Siri For iPad 3

Apple’s mild-mannered assistant Siri has been a key component of the iPhone 4S’s success. The virtual personal assistant shows us a glimpse of the future where devices can actually help you out in day-to-day life all controlled by your voice. At the moment Siri makes it easier to send text messages, write emails and generally helps you keep up-to-date with what you need to do. We’d love to see the stern talking assistant make the jump to Apple iPad 3.

A New Form Factor

Apple has been historically stubborn to change the size of their devices, the iPhone has been 3-7inches since its inception, and the iPad is the same with a 9.7-inch form factor. Well, we’d love to see Apple embrace change and consider two different sizes of tablet. Clearly consumers want to be able to choose. Apple offers a multitude of different MacBooks in a range of sizes – could this be something the Cupertino company might consider with the iPad 3? Well, we’ve heard many rumours of a baby iPad and nothing has ever materalised – hopefully with the iPad 3 it might become a reality. Giving customers choices isn’t a bad thing. And it’s about time Apple realises this.

Embracing 3D

There’s no doubt that 3D has a place in consumers hearts – just look at recent 3DS sales – it’s clear that 3D is something consumers want. Considering that Apple’s iPad is becoming a go-to device for films and games it wouldn’t be a bad idea if Apple considered bringing 3D to the world’s best-selling tablet. From what we saw at CES 3D has plenty of new tricks up its sleeve and we wouldn’t bet against Apple jumping onboard at some point in the near future.

Glare-free Screen

Amazon’s range of Kindles, whether it be the original ink version or the new colour one, shows that glare-free screens are the future. The major downside of any handheld Apple device is the issue of viewing them in direct sunlight. It would be great to see Apple finally solve this bugbear and create and glare-free screen for the iPad 3.

A Truly Wireless Device

Apple has already taken measures to make the iPhone and iPad wire-free. Well, the next step would be to their make their devices charge without having to actually plug them into a wall. Such charging methods are starting to become popular – but few major companies have adopted it. Apple should be the first to make a truly next generation device free of cables and constraints.

A Battery That Can Last A Month

One crucial part of any mobile device is the battery and Apple has been a leading light in this sector. As far as were concerned no one has come close to competing with them when it comes to length of batterly life and stand-by time. There have been rumours that battery tech is going to get a big shake up in the next few years with some technology giants suggesting that future devices could last up to one month on a single charge. Now it might sound like pie in the sky, but we wouldn’t bet against Apple solving this problem – long battery life is everything in the mobile space.

Gorilla Glass 2.0 

One thing that caught our eye at this month’s CES was new Gorilla Glass – the screen technology is commonplace in any device that has a touchscreen. Well, the company behind it, Corning, unveiled Gorilla Glass 2 at CES. It’s a major step up over the current crop of screens. It offers better sensitivity, bright images and a thinner design which would help device makers create even smaller products. We’d love to see Apple use this new glass in the iPad 3 – make it so Apple.

Retina Display

Following on from glass is the screen. Now were almost certain that the iPad 3 will get a brand new screen and it’s likely to be a super-sharp Retina display. For more than one year now, consumers have been hoping for the Retina Display to come to the iPad. Let’s hope that it happens in 2012. A Retina display would finally mean that the iPad 3 will be known as truly high definition tablet. We’ve already seen Android devices with amazing screens, but Apple is likely to be the company to take this tablet screen technology to the masses.

Give Gamers What They Want

Gaming is a massive draw for Apple, not necessarily from the hardcore, but from more casual gamers. We’d love to see Apple take note of this new use and start giving gamers what they want: a controller. Touchscreen controls can only go so far – we’d love to see Apple come up with a mini controller for the iPad. So far they’ve been rather resistant, but if they want to push past casual gamers they’ll need address this need with the iPad 3.

NFC 

Looking ahead, it’s hard to argue that near-field communication and mobile-payment applications won’t be a big deal in the future. Google currently supports it with its Wallet service. And now, all attention is focused on Apple to follow its lead. Let’s hope it does just that with the launch of a mobile-payment solution in the iPad 3.

10 Things We Want To See In The New iPad 3 is a post from: UK Gadget and Tech News, Reviews and Shopping Site - Gaj-It.com

CES is in full swing and today we’ll give you some interesting details on origami laptops, tablets, 4K camcorders and even an Apple rumour.

