It is highly plausible for the Philippines to be one of the first asian countries to get the iPhone 5. It is crucial, however, for those who are dying to get the iPhone 5 in the Philippines, to choose a very reliable network. Currently, Globe and Smart have announced the availability of 4G LTE in select locations in the Philippines.

So far, Smart had already flipped the LTE switch on and enabled multiband in the 2100MHz and 1800Mhz bands officially making them the first multi-frequency service provider of mobile LTE in the country and one of the first ones in the world. You may probably remember that Smart Telecom’s Chief Wireless Adviser, Orlando Vea, was among the hopeful ones that Philippines becomes one of the first countries in Asia to get the iPhone 5.

Also, according to my reliable source, existing Globe iPhone subscribers (especially those who got the iPhone 4… like me), might get a 25% discount if they switch from Globe to Smart. Man, we just can’t wait to see the final announcement of both telcos.

How about you?

Other iDevices to Be Launched

Forget about the iPad Mini. Apple may not launch it on the 12th; although it is very likely that they announce and launch it before Christmas.

We highly expect a fresh line of iPods: Shuffle, Nano and Touch. Shuffle will remain as their entry level iPod and may not sport a touch screen. Nano may however be highly promoted again as a wearable iPod. The Nano getting a front-facing camera/iSight is still a long-shot though; although I find it quite possible. The iPod Touch might get a 3G/LTE feature and may retain its size; much like making it a smaller iPad.

Room for the iPad Mini

If Apple launches an iPod Touch with a 3G/LTE feature, it may somewhat put the future of the iPad Mini quite daunting. Still, I believe on the plausibility of Apple to release a smaller and thinner iPad before Christmas. The iPad Mini is one of Apple’s arsenals in their “thermo-nuclear” war against Android; and can significantly leave a dent on the Android tablet market.

Tomorrow Never Dies

Honestly, we cannot wait for Tim Cook to get on stage tomorrow and “hypotize” us to get the new iPhone. He wouldn’t do much work on us as most of us are already determined to get (or to not get) the iPhone 5.

My analysis and brouhahas and the “reliable” sources I quoted could be wrong. But something remains – it could be shitty or awesome for some: Tomorrow isn’t the end of the era of mobile consumerism and smartphone innovation. 1 year later, we’ll find ourselves watching the top-honchos of Apple announcing a new phone that will replace the iPhone 4s. 2 years later, it’ll be time again for us to replace the iPhone 5. We live in a world and time full of innovation. The challenge to innovate rests upon smartphone manufacturers and we’re here to be wowed and accept their latest offerings. The emotion to get wowed is simple as it’s free. What’s difficult, however, is when we accept their offer and spend our hard-earned money and eventually get into the vicious cycle of fast-paced consumerism they established.

Voice out your thoughts about this article. I would appreciate if you can post your comments below and tell us if you’re getting or not getting the iPhone 5.

The post What To Expect When You’re Expecting the New iPhone [Part 2] appeared first on Gadget Pilipinas.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen – March 7 is fast approaching. The follow-up to the mighty iPad 2 will soon be unveiled, and all we could do now is to make up some rumors or declare how it looks, feels and performs. Today, allow me to fearlessly predict how the next iPad would look like, perform and be named. Of course, this article will become deprecated once the next iPad is finally unveiled. Well, it’s just me – a geek, having fun. Who knows? Come March 8, 2012, we’d all realize that I could be right after all.

The Next iPad’s LOOK

The iPad 2 looks good. It was carefully and beautifully designed. I praised it in my review last year and even dubbed it as the sexiest tablet. Being thinner by 4.6mm and lighter by 80 grams compared to the first iPad, it is undoubtedly a big leap when it comes to aesthetics department.

The next iPad though would be far superior to the iPad 2; superior not in terms of thinness but in terms of lightness. It will be lighter by 35 grams compared to the iPad 2. This means that the next iPad is just 566 grams, thanks to its lighter and more slender battery. It is just lighter by 150 grams than your Sony Bravia TV Remote.

Multiple reports rumors say that indeed, the next iPad will neither be bigger nor smaller than the iPad 2. However, in a leaked video by M.I.C. Gadget, the next iPad 3 appears to be slightly thicker.

