Tuesday, June 14, 2011

MobileCrunch

MobileCrunch

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iOS 5′s Fancy New Camera Trick? Microsoft Has A Patent On It

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 03:10 PM PDT

At Apple's WWDC keynote last week, we finally got a sneak peek into iOS 5. Amongst other things, Apple revealed that its camera app would be getting quite the makeover.

Pretty much immediately after the new camera tricks were demonstrated, people began noting similarities between iOS 5′s new focal features and some of those found in Windows Phone 7. Even Microsoft's Joe Belfiore touched on the matter, tweeting, "Feeling flattered today. Lots of WP ideas headed to iOS." As it turns out, Apple may have to cough up some cash (or possibly already is) for at least one of those cool new capabilities; Microsoft has held a patent on the mimicked feature since February of 2010.

The suspiciously similar feature in question: the ability to swipe back into your camera roll while taking a picture, no button pressing necessary. Seem trivial? Sure — but those are the woes of a software-patent-friendly world.

While Windows phone owners probably feel a little perturbed by the fact that Apple hijacked their WP7 exclusive, Microsoft may not even mind as long as it can squeeze some cash out of Apple the same way it has with Google's Android OS. Of course, patent wars are merely part of the game for these guys; at this point, most of the big names have enough patents in their arsenal to turn any infringement claims around on whoever is brave enough to come pecking for cash, so they generally avoid going head-to-head.

Swype 3.0 Beta To Launch Today, Now Tablet-friendly

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 02:16 PM PDT

Swype. It’s just one of those things where you know if you love it or hate it within about 30 seconds of your first touch. Some people just can’t wrap their heads around dragging their finger from letter to letter rather than poking around; others pick it up immediately, and then can’t imagine typing on a phone without it.

If you’re part of the “love it” camp, you’ve got a reason to be excited: later today, Swype will be releasing the first Beta build of Swype 3.0.

What’s new in Swype 3.0:

  • Tap Correction:You’ve always been able to jump back and forth between swiping through letters and tapping letters one-by-one; now you can do the latter without losing the autocorrect/predictive functionality that comes with swiping.
  • Horizontal Word Choice: When there are multiple possible words for the letters you just swiped through, the options will be shown in a sliding horizontal bar above the keyboard as opposed to the strange popup selection window that Swype has had for a while.
  • Available for devices with HVGA, WVGA, FWVGA, QVGA, WQVGA, WSVGA, qHD screen sizes
  • A special Honeycomb-only WXGA version for Android tablets, which features a resizable and moveable keyboard

Swype says the download should be going live “around 2 pm Pacific” — which, by our clocks, is about 15 minutes ago. Look for it to roll out sometime soon on this page.

U.S. Cellular To Pick Up The HTC Wildfire S, Desire S?

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 12:59 PM PDT

Aaaaand U.S. Cellular picks up another pair of slightly obscure phones — or, at least, it looks like they’re about to. After picking up the LG Genesis (after Verizon quietly killed their plans to carry it) and the HTC 7 Pro (months after Sprint launched it as the “Arrive”), two more handsets have just been spotted lurking in U.S. Cellular’s inventory: the HTC Desire S and Wildfire S — two Android phones which were both announced back at Mobile World Congress, but then saw surprisingly little traction in the US.

Careful, U.S. Cellular: everyone loves having more phones to choose from, but you don’t want to get a reputation as the Island Of Misfit Phones.

[via AndroidCentral]

U.S. Cellular Nabs The HTC 7 Pro As Their First Windows Phone 7 Handset

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 12:45 PM PDT

If you’re one of U.S. Cellular’s 6.1 million customers and you’ve been just aching for a Windows Phone handset, your only option so far has been… erm… deal with it.

Deal no longer! This morning, U.S. Cellular added their first WP7 handset, the HTC 7 Pro, to their arsenal.

As one of the first WP7 handsets that Microsoft ever showed (and as the handset that Sprint launched as the “Arrive” back in February), this thing’s not exactly brand new — but hey, beggars can’t be choosers. Not that anyone who can afford a $200 phone is really a “beggar”. but still.

