Big surprises, eh? Sony Ericsson has been playing fast and loose with its calendar yet again, as it has just announced that the hotly (and by now angrily) anticipated upgrade to Android 2.1 for its X10 family of devices won’t be happening until late October. We were given the gravest of assurances that the end of September would be the time our tragic wait would end, but nope, apparently “we need a couple of more weeks before we are ready to start the roll-out.” Just so we’re clear, this isn’t Android 2.2, which is Google’s current highest iteration and has been around for months now — this is the upgrade to 2.1, aka Eclair, aka the software that’s not too far away from its first birthday. SE is trying to console users with promises of HD video and continuous autofocus bundled into the Xperia X10 update, but then there’s also word that different configs of the phones will get the update at different times. So don’t be surprised if your French-speaking X10 Mini is still doing the Donut deep into November.
Sounds like it’s not much of a delay — but be that as it may, if you were hoping to pick up your colorful N8 in the tail end of this month… well, we don’t quite know how to say this, but you’re going to want to make other plans. Backing up rumors that have been going around the past couple days, locales that had expected to get the N8 in September have now been pushed back to October while Nokia makes “some final amends.” On the upside, some rumors had the delay pegged for November, so this doesn’t seem to be as bad as it could’ve been. For what it’s worth, Nokia mentioned during Nokia World last week (and again today) that the N8 is seeing strong pre-order demand — the strongest ever for a Nokia device, allegedly — so this is likely to bum out a lot of folks, and for a few, it might even be just the impetus they needed to hold out for the upcoming E7. Here’s the full statement:
“The amount of preorders has exceeded our expectations and we are working hard to deliver the Nokia N8 to the market. In some markets, we had planned to start delivering the Nokia N8s to our pre-order customers by the end of September. To ensure a great user experience, we have decided to hold the shipments for a few weeks to do some final amends. We’re thrilled with the response that we’ve had to the Nokia N8 and assure everyone who’ve pre-ordered it already that it’ll be worth the wait! We expect consumers to get their Nokia N8s during October.”
Man, there’s about a zero percent chance that Steve Jobs and company are happy about this. Just days after shocking the market with higher-than-expected profits and revenues, Apple is having to grit its teeth once more with yet another iPhone 4 problem. This time, the elusive white iPhone — yeah, that one that we toyed with at the WWDC announcement keynote — is being delayed again. The new due date? Sometime “later this year.” Here’s the full, and unsurprisingly brief, announcement:
“Statement by Apple on White iPhone 4
White models of Apple’s new iPhone(R) 4 have continued to be more challenging to manufacture than we originally expected, and as a result they will not be available until later this year. The availability of the more popular iPhone 4 black models is not affected.”
This almost goes without saying, but it’s truly been a wild ride for the iPhone 4 over the last three weeks. While most of us will just happily open our hands to Stevie J’s freebies, there’s one question that’s still bugging us: what’s actually holding back the white iPhone 4? Sure, Apple’s now promised us an “end of July” delivery for its latest iTemptation, but it has yet to specify what the manufacturing difficulty is. According to Chinese newspaper 21st Century Business Herald, the problem stems from a little-known Chinese factory by the name of Lens Technology, which is apparently responsible for transforming fine raw glass into the majority of iPhone glass panels out there (and contrary to previous reports, there’s no mention of Corning here). Read on to find out what’s causing our invisible hero to stall.
Still haven’t received your HTC Droid Incredible due to that AMOLED shortage? Then it looks like you’ll soon be hearing from Verizon, if you haven’t already. Android Central reports that the carrier has begun sending letters to all customers still waiting for their phones that apologizes for delay, and informs them that they’ll soon also be receiving a $25 Verizon gift card as a little thank you for their patience. As for when you’ll actually receive the phone itself, however, Verizon is only saying that if your order date was June 28th or prior, you “may experience an additional delay of up to 7 business days.”
As friends very near and dear to us have confessed, “soon” is a relative term. If you’ll recall, we heard from Palm (in)directly that the next webOS update was “coming soon” back in the early days of May, and here we are a fortnight from July without so much as an update regarding the update. Well, without an official update. A source over at Pre|Central has confirmed that a release of webOS 1.4.5 is “imminent,” and while the primary purpose will be to get a better handle on PDK apps, it’s also expected to finally bring 3D gaming to the oft-forgotten Pixi. Purportedly, carrier testing on the new OS is just about wrapped, with one unnamed operator waiting for a small bug to be squashed and AT&T simply waiting for waiting’s sake. At any rate, we’re still left twiddling our thumbs and hoping for the best, but at least we’ve a sliver of hope that our patience is about to pay off.
As in any business, in the world of the smartphone there are winners and there are losers. Earlier this week Apple blew away market expectations and posted a $3 billion profit thanks largely to increased popularity of the iPhone. For the competition news is not so good, and while Nokia did manage to boost earnings per share 40 percent this year, it missed analyst expectations and, more importantly, is having to delay the release of Symbian^3 until sometime in the third quarter. The release was initially due in the first half of the year, then became a little more specific as a Q2 release. These factors have sent share prices dropping 12 percent and leaves Nokia fans waiting another few months for a taste of something fresh — not good when there are so many other delectable options up for the taking.
Microsoft’s new Kin phones promise to let “Generation Upload” stay in touch with their friends via integrated, streamlined social networking. It’s the main draw, the big selling point, the reason why teens, tweens and those who want to share pictures of huge fat men eating Chipotle burritos will get one. But unless you hit a manual refresh button, Microsoft says Kin will only let you stay in touch in fifteen-minute intervals. That’s how often the company’s servers will ping Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Windows Live to grab info from the cloud. “We didn’t want the device always pulling data from the network,” said one engineer, citing battery life and immature social network APIs as primary reasons why. Our take? This might be how Microsoft intends to leverage cheaper data plans out of Verizon — by subtly throttling data usage — providing an always-on 3G experience at a tween-affordable price. We’ll just have to see if “Heather M.” appreciates that, when her clothing recommendation is subject to a quarter-hour delay.
Oh, bollocks! After hearing for days that Verizon Wireless would be pushing out the highly anticipated Android 2.1 update to its stable of Droid users, along comes this. Internal company documentation clearly states that the aforementioned update won’t be going down today, and there’s no clear indication of when it will. To quote:
“The OTA software update for the Droid by Motorola is TBD. A new date will be communicated as soon as possible.
The 3/18 OTA software update will not happen as planned. A new date will be communicated as soon as possible.”
We knew things were just too quiet after the noon hour, and now we know why. An impromptu support group meeting has been scheduled for 1:30PM ET, though we’re hearing the location is still being decided…
Palm might be able to use a bit of goodnews right about now, but it looks like it may not be able to count on that coming from AT&T. As AllThingsD‘s John Paczkowski reports, Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek is now saying that Palm’s still as yet unconfirmed launch on AT&T has been pushed back from its rumored April debut to June or July. What’s more, Misek says that the delay isn’t one of the usual variety, with AT&T reportedly citing a “long list of technical issues with the Pre and Pixi,” and even going so far as to decrease its initial order size and “sharply reduce” its marketing budget for the launch. Of course, we are still taking about a rumored delay to an unconfirmed launch, but we should be hearing directly from Palm soon enough — it’s scheduled to report its third-quarter earnings after Thursday’s closing bell.
