The iPhone 4 CDMA edition was unique in being the first Apple mobile device to use the GPS support of the cellular baseband chip. The iPad and previous phones had a separate AGPS chip tied into the device. Though I doubt the cost reduction of removing a dedicated chip will be passed onto the consumer in Apple's case since they stick to the same price brackets generation after generation.

Maximum workhours tend to be mandated by the chinese government, and obviously they have decided that x hours spread over y days is what they are happy with. From what I've seen there myself, most of the workers are scrambling to do as much work as possible - everything they are legally allowed.

Most do not see factory work as a long-term career - some do, progressing to line managers then project managers or R&D engineers, but that's the exception rather than the rule. Most of them are there for a few years, work really hard, make a (relative) pile, send plenty back to their parents then move on to something else. They're away from their families, their friends also work at the same place, so you can see how this makes sense to a kid fresh out of school.

I mean, the UK opted out of the EU working hours directive because it'd stop people being able to work as long as they wanted and whilst the sub 40 hour workweek sounds like a great idea for work-life balance, there are plenty of people who would hate it (like me).

Don't assume that people are being forced to work. It's a good job, especially compared to the alternatives, which is why they're never short of applicants...

The Motorola Xoom was confirmed at $800 and today VZ has announced a discounted price of $600 with a 2-year contract. Oh, it's not shipping with any Flash support at all. That's supposedly going to come later in the spring. Probably a good thing Motorola didn't wait on Adobe, right?

Great example why not controlling your own software stack sucks.

In the UK you can get an iPad for UKP99 on a two year contract. We must be getting close to an announcement.

Here's a funny one. The Xoom can't even browse its own craptastic web page, because the whole thing is unnecessarily (and horrendously!) done in Flash. If there was even a time to use that popular internet meme it's now. FAIL.

My question is why the subsidized price is less than normal. It seems like Verizon is taking less of a hit on the Xoom for some reason. Possibly because the contracts aren't as lucrative...

If showing non-working mock-ups was bad enough, Samsung's extremely boring presentation is using paid actors pretending to be people off the street...

Oh, and the non-working mockup was still thicker than the iPad 2, though Samsung claimed otherwise. Must be something getting lost in the translation of bullshit to English.

http://technologizer.com/2011/03/25/is-s...alaxy-tab-fans/

Samsung "unveiled" at CTIA this week a new thinner Galaxy Tab which it probably put together in the past two weeks based on how well the iPad 2 has been doing. Unveiled is in quotes because they didn't actually show anything real. Employees carried around some plastic mock-ups pretending they were real, but anyone could have knocked those out in a few days, they were nothing but solid blocks as far as I've read. Now they've set themselves up with a due-date of June to actually engineer the product that's supposed to fit into what they showed. Good luck with that.