Speaking of which, the HTC 7 Pro will set you back $200 after contract and $100 mail-in rebate.

Samsung To End Nokia’s 15-Year Market Reign?

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 12:36 PM PDT

It looks as though Nokia's 15-year reign is coming to a close: according to Nomura Research Institute, Samsung is expected to usurp the world's largest phone maker this quarter. And if losing the top spot isn't tough enough, Nokia likely won't even take the second place position this quarter either; Nomura sees Apple sliding past Finland’s finest, as well.

Nokia has had a tough year, losing market share to Apple's iPhone and other Android-powered smartphones. Even its low-end phones have taken a hit, thanks to some strong competition coming out of Asia. Perhaps the shift to Windows Phone will breathe new life into the lungs of Nokia, but with Apple's feature-packed iOS 5 set to launch this fall and Android's expected continued growth, there's no telling whether or not Nokia will have what it takes to reclaim its crown.

[via Reuters]

Jailbreakers Start Hacking Away At iOS 5′s New Notification Center, Add New Widgets

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 11:14 AM PDT

It’s the Circle of Life, friends.

Apple releases a new build of iOS. Jailbreakers find a way in, and add something really cool that makes jailbreaking worthwhile. Sooner or later, Apple gets around to replicating said really-cool-feature in an official means, and everyone says “Wow! Now there’s pretty much no reason to jailbreak!” Then Jailbreakers take that feature and make it even cooler.

The latest feature going through the cycle: Notifications. We called the jailbreak-only MobileNotifier modification the one thing that would make “anyone want to jailbreak”; Apple showed their agreement by tossing a strikingly similar implementation into iOS 5 and hiring the project’s lead developer. In turn, jailbreakers have gone and made the whole thing even better.

How? Skins!

Much as jailbreakers were customizing their iPhone’s homescreen backgrounds long before such things were Apple-endorsed, they’re now able to skin the Notifications Center drop down as they please.

They’re not stopping at visual remixes, though. Just about every developer’s first reaction to sliding down the Notifications Center pull-down and seeing the Weather and Stocks widgets floating inside is “Cool! When can I make my own?” — and sure enough, jailbreakers have found a way.

Modifier Will Homer (@WillFour20 on Twitter) released some basic template code for developers to build their own widgets. Shortly thereafter, Italian modder @Qwertyoruiop released UISettings, a one-click-access settings widget which allows the jailbreaker to toggle WiFi, Bluetooth, Airplane mode, set brightness, and reset their device’s springboard from the pulldown.

Meanwhile, dev Aaron Wright is working on a widget that show’s the Album Art and Track Info for any currently playing song:

Neat, right? Now, the only question we’ve got: how long before Apple goes ahead and opens this up to third-party developers, no jailbreak-required?

[Sources: GildedSplinter's mod, Jeff Broderick's mod , iClarified, RedmondPie, Readwriteweb]

IDC: Windows Phone 7 Will Surpass iOS As Number 2 Platform By 2015

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 10:21 AM PDT

A couple of years ago, if someone had told me that the Windows Phone platform would become more popular than iOS, I would have laughed in their face. Now, however, IDC is claiming that it just may become a reality by 2015, as WP7 is expected to snatch the number two platform spot from iOS, currently ranked just behind Android. The BlackBerry OS is expected to lose even more ground, while Symbian basically disappears from our phones and possibly, our memories, in the next four years.

The report claims that "as the smartphone market grows and diversifies," iOS will drop from an 18.2 percent market share to 16.9 percent, while Android will jump from a market share of 38.9 percent in 2011 to 43.8 percent in 2015. Most impressively, WP7 will skyrocket from its current measly market share of 3.8 percent to a whopping 20.3 percent share in four years. That's a shocking cumulative annual growth rate of 82.3 percent.

IDC believes the reason for this spike will be the release of Windows Phone 7, codenamed Mango. And from what I've seen of Mango, the firm's predictions make total sense. Mango is a gem, and with Nokia shipping Mango-powered devices starting next year, it wouldn't surprise me if Apple and Google have started biting their nails a bit.

