Rich communication services (RCS) is already a big deal on Android phones with more than a billion users. Those numbers might be going up by the fall, as Google claims Apple will be joining the RCS party.
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A page for Google Messages lists the benefits of RCS, and it also just happened to have a slide saying the feature will come to the iPhone, as first spotted by 9to5Google Thursday.
“Apple has announced it will be adopting RCS in the fall of 2024,” the now-deleted slide said.
Google and Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on this deleted slide.
Apple already began work on implementing RCS compatibility with its upcoming iPhone last year, but this is the first mention of when this momentous occasion would happen. The timing does seem appropriate as Apple routinely releases its new iPhone in the fall. This could be one of the many announcements of new features for iOS 18 happening in June at Apple’s WWDC.
As for what this means for Android and iPhone users, it could be the end of the green and blue bubble drama. Now this doesn’t mean that the different color bubbles will go away or that Android phones will now have access to iMessage. Android users will still have the green bubble when texting someone with an iPhone. However, things like emoji reactions, message receipts, and high-resolution pictures and videos could be available between the two devices.
Texts were one of the points the Department of Justice focused on when it decided to file a lawsuit against Apple for creating a monopoly on the iPhone. In the suit, there was an interaction CEO Tim Cook had with an individual who said how it was tough for him to send her photos as she was on an Android phone. Cook then told the person, “Buy your mom an iPhone.”
Apple is in major legal trouble as the Department of Justice (DOJ) and 16 state and district attorneys filed a lawsuit against the iPhone maker, as reported by the Washington Post Thursday. They accuse Apple of building a monopoly with the iPhone.
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The suit alleges Apple’s changes to its rules and high fees created a “degraded user experience.” Some of the practices cited included the iMessage green bubbles for non-iPhone users, the 30% App Store fee, and privacy issues with the Apple Wallet.
“We alleged that Apple has consolidated its monopoly power, not by making its own products better, but by making other products worse,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press conference Thursday. “If left unchallenged, Apple will only continue to strengthen its smartphone monopoly.”
Apple says the suit is wrong on the facts and the law.
“This lawsuit threatens who we are and the principles that set Apple products apart in fiercely competitive markets,” the company said in an emailed statement to Gizmodo Thursday. “If successful, it would hinder our ability to create the kind of technology people expect from Apple—where hardware, software, and services intersect. It would also set a dangerous precedent, empowering government to take a heavy hand in designing people’s technology.”
Apple routinely finds itself in legal trouble over its business practices, but the company finds ways to keep winning. Last year, the legal battle between Epic and Apple over the App Store payment options went all the way to the Supreme Court, but Apple prevailed in the end.
But that’s in the U.S. Over in the European Union (EU), Apple has been getting spanked by regulations. Not only did regulators make Apple go all-in with USB-C cables for the iPhone 15 last year, but the EU also made Apple open up its software to allow third-party app stores onto its devices.
A first-edition iPhone with 4GB of storage would run you about $499 back in 2007, but nowadays they cost around $190,000. An auction house is selling one of these rare iPhones, sealed in its original packaging from 16 years ago, but the last one it sold had a 38,000% markup from its original price.
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“One of the most important and ubiquitous inventions of our lifetime, the iPhone,” said LCG Auctions in its product description.
The auction house will take bids on this Original 2007 iPhone for the next two weeks, first reported by 9to5Mac Monday. It’s the third 4GB model LCG Auctions has ever sold, with the first two selling for $190,000 and $133,000 last year. The current bid on this iPhone is $11,000, as of Tuesday morning, but the auction house estimates this model will go for at least $100,000.
Steve Jobs first introduced the iPhone on Jan 9, 2007 at Macworld in San Francisco, noting that Apple was about to “reinvent the phone.” The iPhone quickly became Apple’s best-selling product and was even named Time Magazine’s Invention of the Year. Given the success, it’s strange that the iPhone 4GB was discontinued on Sep 5th, 2007, just two months after its retail release.
