Concern grows in Washington over exclusive cell-phone deals

Scrutiny of cell phone exclusivity deals, in which hot new phones are available from only one carrier, is intensifying in Washington. Within the past day, the chairman of one Senate subcommittee has weighed in with a list of recommended steps to address such deals, and the Wall Street Journal reports the Department of Justice has opened an investigation into them.

Senator Herb Kohl, who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, sent a joint letter to the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice. Calling exclusivity arrangements “a serious barrier to competition,” he urged the FCC to open its own investigation into them and the Justice Department to take “all necessary action to keep the market open to competition.”

The FCC has already announced they’ll open a proceeding to investigate handset exclusivity—another recent development—with the exact question they’ll be investigating expected to be announced within the next few weeks, after which comment will likely be received from interested parties representing consumers, carriers, and manufacturers, among others.

Today’s Wall Street Journal report indicates a parallel, broader investigation at the Department of Justice into whether cell phone carriers are abusing their market power to the detriment of consumers and competitors. Areas of investigation, according to the report, could include exclusivity deals and limitations on the types of competing services that can be offered on carriers’ networks—such as curbs on voice-over-internet calling from smart phones using third-party applications.

Advocates at Consumers Union, the parent company for Consumer Reports, welcome the growing attention in Washington to these issues. Singling out Senator Kohl’s letter, in particular, CU says "exclusive deals with manufacturers and the blocking of applications are common practices among national providers.  There doesn't seem to be any market constraint on this behavior.  We applaud Senator Kohl for taking a strong stand, because consumers need some relief."

In addition, a  bipartisan group of senators, all members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation last month asked the FCC to examine exclusivity agreements and act accordingly if the agency finds “they unfairly restrict consumer choice or adversely impact competition in the commercial wireless marketplace." —Paul Reynolds

Adobe Flash to your TV: Let's get interactive!

Not content to remain tethered to the computer, Adobe’s Flash technology is about to make the jump to televisions and other consumer-electronics devices this fall, promising to deliver high-def video and other web-based content seamlessly to TV viewers. The technology, called Flash for the Digital Home, is an optimized version of Flash Lite—designed for mobile products—that can run on TVs, Blu-ray DVD players, and settop boxes.

As far as we know, Vizio is the only TV brand that's announced support for the specialized version of Flash, which will be available later this summer in XVT-series TVs that feature Vizio Internet Apps (VIA), the company's online TV platform. But Flash for the Digital Home has already garnered the support of some major players, including Atlantic Records, Comcast, Disney Interactive, Intel, Netflix, and The New York Times, among others.

This is part of the Open Screen Project, Adobe's plan to let you access Internet content from almost any kind of device without going through a computer or web browser. Flash for the Digital Home will give users the ability to combine traditional TV viewing with access to new types of Internet-delivered content, including streaming HD video and music, along with interaction with social-networking communities. Flash Lite is currently used to deliver multimedia content to mobile devices, including cell phones.

We'll be looking for additional product announcements from TV and Blu-ray player manufacturers to see how broadly this new technology will be adopted—and of course testing models when they become available to see if the technology lives up to its promise. —Will Dilella

iPhone 3G S: Too hot for its own good

This message appears when an iPhone 3G or 3GS becomes too hot.
[ Photo courtesy of Apple ]

PC World, Wired, and other media outlets have reported that the new iPhone 3G S models have been running a little hot—hot enough to turn their white plastic cases brown, according to Wired  .
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Apple Support has acknowledged an overheating problem with both the 3G S and 3G phones, when they "run certain applications in hot conditions or direct sunlight for long periods of time, such as GPS tracking in a car on a sunny day or listening to music while in direct sunlight."

This problem may be limited to specific lots of phones, as such problems have not turned up during our tests, which are still ongoing.

Besides feeling hot, symptoms of an iPhone suffering from heat exhaustion may include a dimming display and a weak cellular signal. The most-obvious sign is an on-screen message "iPhone needs to cool before you can use it" (see image at right).

We'll keep you posted as the story unfolds. In the meantime, please let us know if you've experienced an overheating problem with your phone. —Mike Gikas

iPhone 3G S tops new smart phone Ratings, edging out Palm Pre

The iPhone 3G S tops our new smart-phone Ratings (available to subscribers), with strong performance in everything but voice quality, an area in which few phones score well. It's not a runaway winner, though. A number of other phones ranked close to the iPhone, including the Palm Pre, which turned in a fine performance, as we expected from our head-to-head review of these two highly publicized rivals.

The phones vary significantly in how they achieve their high scores. The iPhone 3G S edged out high-scoring competitors such as the Palm Pre and BlackBerry Storm thanks to a superior display, reinforced by top-notch multimedia, navigation, Web browsing, and battery life. However, the Pre, the Storm, and other BlackBerry models bested the iPhone in messaging, and the Pre, with its new deck-of-cards handling of multiple applications, is a superior multitasker.