Design-wise, the size of the next iPad will be similar to that of the iPad 2’s. Height and width will still be 241.2mm by 185.7mm. As pointed out earlier, depth (or kapal) will still be 8.8mm. It will still have a 9.7-inch display. But the real shockers are the following:

1. Nosebleed time: Say Goodbye to In-Plane Switching (IPS) Display, Say Hello to indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO). According to GigaOM, the big switch from IPS to IGZO would “provide benefits in terms of energy consumption, cost reduction and improved resolution.” Simply put, with IGZO display, you’ll be able to use your next iPad longer and better.
2. The resolution is upgraded from 1024 x 768 pixel to 2047 x 1536; pixel density is twice better too at 264. Yes, to make things easier to understand – Retina Display on the iPad. Text would look clearer and pictures would look more vivid. Play your favorite games at higher resolution to your heart’s content.
3. Steve Jobs never liked physical buttons. The lesser the buttons, the better. Killing the physical Home button is definitely a drastic move, but Apple needed to sack it off to carry on Jobs’ long-term plan. The Home button won’t be completely gone though. It will be replaced with the capacitive Home button, much like similar with the Windows Logo on new Windows Phone.

3rd point is quite over the edge. It felt good. Another shocker is that the next iPad may use the Senseg E-Sense Technology that, According to The Guardian, “appears to give texture to a touchscreen.”

Photograph: Charles Arthur for the Guardian

The Next iPad’s PERFORMANCE

Undeniably, the next iPad will be the embodiment of a true beast – fast and furious.

The next iPad will not have the A5x processor. It will have the A6 Quad-Core processor, decently clocked at 1.5Ghz with 1gb RAM. You are probably expecting a couple of Gigahertz, but putting it into the heart of the next iPad might derail Apple in its usual and perfect launch price-point. Simply put, an additional .5 Gig to 1.5 might significantly increase its price to $599 from the usual $499 to $529 launch price. This means that the 16gb variant of the next iPad will be priced at $529 or around PhP23,000 – PhP25,000.

The RAM upgrade from 512mb to 1Gb is a significant upgrade especially now that site loading, applications and games are getting more demanding. It is important to note that RAM is relevant when reloading web pages, switching from one tab to another and multi-tasking application and games (continue using an application from a dumped-stated or paused-state).

This is kind of confirmed by Chronic Wire. In their article, Chronic was able to compute the ram by interpreting the leaked photo by BGR. He was referring to the line of code — “vm_page_bootstrap: 244276 free pages and 8396 wired pages” — from which he finds the RAM details:

“So, just do some simple math: 244,276 (pages) x 4,000 bytes (size of a page) = 977,104,000 bytes = 977MB”

The Next iPad’s Moniker

The Next iPad will be called the iPad 3, not iPad 2s or iPad HD. The last 2 don’t just fit and do not conform with the long-term plans of Apple.

The logic is that the iPad cannot and will not share similar fate as the iPhone’s because it caters to a different need and timing. The iPhone will always have an ‘in-between’ variant (like iPhone 4 to iPhone 4s before iPhone 5) in consideration to carrier plan subscribers. For instance, iPhone 4s’ market are not those who purchased the iPhone 4, but those who purchased iPhone 3gs 2-years ago. This will not happen with the iPad.

Here’s an illustration of the fate of the Apple’s iDevices this year. This also clearly shows why the iPad 3 is called as such:

Rumors say that the next iPad may be called iPad HD. I ruled this out above since Apple’s naming convention for the iPhone may not be applicable to the iPad. However, if this were conclusive, Apple is probably setting a different naming trend exclusive to the iPad. It’s also possible – although I find this funnier – that it will be called iPad Pro.

The iPad 3 will have Wifi and Wifi + 3G/LTE variants. Pre-order can be done right after the March 7 annoucement, and customers who pre-ordered will receive it by March 29 onwards. CDMA versions will also be available by May 2012.

Reports also say that the iPad 3 will hit shelves by March 16.

You shouldn’t believe everything I said. The real deal will be known by March 8, 2o12 (at 3am here in the Philippines). But come one – that would be 6 days from now. Anyway, isn’t it fun to pretend that we’re Tim Cook, Scott Forstall, Jonathan Ive and Bob Mansfield for a day?

The post The Next iPad, A Fearless Forecast appeared first on Gadget Pilipinas.

This morning, one of our time’s greatest thinkers, artists and inventors, Steve Jobs, died from pancreatic cancer. He battled cancer for more than 7 years, and died at the age of 56.

I was waiting for my wife on my car this morning when I saw the news that Steve died. Coincidentally, I was then flicking my Twitter feeds on my iPhone. It was not just the thought that it would be too odd if I won’t be affected by the news because I’m a total fanboy, but it was the connection he created with me through the phone I’m using. It was really a sad day for me; I thought it was just apt for me to offer this day for him and “live each day as if it’s my last” – just like what he said.