The iPhone 4GB was released alongside the iPhone 8GB, priced at $599. For double the storage, most consumers were more than happy to pay the extra $100. So Apple quickly stopped producing the 4GB iPhone and never made a phone with such little storage again. Today, the base iPhone 15 has 128GB and more expensive models have 512GB of storage. The original 4GB iPhone is puny in comparison.
Given that the first edition iPhone 4GB was only sold for two months, despite being so revolutionary, it’s become quite the collector’s item. LCG Auctions notes the box on this specific model has never been opened, and the phone inside has never been activated. The box still has bright colors imbued in 2007, with little signs of fading.
Some lucky collectors will take home this original iPhone, and they may pay a hefty price tag to do so. But it could all be worth it to relive the glory days of Apple.
When you’re buying a new smartphone, salesmen love pestering you to buy some increased protection — insurance, a case, and, obviously, a screen protector. The screen protector has long been hailed as a necessity, costing anywhere from $10 to $60. These little slips of plastic and glass have ballooned to a $50 billion industry, but there’s a dirty secret underneath it all. Your screen protector may not be essential anymore.
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You wouldn’t be crazy for wanting to protect your screen. Cracking your screen is the number one way to break your phone, followed by water damage and battery issues. However, the glass in your phone has gotten significantly stronger in the last five years. Some experts say you might be able to skip the screen protector, and even warn about some relatively unknown downsides that salespeople aren’t telling you.
“It’s really not particularly useful,” said Raymond Soneira, CEO of DisplayMate Technologies, about screen protectors in an interview with Gizmodo. Soneira’s company researches how to optimize your phone’s display. He doesn’t use a screen protector, just a phone case, but caveats this by noting he is very careful with his phone and rarely ever drops it.
DisplayMate found that screen protectors make your phone more reflective. This reduces the quality of your display and requires you to increase your phone’s brightness to match the same quality. Over time, he says this will wear down your phone’s battery, and give you a shorter daily battery life.
However, the phone community is mixed on this screen protector issue. iFixit Repairability Engineer, Carsten Fraunheim notes that screen protectors can be useful against scratches, micro-abrasions, and just give you peace of mind. He calls them a “no-brainer” but admits they’re less essential than they used to be.
“As smartphone glass tech becomes more and more shatter resistant, screen protectors will lose their ‘drop protection’ selling feature,” Fraunheim said in an email.
Even the liquid screen protectors have their issues.
“Liquid wipe-on screen protectors are snake oil,” said iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens in an email. He says that this variety of protection actually compromises the structure of your screen, though he had no comment on panel-style protectors.
Trey Barnett, a computer technician at a Manhattan uBreakiFix, has seen a lot of cracked screens in the 14 years he’s been repairing phones. However, he sees fewer iPhones with broken screens than he used to.
“I would say that screens have gotten a bit stronger, but, you know, it hasn’t stopped people from breaking them altogether.”
There is an obvious argument in favor of screen protectors: they cost less than replacing your phone screen. While that’s true, the chances of having to repair your screen are far lower than they used to be. The multi-billion dollar screen protector industry would like to keep that on the down low.
Origins of The Screen Protector
In 2021, Apple’s iPhones started using Ceramic Shield, a new material that claims to be tougher than any previous smartphone glass. It comes from Corning, a glass company that Steve Jobs commissioned to produce the first screen for the iPhone in 2007.
Jobs famously gave Corning a 6-month deadline to produce the iPhone’s screen, which was originally planned to be plastic. Corning got it done, creating an especially strong, thin material called Gorilla Glass. This material would be used in the first decade of iPhones and is still used in most Samsung phones.
Gorilla Glass is stronger than most glass, but it wasn’t great at first. Screen protectors for phones almost immediately popped up, as consumers raced to wrap their phones in protective materials.