To better display those differences, we recently added more attributes to our Ratings and put more emphasis on the display, ease of navigation, and multimedia and messaging prowess. In turn, we've somewhat reduced the contribution of talk time (as reflected in our battery life results) and voice quality, in part to reflect the growing importance of non-voice use of smart phones.

iPhone 3G S vs. Palm Pre: A video shootout

They're the two hottest smartphones of the year. The iPhone 3G S and the Palm Pre emphasize multimedia capabilities and are centered on versatile touchscreens that are among the best we've ever tested. Both even cost the same: $199 with a two-year contract (though there's a more capacious iPhone that costs $299.)

Both are also fine performers that we expect to formally recommend next week, once we've fully completed our tests and added them to our smart phone Ratings. (Both Consumer Reports Ratings and Recommendations are available to subscribers.)

Meantime, here's a Western-themed video shootout, in which phone-slingers Mike Gikas (at the iPhone end of the saloon) and Paul Eng (representing the Palm Gang) settle their differences.

Mike fires with the iPhone's new Voice Control feature, which allows you to dial numbers and even search for music by speaking to the phone. He also singles out the camera on the 3G S, which offers features lacking from past iPhones, like auto-focus and the ability to shoot videos, and adds nice video-editing and tap-to-focus capabilities.

iPhone 3G S: First impressions of its upgraded camera

Apple's new iPhone 3G S sports a 3-megapixel digital camera. But is it really better than its predecesor's 2-megapixel camera? Consumer Reports takes a first look at the iPhone 3G S camera's performance. Click to enlarge.
[ Photo courtesy of Apple ]

The digital camera on the new iPhone 3G S seems to deliver on its promise of better performance compared with other iPhones, at least in my initial use of it over the past few days.

Imaging capability is among the several key areas where Apple has upgraded this newest version of their smart phone with capabilities that competitors have—and have had for years, in some cases.

Here's what I observed:

Sharp pictures. In my casual test shots, the 3G S yielded shots that looked noticeably sharp, at least in the viewfinder. Some of the credit undoubtedly goes to the presence of auto-focus, a first for an iPhone and a less-than-universal feature on other cameraphones. There's also has a unique tap-to-focus feature, which lets you override the auto-focus by tapping on any subject on the screen. I found the camera successfully focused on the subjects on which I tapped.

A macro feature—another first for an iPhone and relative rarity on cameraphones—lets you shoot objects as close as a few inches away. As you can see in my close-up shot (just 4 inches away) of an n-scale train layout, this feature, too, appeared to yield impressively sharp performance.

Here's a sample of a close-up I took of an n-scale model train set using Apple's new iPhone 3G S built-in camera. Click to see the full-size (and unedited) image.
[ Photo: M. Gikas ]

It likely helps, as well, that the 3G S camera has been upgraded to 3-megapixels of resolution, compared with the 2-megapixels of past iPhones. But resolution isn't everything, as we say in our digital camera advice. Factors including the lens and image processing also affect image quality. The new Palm Pre has a 3-megapixel camera, too. But in my casual test shooting, I found its photos to be less sharp than that of the 3G S, particularly when taking close-ups.

Decent videos, too. The 3G S is the first iPhone with video capability. While we haven't extensively tested video from other cell-phones, the videos I shot looked reasonably clear—even at close range. (Download a QuickTime video of a model train set I shot with the iPhone 3G S. Download IMG_0034) In addition, you can edit videos for length, at least rudimentarily. A film-strip-like bar appears on top of each video clip, showing successive images from it. You slide the virtual tabs at each end to edit where the clip begins and ends. You can preview your edit before you finalize it with a press of the Trim button. The feature is less robust than video-editing software on a computer—you can't splice together successive clips, say, or save the original full-length clip for later editing. But it's extremely easy to use.

iPhone 3G S: First, and mostly positive, impressions

The new Apple iPhone 3G S.
[ Photo courtesy of Apple ]

Based on a few hours of use, the new iPhone 3G S lives up to its promise—or it does, at least, once it’s actually up and running.

In a seeming rerun of last year’s problems with the iPhone 3G, eager new iPhone 3G S owners have been plagued by activation problems today—the phone’s first day of sale.

We succeeded in buying (at retail, like any other consumer) three 3G Ss by 10 am this morning. As of 4:30 pm, we’d succeeded in activating only two of the three. The screens of the remaining reads that it’s “Waiting for activation,” which “…may take some time.” Indeed. Some iPhone 3G S owners have been told the wait may be as long as 48 hours, according to Apple Insider.

Here’s what we have observed so far in our labs:

The display seems largely unchanged. Which is to say it’s better than fine. Contrast appeared to be slightly higher than on earlier iPhone models, we thought, but the difference was modest even in side-by-side comparison. While the screen is claimed to be more resistant to oily smears, due to a special coating, there wasn’t a noticeable difference in smudge resistance between the 3G and 3G S screens in a grueling, selfless "Happy Meal" test—in which we ate fries and then ran our fingers across the screens.

