News

Speculation that Verizon would offer new iPhone owners an unlimited data plan has been confirmed. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Verizon's COO, Lowell McAdam, has confirmed Verizon's plan to offer iPhone customers unlimited data for $30 per month. McAdam stated plainly that he wasn't going to "shoot [himself] in the foot" by putting up a roadblock to customers wanting to switch from AT&T. This was reported a few weeks ago, as well but has only now been officially confirmed by Verizon.

Verizon Wireless leans heavily on its reputation as the most dependable network in the US. The company is betting this reputation that it will flawlessly launch millions of iPhones onto its airwaves without any of the snafus that faced AT&T. Some are starting to wonder if Verizon is really as bulletproof as it seems.

Various reports from around the country have cited network problems of various stripes affecting Verizon for hours, even days in the case of some BlackBerry owners. The company is aware of the problems and is working on correcting them, but the news comes at an awkward time for America's largest cellular carrier.

Well the iPhone 5 rumor mill is in full swing, and reports are backing up claims that Apple's next generation device will come this summer with significant changes. Apple has already shifted some of its parts suppliers from Japanese companies to Taiwanese manufacturers Foxconn and Foxlink. This will likely lower manufacturing expenses for Apple, although it's not clear if the move will result in lower prices for consumers.

Apple's iOS App Store just keeps getting bigger. The unstoppable torrent of mobile apps available via iTunes has soared to more than 350,000 titles, with 60,000 of these specific to the iPad. Apps are divided amongst 20 different categories and available for download in 90 countries worldwide.

The App Store just surpassed 10 billion individual software downloads since its initial launch in July 2008. In fact, this amounts to a whopping 18 million average downloads every day the App Store has been in operation. Assuming there are roughly 160 million iOS users, each iPhone, iPad or iPod touch owner has acquired an average of 62 apps for their device.

Italian hacker Zibri has published a code snippet on his blog that points to a Qualcomm-sourced baseband chip in the next generation iPhone. The code in question showed up in iTunes, and hints that Qualcomm will replace Infineon as the source for iPhone 5 baseband chips.

Of course, Qualcomm is the originator of CDMA technology, and this code may just be in place for the Verizon CDMA iPhone. Zibri believes this is not the case, and several other sources have made it clear that Apple may be making the move to Qualcomm basebands across its mobile product line.