The countdown is over. See our updates below for the IPhone 5 specifications.

There are rumors already circling stating that it’s just going to be called the iPhone 5. Do you think so? We will find out shortly for sure. There have been numerous leaks ahead of Wednesday’s event, from individual components like screen size guestimates and dock plugs to full-fledged prototypes of the iPhone. Of course, all of these remain suspect until Apple makes it official. Some leaks even suggest that there will be new lineups for the Apple iPod but we don’t know for sure until about another hour and a half.

The press conference, which is expected to bring Apple’s next iPhone, takes place at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in downtown San Francisco and kicks off at 10 a.m. Pacific. CNET just so happens to be there and they have created a live blog for you to follow. Click here to see the blog updates. They will also be running live commentary from editors Molly Wood, Brian Tong and Donald Bell beginning at 9 a.m. PT. Some of you may want to see the live feed from Apple themselves but that’s not going to happen. There’s no live video of the presentation itself, which is the usual for Apple’s events so CNET is helping out by blogging it for us all to see.

To all the Apple lovers, what do you expect to see in the next iPhone? What would you like to see? Are you waiting patiently for the event to start? We sure are and we will be following CNET’s blog to get the best details. After you collect all of the information and feel like you need to share your opinion, come right back here and let’s talk about it. We want to know if you were shocked, surprised, excited etc. How does this big event today make you feel?

Source: CNET

[UPDATED]

Here’s what has gone on so far at the live event and what you can expect in the new IPhone 5:

• Name – Iphone 5
• Operating System – IOS 6
• Shipping – Possibly October 5th
• Made entirely of glass and aluminum with a metal backing
• Thinnest and lightest Iphone so far
• 7.6mm thick (18% thinner than the IPhone4)
• 20% lighter
• Retina display with a 4″ screen size
• 1136 x 640 resolution
• Old applications run letter boxed
• 44% more color saturation in the screen
• Ultra fast wireless
• LTE Support – Verizon, At&t and Sprint
• Max 100MBPS download speeds
• Single chip for voice and data
• A6 processor two times faster graphics and CPU, which is 22% smaller and more energy efficient
• Time shifted multi-player
• 8MP camera and a front facing camera (face time over cellular networks)
• Dynamic low light mode for camera
• 40% faster image capture in the camera
• Camera will have panorama mode
• Camera creates up to a 28 megapixel image
• Take photos while recording!!
• 3 microphones
• New, 80% smaller USB connector called “Lightning”
• Apple created adapters to work with the older accessories
• Turn by turn navigating from Siri
• Safari gets full screen mode

Do these specifications make you happy? Let us know how you feel in the comment section below.

Are you one of the consumers still hanging on to that Palm Pre or WebOS device? If so, you may feel like helping the Internals out. They are currently taking donations throughout the next two days. These donations, during what they are calling “The 2012 Web-a-thon,” will be used to support their WebOS Internals with things such as development, testing and many other goodies related to their open source experiments.

Just last year the WebOS community did something very similar and raised a very large sum of $16,699.00. The donations were a great success and helped keep the Internals from having their members pay out of pocket for the tests and other costs they run into while further developing the operating system. If you aren’t sure who the Internals are or what I am referring to I’ll tell you. This group of people use their spare time helping WebOS grow and develop into what it is today. We can refer to them as the masterminds behind WebOS being super fast and functioning the way it does today.

You may be laughing now if you have moved on from WebOS but believe me, there are still users out there who love their devices. We have all seen WebOS struggle throughout the past few years but we also know that they have also performed miracles time and time again. If it weren’t for their users they may not still be here. Those users did not only raised $16,699.00 last year but they are already up to $4,000 so far this year. WebOS and its users are apparently still hanging on.

To make a donation, head over to the WebOS Internals site support page to . If you know someone who loves WebOS, please share the news with them. You never know who may be willing to help and every little bit counts so why not? Do you have a WebOS device? Were you one of the people who donated to their 2011 web-a-thon? If so we would like to know! If you aren’t a member here yet and just stumbled upon this article, join here to give your input.

Source: WebOSNation

May 23rd sounds a lot better than indefinitely!

Thanks to Inside Sprint Now for a little hope.

According to an Inside Sprint Now blog ALL pre-orders are in a “Pick and Pack” status. So wouldn’t that mean that the pre-orders are basically ready to go and we are really just waiting to find out what is happening on the legal side of things.

I personally like thinking that they will have enough on hand to ship out the orders all at once, but I am not sure how I feel about being told the phones are at customs when the above makes it sound like they are not.

What are you thoughts on this? Do you think that all orders are really ready to go like mentioned in the Inside Sprint Now blog? Do you think they are truly still sitting at customs? Is it possible that this is just a scheme in Apple’s master plan to sue everyone into dumbing down their products so Apple can catch up? ((Ok, maybe that last question was a bit “aggressive”.))

Thanks to Inside Sprint Now for their insight on the this story here: http://insidesprintnow.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/update-htc-evo-4g-lte-delayed-launch-status/

The latest Nielsen survey released shows some pretty amazing trends in the cell phone industry. First to note is that smartphones now account for 50% of all phone purchases in the U.S., marking a 38% increase over last year at this time. According to Nielsen, this growth is attributed to increasing smartphone adoption, with more than two thirds of the phones purchased in the last three months being smartphones.