Apple forumsin 2008 were full of peoplediscussing early screen protectors. The first iPhone adopters quickly scratched their Gorilla Glass displays. Some users found these early screen protectors were so bad they messed with the iPhone’s touch screen. Screen protectors have gotten much better, but so have screens themselves.
Ceramic Shield was a major leap forward for screen technology. The materials used in Ceramic Shield are much different from typical smartphone glass. Corning describes it as somewhere in between ceramics and glass, and Apple says it’s four times stronger than Gorilla Glass when it comes to drops.
However, these major improvements have flown under the radar. That may have something to do with the growth of the screen protector industry. By 2030, the industry is expected to grow to roughly $85 billion, according to Grand View Research.
Why Screen Protectors Persist
Anyone who has cracked their phone screen will tell you how painful that experience is. Even though phone screens have gotten much better, the replacement process is scarring enough to make anyone just buy the dang screen protector.
It’s totally understandable why you might put your phone in a screen protector still. It is a large investment, but there’s more and more evidence that screens are getting better. A good phone case alone may be sufficient.
So at what point do we ditch the screen protectors? These flimsy films could be degrading the quality of that very expensive screen in your pocket, and they are potentially running through your battery. Screen protectors are slowly becoming a thing of the past.
If you like vaporware and looking at phones and gadgets you’ll never own, then Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) is the trade show for you. This week’s annual menagerie revealed new devices like the TCL Nxtpaper 14 and a working model of Motorola’s rolling phone display. Other brands—namely Samsung—used the…
Hey, quick question: If you had a spare $200,000 laying around in your bank account, what would you spend it on? You’d probably spend it on a house, or maybe a new car (several new cars?). What you probably wouldn’t do is drop that kind of cash on a 16-year-old iPhone. But that’s what happened over the weekend.
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The original iPhone was released all the way back in June 2007. At the time, Apple released two versions of what would become its most successful product ever: a 4GB storage model that cost $499 and an 8GB model that cost $599. And it’s that 4GB model that has become a bit of a collector’s item. This is because back in 2007 the 4GB version sold more slowly than its 8GB counterpart. Most people just paid the extra $100 to double the phone’s storage, and as a result, Apple discontinued the 4GB version just two months after its release, in September 2007. So there weren’t nearly as many of them out in the wild, and even fewer remained sealed in their boxes. That (sort of) explains why a sealed, mint condition iPhone 4GB from 2007 just sold at auction for $190,372.80.
LCG Auctions’ item description suggests that the old Apple phone is the “Holy Grail” among phone collectors. The phone up for auction was still factory sealed in its original box, and apparently in “exceptional condition.” LCGAuctions claimed the consignor was part of the original engineering team at Apple during the iPhone launch, possibly explaining how they got their hands on such a rare device and why they never opened it.
Other iPhones have sold for similarly high prices
This isn’t the first iPhone to sell for a large sum of money at auction. LCGAuctions cites a few other Apple devices that have, over the preceding nine months, sold for hard-to-believe prices, including two factory-sealed 8GB iPhones from the same era. One sold in October of last year for $39,339, and another hit $63,356 this past February. And yet another one of these old, original, and still-sealed iPhones sold this year for $40,000, bought (and opened) by YouTuber Marques Brownlee.
Marques Brownlee
What’s happening here? Well, some have suggested that many of these big-ticket auctions involving old tech, video games, and collectibles are part of some kind of money-laundering or price-fixing shenanigans. For example, some believe that video game auctions involving sealed copies of Nintendo gamesgoing for tens of thousands of dollars are part of some alleged racket involving item graders, auction houses, and rich clients. All companies involved have denied the claims, however, and there’s no direct evidence that suggests these recent iPhone auctions are part of some larger conspiracy or otherwise tied to illicit activities.
Regardless of what’s going on, if you want an old iPhone or other collectible tech item, you should probably buy it now before prices get even higher in the future. Maybe it’ll pay for your kid’s college, or the AI apps that they’ll need to compete in the 2040s job market or something.
