Thursday, May 5, 2011

MobileCrunch

MobileCrunch

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iOS 4.3.3 Released for iPhone, Fixes “Tracking” Bugs

Posted: 04 May 2011 11:21 AM PDT

Just two weeks ago, Apple took a rare hit to their so-called “reality distortion field”. A pair of researchers found a file on the iPhone that seemingly tracked the iPhone owner’s location (based on which cell towers they were connecting to) going back as far as a year. As a few angry mobs gathered their pitchforks (and fired off lawsuits), Apple explained it as an anonymized, “crowd-sourced location database”intended for use with an upcoming traffic feature, and chalked up some of the stranger aspects (namely, how far back it tracked, and that it continued to log locations even after the user manually disabled location services) as bugs.

Whatever the reason for the log file, Apple has just released a patch (iOS 4.3.3, or 4.2.8 for Verizon iPhones) that does away with much of the creep-factor.

Here’s whats fixed, according to Apple’s changelog (bracketed notes ours):

  • Reduces the size of the cache [it's only about a weeks worth of locational data now, as opposed to many months]
  • No longer backs the cache up to iTunes [Your new backups will no longer contain the consolidated.db file, making it a whole lot harder for a crazy spouse to take it and throw it into a third-party mapping tool to figure out roughly where you were at any given time]
  • Deletes the cache entirely when Location Services is turned off

A surprisingly hasty fix on Apple’s part, though it’d be nice to be able to disable the logging without having to disable Location Services all together. What do you think about this solution?

Photo: Why We Should Be Glad Apple Delayed The White iPhone 4

Posted: 04 May 2011 11:01 AM PDT

(Unreleased white iPhone 4 on left; released model on right)

At this point, your white iPhone 4 probably looks pretty nasty — at least, it will if you’re one of the few who have been walking around for months with a pre-release prototype.

The New York Times‘ Nick Bilton managed to track down someone who nabbed a white iPhone 4 from one of the first, unreleased batches, and put it side by side with one just released last week. Outside of a few minor aesthetics tweaks (modified proximity sensor and camera lens), there’s one key difference: that old one looks gnarly. The white has faded to a greyish-yellow, while the edge of the face seems particularly attracted to dirt and grime.

We’ll have to check back in a few months to see how the officially-released white iPhone 4 is fairing in its battle against pocket dirt and sunlight.

Samsung To Announce… Something On May 24th

Posted: 04 May 2011 10:27 AM PDT

At this point, any given month wouldn’t really feel complete without Samsung announcing something.

Without CES, CTIA, MWC, or any other acronym to schedule this month’s event around, Samsung’s just puttin’ together their own New York shindig for the announcement of.. whatever they’re going to announce. For the first time in a while, we’re a bit stumped*. The stars in the background indicate that it’s gonna be something for their Galaxy line — but beyond that, you’ll just have to tune in on May 24th and find out what this thing is along with us.

(* I mean, unless it’s the US carrier announcement of the Galaxy S II, which it probably is)

HP Veer 4G Hitting AT&T May 15th For $100

Posted: 04 May 2011 07:52 AM PDT


The itsy bitsy HP Veer, or rather, HP Veer 4G as it’s now officially called, will sneak into AT&T stores on May 15th. Nothing has changed since the last time the Veer made an appearance — well, besides the somewhat deceptive 4G label.

The Veer is still a basic HSPA slider with a 2.6-inch 320 x 400 screen, 5MP camera, 8GB of storage and a 800MHz Snapdragon CPU running webOS 2.1. Still, for only a $100, it’s a solid webOS device that shouldn’t have that much of an issue sneaking into customer’s hands. [AT&T]
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