MacRumors

Sprint has updated its website with information on its iPhone offerings, beginning immediate pre-orders of the new 8 GB iPhone 4. Pre-orders for the iPhone 4S start tomorrow, in line with the schedule set by Apple and being followed by other carriers in the first round of launches.

In its press release announcing the iPhone launch, Sprint touts its service plans offering unlimited data, a feature not offered by other U.S. iPhone carriers.

“Our unlimited data plans are the perfect fit for iPhone customers,” said Sprint CEO Dan Hesse. “Sprint’s unlimited data plans provide more value than metered plans from other carriers. Our customers can take advantage of the innovative features of iPhone without worrying about overage charges or surprises on their bill.”

Sprint's plans include unlimited data and messaging (text, photo, and video), as well as unlimited mobile-to-mobile calling to and from any mobile phone in the United States. Three different plans with varying amounts of calling time are available:

- 450 Minutes: $79.99/month
- 900 Minutes: $99.99/month
- Unlimited: $109.99/month

A mobile hotspot option is also available for $29.99 per month, offering up to 5 GB of data for hotspot services through the device, which can support up to five Wi-Fi connections simultaneously.

As on other carriers, Sprint is offering the iPhone at the following price points, all with two-year agreements:

- 8 GB iPhone 4: $99.99
- 16 GB iPhone 4S: $199.99
- 32 GB iPhone 4S: $299.99
- 64 GB iPhone 4S: $399.99

As with Apple, iPhone 4S pre-orders through Sprint will begin at 12:01 AM Pacific time tomorrow.

Apple's website announces the sad news that Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs has passed away. Jobs was 56 years old, and had been struggling with complications related to pancreatic cancer over the past several years. Apple leaves the following message on their website in tribute to Jobs:

Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.

If you would like to share your thoughts, memories and condolences, please email rememberingsteve@apple.com

Steve Jobs narrated this unaired version of Apple's famous Think Different ad in 1997:

Apple's board of directors released this statement:

We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today.

Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.

His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.

From Robert Scoble: "Flags half staff at Apple headquarters. Sad day in Cupertino."

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As noted by CNET's Roger Cheng, Phone Scoop, and AllThingsD, Sprint has confirmed that it will indeed be offering unlimited data for the iPhone when it launches on the carrier.

“We will be offering the benefit of our unlimited plans that start at just $69.99,” said spokeswoman Michelle Leff Mermelstein. Sprint’s $69.99 plan includes unlimited data and 450 voice minutes as well as unlimited mobile-to-mobile calling. Unlimited calling and data costs $99 a month.

The new iPhone 4S is scheduled to debut on Sprint, AT&T and Verizon in the United States on Friday, October 14th, with pre-orders beginning this Friday, October 7th. Sprint will also join AT&T and Verizon in offering the low-capacity 8 GB iPhone 4, with information on Apple's site listing Sprint's availability for that device as "coming soon".

Sprint has been surprisingly quiet since yesterday considering that it has reportedly committed to purchase billions of dollars' worth of iPhones from Apple, with no mention of the iPhone yet appearing on the carrier's website. AllThingsD notes that Sprint is in fact "very excited" to begin offering the iPhone, but is making sure all of its plans are in order before beginning its promotional blitz.

TUAW publishes an extensive list of phrases that the new Siri personal assistant functionality for the iPhone 4S is capable of understanding. The list, broken down into categories, outlines the various types of information and tasks Siri can deal with and provides some interesting insight into how users can help Siri learn to understand their requests.

For example, several demonstrations of Siri have included users referring to other people by their relationships (wife, dad, etc.) rather than by name. Informing Siri of those relationships is as easy as telling the system what they are, and Siri will remember those associations from that point on. Example voice input using relationships includes:

- My mom is Susan Park
- Michael Manning is my brother
- Call my brother at work

Another interesting and flexible use of Siri is in the creation of notes, a feature that allows users to make records of a wide range of content on their devices.