Claims to higher speed appear to stand up. We measured (using the stopwatch of an iPod Touch and with 3G network strength at a full five bars) the times to fully load some popular and fairly demanding Web home pages—including the New York Times, BBC, and TMZ—on a 3G and a 3G S. All loaded at least 50 percent more quickly on the 3G S, saving at least nine seconds of load time, and some met and even exceeded the claim that the 3G S is up to twice as fast as its predecessor, saving 15 seconds or more of load time—which actually feels like quite a big difference.

iPhone 3G S: Why I’m sticking with my stodgy 2G model for now

Now that I'm at the end of my 2-year service contract with AT&T for my old Apple 2G iPhone, should I upgrade to the Apple iPhone 3G S?
[ Photo courtesy of: Robert S. Donovan (under Creative Commons) ]

Apple's iPhone 3G S came out today; we’re testing it in our labs, and you can follow our testing on Twitter. This third-generation iPhone has me thinking about my relationship with my current, first-generation iPhone.

I purchased an 8GB, Edge-network (or 2G) iPhone two years ago, after a long love affair with my iPod (Apple's portable MP3 player). Since I needed a new iPod, and I wanted a new phone, the iPhone seemed like a good fit.

Now my two-year contract with AT&T is ending, as it is for many other first-generation iPhone users, and I'm deciding whether to spring for the 3G S—which can do a lot more than the model I have, albeit for more money. After much soul-searching, I've decided: I am going to hold on to my "archaic" 2007 iPhone. Many of you are likely gasping in horror, but I've got my reasons.

The first one is simple economics. I can't justify dropping another couple of hundred dollars for a new phone and then paying more for monthly service. While both phones cost the same for talk time, the difference is in the data plans. Right now, my 2G data plan is only $20 a month, and that includes unlimited data, unlimited Internet access, and 200 messages. The 3G plan is $30 a month for unlimited data and Internet usage, but doesn't come with messaging ­I'd have to pay another $5 for the same 200 messages.

iPhone 3G S: Early reviews are positive

The new Apple iPhone 3G S.
[Photo courtesy of Apple]

The early reviews for the imminent iPhone 3G S, available tomorrow, mostly praise the third-generation Apple smart phone for addressing what reviewers perceived as key, longstanding shortcomings compared with its competitors–like the absence of voice-dialing and stereo Bluetooth capability–and for offering speedier performance.

Media outlets who received review units of the new phone consistently cited its performance as faster than that of the second-generation iPhone 3G. There was also enthusiasm overall for the device’s upgraded camera, including its video capability, though The New York Times' David Pogue found the camera, like that of its predecessors, took somewhat blurry pictures of moving objects.

Other quibbles include a few from Engadget, including occasionally misinterpreting voice control commands during searches for music. Gizmodo also experienced this problem, and also found the new, more fingerprint-resistant display was a little more reflective than the screen on previous versions of the iPhone.

Reviewers, including The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg, noted that many of the iPhone 3G's other significant improvements are the result of the new iPhone 3.0 operating system, which is available to all iPhone users for free and to iPod Touch users for $10. As we cite in our first look at iPhone 3.0 yesterday, these include the ability to cut and paste text, expand the virtual keyboard to landscape when you tilt the phone, and to easily perform system-wide searches for documents, e-mails, calendar appointments, etc. using an on-board search engine called Spotlight.

iPhone 3.0: First Impressions

A new operating system, released on June 17, 2009, gives current owners of Apple iPhone (seen above) smart phones and iPod Touch media players some snazzy new features.
[ Photo: Apple ]

The new operating system for Apple's iPhone smart phones and iPod Touch launched this afternoon. Here are some observations on some of the most eagerly awaited features of the new OS, based on my first few hours of using it on my iPod Touch:

The new search feature is brilliant and instantaneous. A quick swipe to the left with your finger summons the Spotlight search app. Start typing a word and all the relevant applications, e-mails, calendar events, songs, etc. instantly become listed. For example, I typed "Paul" on my Touch and the feature instantly searched the device (though not the Web, as the Palm Pre does). I got a list of songs from Paul Simon, Les Paul, e-mails and calendar events concerning my boss, Paul Reynolds, and my colleague, Paul Eng. Just continue typing and the list narrows down in real time to what you're looking for.

The new feature had another benefit for me. During what was otherwise a smooth OS upgrade, my downloaded iPhone apps all jumped to the third page of the Touch's desktop, leading me to think they were gone. The new search feature quickly revealed where my apps were.

The landscape-mode keyboard helps, with some downsides. Tilting the iPhone on its side in e-mail or messaging applications does indeed produce a wider keyboard. That's a real plus for my rotund fingers; I find I can type much faster and make fewer errors.