Right, let’s get this Apple iPad rumour out of the way first. Now, everyone knows that Apple isn’t at CES (or are they?). Well, according to iLounge they’ve seen something interesting from Apple at CES.

The iPad 3. Now before you start the obligatory trolling, let’s just give them a chance. First of all there’s no picture. Ok….. But there’s the testimony of someone who has seen it and works for a reputable publication: iLounge.

Jeremy Horwitz, has been shown what he was a told is the new iPad. What does it looks like? Well, the iPad 2. According to Horwitz, if you had them side-by-side then you’d struggle to tell them apart. The only visual difference was that it’s a tiny bit thicker: 1mm. According the whistleblowers the design changes are more akin to the changes we saw in the iPhone 4 to 4S. Basically none.

The main talking point about the rumour is the screen. Although iLounge didn’t get to see it working (we know) the new iPad has indeed got a Retina display. According to Horwitz and his manufacturing sources they reckon the new tablet will be with us within 2 months under the name iPad 2S or iPad 2HD.

It’s not the first time new tech is shown off behind closed doors, remember the time Reuters saw the iPad 2 at The Daily Launch?

We’d say file this under: just maybe.

Now, for the tech announcements that actually did happen – remember the 4K screen’s that we’ve been talking about over the last week or so. Well, we made a caveat that we’d be interested to know what content they’d show off on these new TV’s as we weren’t aware of any film footage in this mind-bogglingly high resolution.

Well, that’s not true: JVC has announced a new camcorder, called GY-HMQ10, which offers recording at 3840×2160 at 24 or 50p. Even more exciting is the fairly reasonable £4340 price tag and the promised UK release of March. This is a professional offering and is sure to future proof yourself for an expected move to 4K content in the next 18-24 months.

For the technical of you, the new camera is powered by HVC’s Falconbrid large-scale integration (LSI) chip, which has a half-inch CMOS imager with an impressive 8.3 million active pixels.

Product manager, Gustav Emrich. “We’re witnessing the birth of what is destined to become a broad market for full 4K end-to-end production. The GY-HMQ10 is a breakthrough product that opens up 4K imaging to users who previously wouldn’t have considered it.”

JVC explains that the big problem with 4K for video is processing power, but that this is now shifting.

“There just hasn’t been the ability to capture, process, display and record full 4K images in real time until now,” adds JVC.

Lenovo has been incredibly busy at this year’s CES with plenty of smart TV’s and laptops, but, the device that caught our eye is their up-and-coming IdeaPad Yoga. Admittedly it’s not the greatest name, but, just look at it.

It’s a Windows 8 laptop than can also double up as a tablet in a similar vein as Asus’ Transformer, which saw impressive reviews and sales last year.

The current trend of latops sharing design cues from tablets is something we’ll see a lot of in 2012. So expect everything to get thinner and lighter. Essentially Yoga is an Ultrabook laptop that’s as gorgeous as a MacBook Air, but also doubles as a impressive tablet.

The hybrid laptop comes with a 13.3-inch screen and has 10-finger touch capabilities. Although, we fear that it might just be to heavy to use as an every-day tablet as it weighs twice as much as an iPad 2.

Lenovo expects the IdeaPad Yoga to ship when Windows 8 is available commercially, which should be in the third or fourth quarter of this year. The company expects the device to run for less than $1,200.

Razer’s newly announced prototype tablet is getting a lot of coverage and when you first set your eye’s on it you can see why.

Gaming on tablets can be cumbersome and fiddly. Anyone who has played GTA3 on iPad or Android will testify to this. At the moment Apple isn’t making any plans to make a games controller for their tablet, so it’s up to companies like Razer to show them where there are going wrong.

Hydra controllers connected up to a PC gaming tablet certainly appeals to us – especially with some impressive suggested specs. They’ve included an impressive workhorse in the form of a Intel Core i7 processor, and a 1280×800 display. Now you’d look quite the wholly if you popped this out on your daily commute to work. But gaming on tablets is big business, Angry Birds is proof of this, but so far we’re yet to see a hardcore game really find a home on tablets – could this be the answer?

There are also magnetometer and accelerometers thrown in to take advantage of its mobility.

“Adapted from a full featured PC gamepad, Project Fiona’s integrated dual controllers coupled with its advanced multi-touch screen are designed to make complex game navigation ergonomic and intuitive without compromising on the portability of the tablet,” states Razer.