Creating and finding notes

- Note that I spent $12 on lunch
- Note: check out that new Alicia Keys album
- Find my restaurant note
- Create a reading list note
- Add Tom Sawyer to my reading list note

And while the example phrases show how users can make requests of and provide information to Siri, the examples are just that – examples. As demonstrated yesterday, Siri is capable of understanding natural language, allowing users to ask essentially the same question in a number of ways without needing to employ specific syntax.

Siri's example input phrases are broken down into the following categories:

- Address Book: Querying Contacts, Finding Contacts, Relationships
- Calendars: Adding Events, Changing Events, Asking About Events
- Alarms: Setting Alarms, Checking the Clock, Using a Timer
- Email: Sending Messages, Checking Messages, Responding to Messages
- Friends: Checking Up on Friends
- Maps: Directions, Local Businesses
- Messages: Sending Texts, Reading Texts, Replying to Texts
- Music: Playback
- Notes: Creating and Finding Notes
- Phone: Phone Calls
- Reminders: Requesting Reminders
- Stocks: Checking Stocks

The full list of example phrases is included at TUAW, but Siri's capabilities extend even beyond the items included on the list, as evidenced by demonstrations of Siri searching the Internet, Wikipedia, and Wolfram Alpha for specific information.

comScore today released the results of its latest survey of mobile phone usage in the United States, revealing that Apple is quickly approaching a 10% share of the U.S. mobile phone market. Among the top mobile phone manufacturers, Apple led the pack in growth between the three-month period ending in May and the period ending in August, growing by 1.1 percentage point to hit 9.8% of the U.S. market.

Looking specifically at smartphones and measuring platforms instead of manufacturers, Apple checked in at 27.3% of the market, up 0.7% over the prior period but trailing Android's 5.6 percentage point growth.

The reports also highlight the rapid deterioration in Research in Motion's market share. Apple and RIM had been neck and neck in share just four reports ago, covering the February-April 2011 period, but RIM has fallen to under 20% of the smartphone market as Apple has surpassed 27%.

comScore's surveys track installed user base rather than recent sales as tracked by many other firms. As a result, comScore's numbers react more slowly to changing trends in mobile phone sales than shorter-range measures of recent sales. But comScore's numbers would be more accurate reflections of actual consumer usage given typical upgrade cycles on the order of 18 months for average users.

In what should have come as no surprise to most observers, Apple yesterday introduced its new iPhone 4S without LTE 4G capabilities. The company had previously acknowledged that the first generation of LTE chips had required handset design compromises that Apple was unwilling to make, and analysts had noted that Apple-suitable LTE chips weren't likely until early 2012.

AnandTech takes a closer look at the status of LTE chip development, describing how a slower-than-expected transition to new 28-nanometer chip processes has left a number of companies unable to release the devices they had originally hoped to launch in 2011.

As you may have heard however, the move to 28nm at both TSMC and Global Foundries isn't really going all that smoothly. The jump from 4x-nm to 28nm is a very big one, so it's not unexpected to have pretty serious teething problems as the process ramps up. I suspect that an aggressive 28nm roadmap that didn't pan out probably caught a lot of SoC and smartphone vendors in a position where they couldn't ship what they wanted to in 2011.

As in earlier reports regarding Apple's likely LTE chip plans, AnandTech points to Qualcomm's MDM9615 modem as the chip to watch for. The MDM9615 will be the first chip to offer both LTE and voice services in a single chip.

But with the MDM9615 not scheduled to begin shipping in quantity until the second quarter of next year, AnandTech suggests that an LTE-enabled iPhone wouldn't appear until the third quarter of 2012.

Qualcomm's current roadmaps show the 28nm MDM9615 arriving in Q2 2012. The 9615 finds itself in a smaller 10x10mm package and is voice enabled as well. Apple (and all other smartphone makers) could replace the MDM6600 with the MDM9615 and have a "single chip" LTE solution for smartphones.

Apple's next-generation A6 system-on-a-chip is also said to be on track for a second quarter debut, and while such a schedule raises questions about Apple's plans for the iPad 3, it would line up nicely to allow Apple to launch a new iPhone based on the A6 and LTE about a year from now.

