While it’s easy to think the iPhone 3GS is everywhere now, TiPb still gets email asking when it will be in India, and on the largest carrier in the largest market in the world, China Mobile.

Well Macworld tells us Airtel has finally announced they’ll be bringing the iPhone 3GS to India:

New Delhi, March 19, 2010 : Bharti Airtel and Apple have reached an agreement to bring iPhone 3GS, the fastest most powerful iPhone yet, to India in the coming months. For information please visit www.airtel.in/iphone3gs. For more information on iPhone, please visit www.apple.com/iphone .

Meanwhile, Financial Times [registration required] reports that China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou is still interested as well, providing Apple addresses their special radio needs:

“including TD-SCDMA is not that hard to do – RIM is doing it”. But he added that Apple had not yet responded to his proposal.

MacRumors points out that while China Mobile is a monster, their 3G customer base remains small, but should grow from 3.4 to 10 million this year.

Either way, these represent two holes in Apple’s iPhone coverage and it’s nice to see at least one of them getting filled.

Airtel Bringing iPhone 3GS to India, China Mobile Wants in on iPhone and iPad is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Square-Enix has been quite busy developing for the iPhone/iPod touch with the recent release of both Final Fantasy 1 and 2, and now Chaos Rings.

Make no mistake, this is no Final Fantasy but if you love turn-based battles it does look very promising. No official release date or price has been mentioned but we will be sure to fill you in on the details as they are released.

Check out the full trailer after the break and let us know what you think!

Square-Enix Shows Off New iPhone RPG – Chaos Rings is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Live from GDC 2010, Rene talks to Bob Koon of Binary Hammer about the Creature24 project that tried to make a complete, polished iPhone game in 24 hours.

The goal of Creature24 was to create a real, polished iPhone game in 24 hrs, transparently on the internet. They didn’t make their deadline, but were valiant in the attempt. They’re going to complete the game, and perhaps do an iPad version of the challenge (with a slightly expanded time limit) next year.

Watch along after the break!

YouTube link

TiPb Apps 5.5: Creature24 (GDC 2010) is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Chad and Rene discuss iPad pre-orders, GDC 2010, iPhone 4.0 rumors, Google vs. Apple, Windows Phone 7 series, and all the week’s news. Listen in!

Credits

Our music comes from the following sources:

• I Called You — iPhone Remix by Pete Leidy
via Sneakmove iPhone Ringtone Challenge

TiPb Live Podcast #90 — Game On! is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

NAVIGON’s new MyRegion is a customizable version of their turn-by-turn MobileNavigator app for iPhone that basically lets you buy just the navigation you need, when you need it, and expand via in-app purchase later.

Three “regions” are available in the US — Western [iTunes link], Central [iTunes link], and Eastern [iTunes link]. Each region is currently on sale for $24.99 until April 12, at which point they’ll be regularly priced at $29.99. Getting an additional region via in-app purchase will cost $12.99 on sale ($14.99 regularly).

What’s included?

NAVIGON MyRegion includes all the features and capabilities as MobileNavigator 1.4 plus NAVIGON MyRoutes. This new feature will be added to MobileNavigator North America via an upcoming update to 1.5.0 due this spring. NAVIGON MyRoutes is an industry first feature that learns from the users driving style to provide customized and better route recommendations. The feature also offers up to two alternative routes clearly displayed on a map including ETA, distance and driving time. This lets user choose the route that best serves their individual situation.

If you don’t already have MobileNavigator and on-board maps are a must-have but not necessarily a have-all, give MyRegion a shot and let us know what you think!

NAVIGON Brings MyRegion Turn-by-Turn Navigation to iPhone is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Rene talks to Marc Edwards of Bjango about iStat [$0.99 on sale - iTunes link] for iPhone, iPod touch, and… iPad!

iStat lets you monitor the resources on your iPhone, including voice and data usage, RAM, storage, networking, up time, processes, and more, and remotely monitor resources for your Mac, Linux, or Solaris server. Additional tools include ping and traceroute. If you want to sit on the sofa and watch your octocore’s CPU’s to see when that big transcode or render is done, or if you want to try and narrow down a problem on your server floor from the coffee shop, give iStat a shot and let us know what you think.

Note: If you’re a fan of iStat Menus on the Mac, they’re running a poll [Google Spreadsheet link] on future versions so head on over and let them know what you think about price points and features.