“You’ll be able to carry out headshots and command troops in-game with ease. This first-of-its-kind PC gaming tablet with integrated dual controllers is definitely not for playing casual games about unhappy birds or zombie-killing flora.”

It’s only a prototype, but it’s good see companies trying to marry tablets and gaming in a perfect match for each other without have to dumb down today’s complex triple-A titles.

More CES news tomorrow.

CES 2012 Round-up: iPad 3, 4K JVC Camcorder, Razer Tablet & Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga is a post from: UK Gadget and Tech News, Reviews and Shopping Site - Gaj-It.com

According to NotebookItalia, the new tablet has a form factor different from Eee Pad MeMo, which is likely to be released in the month of January itself. It is not clear whether Asus would be releasing both the tablets or whether MeMo has been cancelled altogether. However, it won’t be the first time for MeMo to get an axe. The ill-fated tablet has been booted before too. MeMo was planned to be launched as glasses free 3D tablet. Later, the plans to release were scrapped due to multiple roadblocks and delays. Most recently, it was rumored that Asus would be releasing the tablet as conventional 2D device. It is also speculated that it would be based on Ice Cream Sandwich platform.

The new tablet seems to be running Honeycomb OS instead of Ice Cream Sandwich, though. Asus has not released any comments about this rumored picture.

Asus May Unveil 7-inch Tablet at CES 2012 is a post from: UK Gadget and Tech News, Reviews and Shopping Site - Gaj-It.com

The insider has also claimed that the new phone will have some plastic or rubber parts. These parts are likely to perform the function similar to bumper cases employed by Apple. The bumper cases were used to mitigate the effect of antenna problem in original iPhone 4. BGR has reported, “In all likelihood, this material will be used as a bezel surrounding the front edge of the phone.” These parts may also used for attaching the glass screen to the back plate. The back plate is likely to be of Aluminum.

At this point of time, industry specialists are busy making assumptions about next generation iPad, which is likely to debut early next year. Some rumors are suggesting that the tablet may be launched as early as in February next, to co-incide with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’ birthday.

All New iPhone 5 to Debut in Late 2012? is a post from: UK Gadget and Tech News, Reviews and Shopping Site - Gaj-It.com

If the rumors prove to be this time over, then Apple would be dealing with a new problem. The company is likely to face supply issues as producing retina display is not an easy task. Stringent quality control means that the yield of such displays is on the lower end. So, on one hand, Retina Display may lead to even higher demand for iPad, but the company is likely to have tough time fulfilling that demand.

DisplaySearch Analyst Richard Shim further teased that Apple may also be working on a smaller 7.85 inch iPad. The iPad Mini may be launched some time in late 2012. However, it would be more than scandalous if this rumor turns out to be true as Apple founder Steve Jobs was dead against smaller tablets. It seems highly unlikely that the company would go against his ideology, so let’s just dream about high res. iPad 3.

The current generation iPad comes with 1e2 pixels per inch, whereas for the next generation tablet, the PPI is likely to stand at 264 pixels per inch. While this PPI is less than the real Retina Display PPI of 300, but it is still damn good.

iPad Rumors: Next Gen iPad to Come with High Resolution Display is a post from: UK Gadget and Tech News, Reviews and Shopping Site - Gaj-It.com

In a statement this morning at 5.30am, RIM said there is “a significant increase” in Blackberry service level in Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa.

The three-day outage has been a PR disaster for the Canadian technology company, with thousands of customers taking to social networks the vent their frustration, RIM CIO Robin Bienfait apologised to BlackBerry customers for the disruption in a statement last night.

“You’ve depended on us for reliable, real-time communications, and right now we’re letting you down,” he said.

“We are taking this very seriously and have people around the world working around the clock to address this situation.”

Benait said last night that RIM is working to clear the backlog of messages, he added that BBM is up and running, but web browsing was unavailable as their support team monitors the stability of the service, but hopefully will have the service online “soon”.

For those of us who use other handsets, namely the iPhone or Android – it seems rather odd that users internet access is dependent on RIM, for iPhone’s or Android’s or any other phone web access comes from the phone and the Wi-Fi  – it has nothing to do with the manufacturer – so quite why Blackberry’s need to rely on a system that clearly has major flaws in it is quite worrying.