Yesterday, Apple released their next generation iPhone called the iPhone 4S. Some were understandably disappointed that the rumored tapered "iPhone 5" design (shown below) was not released.

The design was first revealed back in April, but gained more traction after cases started appearing from various Chinese accessory manufacturers in June. In fact, we heard that many of these suppliers were 100% confident that this would be the new iPhone design. So much so that large distributors were offering money back guarantees to retailers that these cases were correct. This, of course, led to a proliferation of cases into retailers as well. As the media event approached, however, there was no real evidence that Apple was actually producing this design.

One report suggested that a lost Apple prototype from a Foxconn factory was the source of the case designs. This is a story we're inclined to believe. We had heard that this design is an actual Apple prototype that was in development, and not just a product of someone's wild imagination.

So, there is some hope that we will ultimately see the design in the future, though it's also possible that this exact design will never make its way to production. This scenario has happened before, where case makers jump the gun based on a leaked prototype. Most notably, back in 2009, case makers started producing cases for a then-unreleased iPod touch with camera. A prototype of exactly such a device was also leaked. Apple, however, released a camera-less iPod touch in 2009, and waited until 2010 to release one with a further redesigned camera. So that 2009 prototype never made it into production, but was verified to be legitimate.

The "iPhone 5" moniker will also have to wait until the next iPhone's release. At this point, Apple seems to have established a pattern for their iPhone releases with external design changes seemingly scheduled every two generations (Original iPhone, 3G, 3GS, 4, 4S). We've heard nothing about when the next generation iPhone will arrive, but if we had to guess, we'd think Apple would stick to a late fall schedule again in 2012.

Making good on its previous plans to target Apple's new iPhone in an attempt to ban sales of the device over intellectual property infringement, Samsung has announced that it will indeed file requests for preliminary injunctions today in France and Italy.

Samsung Electronics will file separate preliminary injunction motions in Paris, France and Milano, Italy on October 5 local time requesting the courts block the sale of Apple’s iPhone 4S in the respective markets.

Samsung's preliminary injunction requests in France and Italy will each cite two patent infringements related to wireless telecommunications technology, specifically Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) standards for 3G mobile handsets.

Samsung notes that it plans to file additional requests in other countries as it reviews the situation. Samsung's efforts are part of an escalating patent dispute between the two companies that has seen Apple win delays in the launch of Samsung's Galaxy Tab device in Australia and Germany.

Today's announcement from Samsung does not cite the specific patents it will accuse the iPhone 4S of infringing upon, but it is likely that they will be patents already being used by Samsung in a Dutch lawsuit against Apple seeking the ban of the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 2, and original iPad.

Apple has argued that those patents are essential enough to the basic operation of 3G wireless technologies that they should be subject to FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) terms requiring Samsung to license them under reasonable terms. Apple's position is that Samsung has not been offering reasonable terms for the patents, and the two parties have been unable to reach an agreement on their licensing.

Apple today introduced the iPhone 4S, the company's next generation iPhone. The iPhone includes a number of improvements including an improved camera, A5 processor, faster graphics and support for the Siri intelligent assistant software.

The iPhone 4S will be available in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the UK on Friday, October 14 and customers can pre-order their iPhone 4S beginning Friday, October 7. In the U.S., the iPhone 4S will be available on AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. Apple support representatives are telling customers that pre-orders will begin online at 12:01 a.m Pacific (7:01 a.m. GMT).

iPhone 4S will roll out worldwide to 22 more countries by the end of October including Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

Existing iPhone owners can check their upgrade eligibility using this tool.

Today, Apple announced that iOS 5 would be released to the public on October 12th. In the meanwhile, they have seeded the final Golden Master copy to developers and are now asking developers to submit iOS 5 applications for inclusion in the App Store.

Apple has already been quietly approving many iOS 5 applications, but this gives developers a chance to test against the final shipping version of iOS 5. iOS 5 delivers over 200 new features to customers and will be available for a free download on October 12th. iOS 5 is compatible with the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 2, iPad, and the 3rd and 4th generation iPod touches.