Watch along after the break!

YouTube link

TiPb Apps 5.4: iStat for iPhone is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Research firm Crowd Science says that almost 40% of Blackberry owners they polled are willing to ditch their device for an iPhone when next they need new hardware, and 32% said they would jump ship to a Nexus One. That leaves a dismal 28% willing to rough it with their Blackberry.

“These results show that the restlessness of Blackberry users with their current brand hasn’t just been driven by the allure of iPhone,” said John Martin, CEO of Crowd Science. “Rather, Blackberry as a brand just isn’t garnering the loyalty seen with other mobile operating systems.”

There are two main reasons that Blackberry users are wanting to jump ship. For years Blackberry has always been known as a business tool and not a device someone would purchase for regular day to day use. RIM has made two attempts to embrace the growing full-screen form factor, the original Storm and Storm 2, but neither have managed to catch on.

Then there is the lack of apps available for Blackberry devices. 7 days prior to the survey, 67% of Blackberry users did not download a single free app and 91% did not purchase any apps. Now when compared to Apple hitting the one billion download mark last April or even the successful Android market, things don’t look that good for RIM in app terms.

Before this survey was completed I personally witnessed this trend take place while spending a lot of my time within our forums as well as the Android Central forums. I was astounded to see so many people abandoning their Blackberry for a Motorola Droid or iPhone 3GS.

When it comes to iPhone and Android users, 90% plan on being loyal with their current platform for their next phone upgrade.

How about you, did you come to the iPhone from a BlackBerry?

Blackberry Users Ready to Bail on RIM for iPhone and Android is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Once you downloaded and opened an issue, you are presented with a table of contents. Tap the section you want to read. Depending on the section there are links to pictures, video and font size. Rotate your device to landscape and you are given a virtual representation of the print issue. You can use the slider on the bottom to navigate. I really like this feature, you get the best of both worlds; portrait for an optimized iPhone view and rotate for magazine view.

I am impressed with this effort on the iPhone and I am looking forward to an iPad version. Check after the break for more pics!

Quick App: GQ Magazine is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

MacRumors reports on an email being sent to users of Apple’s iWork.com document sharing site that outlines a few updates to the service, including one for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad:

Refined user interface. A redesigned Sign In and Shared Documents page for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch makes it easy to access your documents while on the go. The new interface and improved scrolling help you find your shared documents faster. Visit www.iwork.com from your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch to view your shared documents.

iWork.com has been in beta since it was introduced at Macworld 2009 and it’s still unclear exactly how much effort Apple is putting into it compared to say iWork touch recently unveiled for the iPad, and whether or not Apple will ever release full-on Web App versions of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote to compete with Google Docs and Microsoft’s new Office 2010 Online.

If you use iWork.com, let us know what you think of the changes.

Apple Updates iWork.com with Better Interface for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

All Things Digital is reporting that NPR along with The Wall Street Journal are just a few of the big-name media outlets preparing Flash-free versions of their respective sites specifically for Apple’s new iPad.

While National Public Radio is scrambling to have their iPad application available for the iPad release date, they are also putting the finishing touches on their app alternative solution for users to listen to their programming directly from the iPad on April 3rd.

“Use the iPad’s browser to visit NPR.org, which will detect that it’s being viewed with Apple’s device and serve up a custom-built site. This means no trace of Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash, which is used to power graphics and media on the site.”

The Wall Street Journal will also have their Flash-free, iPad specific, front page in a few short weeks. However, the deeper you click into their site you will find that Flash does still exist. That’s certainly understandable given how large the site is and how deeply Flash content, especially video and advertising, has been integrated. Detecting iPad Safari’s unique user agent string might be easy enough (that’s how so many sites detect and deliver iPhone optimized web sites already), but setting up complete mirrors absent Flash is by no means a simple task and may not be a viable solution for those sites out there that depend on Flash to display most of their content. (Though hopefully it will cause sites that use Flash for no reason — we’re looking at you restaurants! — to rethink the decision and switch to more basic, searchable, and friendly standards based technologies).

As the battle between Adobe and Apple over Flash continues to heat up, it’s interesting to see where the chips are falling. Is not having Flash on the iPad or iPhone still a concern to you? Let us (and them) know how you feel in the comments!

Flash-Free Versions of NPR, Wall Street Journal Web Sites Coming for iPad is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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