According to AppleInsider sources, iPhone firmware 4.0 will bring multitasking to the platform this summer. And it may look a lot like Exposé. More

According to AppleInsider sources, iPhone firmware 4.0 will bring multitasking to the platform this summer. And it may look a lot like Exposé. More

Apple’s making life simpler for developers with the iPhone 3.2 Beta 3 SDK which makes it easier to develop universal apps by allowing devs to easily update “existing iPhone projects to include the necessary files to support” iPads. [ Apple ] Updated. Update: Commenter apple1loop and others are reporting that Apple has pulled the SDK from their developer website. No word on why this happened just yet.

Gartner just released its annual numbers for worldwide mobile phone sales to end users in the year known as two thousand nine. Looking at smartphone OS market share alone, Gartner shows the iPhone OS, Android, and RIM making the biggest gains (up 6.2%, 3.4%, and 3.3% from 2008, respectively) at the expense of Windows Mobile (down 3.1%) and Symbian (down 5.5%). Although Gartner says that Symbian “has become uncompetitive in recent years,” (ouch) it concedes that market share is still strong especially for Nokia; something backed up by Nokia’s Q4 financials and reported quarterly smartphone growth of 5% . Regarding total handsets of all classifications sold, Nokia continues to dominate with 36.4% of all sales to end users (a 2.2% loss from 2008) while Samsung and LG continue to climb at the expense of Motorola (dropping from 7.6% to 4.5% of worldwide sales in 2009) and Sony Ericsson. See that table after the break or hit up the source for the full report. Continue reading Gartner: Apple, Android, and RIM winners in 2009 smartphone growth, Nokia and Symbian still dominate Gartner: Apple, Android, and RIM winners in 2009 smartphone growth, Nokia and Symbian still dominate originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 05:05:00 EST

You’ve got to be one of the cool kids that shelled out a Benjamin to get into the iPhone Developer Program to get access, but if you’re already a card-carrying member, it looks like you’ve now got a green light to download beta 2 of the iPhone SDK for OS 3.2 . We don’t know what’s new, changed, or removed, but presumably, most of the updates would center around the sundry changes Apple has made to support the iPad in the latest version of its mobile platform — so drop us a line and let us know what you find, alright? iPhone SDK 3.2 beta 2 busts loose originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

At this particular point, 50-something days away from the earliest iPad deliveries, we doubt too many people are up in arms about the iPad’s ability to act as a jumbo iPhone . On the other hand, if we told you you can take pretty much the entire iPad experience and distill it down to your iPhone OS device, well you’d probably care a lot more, wouldn’t you? To get that extra 3D flavor to your UI, including the fetching iBooks shelf and other iPad-specific touches, you’ll need a jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch, access to the Cydia app store, and the manpower to click past the break for the full instructional video. Come on, you know you want to.

Based on an SDK which doesn’t differentiate between the iPhone and iPad, folks at Engadget say they’ve confirmed that the iPhone OS 3.2 has “rudimentary” support for video calling and file downloading. Too soon for any excitement at all? File downloading and local storage in the browser could be great. Just imagine finally being able to grab a song off the Internet and actually save it on your iPhone. The daydreamer in me wants to believe that files downloaded in such a manner would be accessible by all applications

The iPad may not have a camera in its current incarnation, but Apple’s at least laying the foundation for one : we just confirmed with extremely trusted sources that iPhone OS 3.2 contains rudimentary support for video calling, which could explain that mysterious space at the top of the device in our leaked pics . We’re told that there are hooks to accept and decline a video conference, flip a video feed (which suggests a front-facing camera) and — most importantly — run the video call in either full screen mode or in just a portion of the screen. That means you’ll be able to chat and do other things at the same time, which could mean there’s at least some type of multitasking going on here. We can also confirm that iPhone OS 3.2 supports file downloads and local storage in the browser, which means you’ll be able to pull files off the web and use them in other apps, and there’s at least the beginnings of SMS support buried within the code — a fact we were able to verify with noted iPhone jailbreaker chpwn, who sent in the above screenshot from a hacked-up copy of the iPad simulator. (The simulator always says “iPhone simulator” in the menu bar, but that’s the iPad.) chpwn also tells us he’s found some inklings of actual phone support, there’s a spellchecker, and that both the new landscape orientation for the homescreen and keyboard support appear to be destined for the iPhone itself when 3.2 comes out. We’re not sure what any of this means at this point, or if any of it will ever be implemented, but we’re definitely starting to get the impression that Apple didn’t tell us everything there is to know about the iPad on Wednesday — and we’re even more curious to find out what iPhone OS 4.0 will look like when it arrives.

iPhone owners holding out hope that OS 3.2 would bring some of these fancy new iPad spoils to their devices might be in for a disappointment, because two of the big ones — split view and popovers — are both referred to in Apple’s updated human interface guidelines as “iPad-only.” Realistically, this shouldn’t come as a surprise; both of these UI elements were built to shine on larger displays, and it’s hard to say how you could make either one of them work on HVGA — but it’s important for devs to note that heavily investing in these are definitely going to make it difficult to make their apps compatible across all iPhone OS-powered devices. Considering that iPhones will almost certainly continue to dominate iPads for sales volume, we know how we’d be developing. In other news, running the updated iPhone simulator in iPad mode gives you the option to take photos, which doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense considering that it doesn’t have a camera. There are plenty of plausible explanations for the muck-up, but our guess is that Apple’s left the vestigial capability on-board since the framework’s already in place for the iPhone and there could very well be iPads down the road that have a cam (or two). Follow the break for a shot of the iPad’s Address Book imploring you to take a photo — and savor it, since it’s probably the closest you’ll actually get to snapping a shot on the device any time soon. [Thanks, iPhone Dev and Eric] Continue reading iPhone SDK calls out nonexistent iPad cam, confirms split views and popovers are iPad-specific iPhone SDK calls out nonexistent iPad cam, confirms split views and popovers are iPad-specific originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:54:00 EST

Everyone is trying to guess what the features are of the tablet that Apple may announce on Wednesday 27. What’s its name? What’s the OS? How big? Tell us what you think and win an Apple tablet .