Especially worrying is the fact that many companies are heavily reliant on Blackberry and when the system crashes it leave millions in the dark – clearly the architecture of the system isn’t quite as bullet-proof as RIM has made us believe. Could this be the last nail in the coffin of RIM and BlackBerry?

Customer backlash

A senior investment banker at a major Wall Street firm kept sending out e-mails on his BlackBerry on Wednesday morning. And they kept bouncing back, annoying him.

“It’s one of those things – you don’t realise how important it is to breathe, until you can’t do it,” said the New York-based banker, who declined to be named because he was not authorised to speak about the subject on behalf of his bank.

According to RIM the problem originated in the UK, more specifically in Slough, as a major network switch failed, and then the backup system failed as well. According to the company is was a Chernobyl-like shut down of the system – which then rippled around the world.  At RIM’s annual customer conference, taking place in London yesterday, the company’s UK MD, Stephen Bates, said: “We are dealing with over 20PB of data every month so you can imagine the disruption we are trying to resolve.”

British technology entrepreneur Lord Alan Sugar took to twitter to lambast the company for the outage, he tweeted:  ”In all my years in IT biz, I have never seen such a outage as experienced by Blackberry. I can’t understand why it’s taking so long to fix”.

The final nail in the coffin 

The way RIM handled the issue left many wondering why they are with a company that failed to communicate the problem, and didn’t make a spokesperson available. Compounding the problem even further, is the fact the Apple release its new mobile operating system iOS 5 – which now comes with software like iMessage, an instant messaging technology that is exclusive to Apple, doesn’t require servers to work and duplicates many of the same features offered by RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger platform, a key differentiator for the company.

RIM is having quite a dip in its fortunes – it’s losing marketshare to both Apple and Android, despite that fact that they are the forth most popular smartphone operating system – they are apparently loosing 500,000 customers in the US every month. They have tried to branch out in emerging markets like India, but they are being halted by the popularity of cheaper Android handsets. This has led to a group of investors floating the idea of the sale or break up of the company. The current woes couldn’t have come at a more awkward time.

RIM has struggled with delays in future handsets, their tablet has been a unmitigated disaster and their share has slumped to a five-year low. Over the quarter; it sold 10.6 million phones, down from 12.1 million in the same period last year.

The outage brings in the sharp focus the woes of the company, and may see major companies rethinking their reliance on a technology that is showing signs that it’s not a reliable as previously thought.

It’s thought that RIM could be broken up into a network company, a handset and patent company. The breakup could attract private equity buyers and would also be target for other companies like Microsoft, Apple or even Oracle.

In February RIM shares were trading at nearly $70, but today are worth just $25 – quite when the slide will end is anyone guess, but losing two-thirds of its value in eight months is very worrying to investers and customers alike.  BlackBerry has become the standard for business users, its rise seemingly unstoppable until earlier this year, since when the reversal in its fortunes has been swift and dramatic.

RIM was one of the success stories of the last 5 years, with its revenues doubling over the last three years to $5.6bn. But the last 3 quarters have seen a monumental decline. The company saw profit collapse over the summer due to the lack of models; low demand for its tablet computer and the unstoppable rise of the iPhone and Android mobiles took their toll.

Income before tax fell 54% to $414m (£262m) in the quarter to 27 August, from $904m in the previous quarter. Revenues fell to $4.2bn, at the bottom end of the company’s own forecasts.

Blackberry Outage: The Final Nail In The Coffin ? is a post from: UK Gadget and Tech News, Reviews and Shopping Site - Gaj-It.com

According to the latest wave of rumors, Apple might be gearing itself to face the challenge posed by Amazon’s latest offering, Fire. The quasi-tablet released by Amazon does not hold a candle to iPad, but with its very attractive pricing, it is likely to snatch away a few potential iPad buyers. Though, we believe that Fire would be able to attract only very lightweight tech users, but every buyer counts for Apple and hence it may release its own iPad Mini for satiating such users.

According to Ticonderoga Securities, Apple is planning to launch iPad Mini next season, but ironically, the tablet would be the same size as the present one. Uh! As per Brian White, Ticonderoga Securities analyst, the device would be mini in pricing, not in size. If this prediction sounds bizarre to you, then let’s just look at the track record of Ticonderoga Securities. It is same research firm, which was pretty sure that Apple would launch two iPhones in 2011. The previous ramblings of Ticonderoga do not inspire much confidence, but, we will always and always welcome a device with lower price tag. So, let’s just hope this is one rumor from Ticonderoga stable that comes true.

