Tag Archives | Smartphones

Devastation! White iPhone 0.2mm Thicker Than Black One

Posted by Doug Aamoth on April 29, 2011 at 8:34 am

A man returns home with his newly-purchased white iPhone. Ten months of waiting—HE THOUGHT THIS DAY WOULD NEVER COME!

His trembling hands struggle to remove the cellophane surrounding Apple’s minimalist, yet irresistible product packaging. “I wish my fingers were knives!” he sputters to himself, breathless with anticipation.

Finally, the cellophane is no more. He grabs the box and gently shakes it up and down, waiting for WHAT SEEMS LIKE AGES for that weird, science-y suction phenomenon that holds box tops against box bottoms in a tender embrace to finally run its course. He imagines the box halves screaming to each other, “I’ll never forget you!” until they’re finally separated like high school sweethearts going off to different colleges.

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Qik Lets You Video Call Between iPhones and Android Phones

Posted by Erica Ho on April 27, 2011 at 10:40 am

Coexistence is possible. The newest version of Qik lets Android video call iPhone users – and vice versa. Now let’s all hold hands and sing around the campfire.

The latest version of the apps works across Android (as long as you’re running software 2.1 to 2.3.3), all iPhones, the iPad2, and every iPod touch with a camera. The new app also introduces video mail.

So if you’re keen on doing some video mingling with people on the other side of the ‘hood, you better grab it now. Qik is dropping the price of their iOS app back down to gratis for a limited time. After June 1st, you’ll have to shell out three George Washingtons (fine, three dollars).

The video mail is also only free until June 1st, but prepared to pony up for a subscription afterwards.

Fring also offers video calling – in fact they have just launched a beta of group video calling – but it looks like it may be easier to talk to your best friend without jumping off the iPhone (or Android) bridge.

(This post republished from Techland.)

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Apple Responds to the iOS Location-Logging Discovery

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 27, 2011 at 9:26 am

It took a week, but Apple has published questions and answers about the discovery that iOS devices keep an unencrypted file with months of data that can be used to figure out where the device has been. It does a good job of explaining what the data is (a subset of a database of Wi-Fi hotspots, some of which may be up to a hundred miles from where the device is), what it’s used for (pinpointing the device’s location more quickly than can be done with GPS alone), and why it stores so much data and does so even if you shut off location services (because it’s buggy). It also confirms that Apple can’t use the data to track you–it sees it only in anonymous, encrypted form. And it says it’s collecting anonymous traffic data for a service–built-in turn-by-turn navigation?–which it plans to release eventually.

Apple says that it’ll release an update in the next few weeks that collects less data and none at all if location services are turned off, and doesn’t back it up to iTunes. And in the next major iOS revision, it’ll encrypt the data on the device.

Was reaction to all this overblown? Yes, since some of it suggested that Apple had access to data it could use to track individual consumers, a scenario that the evidence didn’t support. But it’s important that we know what our phones know about us. The researchers who wrote about this did Apple customers a favor–and they seem to have done Apple a favor, too, by finding bugs in iOS.

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Android About to Enlist in the US Army?

Posted by Ed Oswald on April 22, 2011 at 6:03 pm

The US Army wants to equip every soldier with a smartphone in the battlefield, and it appears as if Google’s Android could be the solution. According to Wired’s Spencer Ackerman, the military has been working over the past year to realize that goal. What’s behind its choice? Likely the fact that the operating system can run across a range of third-party devices, unlike the iPhone.

Officials haven’t settled on Android just yet it seems, but it seems like it certainly has a leg up on other solutions due to its “open” nature.

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Smartphone Users are Concerned About Privacy

Posted by Ed Oswald on April 21, 2011 at 2:51 pm

In light of the news that iOS4 likes to track your every move, Nielsen’s poll results released Thursday appear especially prescient. The firm found that a majority of both women and men have privacy concerns when it comes to check-ins and location-based apps on their smartphones.

Women appear a bit more concerned about the issue, with 59 percent saying so versus 52 percent of men. Concerns about big brother watching you seemed to build with age: those 25-34 showed the least concern (half of all respondents), which increased to 63 percent of those 55 and older.

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AT&T Is Just Fine in the Verizon iPhone Era, Thank You

Posted by Ed Oswald on April 20, 2011 at 11:17 pm

AT&T reported its quarterly numbers Wednesday morning, and they certainly showed that the iPhone is still a significant driver of growth for the carrier. 3.6 million iPhones were activated during the quarter, and iPhone subscriber churn (customers with the device who left for a competitor) was unchanged from the same period last year.

This is significant for one reason: it was the first quarter that the Verizon iPhone was available. Being able to keep churn flat is quite an accomplishment, considering that so many analysts said that Verizon would siphon customers away from Big Blue.

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