The Japanese cellphone carrier NTT DoCoMo has suspended all sales of the popular RIM BlackBerry Bold due to overheating problems reported by over 30 users.
The overheating occurs during charging of the smartphone, and RIM says that one percent of all the phones sold in Japan experienced the overheating. RIM did say however that “temperatures remained within regulatory standards.”
“Although RIM’s analysis of the devices in question has allowed it to rule out a battery problem, the root cause remains under investigation,” read RIM’s statement.
There are over 21 million BlackBerry users globally.
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Apple has been sued again over their hugely popular iPhone, this time over the screen rendering technology used in both the iPhone and the iPod Touch.
The suit, brought forward by Picsel Technologies, alleges that the rendering process is in clear violation of Piscel’s patents. Picsel added the “technology accelerates the process of updating the display on a device.”
Lawyers for the company said iPhone users “would experience long screen update delays if it weren’t for the use of the patented technology. Zooming and panning documents, Web sites, and images would not work on the iPhone as fluidly.”
Picsel adds that its technology is featured in hundreds of different gadgets and counts KDDI, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Palm, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and Sharp as past and current customers.
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The Japanese mobile carrier Softbank has announced that it has signed a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to Japan later this year.
There was no details on pricing, availability or whether the deal was exclusive for the country.
Softbank has about 19 million subscribers in Japan but still lags decently far behind NTT DoCoMo and KDDI in market share.
Although the Japanese are a huge market for the iPod line of media devices, the iPhone may not be so impressive to a country whose cell phones are years ahead technologically then ours.
Regardless, rival NTT DoCoMo spokesman Shinjiro Minami added that his company was unhappy at the turn of events as DoCoMo had been trying to ink a similar deal for months.
“The user interface is very attractive and it’s a product that’s likely to draw Apple fans in Japan,” he added.
So far this year Apple has struck deals to sell the iPhone in over 20 new countries, including markets in Asia, Australia, Europe and South America.
