South Korean technology giant Samsung Electronics alleged on Monday that it expected to resume its number one spot by value in the French mobile phone handset market from Apple by September this year. Samsung remains first in terms of volume, taking 39 percent of the market with 4.5 million phones sold, David Eberle, the head of

Acer’s 6-inch LumiRead e-reader just hit the FCC, but there’s not a lot to learn — the company smartly withheld the user’s manual and detailed images, so all we have are the triplicate forms of stalwart government employees trying to irradiate themselves. Those thankfully painless tests reveal that the Kindle-alike will have standard 802.11b/g WiFi alongside its monochrome E Ink screen, and the whole 532MHz Freescale iMX357 kit will be powered by a 3.7V, 1460mAh battery. Exciting stuff, we know. In other news, the FCC’s “ancillary equipment” list features genuine Apple iPod earbuds, and a Dell Vostro 1510 — because that’s how they roll. Acer’s LumiRead 600 hits the FCC with slow bursts of 2.4GHz radiation originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Jul 2010 00:12:00 EDT

HTC confirmed on Friday that it is not going to produce a slate device in the immediate future; despite earlier rumors that the mobile handset giant had an Android and possibly Chrome version in the works. Eric Lin, the Global PR and online community manager for HTC, had this to say about tablets: “We are always looking at it, but, right now, the whole idea is that in order to be successful with a tablet, you need to have something compelling. And not just a compelling form factor. You need to find that compelling use, that compelling story, that one compelling feature. And we are not going to do anything until we have found that” The statement that HTC is working towards something compelling and not just another run of the mill tablet may seem prudent to some and folly to others in light of the runaway success of the Apple iPad. Regardless of where you stand on HTC’s decision to watch, wait, and innovate, one thing is for sure — if and when HTC does finally enter the tablet market, it will do so with an iPad killer a bang. Read

Filed under: iPhone The popular Navigon app for the iPhone has had a significant update which is likely to please current owners and may get the company some new sales as well. New features include Live Weather (which gives the current weather wherever you’re going), parking information, iOS 4 integration — including background navigation and Retina Display enhancements), and updates to the NAVTEQ maps included. Additionally, there are some nice changes and improvements to the graphics, so this is a fairly substantial update. Read on for a little more insight. TUAW Navigon updates MobileNavigator with iOS4 multitasking, new maps and parking info originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 10 Jul 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read

YouTube has said that it will be sponsoring higher quality content and supporting ultra-high quality digital video. These two announcements come just days after the launch of the beta version of YouTube Leanback , the next phase in the company’s play for the living room. These moves also signal a shift in strategy for the online video site as it attempts to brand itself as a content destination rather than a place to watch viral videos. Earlier this week, Mashable’s Ben Parr argued that in order for Leanback to take off, YouTube will need to remake itself as the central point for video entertainment. These announcements appear to be a play for just that space. YouTube Partner Grants: Paying for Better Content YouTube is rolling out its YouTube Partner Grants program, which will invest five million dollars to select new and emerging YouTube partners. The goal here is to provide small production companies and studios with the funds needed to produce high quality original content. The money that is given via the YouTube Partner Grants program will be an advance on future YouTube revenue shares

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here . The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. Name: DokDok Quick Pitch: DokDok enhances your inbox to make it easy to find, work on and share the latest version of any document. Genius Idea: Even with threaded conversations and online document collaboration, finding and managing the right version of an attachment can be frustrating, to say the least. DokDok’s makers think it should be easy for you to verify that the attachment you’re working on or searching for is the most recent version. You should also be able to track any changes to that document and share it with others, all without disrupting the workflow of a normal business. It might be good at the outset to tell you what DokDok isn’t

Filed under: iPhone I’ve been trying (pretty unsuccessfully) to become a smarter wine drinker for a while now, and Corkbin might just push me over the top. This elegantly designed app is set up to help you track and chart the wines that you drink, learn how to classify them, and share reviews with friends and fellow iPhone users around you. The idea is that every time you try a new wine, you snap a picture of the label and leave a short note about what you had it with, how it tasted, or where you got it. Then, later on, at the liquor store or when out at a restaurant, you can pull up “that wine we tried last week,” and you’ll know exactly what it was. It’s simple, but it’s perfect for people like me who aren’t wine experts and need a little help remembering exactly what that last bottle was called. Unfortunately, the app isn’t perfect; I don’t like that you must log in on startup, and there are quite a few features (like a wine database or the ability to browse friends’ wines rather than just “nearby” check-ins) that seem like they would be awesome but are still missing from the app

This series is supported by Rackspace , the better way to do hosting. Learn more about Rackspace’s hosting solutions here . TextMate is one of the most used and well-loved applications for Mac OS X-based designers and developers. Even if it does look like TextMate 2.0 is likely vaporware, the existing app (currently at version 1.5.9) still delivers the goods. One of our favorite features of TextMate — and really, any modern text editor — is the ability to customize the look and feel. For designers and developers, this can be really fantastic, as we often spend the better part of our day in front of an open text editor and white on black text can sometimes get to be a little much. Likewise, having color schemes that can help highlight different elements of code that you frequently use can make the entire process much more enjoyable .

