With iPhone 5 on the horizon, Google needs to do something to catch/keep our interest in Android and in the highly competitive marker of smartphones aside from new devices the best way to shake things up is a new OS!!! Google is trying just this with Ice Cream Sandwich!

I just made the leap from Froyo to Gingerbread on my phone (haven’t even used Honeycomb yet) and here we are looking at a new OS rumored to come out as soon as early October to compete with the highly anticipated iPhone 5.

According to this article some of the new features/improvements of ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) are USB host support and the highly anticipated music and movie rentals. Google is rolling out their movie rental service to devices soon and it will consist of movie rentals starting at $1.99 per rental. You have 30 days to view the movie from download date and 24 hours to complete it after you start to view the movie (more information found here). The music service will be like a cloud server to download your music collection to for use on your phone.

More information will be sure to come out as we get closer to release date, but with a lot of big phones closing in on their 2 year anniversary (upgrade time) and the projected release of new devices soon, I anticipate quite the buzz for a while!!

How about you guys? What do you think the chances are of Google holding it’s own against the new version of the heavy-hitting iPhone? What features would you like to see in ICS, or what features do you think it will need to compete with iPhone 5?

Sources: Phonearena   BGR   Talkandroid

The latest rumor in the Apple world seems to be that the next generation of iPhone will be completely SIM-less to accommodate both GSM and CDMA carriers, along with the 3 or 4 antennas so Apple doesn’t have to make two models like they are now for Verizon and AT&T. For CDMA people this is no shock as SIM-less way of life is not that big of an issue…Now for GSM folks, this is HUGE news – as this means that Apple will have to make an e-SIM that is stored in the devices memory. This could be a huge security issue if your phone was lost or stolen.

Let’s look at the advantages that having no SIM in the phone could mean…It could mean that they could use that space to cram more stuff into it, think memory, bigger batteries. Other rumored changes for the next iPhone, rumored to be known as the iPhone 4S and launching in July-August, include an 8-megapixel camera with an altered flash position. Possibly a new ARM Cortex-A9 processor similar to that found in the iPad2 and possibly a dual-core to keep up with the latest Android devices.

Additionally mentioned was the possibility of the iPhone5 for Spring 2012 release; an unusual time for Apple product to launch but certainly possible as the upcoming iPhone launch has been rumored to have little overall changes to the iPhone 4. As with the iPhone 3GS to iPhone4 release the iPhone 5 will likely features more aesthetically pleasing shape to the contour of your face and hands and have more upgrades/features than the iPhone 4S.

This is all supposed to be announce at WWDC 2011 on June 6th. I guess we can see if these rumors pan out or if they are just rumors. What do you think PPCGeeker’s what does Apple need to do to keep the edge over competition? I think they need to release to all carriers, and then be a little nicer to users about bugs issues when they are released. Think back to the “death grip”. Let me know down below – but please keep it clean and nice.

source: neowin.net

For quite a while now, Walt Mossberg at The Wall Street Journal has been testing the two iPhones, one on each network of course. Keywords: each network. The phones themselves are essentially identical, except for the fact that they have different radios inside to accommodate the two carriers’ differing network technologies. Verizon is CDMA and AT&T is GSM. Most of us know the difference.

During his tests, Walt Mossberg found that the Verizon iPhone has much better voice calls, but he says there’s a trade off in data speed. We’ll get to that part. He continues to say “I’m here to say: Yes, there are some major benefits to having your iPhone on Verizon, but, as with all good things, there are also trade-offs.”

Over a period of nine days, Mossberg found that he only had three dropped calls on Verizon, but guess what, they were each with an AT&T iPhone customer who didn’t have good service. He doesn’t blame Verizon for this one. He says the calls were crystal clear, including speakerphone and blue-tooth calls. With the AT&T model, in the same areas, he had several dropped calls.

Keep in mind though that during his first day of testing, neither devices functioned as they should have. He at first had several Verizon calls that dropped out for a few seconds before recovering and terrible battery life. The AT&T iphone did the same thing following the initial setup forcing him to reboot. After he did this to each of them, he was free from the instant, often dropped calls on newly activated devices and both had great battery lives. We wonder why this happened? What do you think?

So you’re asking, what about the trade-off Mossberg spoke of? The biggest one he mentions is data speed. That’s what every smartphone user looks for, well most of them. He performed several speed tests with the two devices, primarily in the Washington area and a part of a day at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Keep reading, it gets good.

Mossberg found that, despite a few Verizon victories here and there, AT&T’s network averaged 46% faster at download speeds and 24% faster at upload speeds. He says, “This speed difference was noticeable while doing tasks like downloading large numbers of emails, or waiting for complicated Web pages to load. AT&T’s speeds varied more while Verizon’s were more consistent, but overall, AT&T was more satisfying at cellular data.”

We aren’t here bashing either carrier, just stating the facts from a well trusted journalist from Wall Street. What we can say that’s extremely useful to AT&T customers right now, that Verizon doesn’t offer, is surfing the web and making a voice call at the same time. However, Verizon has plans to have certain models with that capability. It still is something AT&T can say they have that Verizon doesn’t.

Verizon isn’t the best everywhere you go and neither is AT&T. In the D.C. area, Mossberg had issues with the Verizon model switching from 3G to 2G mode. It had no affect on voice quality but did slow down the data.

Mossberg says, “Bottom line: In my tests, the new Verizon version of the iPhone did much better at voice calling than the AT&T version, and offers some attractive benefits, like unlimited data and a wireless hot-spot capability. But if you really care about data speed, or travel overseas, and AT&T service is tolerable in your area, you may want to stick with AT&T.”

Now what we want to know, will the iPhone 5 be completely different or just slightly updated? What changes do you think should happen and what do you think will happen? Let us know your thoughts on this article in the comments box below.

Source: WSJ