Apple May Launch iPad Mini in 2012 is a post from: UK Gadget and Tech News, Reviews and Shopping Site - Gaj-It.com

Live Blog 19:40 – And we’re done. So no new iPhone 5, but as many had predicted an iPhone 4s. It does indeed come with the iPad A5 processor, and a new 8-megapixel camera.

You can preorder from October 7th, and will be on sale on the 14th. The handset will come in both Black and White. The prices are: 16GB for $199, 32GB for $299, and 64GB for $399.

It’s going to be available in US, Canada, Australia, UK, France, Germany and Japan.

Live Blog 19:39 - Pre-orders on the October 7th, and then launching on the 14th. Coming on Sprint in the US.

Live Blog 19:37 - “The iPhone 4S is not the only phone in our lineup. The iPhone 4 will now be available in Black and white for just $99. The iPhone 3GS in 8GB: free.”

Live Blog 19:36 - Phil: “So that’s the iPhone 4S. Black and white, 16GB for $199, 32GB for $299, and 64GB for $399. 64GB is the first time in an iPhone.”

Live Blog 19:32 – video time, first shots for the new iPhone.

Live Blog 19:25 – Siri in the flesh.

Live Blog 19:22 -  “With Siri, you can just ask Siri to read your messages to you.” will read your messages and your notification queue, all hands-free.

Live Blog 19:20 – Siri: New voice command search engine. Scott’s asking Siri all kinds of stuff. Find me a great Greek restaurant in Palo Alto. “I’ve found five Greek restaurants, and I’ve sorted them by rating.” Scott: “I’ve been in the AI field a long time. This blows me away.”

Live Blog 19:15 – Airplay Mirroring to make the jump to iPhone 4S.

Live Blog 19:08 - Video capabilities. “We can take stunning HD video, and for the first time, 1080p video.” & “1080p, real-time video image stabilisation, real-time temporal noise reduction.”

Live Blog 19:06 – Camera: “CMOS backside illuminated sensor — gets 73% more light than the iPhone 4 sensor, and 1/3rd faster. On top of that, we place a high-end IR filter for greater accuracy and uniformity.”

Live Blog 19:06 – Camera time.  “What’s the new camera on the iPhone 4S like? It starts with an 8 megapixel sensor.”

Live Blog 19:04 -  “Our engineering team has worked really hard to advance the state of the art that’s never been done in a phone before. It can now intelligently switch between two antennas between send and receive to make even better call quality.” They reckon it will be as fast as the current crop of 4G phone.

Live Blog: 19:00 - “You’d think if you put a CPU like that you’d sacrifice battery life Increased to 8 hours talk time”. Significantly better than iPhone 4.

Live Blog: 18:59 – iPhone 4S to Launch Today.

Live Blog: 18:57 - “Of course it starts with the Retina Display. But inside it is all new. The A5 chip is now making its way into the iPhone.”

Live Blog: 18:56 - iPhone time. Booo, it’s a iPhone 4S. “As you’ve heard, it’s the number one smartphone in the world. People have been wondering, how do you follow up a hit product like the iPhone 4?” The iPhone 4S.

Live Blog: 18:54 – iPod touch: Not only is it the most popular music player in the world, but we’re excited to announce it’s now also the most popular portable game player in the world.”

Live Blog: 18:53 - New Nano comes in 7 colors, now the iPod nano is 8GB for $129, and 16GB for $149. Available today.

Live Blog 18:52 – iPod Nano time. New customisable face – you can now wear it like a watch. “There’s a really cool use people have created all their own — accessories like watch bands. We thought that was really fun, so with the updated nano we’ve added 16 new clock faces to make it fun for people who like to wear it as a watch. Why not, right?”

Live Blog 18:44 – iTunes Match, Edi Cue: “It scans and matches your library against our 20m songs, we’ll upload what we don’t find, we’ll stream…” wait, did he just say stream? Someone made a boo-boo.

Live Blog 18:42 – New location app called Family and Friends. Essentially Foursquare for iOS 5.

Live Blog 18:40 – Edi Cue: “What if you could find your family and friends? Today we’re launching a new app called Family and Friends.” Foursquare, you ready?

Live Blog 18:38 – iCloud now. Still no iPhone 5 news. Tick, tock, tick, tock. A full WWDC re-cap going on at the moment.

Live Blog 18:38 - Safari. “We’ve added a number of things, including Reader. We take the story on the page, we format it perfectly on the device, it’s all loaded so you can just scroll through and read it.”

Live Blog 18:32 – Time for iOS5. New App show: Cards. Now you can create physically mailed cards.

Live Blog 18:27 - All of these together makes the App Store the number one store for downloading apps. Customers have downloaded more than 18b apps. And it’s accelerating. They’re downloading them at a clip of more than 1 billion per month.” That is pretty insane.

Live Blog 18:27 - Forstall: “Already, more than 500k apps in the app store. More than 140k of these are made specifically for the iPad.”

Live Blog 18:25 - Scott Forstall is up now.

Live Blog 18:24 - ”We have passed the quarter of a billion sales mark” for iOS devices.

Live Blog: 18:18 – “What’s amazing is that the iPhone 4 has sold over half of our total iPhones sold in the entire time we’ve been selling iPhones. It’s the number one smartphone in the world.

Live Blog: 18:10 – Cooks’ introduction talks about the continued success of new Apple stores across the world and especially in Asia “At the Hong Kong opening, we sold more Macs on opening day than they have in any other store in the world”

Live Blog: 18:05 – Tim Cook is on stage and declares “I Love Apple”.

Live Blog:18:00 - ”Ladies and gentlemen, our presentation will begin shortly.”

Live Blog: 17:58 – The predictions that Apple will be unveiling a iPhone 4S are almost a certainty; Japanese website has spilled the beans with a October 14th release. There’s is also some pictures too – showing a phone that looks almost identical to the current 4th generation model

Live Blog: 17:48 – It’s almost time. Delegates are shuffling in to their seats – everyone is wearing rather fetching media tags.

It’s finally here!!!! Well, not quite but we’re only an hour away from Apple CEO Tim Cook taking to the stage at their Cupertino Head Quarters to unveil the new Apple iPhone.

Speculation is understandably rife at the moment, but Apple has managed to keep the new iPhone under-wraps – so really don’t know what Apple will unveil – the only thing we do know its a new iPhone.

It’s going to be an exciting time for Macolytes across the world. So make sure you check this post periodically as we’ll be updating it on-the-fly with news as it breaks.

Will Steve Jobs be there? Will Apple announce two phones? Will it be a 4S or a full-blown 5? We’ll keep you abreast of all the announcements from today’s Let’s Talk iPhone Event.

iPhone 5 Launch: Live Updates From Apple’s Let’s Talk iPhone Event is a post from: UK Gadget and Tech News, Reviews and Shopping Site - Gaj-It.com

Back to iPhone 5, analysts and industry pundits have finally conceded that Apple would be unveiling only one new phone, instead of two. Apple has already handed invitations for its ‘let’s talk’ event, which is scheduled to be held next week. It is quite likely that Apple will come up with ne2 voice recognition technology for the fifth version of iOS. Though, Apple had this functionality from a long time, but this time over it is expected to give it a drastic makeover.

Industry pundits now also believe that Apple is not working on a low end iPhone. It was long rumored that Apple would be launching a low priced stripped down version of current iPhone. So, if you were waiting for a cheaper iPhone, then 2011 is not your year.

However, it is not only iPhone segment, which is going to see some action. It is also being speculated that a new white iPod Touch may be in the offering. This rumor had been doing rounds ever since the launch of white iPhone. According to 9to5Mac, Apple may not be making any substantial hardware changes in the personal media player. But it sure would receive a cosmetic makeover in a non-color. These are merely the conjunctures, but we would come to know about the truth on October 4, so it is not that long a wait now.

But it is not going to be all about new additions. The Cupertino company is apparently mulling saying ciao to a couple of its beloved devices. It looks like iPod Classic and iPod Shuffle will not be able to survive the onslaught of touch screen devices. Currently, these two are the only products in their segment not to have a touch screen, so it looks like that in a bid to streamline its offerings, the company may decide to withdraw these music players. TUAW has claimed that it has insider news about the demise of iPod Classic and iPod Shuffle. It also makes sense, as in the din of iPhone 5 rumors, we really never get to hear about the update iPods.

iPod Classic, released almost 10 years back, may have some nostalgic value, but over the years, iPhone has emerged as a powerful and more versatile option. If Apple does decide to kill of iPod Shuffle and Classic, then Nano would become the entry level media player with a starting price point of $149. iPod Shuffle was priced $49 upwards. In this case, it is also possible that the company may drop iPod Nano price, in order to make it more affordable. Apple had also been dropping vague hints about impending ‘product transition’, so probably bidding adieu to these two iPods is really on the cards.