There has been a change? Apple Stores are no longer charging the usual 10% restocking fee – in this case $19.90 for the 16 GB iPhone 4 and $29.90 for the 32 GB version. Apparently there was one tiny detail we overlooked in Apple’s last statement confirming the iPhone 4/iOS 4 reception problem was “if you are not fully satisfied, you can return your undamaged iPhone to any Apple Retail Store or the online Apple Store within 30 days of purchase for a full refund.” Really? I think this has something to do with the lawsuits but hey if Apple really wanted to make nice, they would give out bumpers to fix the antenna problem.

Is Apple doing enough to reach Chinese customers? Not even close – if you ask Lenovo. According to Financial Times , Lenovo’s founder Liu Chuanzhi said Lenovo is “lucky that Steve Jobs has such a bad temper and doesn’t care about China. If Apple were to spend the same effort on the Chinese consumer as we do, we would be in trouble.” It’s a bit odd for a company chairman to speak about competition in that way, and a Lenovo spokesman later said the remarks were uttered during a “relaxed” moment during a dinner interview. But is Chuanzhi right? It’s true that it took several years for the iPhone to finally reach China (although the phone is actually manufactured there), and Apple only has a handful of stores in China, with the first one being opened only recently, in 2008. Furthermore, a lot of what Apple has to offer lies within its brand, and Chinese customers are all about value which, compared with the price of its products, is not one of Apple’s strengths. Still, when your competitors claim you’re missing an opportunity to take away a piece of the market from them, it might be time to do something about it.

Take it with a grain of salt, but it’s looking like some prayers have been answered on this Fourth of July — Flash (or is that “Frash”?) is running on this man’s iPad, cleverly ported from Android. The YouTube video claims that by using a compatibility layer, the Android runtime can play Flash content natively in Safari, but only on iPad so far — iPhone 3GS support is planned soon, as is iOS 4, and there’s a call for developers to move the project forward at GitHub . We’ve no way of determining its legitimacy at this moment, but it sure seems like Comex (he of the iPad “Spirit” jailbreak ) has outdone himself this time, and hey, where there’s smoke , there’s fire, right? See Strongbad answer emails on iOS, right after the break.

Filed under: Accessories I recently tested out the new Jawbone ICON Bluetooth earpiece. It’s a small hands-free earbud device that you wear in your ear, and talk while on-the-go. At a cost of US$99, the unit provides support for both calls and A2DP -based audio. You can listen to your music and podcasts via the earpiece as well as talking with others. I found the packaging extraordinarily hard to grapple with. There are an insane number of tiny plastic pieces in the box, which has been designed to be eco-friendly rather than to provide a Jonathan Ive-like unboxing experience. All those pieces, however, easily fit into the rigid plastic portion of the package. Once you manage to get the thing open, it’s pretty easy to keep track of all the parts

Well here we go again, more iPhone 4 problems have popped up again; some reports, the camera is having some yellowing issue with photos It’s unclear how widespread this issue is but there have been problems of yellow dots on the screen but now yellow photos? Maybe this is another manufacturing issue? Well we aren’t really sure since not many have questioned this themselves. This could just be another bad sign for Apple’s smartphone launch, which has been plagued with problems. The biggest one has been the reception issue, which Apple now admits is real and should be addressed with a software update in a few weeks. So as for the yellow pictures? If you’re having this problem maybe take it into Apple? There isn’t much I can say, other then good luck.

Steve Jobs had let us know to “stay tuned” concerning the iPhone 4 Death Grip, and today we have a letter from Apple letting everyone know what they’re going to do about it. As alleged, it’s a software problem with iOS 4 (and earlier versions), which Apple assures will be fixed in the next couple of weeks.

Today, on Apple, they have a released a letter apologizing – ha! that’s new! – for the iPhone 4 reception problems. It’s not what you think though, they are blaming the lack of seeing bars our problem? “Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars