Archive for July 29th, 2010

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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