johansen disputes the practicality of these checks and also believes that Google's lack of curation is hurting their marketplace:

Google does far too little curation of the Android Market, and it shows. Unlike Apple's App Store, the Android Market has few high quality apps.
...
Below are just a few examples of what's wrong with the Android Market. Those 144 spam ringtone apps (which are clearly infringing copyright) are currently cluttering the top ranks of the Multimedia category. I was not surprised to find that they were being monetized through Google Ads.

Meanwhile, this past week, Google remotely disabled two apps from all Android phones. This so-called "Kill Switch" received a lot of publicity when it was revealed that Apple had the same functionality for the App Store. So far, Apple has not been known to have triggered it. According to Google, the remotely disabled apps were not malicious, but misrepresented themselves in order to encourage downloads:

Recently, we became aware of two free applications built by a security researcher for research purposes. These applications intentionally misrepresented their purpose in order to encourage user downloads, but they were not designed to be used maliciously, and did not have permission to access private data -- or system resources beyond permission.INTERNET. As the applications were practically useless, most users uninstalled the applications shortly after downloading them.

The removed apps were said to be a theoretical demonstration of how to create a "botnet" of hijacked phones.

By cloaking an application capable of "fetching" new exploit code at will in a fake application offering preview pictures of the upcoming "Twilight Eclipse" film, he tricked more than 300 users into downloading the software. The lesson: a less friendly developer could have used that bait and switch to plant malware on users' devices.

One MacRumors reader emailed Steve Jobs in a followup about the widely publicized iPhone 4 signal issues that have been reported across the web. In particular, rfbandit was asking about Apple's policy on giving free bumper cases to alleviate the issue. "I love everything about the phone except my signal issues", he wrote.

Steve Jobs reportedly replied immediately with:

There are no reception issues. Stay Tuned.

The response is notable in that it is not simply a copy/paste of the official statement from Apple. Steve Jobs had previously been replying to all signal inquiries on Friday with the same generic statement published Thursday:

Gripping any phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.

That public statement from Apple essentially described the issue as a normal phenomenon. Today's email provides users some hope that a fix might somehow be on the way. In fact, one report even claimed an iOS update as early as Monday might be able to relieve the issue due to a lag in the iPhone 4's ability to switch between frequencies causing the loss in signal.

One of the hidden benefits of the 3G iPad was improved GPS accuracy and speed over the iPhone 3GS. The improvement was attributed to a newer GPS chip from Broadcom. iFixit's teardown revealed that the iPhone 4 shares the same Broadcom BCM4750 chip as the iPad, suggesting the iPhone 4 will see the same benefits.

At least one reader experience confirms the improved GPS accuracy and speed of the iPhone 4:

I used my Navigon GPS app today for about ten minutes, nothing to long or in depth, but the [iPhone 4] got a lock in seconds and was spot on. I'll test it tonight going home from work and see how it does but I didn't notice any issues earlier today, in fact it was a huge leap from the 3GS in terms of reliability and accuracy.

Several readers have reported that the iPhone 4 does make good on its promise of increased upload speeds over 3G. ZDNet posted some comparisons between the iPhone 3G and iPhone 4 using Speedtest.

I started noticing this on Thursday after I picked up the iPhone 4. The first bandwidth speed tests that I ran showed that I was getting much higher bandwidth numbers that I was used to seeing on AT&T. I was getting over 2 Mbps on downloads and over 700K on uploads.

The ZDNet author was unable to replicate the signal loss issue at his location (Louisville, Kentucky). How much you might individually benefit from the improved HSUPA depends on the status of your AT&T wireless network in your area.

The success of the iPhone 4 launched has been otherwise marred by widespread reports of signal loss. The signal loss seems to occur when the iPhone 4 is held in a certain position resulting in the bridging of the two antenna on the bottom left of the device (see video above). Reports have been varied, however, with many still claiming that the issue does not affect them at all. It's been suggested that signal or tower differences may account for the different experiences.

We've organized this poll to see how common the problem is and broken down by region to see if there are any regional differences.

