• The cops were holding [the phone] and showing it to each other, saying ‘This is what kept the guy from getting hit.’
• Witness Bill Crumlic • After seeing a guy nearly get shot in the stomach by another guy who was very upset about losing his job as a building supervisor. “I feel lucky to be alive,” said victim Juan Camarena. “I say thank God for the phone!” His Nextel I530 took the brunt of the the damage. He was only scratched a little bit after being fired upon. Which is really freaking impressive. Lucky bastard. source

 
• goodResearch in Motion finally came up with a device good enough to take on the upstarts in the smartphone market. Whoo-hoo! Talk about user retention techniques!
• troubling Despite all this, it’s going to be tough for the company to attract new users and app developers into the fold. Especially if those new users live in Saudi Arabia. source

• $1,500 and absolutely zero conscience source

• Out of the many frank things that came out of Apple’s rage-filled press conference today was the existence of these rooms where they test the signals of their cell phones. They look like the dream chambers of a science fiction author, not a real-world cell phone testing place. We wonder if this place is available for parties or weddings or that sort of thing. It would be one of the most awesome spaces ever for something like that. source

• It was killed abruptly because no one was buying it and there no was no credible reason to believe anyone would.
• A Microsoft staffer • Discussing exactly why the Kin died. The numbers back him up on this 100 percent. In a market where the iPhone sells a million units in a weekend, the Kin sold less than 10,000 in six weeks. It’s one of many embarrassments for the company, which screwed up the Kin’s opportunity by taking too long to bring it to market. Staffers at Verizon stores were actually discouraging people from buying the Kin – par for the course, considering that Verizon pulled a decent data deal out from under the company. source

• Dude blames a compromise between numerous entities. Antenna designer Spencer Webb says the iPhone’s new antenna – which he didn’t work on – was clearly a challenge to create, in part due to FCC regulations which don’t take hand placement into account for some reason. “There is no way around this,” he says. “It’s a design compromise that is forced by the requirements of the FCC, AT&T, Apple’s marketing department and Apple’s industrial designers, to name a few.” source

• 26% of iPhones suffer breakdowns within two years as of 2010
• 31% of iPhones suffered breakdowns within two years as of 2009
• 35%+ the failure rates of older, first-generation iPhones source

• good AT&T will FINALLY allow data tethering via the iPhone, after blocking it for years.
• bad AT&T will no longer offer unlimited data plans, but instead two tiered data plans.
• okay Old customers won’t be forced to switch, but new customers will have no choice.

The new charges

• $15the cost per month for the 200-megabyte “DataPlus” plan; it’s $15 for each additional 200 megs
• $25 the cost per month for the 2-gigabyte “DataPro” plan; it’s $10 for each additional gigabyte

The bullet points

• » Why do this, anyway? Because AT&T found in its research that most customers only used a certain amount of data, and a small number of users accounted for most of the bandwidth-sucking data usage. Take that as you will, kids. On the plus side, AT&T is at least trying to make the new charges somewhat friendly to consumers, allowing for retroactive changes between the two plans.
• » The wildcard, of course? AT&T is the first company to do this. Which means that Verizon, Sprint, all those other companies? They still have unlimited data plans. And if Verizon gets the iPhone like is being predicted, it seriously puts them at an advantage. source

• $97 for the iPhone 3GS – just before the 4G launch source

• YES people prefer buying phones in person, not online source