On Friday, a rumor broke that the next iPhone will be called the iPhone 4S and it will primarily retain the same form factor with a few minor cosmetic changes and some new interior parts.

Now today, GadgetsDNA posted a photo of a case purportedly for the iPhone 5, which shows a re-located camera flash.

Besides the camera flash, the case also shows a much thinner bezel. However as MacRumors points out, the manufacturers matching current case for the iPhone 4 also has a thin bezel, so that can’t necessarily be taken as sign that the “iPhone 5″ will have a thinner bezel. If this case is correct, its “iPhone 5″ attribution is likely nothing more than a guess or easy identifier by the manufacturer. Jeffries & Co. analyst Peter Misek claimed Friday that the fifth-generation iPhone that will debut this fall will be called the iPhone 4S.

The image of the “iPhone 5″ case showed up on Asian parts supplier site Alibaba. Other cases from manufacturers have shown up on the site purporting to be for future models of iOS devices and they have ended up being correct. Usually when a manufacturer is able to build proper cases for unannounced Apple products, they have gotten the dimensions and specs of the upcoming products from people at Asian manufacturers such as Foxconn. As always, there is no way of telling if this case represents the next iPhone Apple will launch, but it wouldn’t be the first time case manufacturers stole a bit of Apple’s thunder.

Most Commented Posts

• Kindle Vs iPad? Choose the eReader / eBook Reader that Best Suits You
• GameStop consider joining tablet market

The much delayed white iPhone 4 from Apple is out and in the UK.

Soon after the new white Apple iPad 2′s were released, further confirmation that Apple have conquered their camera/lens issues and have begun shipping the iPhone 4 smartphone.

According to reports from TechUnicorn.co.uk, retailers have begun making space on their shelves for the smartphone and information coming from Vodafone show that they’ll be shipping these babies. So far only the 16GB model ha been confirmed and that’s via a chap here in good old Blighty who purchased it semi-mistakingly.

9 to 5 Mac also was in the thick of the white iPhone 4 news when a source from phone retailer BelCompany told them that the white iPhone 4 16GB will be available in the Netherlands from Wednesday, April 27, with limited supply of the 32GB model

More information coming soon

Source: TechUnicorn.co.uk

Similar Stories

• Analysts predict Apple’s dominance of the tablet market in 2011
• New research shows iPad’s dominance in 2010

A report from ABI Research showed that, although tablet devices experienced massive growth over the second half of last year, markets for alternative devices – such as e-readers and netbooks – also expanded.

Jeff Orr, senior practice director at ABI Research noted that the dominance of tablet devices had been slightly exaggerated.

“The hype that tablets were displacing portable computers and dedicated CE device purchases simply did not become a reality,” Orr said, before predicting that price will become the next battleground for tablet devices.

ABI’s report predicted the emergence of “low-feature, low price” tablet units in 2011, as tablet shipping hits 40-50 million units. It also predicts that netbooks and other devices will not be killed off by this increase in popularity of tablets.

Meanwhile, news has emerged that sales of Apple’s new iPad 2 tablet device have not gone as well as expected, despite shifting 4.69 million units during its first quarter of release.

However, the Apple publicity machine has stated that the company sold every unit it made and the shortfall was due to manufacturing constraints only, rather than a lack of interest.

Similar Stories

• Canonical backs netbooks over tablets for its Ubuntu operating system
• Lenovo announce plans for LePad follow-up

The report showed that a usage level equivalent to only £15 within the UK could cost you thousands of pounds if racked up abroad.

The tariff varies from country to country, but is thankfully capped within the EU by a directive that limited roaming charges to a maximum of 50 euros per year.

Yves Martin, head of roaming operation at Orange, defended the extreme pricing, saying that in some cases it was necessary because of the costs involved in making such interconnectivity possible.

“You interconnect, say, Orange UK with an operator in India. You need to allocate time to physically connect the two networks and ensure the billing and everything is going well,” Martin said. “Every route costs €10,000 to €100,000 and you have around 700 operators worldwide, so it’s a lot of investment.”

However, consumer groups and tablet users alike have decried the enormous roaming charges as far too high.

Tech site, ZDNet UK have begun an online petition for fair data pricing, which can be accessed here.

Most Commented Posts

• Kindle Vs iPad? Choose the eReader / eBook Reader that Best Suits You
• GameStop consider joining tablet market

The PlayBook had originally been scheduled for a stateside release on April 19th, a date that has now been knocked back by a month.

The report by Digitimes, also identified a delay in the PlayBook’s testing precedure caused by RIM being forced to switch their CPU provider at a late stage.

An RIM spokesperson is said to have rubbished reports that the delay was due to the device having a sub-par battery life, stating that the PlayBook would have “comparable battery life” to devices on the market today.

There is some positive news surrounding the device, however. RIM are rumoured to working with software developers to allow Android apps to run on the PlayBook’s QNX operating system. This would give PlayBook users access to over 130,000 applications as soon as the device is launched, cancelling fears that the amount of tablet oriented apps available to early PlayBook users would be rather slim.

It is unclear as to whether the delays will have a knock on affect for the British release of the device, which has been tentatively announced for June.

Similar Stories

• New research shows iPad’s dominance in 2010
• iPads and other tablets are backed by House of Lords

Yahoo are going to shut down delicious after a slide leaked from an internal webcast, where they showed their roadmap for yahoo properties.