I’ve been a total Steve Jobs fan boy since the launch of the first iPhone at an event in San Francisco in 2007. The iPhone, which eventually changed the way mobile phones look like, was one of his many inventions. But more than being an innovator and inventor, Steve is (and will always be) my model public speaker. During his keynote speeches and product announcements, he talked very smoothly and “magically” with a lot of sense. His famous “one more thing” added thrill to every WWDCs I watched. He suspended my emotions and jolted it with his tame voice while saying, “Isn’t it great? This is by far the best product we’ve created.”

The big question for me remains – What Would the World Do Without Steve Jobs?

Some may have reacted indifferently towards Apple’s new product, the iPhone 4S, during its launch yesterday (oddly a day before Steve’s demise). For a lot of iPhone 5 hopefuls, they thought that the iPhone 4S is an unworthy upgrade from the iPhone 4. Many believed though, especially the iPhone 3GS users, thought that the iPhone 4S is really made for them just in time after their 2-year standard telco contract. The latter, I believe is basically the foremost reason why Apple created the iPhone 4S; and the secondary reason, which my brother jokingly said, is that the 4S also stands for 4Steve – an early (nagmiridang) honor to the great innovator and the one who conceptualized the iPhone.

What would Apple do now? Uncle Tim Cook, Apple’s new CEO, has big shoes to fill. The world expects a lot from Steve’s predecessor. The world needs more innovations from Tim because, as Steve said, “Innovation is what distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” As one of the world’s valuable company and the leader in mobile computing and consumer electronics, revolutionary, radical and more magical things are expected from Apple. I am more excited than worried to see the answer to my question. How about you?

The post What Would the World Do Without Steve Jobs? appeared first on Gadget Pilipinas.

The triumph of Apple’s iPad over netbooks is not simply entirely brought about by the hardware but the soul beneath it – its operating system, the iOS or the iPhone Operating System. Its minimalistic yet classy user-interface, usability and the availability of applications (300,000 apps) are the iOS’ winning factors.

Last January 13, a plethora of iPad competitors filled the Consumer Electronics Show 2011. It’s noteworthy that last year’s CES didn’t feature any tablets but the latter suddenly became ‘scene-stealers’ this year. As expected, the hardware specifications of the new tablets are far better than the first generation iPad like the Blackberry Playbook, Acer Iconia Tab, Asus Eee Pad MeMo, Dell Streak 7, Lenovo Windows 7 Slate and the Motorola Xoom.

2 months later, when Steve Jobs announced the second generation iPad, the game changed all over again. Yes, the hardware specs of the new iPad are inferior to the tablets announces in CES 2011, but the winning factors of the iconic Apple tablet remain unbeaten.

But, the perennial question for consumers remains: “Should I buy a tablet or a laptop?”

Fight.

Price and budget are two of the first considerations when making a major purchase (anything higher than PhP5,000 for me is a major major purchase). How much is your budget and how much are your options? The table below may be your price reference:

The ultimate factor that one should consider when buying a gadget is Value for Money (VFM). VFM is defined as “Utility derived from every purchase or every sum of money spent based not only on the minimum purchase price but also on the maximum efficiency and effectiveness of the purchase.”

When buying a gadget, looking at its VFM makes you think how the gadget would help you process certain inputs (efficiency) and how it would produce your desired output (effectiveness). Confused? Well, simply put: it would be more efficient to work on a device that’s capable of helping you be more productive – such as creating movies, typing articles and playing some games – with minimum user skill. And, it would more effective to work on a device that can provide you with best results like production of better looking movies and playing games that look more realistic.

For instance, the Apple iPad is best on the user input category – thanks to its touch screen interface and “tap-able” functions, but it fails to impress on the productivity department due to the lack of application flexibility and functions to deal with certain details. With the iPad, it would be too difficult, if not ‘incapable’, for you to edit photos at its pixel level, to create awesome video effects and play games with ultra-realistic graphics.

If one is after effectiveness, the iPad or any other tablets should not be the priority; thus it is better to get a netbook or a laptop, which is more capable of producing desired outputs.

On the other hand, if one is after efficiency, getting a netbook or a laptop may not be a bad idea but only a bad priority. Netbooks or laptops may be portable but not as portable as tablet computers. With tablet computers, games are easier to play, there is no need to shut it down and wait for lengthy boot-ups. It allows you to check your Facebook wall. Everything is easy.

Now, that everything is laid out, it’s time for you to answer the question – Should you get a tablet or a netbook?

The post Should I buy a Tablet or a Netbook? appeared first on Gadget Pilipinas.