Millions of BlackBerry users cut off for third day

LONDON (Reuters) - Millions of BlackBerry users around the world were left without text communication services for a third day on Wednesday as Research in Motion struggled to fix what it said was a switching failure in its private network.
Users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India suffered patchy email service and no access to browsing and messaging, ratcheting up negative sentiment towards a company already losing market share toApple and Samsung.
RIM, which had said on Tuesday that services had returned to normal, said later the problems had actually spread beyond EMEA and India to Argentina, Brazil and Chile.
"The messaging and browsing delays ... were caused by a core switch failure within RIM's infrastructure," it said. "As a result, a large backlog of data was generated and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service."
The service disruptions are the worst since an outage swept north America two years ago, and come as Apple prepares to put on sale its already sold-out iPhone 4S on Friday.
"It's a blow upon a bruise. It comes at a bad time," said Richard Windsor, global technology specialist at Nomura.

Sony says to recall 1.6 mln LCD TVs globally

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp will recall 1.6 million of its Bravia brand LCD televisions worldwide after several incidents of TV sets emitting smoke or parts melting due to faulty components, a company official said on Wednesday.

The 11 incidents all took place in Japan, but the faulty parts may affect TV sets sold around the world, the company said in a news release.

There have been no reports of injuries or of damage to anything other than the televisions, Sony said.

The televisions subject to recall were manufactured in 2007 and 2008 and were mostly sold in Europe and the United States, although some were also sold in Japan and other parts of the world, a Sony spokeswoman said. The company will issue an advisory to customers on its websites and by e-mail.

(Reporting by Isabel Reynolds; Editing by Chris Gallagher and Edmund Klamann)

iPhone 4S

Speculation continues to swirl around the next iPhone, and now an analyst claims he has new information about the highly anticipated smartphone from Apple.

It will be called “iPhone 4S” when it’s released in September, according to Jefferies & Co. analyst Peter Misek. He adds that Apple will announce “distribution deals for the iPhone with Sprint and T-Mobile in time for the holidays.”

In addition, the new iPhone will have a dual-core A5 processor under the hood, helping it keep up with numerous dual-core smartphone competitors already on the market such as the Motorola Atrix 4G and HTC Sensation.

Misek added that the iPhone’s design will remain the same except for “minor” cosmetic changes, but he did write that its front and rear cameras will be improved to an unspecified extent.

If you’re looking for higher speed, you’ll have to settle for HSPA+ connectivity; Misek says there won’t be any LTE support for the iPhone yet, because the anticipated LTE chipset from Qualcomm “is currently not achieving yields sufficient for inclusion” in the next iPhone.

AT&T Pantech Pocket very wide smartphone

AT&T today official announced a new midrange smartphone that dubbed the Pantech Pocket. This Pantech smartphone has presented at CTIA 2011 that held on October 11-13 at San Diego, California, USA.

The Pantech Pocket is supports UMTS 850/1900/2100 MHz, GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, and HSPA+ mobile networks. The Pocket is runs Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) OS and boasts a 1GHz single-core processor, 600MB flash storage, and a 2GB MicroSD card bundled (up to 32GB).

Pantech Pocket Android smartphone has a 4-inch touchscreen display with a resolution of 600 x 800 pixels, a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash and 720p video recording.

Other features of Pocket is including 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS, accelerometer, proximity sensor, MicroUSB port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. New Pantech Pocket measures 114.7 x 78 x 11.3 mm and weighs about 130 g.