Here is good news for RIM so regularly criticized by Apple: advertisers of mobile devices didn’t forget about the platform and are currently taking a second look on it, which results in rising of dumb phone advertising, stated an advertising network Millennial Media this Wednesday.

This surprising comeback has expressed in 6 percent grew of mobile ads on RIM devices in May, while "feature phones" make up 17 percent of Feature Phone, Smartphone and Connected Devices mix in May, as estimated by Millennial Media. The key to these surprising figures may be in the BlackBerry Curve and BlackBerry Bold 2 taking a place among top five mobile phones using served ads.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Wall Street Journal reports  that three people in China were sentenced to prison terms from 12 to 19 months, they also must pay fines in amount from $4,500 to $23,000, because of leak of confidential information about the iPad 2.

The court announced the decision Tuesday in statements on its official account at Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like microblogging service in China. It said that Xiao Chengsong, general manager of Shenzhen MacTop Electronics Co., had offered 20,000 yuan, or about $3,000, plus discounts on MacTop products to a former Hon Hai employee named Hou Pengna, for information about the iPad 2. The court said Ms. Hou then paid Lin Kecheng, a Hon Hai research-and-development employee, to get digital images of the device's back cover from last September, six months before the iPad 2 was publicly announced.

Read the rest of this entry »

Apple has reportedly reduced orders of LED flash components manufactured by Phillips. A person familiar with the company's supply chain claims that it may be a sign that Apple is planning to shift to a new LED camera flash module from a different manufacturer in the next-generation iPhone. The new supplier is rumoured to be  a firm based in Taiwan, though information is unconfirmed.

LED flash first was implemented in last year iPhone 4. In May appeared rumours related to the iPhone 5 that suppose that the LED camera flash would be moved  to the right on the rear side of the device. Perhaps, separating of camera lens and flash will lead to improvement of picture quality and reduce of red-eye effect. The next-generation iPhone’s camera could sport the OmniVision’s  8-megapixel  camera sensor.

Imagination Technologies, the contract manufacturer of graphic processor units (GPU) for the next-generation iPhone and iPad, has announced that its key partners have started licensing process of the company’s next-generation GPU with codename Rogue. It’s likely that one of such key partners is Apple, because the company uses Imagination Technologies' GPUs in many its mobile devices. Moreover, Apple not only a major client, it also owns 9,5% of the company’s shares. The current-generation iPad uses Imagination Technologies' PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU. And Apple claims that the new iPad with the new GPU will bring significant performance boost for mobile graphics.

Read the rest of this entry »

An interesting report from Asymco estimates that it costs Apple $1.3 billion per year to run the iTunes store.

Asymco analyzed recently announced numbers like the total number of songs, movies, TV shows, apps, download rate, iTunes accounts and how much Apple has paid out to developers. They put these numbers in a complex formula and estimated that Apple's monthly content margin cost for iTunes at $113 million, which is more than $1.3 billion per year.

That's a lot. It looks like all the iTunes profits go right back into its maintenance and expansion.

Some time ago several high resolution images were found in iPad iBooks app. The resolution was twice the size of the iPad screen 1024x768. This resulted in rumors that iPad 2 would have retina display and the same double pixel strategy used in the iPhone 4. While iPad 2 was released with the same screen resolution of 1024x768 new evidence of retina iPad was recently found.

iPhone developer @Frankrockz found iPad Retina Display sized graphics hidden in the Twitter frameworks of the iOS 5 beta firmware.

As I was going through the iOS SDK I came across some images in the new Twitter .framework. The resolution appears to be 1,536 x 2,048.

This means that iPad 3 might eventually get retina display. Well, we shall see.

Nokia announced that it had entered into agreement with Apple, and now the prolonged legal argument between two corporations is coming to an end with two parties withdrawing their complaints to the International Trade Commission.

A press release that announced the signed patent license agreement was issued by Nokia early Tuesday. Agreement stipulates that Apple have to make a one-time payment to Nokia as well as ongoing royalties. But exact details of the agreement are kept in secret. The statement also reads that Nokia has put about 43 billion EUR into research and development in the course of last 20 years, creating a patent portfolio that consists of  10,000 patent families.