IDC also expects the worldwide smartphone market to jump to 55 percent in 2011, as users toss out their feature phones to join the smartphone movement. This doesn't seem too far off, either, as the smartphone market jumped from 20 percent to 31 percent between last year and now.

[via BrightHand]

Apple Rumored To Offer Unlocked iPhone 4 Models Starting Wednesday

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 08:08 AM PDT

There have been quite a few rumors flying around that U.S. Apple Stores have something big in store for this week. Originally, we assumed it had something to do with the new Sandy Bridge-powered MacBook Air notebooks. However, iOS developer Chronic says Apple is planning something a bit more mobile.

Chronic tweeted last night that on Wednesday, Apple will be selling unlocked models of the iPhone 4 straight to consumers for the first time ever. Sorry, no word yet on pricing, but here are the models you can look forward to:

  • MC603 (16GB, Black)
  • MC604 (16GB, White)
  • MC605 (32GB, Black)
  • MC606 (32GB, White)

[via BGR]

Google Yanks Malware Masking As Angry Birds Add-Ons

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 07:22 AM PDT

North Carolina State University has apparently become our goalie for Android malware, as Xuxian Jiang and his team have found their third batch of Android malware, dubbed "Plankton," in the past two weeks. And this time, it's "pretty serious," according to Andrew Brandt, lead threat research analyst at Webroot. Of course, Brandt and Webroot stand to gain from any malware threat, so we'll just have to take his opinion with a grain of salt.

As far as the facts go, Plankton "has the ability to remotely access a command-and-control (C&C) server for instructions, and upload additional payloads," said Brandt. "It uses a very stealthy method to push any malware it wants to phone." Unlike DroidKungFu and its predecessors, Plankton doesn't take advantage of a vulnerability to control the phone, but rather calls in other files from the hacker's server to exploit an unpatched bug in the Android OS. But Plankton doesn't stop there. The malware also grabs data from the phone, including bookmarks, bookmark history, and the browser home page.

The worst part is the way by which the hackers chose to promote their malware: Angry Birds. Every one of the ten apps pulled by Google were disguised as add-ons or cheats for one of the most popular games in mobile app history, Rovio's Angry Birds. Of course, none of the apps did what they promised to do, but instead delivered Plankton to the phone.

As said earlier, this isn't Jiang's first Android malware discovery, as his team found DroidKungFu in Chinese app stores on June 5, and two days later reported "YZHCSMS," a Trojan horse that infiltrates the phone and sends text messages to premium numbers. Since early March when Google had to yank over 50 apps from the Market, the Android platform has been bombarded with malware attacks, including DroidDream and DroidDreamLight.

Not to worry though, Google seems to have scrubbed the Market clean, so go ahead and download those Angry Birds cheats to your heart’s content. Just make sure to use common sense: unless you trust the source, keep app downloads in the Android Market, and double-check that app permissions match app functionality.

[via InfoWorld]

Please Use Headphones If You Buy This iPad App

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 06:06 AM PDT

Tablets are meant to be complementary devices. A tablet can not replace your computer, and it can not take the place of your phone. So it baffles me a little bit when I hear people complain that they can't make calls on the iPad, as if their phone isn't in their pocket. Nonetheless, there are people out there who are desperate to hold their iPad to their ear, I assume with two hands, and chat it up. Luckily for them, iPhoneIslam has created an app that lets users make and receive calls, and send and receive texts on the 10-inch tablet.

Of course, finding an app like this in the Apple App Store would be too good to be true, which is why the PhoneIt-iPad app is on available on jailbroken iPads. To those of you interested, we'd certainly suggest using a pair of mic-supported headphones like the ones supplied by Apple, unless you want to look like a kid using an over-sized iPhone. It uses a regular 3G SIM card, instead of the standard data-only SIM cards that normally ship with the iPad, and costs $20 from the Cydia store.

[via UberGizmo]
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