Archive for July, 2010

Recently tech journalist Stephen Fenech wrote an interesting iPhone 4 review for Australian Daily Telegraph. Besides saying that iPhone 4 is "a massive jump" in the smartphone industry, Fenech also tried to reproduce the antenna issue. To make sure his results are correct he used his phone on 6 different Australian carriers - Optus, Telstra, Vodafone and 3 other networks in different parts of Sydney. Here is his conclusion:

"I tried the 'death grip' on the bottom left while making test calls in areas I knew to have weaker reception and the times I did manage to reduce the signal bars... my calls were still not affected. The worst thing that happened was a web page I was loading timed out but after refreshing it came up fine. I even managed to watch a YouTube video over 3G while in the 'death grip.'"

Fenech also added that the "death grip" is unnatural and iPhone 4 call quality was significantly improved in comparison to iPhone 3GS.

Invent the newest gadget and the porn industry will find a way to cash in. Associated Press reports:

When Apple Inc. launched the iPhone 4 and its FaceTime video conference feature, it didn't take long for adult-entertainment companies to develop video-sex chat services and start hiring workers through Craigslist.

On the photograph above, taken July 21, 2010, adult film star Teagan Presley poses with her iPhone 4 in Atlanta. Presley is experimenting with Apple's FaceTime feature.

We all remember how Steve Jobs talked about iPhone's and iPad's "freedom from porn" in email conversation. It looks like in real life FaceTime and new iPhone 4 will push forward porn industry.

This morning Apple starts to sell iPhone 4 in many more countries. Here's a video from the Hong Kong launch:

The latest news from Apple - they plan to open a new retail store in Covent Garden (London) on Aug 7th. Nice location, isn't it?

The main topic of the new Macworld will be iPhone 4. That's why the image of the new iPhone 4 was photographed and post-processed entirely on another iPhone 4. This was done by Peter Belanger.

Shooting and editing only on the iPhone had its challenges. Normally Peter shoots Macworld covers with a Phase One P65+ digital camera, which offers 12 times the resolution of the iPhone 4’s camera. That meant getting an image as close to the size of the Macworld cover as possible, because any cropping would reduce the resolution of the image even further.

For post-processing Peter used two iPhone apps - PhotoForge ($3) to remove green cast and the Resize-Photo ($1) to increase the resolution from 216 dpi to 290 dpi to meet the printing requirements.

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At the Black Hat security conference, which is being held this week, research firm Lookout told about malicious application that was found in Google's Android Market. It was collecting private data (such as phone's SIM card number, text messages, browsing history, voice mail password and subscriber identification) and then sending it to a web site imnet.us, which is owned by an unknown person in Shenzhen, China.

According to VentureBeat report, written by Dean Takahashi, an app was claimed to load custom background wallpapers and was submitted by Jackeey Wallpaper.

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After using two iPhones 4 for six weeks Wall Mossberg finally reviewed the newest Apple’s handset.

So, one phone was obtained by Mossberg personally, while the second was provided by Apple. Walt found that iPhone 4 works better than iPhone 3GS in those areas where there is a "strong AT&T coverage", but when it comes to weak coverage areas iPhone 3GS performs better, because it drops less calls and 'no service' status can be seen rarer. That became a reason for Mossberg to not recommend iPhone 4 with its limited AT&T data plans to people who "live, work or travel" in areas with poor reception signal.

Walt also found that the 'death-grip' issue is not a problem as it causes signal bars to fluctuate only and even to rise in some cases.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple started to investigate the compatibility problems of iOS4 and iPhone 3G. The company's spokesman explained that such a decision was made because of numerous user reports, which reveal that after installing iOS4 on iPhone 3G the latter started to work more slowly, became overheated and its battery life had significantly decreased.

Some people are annoyed and disappointed because of the situation:

“This phone has gone from being a dream to constantly annoying me. Not a way to make friends. I would upgrade to an iPhone4, but I’m feeling pretty angry that Apple has forced my hand by making my 3G unusable”.

iOS4 version for iPhone 3G does not support multitasking and Bluetooth keyboards, which was disabled because of RAM requirements, according to Apple.

As you remember, few weeks ago iTunes Store was hacked and the top list of the Books category had been filled with a bunch of obscure books. That was achieved by a number of unauthorized charges that were made on accounts of several iTunes users, who eventually lost few hundred dollars. In turn Apple deleted developers who were found to use the fraudulent purchases.

These days Apple added new layer of security which now require every user to enter the security code of their credit card each time they register a new device or computer with their account, according to Different District blog. So if earlier malicious user just needed to guess a password for the account in order to receive and/or resell the acquired information to fraudulent buyers, after Apple’s security innovation it will require more efforts to do that.

iPhone 3G and iPod Touch 2G work a bit slow with iOS 4. The video below shows a nice trick that will put the speed back in your device. You need to go do Settings and deselect Spotlight.

On iPod Touch 2G go to Settings - General - Home Button - Spotlight Search. On iPhone 3G go to Settings - General - Spotlight Search. Then uncheck all the searches that you don't use. This will increase the speed of your device.

This also works on iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, however the speed increase is very small there.

Watch the video:

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MuscleNerd tweeted today that the recent redsn0w utility is able to jailbreak the iOS 4.1 beta2 on iPhone 3G and iPod Touch 2G. This is useful for developers only, however good news for everyone.

Here's some info from the DevTeam wiki page:

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Apple released beta 2 of upcoming iOS 4.1. Developers can download ше and new SDK here.

Apple’s iPhone 4 handset is scheduled to hit Canadian stores this Friday. According to a recent report by CBC, Canadian customers will have the option of buying the phone unlocked, directly from Apple:

Unlocked iPhone 4 is not going to be cheap.

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This Friday iPhone 4 will become available in 17 more countries, but South Korea will not be among them. Steve Jobs explained why:

"It's going to take us a little longer to get government approval there".

Korean government and people were discomfited by these words. According to The Wall Street journal, there is nothing to approve yet.

"The main communications regulator said last week that neither Apple nor KT [local iPhone carrier] had yet submitted the iPhone 4 for approval here".

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Here is an interesting video demonstrating an iPhone speed test across all four generations of the smartphone (iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4).

It’s fantastic to see how far the speed of the iPhone has advanced. As you’d expect, the iPhone 4 is obviously the fastest, closely followed by the iPhone 3GS. Interestingly, the difference between the 3GS and 3G is pretty big, as is the difference between the iPhone 3G and the first-gen handset.

Watch the video:

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