Other services which will be culled by yahoo include Altavista, my bloglog, yahoo bookmarks and Yahoobuzz

The main reason cited for this is that delicious offers no real monetisation opportunities for yahoo.

Social bookmarking guides have helped users defect to other services like digg, reddit and stumbleupon where users canto discover content on the web and to track content that they’ve found and loved.

reports suggest that Yahoo have received offers up to the value of $1 million for the service.

Most Commented Posts

• Kindle Vs iPad? Choose the eReader / eBook Reader that Best Suits You
• GameStop consider joining tablet market

Company founder, Mark Shuttleworth stated over the weekend that Canonical have remained un-swayed by the astronomical successes of tablet devices over the past year, and that the company remain loyal to the netbook and laptop PC markets.

“We certainly haven’t quit the netbook space,” Shuttleworth said. “If anything, we see growing demand for Ubuntu in PC sectors pushing into new global markets, where netbooks are the name of the game”.

Canonical have flirted with the tablet market before and some tablets, such as the dual-screen, Kno device, have shipped with operating systems based on Ubuntu, while others have been spotted at trade shows and events.

The beta version of Ubuntu 11.04 – aka Natty Narwhal – released last week, appears to back up Shuttleworth’s claims; the new OS is indeed available in desktop, server and netbook editions, apparently without a tablet edition. However, tech bloggers have speculated that this version of Ubuntu will indeed be Canonical’s “optimised tablet version” in the same way that Honeycomb was for Google’s Android.

It is the new version’s reliance on ARM architecture that has got bloggers’ typing fingers all twitchy, as these processors are normally found in tablet and smartphone devices, while Intel processors run the netbook, laptop and desktop game. With no beta version of the tablet edition though, it is unclear when Canonical are going to spring this ‘surprise tablet version’ of Ubuntu 11.04 on us, if at all.

Similar Stories

• Netbooks hanging on in there say analysts
• Tablet market will top $35bn by 2012, say analysts

The tablet – which has probably not made it to the drawing board yet – will be specifically designed for gaming, allowing users to download, and maybe even stream, titles directly to the device from the internet.

The announcement was made by the retailer’s company president, Tony Bartel in an interview with GamaSutra. During the interview, Bartel remained undecided as to whether the tablet would be a wholly new affair or whether Gamespot would use a suitable device from an existing manufacturer.

“If we can work with our partners and the OEMs and then come up with a great tablet that is enabled with a great gaming experience and coupled with a Bluetooth controller, then there is no need to go out and develop our own,” Bartel said, getting highly specific about what criteria such a tablet would need to meet. “However, if we can’t find [a tablet] that’s great for gaming, then we will create our own.”

Bartel released no further information on the project, probably for no other reason than that it is in the early stages of development and there isn’t any.

However, GameSpot’s recent acquisitions of online streaming tech firm, Spawn Labs, and Stardock Systems’ Impulse digital gaming service are strong signals of intent from the company. With this in mind, it looks likely that the GameSpot tablet will indeed go ahead in one form or another.

Similar Stories

• White iPhone 4 released, hot on the heels of the iPad 2 – out this week!
• Netbooks hanging on in there say analysts

Following in the footsteps of rival company, AMD, whose Fusion range greatly improved the efficiency of processors, Intel’s new venture is likely to save users significant amounts of money in energy costs, as well as allowing manufacturers to develop faster, more effective machines.

The Xeon E7-8800, 4800 and 2800 chips can be used with up to 10 cores and are said to be considerably better performing than their predecessors.

The chips – which have been made with 32 nanometre process technology – have allowed servers to display “record breaking performance” in the words of Kirk Skaugen, vice president of Intel’s Data Center Group. Skaugen reports that in fact 12 world records have been broken and that the Xeon E7 range provides the industry’s highest virtualisation performance.

The new E7’s are built upon a framework that will be familiar from Sandy Bridge; Sandy Bridge features such as Turbo Boost, Hyper-Threading Technology and Virtualisation Technology all remain in the new range, but with significant tune-ups.

Intel have also added certain security features to the new E7 range, including easy and fast encryption and decryption of data across a range of applications, and Trusted Execution Technology which targets malicious threats and protects applications.

Similar Stories

• “AMD Llano processors are on track” say analysts
• Intel’s new Atom CPUs to compete with AMD’s Fusion range

The Iconia Tab A100 will hit the UK on April 20th, the same day as its 10.1-inch cousin, the A500.

The A100 will retail at £300, making it one of the cheapest tablets to run Google’s Android Honeycomb operating system. The A500 – also running Honeycomb – will set you back £450 on release.

While some tablet devices have been released with sub-£200 price tags, none of these devices have featured Android 3.0 – aka Honeycomb – which is Google’s tablet optimised OS.

The A100 features an 8GB hard drive, half a GB of RAM and is powered by a dual-core Tegra 2 processor. The basic model features WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, with 3G connectivity adding an extra £100 to the price.

Other features include a micro-SD card slot, an HDMI output, a five-megapixel rear facing camera and a two-megapixel camera on the front for video calling. The device has a 1024 x 600 pixel resolution and weighs 470g.

The double release of the Iconia A100 and A500 is part of flurry releases from Acer; their Windows 7 running Iconia W500 tablet lands in UK stores this week, while Acer are also planning to release new Iconia smartphones.

Similar Stories

• Canonical backs netbooks over tablets for its Ubuntu operating system
• Dell’s 10-inch Windows 7 tablet delayed until autumn