Read the rest of this entry »

It is surprising how good the first beta version of iOS 5 is, but if for any reason you need to go back to iOS 4.3.3, we’ll show you how. There are at least two ways to do that:

Downgrade via XCode (Mac Only + dev license)

This is the easiest way to get back to a previous version of iOS. The bad part is that it can sometimes put you into a never ending DFU loop. You can typically use iRecovery to kick you out of it.

1. Download the iOS 4.3.3 here (it is better to use Firefox).

2. Open XCode and from the top select Window and then Organizer.

Read the rest of this entry »

A new report confirmed that the production of renewed MacBook Air notebooks will be started this month by Apple and provided unverified information about the release of high-resolution iPad 3 later this year.

According to Taiwan's Economic Daily report, which was published on Tuesday, new MacBook Air will be shipped to the market in late June and, as Reuters noted, the first shipment will consist of 380.000 units. The report also reveals the total amount of shipments of existing and the new MacBook Air models makes it possible to expect that 460.000 units will be manufactured this month.

Read the rest of this entry »

The iPhoneIslam team created a hack that brings us cellular calling and texting on a jailbroken iPad 3G.

The new hack is called PhoneIt-iPad and is available in Cydia repository http://apps.iphoneislam.com/ for $20. Take a look at the video:

Read the rest of this entry »

Here is an interesting iPad modded with a 3D display at the Display Taiwan 2011 exhibition in Taipei. It requires 3D glasses, but still quite interesting gadget. In future iPad 3 might have such functionality.

iPhone developer Daniel Amitay anonymously recorded and analyzed iPhone passcodes. The result is quite interesting. The 15% of all passcodes are represented only by 10 numbers. Here they are, the most common passcodes: 1234, 0000, 2580, 1111, 5555, 5683 (spells LOVE), 0852, 2222, 1212, 1998.

Formulaic passwords are never a good idea, yet 15% of all passcode sets were represented by only 10 different passcodes (out of a possible 10,000). The implication? A thief (or just a prankster) could safely try 10 different passcodes on your iPhone without initiating the data wipe. With a 15% success rate, about 1 in 7 iPhones would easily unlock--even more if the intruder knows the users’ years of birth, relationship status, etc.

Try to avoid these passwords.

Read more info here.

Just like we have predicted Apple started selling unlocked iPhone 4's in the United States. iPhone 4 16GB version costs $649. The 32GB version is $749. An unlocked handset offers all of the features without a contract commitment and can be used on supported GSM networks.

All the features of iPhone 4 without a contract commitment. Use it on the supported GSM cellular network of your choice.

If you don’t want a multiyear service contract or if you prefer to use a local carrier when traveling abroad, the unlocked iPhone 4 is the best choice. It arrives without a micro-SIM card, so you’ll need an active micro-SIM card from any supported GSM carrier worldwide.

The unlocked iPhone 4 requires an active micro-SIM card that you obtain from a supported GSM wireless carrier. Simply insert the micro-SIM card into the slot on your iPhone, connect to your Mac or PC using the USB cable, and launch iTunes on your computer to complete the setup.

You can buy unlocked iPhone 4 in Apple Store.

We didn't have to wait long for the Windows version of recently released iOS 5 jailbreak utility for Mac OS.

DevTeam created a Windows version of Redsn0w 0.9.8 b1 and iH8sn0w released Sn0wBreese 2.8 b1. Both perform a tethered jailbreak of iOS 5 beta 1 on iPhone 3GS/4, iPod Touch 3G/4G and iPad 1.

You still need activated UUID. Both tools do NOT hactivate devices.

You can download Redsn0w 0.9.8 b1 and and Sn0wBreese 2.8 b1 for Windows here.

Japanese market analysis firm Nomura predicts Samsung will soon become the largest smartphone maker in the world instead of Nokia.

Yesterday Reuters reported on that prediction and added that Apple may also move past Nokia and leave the latter in third place.

Read the rest of this entry »