It was Samsung Mobile’s time to shine in America last night when the handset maker debuted the U.S. version of its Galaxy S II, a platform that’s already selling admirably overseas.
Unveiled at an event in New York City – one day later than planned thanks to Hurricane Irene – versions of the Galaxy S II smartphone will hit AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA this fall.
Apple’s reported redesign of the iPhone 4′s antenna for Verizon Wireless has not fixed its “death grip” problem, according to Consumer Reports.
Consumer Reports said Verizon’s iPhone 4 can drop calls when users cover a gap on the lower left side of the phone’s external steel band with their hand or finger, according to lab tests conducted by its engineers.
The design flaw is similar to the “death grip” problem with AT&T’s version of the device, which caused the phone’s signal quality to degrade when held in a certain way.
“As with our tests of the AT&T iPhone 4, putting a finger across one particular gap — the one on the lower left side — caused performance to decline,” said Paul Reynolds, Consumer Reports electronics reporter, in a blog post. “Bridging this gap is easy to do inadvertently, especially when the phone is in your palm, which might readily and continuously cover the gap during a call.”
Consumer Reports said it tested five other Verizon smartphones for a similar degradation in signal quality: the Samsung Fascinate, Motorola Droid 2 Global, HTC Droid Incredible, LG Ally and Motorola Droid X.
“The only phones in which the finger contact caused any meaningful decline in performance was the iPhone 4,” Reynolds said.
Consumer Reports is not including the Verizon iPhone 4 in its list of recommended smartphones because of the problem with its antenna, though the publication conceded that the design flaw only caused dropped calls in areas with already weak signal strength and was easily remedied with the use of a case or bumper.
A spokeswoman for Verizon Wireless dismissed the reports, saying the company’s iPhone customers “are experiencing stellar network performance” with less than one half of 1 percent of calls dropped in major cities like New York and San Francisco.
Tear-down analysis from IHS iSuppli and other research firms indicated that Apple had attempted to fix the problem with the iPhone 4′s antenna when it modified the device for Verizon’s CDMA network. Analysts at iSuppli reported that Verizon’s CDMA iPhone 4 used a new two-antenna design that could improve reception.
Google Voice has overcome two of its biggest obstacles to mass adoption: a way onto the iPhone, as well as a way for subscribers to use the service without changing their number.
The move essentially robs the carrier of any hand in hosting voicemail services for their customers. The Internet giant last night said that Google Voice subscribers can use Google Voicemail without changing their phone number.
The new service provides a backdoor onto the iPhone by allowing users to reroute their carrier voicemail to a Google Voice account. In the past, Google Voice subscribers have had to commit to a new phone number, which many users were reluctant to do.
Google Voice features are limited for those who choose to keep their legacy number and forgo the unique Google Voice number. Those who keep their legacy number will not be able to forward calls to other phones, conference call, record calls or send text messages.
Nevertheless, even the limited Google Voicemail features represent an enhancement to standard carrier services. Google Voice subscribers who keep their legacy number are still provided with visual voicemail (voice to text) and custom voice greetings for specific callers.
While the new service does tap the iPhone in a limited sense, it’s still no replacement for a Google Voice App. Wireless Week did limited testing of the new service on the iPhone. The individualized messages for specific callers worked well. However, the visual voicemail translation is simply not accurate enough to rely upon. For lack of a Google Voice App, iPhone users who want to listen to their voicemails will still have to open a separate browser window in order to listen to each message saved to their account.
Apple, Google and AT&T have been embroiled in an FCC inquiry into Apple’s rejection of the Google Voice app from Apple’s App Store. Apple said it had not rejected the application but was holding it for further review. Later, Google produced a letter that said that Apple rejected the app because it did not want applications that “duplicated the core dialer functionality of the iPhone.”
As of press time, AT&T had not released a response to the new service. The service requires a Google Voice account and that users dial a long code from their phone to activate the voicemail service.