What could be considered even more of a telling sign of things to come are the numbers per platform. Android remained unchanged with 48% of the market share, with iOS coming in at 43% and the remaining 9% comprised of RIM, Nokia and Microsoft. The increase of iOS and the unchanged share of Android smartphones in the survey show that these two powerhouses form nothing short of a duopoly in smartphone purchases, in the U.S. RIM slipped to an all time low of 5% with all ofthers comprising the remaining 4%.

While Android is at the top and iOS is steadily coming up behind them, what does this leave for RIM, Nokia and Microsoft? Will they be able to survive the loss of so many new customers? Do they have something up their sleeves to turn things around or are we destined to witness their collapse in the cell phone industry? Which OS do you use and are you tempted to try anything else? If so, which ones?

Give us your thoughts below!

Source: Nielsen Survey

Today, HP decided to drop an early Christmas present for WebOs loyalists and development. A few month prior things looked bleak for HP after spending $1.2 billion on Palm only to have their Tablets collect dust and carriers refusing to carry their devices.

It almost seemed like an end to WebOS when BesyBuy and other distributors decided to send all their stock of TouchPads back, forcing HP into making the best of it and selling it at a loss on a fire sale. People were able to get their hands on a HP Touchpad for as low as 99$ – 149$ depending on capacity. Even though HP officially discontinued the HP TouchPad they still maintained updates and promised that WebOS would live on.

Still, the future of WebOs seemed uncertain as HP itself seems to have went on to reshuffling, and talks broke out of possibilities of licensing the os, selling to os, or even as far as selling off the entire consumer division of HP. These talks eventually came to an end as HP denied any ongoing effort to sell their divisions but the future of WebOs remained shrouded.

Fast forward to today, HP has finally decided on a course for WebOS, it will now be distributed under an open source license. While certain components of WebOs were always open source like the Linux Kernel which was distributed under the GPL license. HP has yet to announce under which open source license they plan to release the source code.

This effectively moves HP from competing in the iphone’s business model to direct competition against Android. HP was quick to point out in the press release though, that they plan to keep a tight grip on licensees to prevent fragmentation.

Personally I think the best start for WebOs would be to include the ability to run Android Applications, this will pave doors open for larger app support until they can build up their own app library.

What do you make of this? Does this put a new interest in webos? Are you already really thinking about porting WebOs to that TP2?

Source

Taiwanese phonemaker HTC says its recent poor stock market performances are not “so serious”, and points to its plans to release “better and more competitive” handsets for the U.S. market in 2012.

HTC has been facing a double whammy in patent infringement lawsuits and a dwindling of its product competitiveness, sources in the handset industry believe that the pressure to win in terms of product competition is more crucial for HTC.

Many have been concerned of HTC losing its strength after the company last a patent lawsuit to Apple recently and also lowered its revenue guidance for the forth quarter of 2011, pushing its share prices down.

In a recent report published on Monday, it was pointed out that HTC has become the worst performer among its competitors shares this year, with the company’s stock falling over 30 percent in the last eight trading sessions alone. The Taiwanese company’s chief financial officer, Winston Yung, said the situation is not “so serious”.

HTC’s ongoing lawsuits will not help the current financial situation either. The company recently said it has no plans to appeal a 2009 ruling that gave IPCom the winning hand in a patent lawsuit. The decision could result in a German injunction against sales of HTC smartphones, which could hurt the Taiwanese company during the holiday season.

HTC is hoping to turn its luck around with the release of two new handsets scheduled for debut at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), next year. The upcoming handsets are reportedly known as the HTC Ville and the HTC Edge.

The HTC Ville is reported to be be thinner than an iPhone measuring in at 8mm thick, with a 4.3″ super AMOLED Touchscreen, HTC Sense 4.0, 1.5GHZ dual-core processor, 8 MP camera, HPSA+ network, and a 1,650mAH battery. The handset is expected to launch in April 2012.

The HTC Edge is expected and rumored to have a quad-core 1.5GHz NVIDIA processor and expected to be 8mm thin too. Some other features included 4.7″ HD S-LCD touchscreen, HD video recording,  720p front-facing camera, Beats Audio, Bluetooth 4.0, 1,800mAH battery and NFC. Because the device is so thin it is rumored to not have a microSD slot. To make up for the lack of a microSD slot the phone is rumored to house 32GB of built-in storage with 1GB of RAM.

Many investors still remain skeptical that the Taiwanese company can remain innovative and continue to make phones attractive as it has in the past. “More foreign investors atre still selling HTC as the company doesn’t have many bets in hand,” Masterlink Investment Advisory vice president Tom Tang told Reuters. “And unlike last time, HTC didn’t make a share buyback plan this time.”

Since the second half of 2011, HTC has added more elements such as fashion and brand image to its product lineups but has done little to upgrade the hardware specifications of its smartphones. The lineups including HTC Ryhme, HTC Sensation XE and HTC Sensation XL are similar fashion models.

On the other hand, Samsung has been keen in rolling out innovative products. It has knocked out rivals with HD displays, sending competitors also adopting comparable displays. Motorola has decided to purchase Samsung’s Super AMOLED panels for its smartphones, and HTC is also expected to follow suit.

HTC also has to further diversify its markets, given that sales generated from North America account for 50% of its total revenues currently.

Only time will tell if HTC can turn this slump around and continue to be one of the leading innovators in the smartphone industry.