Now, that we have less than a week left for ‘let’s talk’ event, what are your speculations about the product announcements?

Apple iPhone Rumors’ Final Round: Only One iPhone to Arrive is a post from: UK Gadget and Tech News, Reviews and Shopping Site - Gaj-It.com

The iPhone 5 release date saga has had more twists and turns than a Disney rollercoaster – but we’ll gaze into our crystal ball to give you an idea of when you’ll see the new iPhone from Apple.

Over the last 12 months the biggest question in the technology world has been when will Apple release its iPhone 5? A closely guarded secret – but it’s possible to read into all the rumours, quotes, and hearsay to come up with a fairly accurate release date.

Well we think we’re a matter of weeks away from the actual launch. Depending who you believe the release date is scheduled for October, with a unveiling happening in the last week of September.

The CEO of France Telecom, parent company of Orange, has given a pretty clear indication that the iPhone 5 will be launching in mid-October, going as far as giving an actual release date.

Speaking to French media, the chatty Stéphane Richard (who has been happy to wax lyrical on Apple’s plans before), said that his network had heard word of Apple’s iPhone 5 coming soon.

“If we believe what we have been told, the iPhone 5 will be released on 15 October,” said the CEO.

October is slightly later than many had predicted, but this can be explained: the slight delay has been getting the new iOS 5 software ready for the launch of the handset.

According to a report by BGR , the iOS 5 beta 8 is rumoured to be released this Friday with the gold version being sent to Chinese manufacturers next week.

The report goes on to indicate that this will be the final beta release of iOS 5. The website says that speculation about Apple’s plans of sending the final version of the OS to iPhone and iPod Touch assemblers in China by the 23rd of September.

According to rumours, Apple is predicted to sell as many as 25 million iPhones by the end of 2011. A recent report claims that 35 percent of people are planning to buy the iPhone 5 which means that the sales estimates of this next generation iPhone are going to be quite high.

The iPhone 5 or 4S depending on who you believe will be the 5th handset from the Cupertino company – there’s still a lot of uncertainty whether it will be the named the iPhone 5 or iPhone 4s, but we’re leaning toward the 5 as it would diminish its significance if they decide to call it 4S.

Apple’s strict confidential policy is famed for revealing as little information about its upcoming devices until it is officially announced by the company. Therefore, information regarding the next iPhone is still unclear.

If you keep your eye on twitter you’ll have probably seen tweets from several lucky people commenting on a final build iOS 5 and have said: “It’s only a matter of a couple of weeks away”.

The next generation iPhone 5 is expected to come with a thinner form factor than the current iPhone 4 – there are also rumours that Cupertino might increase the screen size and shrink the bezel around the screen to create the illusion that it’s substantially bigger than it actually is.

Also touted is a 8-megapixel camera with an advanced battery, other features are expected to concentrate on the iCloud and new iOS 5 functionality.

If October does turn out to be the release date then this would play out perfectly for Apple as Christmas is just around the corner and would make the new handset the most sort after gadget for this Christmas.

So what’s so hot about the iPhone 5? A survey for ChangeWave Research (which asked 2,200 potential phone buyers) claims that more people will buy the iPhone 5 than those who wanted to buy the iPhone 4. Thirty-one percent of people who are shopping for a new phone consider it “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that they’ll pick up, magpie-like, a shiny new iPhone 5, whereas 66 percent of current iPhone users say they’ll upgrade to new iPhone before they even see it.

What do you want to see in the new iPhone 5 ? Do you want a smartphone that can last more than one day on a single charge? Is a greatly improved camera the most important thing? Or do you just want it to be cheaper? Hit the comments below and let us know what you think the iPhone 5 should improve upon.

The iPhone 5 Release Date Revealed: Our Prediction is a post from: UK Gadget and Tech News, Reviews and Shopping Site - Gaj-It.com