Mobile Phone News

Remember that WAPI-compliant version of the iPhone approved back in May? Yeah, well, China Unicom is just at this time getting around to rolling it out, promising it’ll be available next week in the form of an 8GB 3GS for an incredible 4,999 yuan (about $739). As far as we can tell, the phone will be compatible both with straight WiFi and WAPI wireless networks, which is a big step for the country — traditionally, the Chinese iPhone has been WiFi-free while the iPod touch has gone unfettered, the result of bureaucracy, product categorization, and strange laws that don’t fly in many other locales. On a related note, rumor has it that the iPhone 4 — presumably also with WiFi / WAPI — is on track for a September 1 release, so if the 3GS is feeling a little too 2009 for you, you may not have long to wait.

China Unicom getting WiFi-enabled iPhone 3GS next week, iPhone 4 on September 1? originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Fri, 06 Aug 2010 20:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apparently, the latest firmware update for Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X10 (which, yes, is still based on Android 1.6) does more harm than good — if you’re frequently using WiFi and you find yourself in weak cellular coverage, anyhow. Basically, any time your cellular signal drops to zero then bounces back, WiFi turns itself off, which is particularly brutal considering that a weak signal is probably why you’re leaning on WiFi in the first place. We don’t have details on what X10s are affected, but R2BA026 sounds like the offending version — so if you see it, we’d probably stay far away until SE manages to push another update.

We can’t even imagine the uproar that AT&T and Apple would be dealing with if FaceTime calls — which travel over WiFi alone — siphoned minutes out of your cellular plan’s voice bucket, but fortunately, that’s a doomsday scenario we’ll never need to worry about because it’s at this time been confirmed that they’re totally minute-free. What’s more, when you start by initiating a voice call, it ends as soon as you switch from voice to FaceTime — so you won’t be charged for the portion of the call that’s conducted over FaceTime in that case, either. Of course, as long as FaceTime is an iPhone 4 exclusive, it’s plan to be pretty limited in scope — but once other vendors start getting in on the open standard (if “standard” is an appropriate term in this place) it’ll get a lot juicier, we suspect.

PSA: iPhone 4’s FaceTime won’t use your voice minutes originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.