At the iPhone 4's introduction at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple made significant mention of the device's capabilities, noting that while the device carries only 5 megapixels in comparison to the 8-megapixel cameras that are becoming standard on the latest smartphones, the new iPhone offers a great deal beyond simple pixel count that contributes to superior performance.

With iPhone 4 now on the market, and samples of Motorola's new Droid X, introduced on Wednesday, coming available, objective camera tests for both still and video imaging have become possible using the latest devices.

Macworld performed a series of tests comparing iPhone 4 with its predecessor, the iPhone 3GS, as well as the Droid X, HTC EVO 4G, Samsung Galaxy and HZ35W, as well as basic Samsung and Sony point-and-shoot cameras. For video tests, the publication also threw in the Flip Video M2120. A series of images and videos was taken with the devices, and a blind evaluation of their quality was performed.

In still image testing, the two point-and-shoot took top honors, with Apple's iPhone 4 right behind, leading the pack of smartphones, supporting Apple's claim that pure megapixel count is not a sufficient measure of image quality.

The iPhone 4 had, by a healthy margin, the best exposure and color scores of the entire bunch, beating out even the point-and-shoot cameras. It did run into trouble in the sharpness and distortion categories, performing much lower than the pocket cameras and similarly to the Droid.

For video quality, iPhone 4 topped all other smartphones, as well as the point-and-shoot camera, losing out only to the dedicated Flip Video camera.

While its image quality was impressive, it was the iPhone 4's video capabilities that really stole the show in our lab tests. Of the eight devices we rated for video, only the Flip Video M2120 scored higher. The Flip, which also records 720p, 30fps video, had just slightly better video quality than the iPhone 4, even in low-light.

Audio was a bit less impressive on iPhone 4, only matching the Droid X while the Samsung Galaxy took the top spot for smartphones behind the Flip camera.

Boy Genius Report has also performed a comparison of iPhone 4's HD video capabilities to those of Droid X, which both shoot in 720p. The report awarded top honors to Apple's iPhone 4, in part due to its superior framerate of 30 fps versus 24 fps for the Droid X.

iPhone 4's use of the H.264 format also allowed it to achieve the better performance with file sizes less than half that of Droid X. Despite iPhone 4's overall victory, however, the study found that Droid X beat out iPhone 4 in both color accuracy and audio quality, somewhat disagreeing with Macworld's assessment on those aspects.

One of the key features of iPhone 4 is FaceTime, Apple's new video calling feature. Unfortunately, the feature is currently limited to iPhone 4-to-iPhone 4 calls, making it difficult for some people to try out the new feature if they don't know any other users with the device.

Apple has addressed the issue with a new FaceTime support and testing hotline at 1-888-FACETIME, mentioned in an email sent to some iPhone 4 customers by Apple. Callers to the FaceTime hotline will be asked a few questions about their phone and Wi-Fi situation before being transferred to a FaceTime session with an Apple representative. Callers can then receive information about the feature, ask questions, and test things out with the Apple representative on the other side.

The FaceTime hotline is currently available between the hours of 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM Central Time.

Hardmac reports that it has heard that Apple is considering rebranding Mac OS X under the new "iOS" name recently rolled out as a replacement for "iPhone OS". The change would serve as a means for uniting Apple's operating systems under a single naming scheme with multiple flavors.

They are currently thinking of using iOS as the default naming/branding of Apple OS. We would then have iOS desktop, iOS server and iOS mobile. The final decision is not taken yet, however, the proposal seems to be well supported by the high management, it would give a better exposure and unity to Apple OS platforms while making communication easier.

Such a change could facilitate branding and marketing if Apple were to release touchscreen-enabled Macs running an "iOS mobile" layer on top of the traditional Mac OS X.

While the "i" naming scheme has become synonymous with Apple's mobile devices, it obviously has its origins in the iMac, introduced in 1998 and carried along through multiple iterations to today's desktop computer still bearing the same name. A tighter marketing integration of Apple's traditional Mac operating system and mobile operating system could help Apple position itself for a future where lines between computing environments continue to blur.