Apple broke from its traditional June unveiling for the iPhone 4S, choosing instead to launch the device at a dedicated “Let’s talk iPhone” event in October. But we may not have to wait until October of this year to see the iPhone 5.
According to one analyst, the sixth-generation device will get back its traditional June announcement at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference in 2012.
Did you know that your iPhone’s serial number says a lot about your device? It isn’t just a random string of digits. It reveals the factory in which your device was built, the year it was manufactured, its unique identifier, and more. Here’s how to decode your iPhone’s serial number.
Do you have an old first or second gen iPod touch or iPhone? If so, you’re probably pretty red-faced with jealousy about all of those cool new iOS 5 features you’re missing out on: multi-tasking, reminders, iCloud, homescreen folders and so on.
There’s no reason your face has to be so flushed, though. Thanks to Whited00r, you can get iOS 5’s best features on your old iPod touch or iPhone 3G, no jailbreak required.
Over the course of the past year, Samsung has shamelessly stolen Apple’s design on everything from the iPod touch, the iPad 2 Smart Cover, iOS’s homescreen, and more. Heck, they’ve even poached the actresses who star in Apple’s current iPhone 4S commercial!
Having apparently run out of new Apple products to rip-off, Samsung has decided to examine Apple’s past portfolio of devices for new designs to flagrantly plagiarize. The latest? Meet the Galaxy Ace Plus, Samsung’s new entry-level Android phone that looks just like the three year old iPhone 3G design!
This is just beyond parody at this point. Next up? Samsung announces the Galaxy Tab 8.5 Noir, which shamelessly violates the design of the 1993 Apple Newton.
In the ever-changing patent wars, somedays you are the windshield and some days you are the bug. After coming up roses Thursday, Apple finds itself on the losing side against Samsung and Motorola.
It hasn’t even been a month since Apple’s iPhone 4S first hit the market, and already its 8-megapixel camera is proving to be a huge hit amongst Flickr users. The device has quickly rocketed up the Flickr charts to become the second most popular camera phone on the photo sharing service, overtaking the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and the HTC EVO 4G.
Inside every iPhone are a dozen little moisture indicators that turn pink the second your iPhone is exposed to excessive moisture. Apple uses them to tell when to deny you warranty service because you’ve accidentally dropped your device in a drink or left it out in the rain, but wouldn’t it be better if Apple never had to worry about replacing a water damaged device again?
We could be a year away from just that, thanks to Never Wet, a superhydrophobic coating that does such a good job resisting moisture that devices literally can never get wet when slathered in the stuff. Don’t believe us? Check out the video above, in which an iPhone 3G functions while submerged in water for over thirty minutes.
Apple’s Texas Hold’em game was one of the first titles I purchased from the App Store when it opened for business in 2008, and the only game Apple has developed for iOS devices. And while it was a fantastic purchase at the time, the Cupertino company hasn’t exactly been committed to maintaining its popularity.
Its last update came in September 2008, and today, the game has been removed from the App Store completely.
One thing you can be sure that Apple will improve with every iteration of its iPhone is the device’s camera. The original iPhone packed a 2-megapixel camera that wasn’t all that great at taking photos; things got significantly better two generations later with the iPhone 3GS. The 5-megapixel camera in the iPhone 4 received a ton of praise, but its 8-megapixel successor in the iPhone 4S is even more terrific.
So terrific, in fact, that the developer behind the hugely successful Camera+ application for the iPhone, Lisa Bettany, says the device “outshines” many of the high-end compact cameras currently on the market.
Apple’s unveiling of the fifth-generation iPhone now looks certain to be held on October 4, but how long will we have to wait until we can actually get our own sweaty mitts on the device? According to once report, the much-anticipated iPhone 5 will arrive in the U.S., Japan, and some parts of Europe around the middle of next month.
Things at Apple are going to be a little different without Steve Jobs at the helm. I have no doubt that Tim Cook will step up to do a fantastic job, but there are many reasons why we’ll never forget Steve’s time at Apple. Here we take a look at some of Apple’s greatest achievements while Steve was at the company, and the products that have made it the world’s largest company.
With iOS 4, Apple left the original iPhone and iPod Touch behind in the dust of iOS 3.1.3, and even the iPhone 3G could not avail itself of some of iOS 4’s most notable features, like multitasking. As long as you at least had an iPhone 3GS, though, you’d be fine.
Given how many problems the iPhone 3G hardware had running iOS 4.0, it should come as no surprise that Apple is hoping to consign that hardware to the dustbin when they debut iOS 5 at WWDC next month. What may be more surprising is that the iPhone 3GS will go into the dustbin too.
You might not agree with her position, but you’ve got to admit that this is one precocious kid: a thirteen year old iPhone owner is set to go into court next month to contest what she and her family claim was an unjust charge levied by Apple Korea to fix an iPhone 3G which they claimed had been water damaged.
Sales deals on Apple products are precious occurrences, as spontaneous and rare as the collision of matter and antimatter localized entirely on the Grand Concourse Parkway in the Bronx. Sure, you can get a buck or two off at some of the big boxes; you may be able to weasel a fin out of Amazon, but ultimately, Apple’s MSRP is an immutable law.
So this is exciting: the iPhone 4’s first honest-to-goodness sale at a physical and reputable retailer. Effective as of Friday, if you sign up for an AT&T contract at one of Radio Shack’s stores (new or upgrade), you can get an iPhone for $50 off the retail price. That’s $249 for the 32GB iPhone 4 (usually $299), $149 for the 16GB iPhone 4 (usually $199) and $49 for the 8GB iPhone 3GS (usually $99).
One thing’s for sure: iOS 4 hasn’t been very kind to iPhone 3G owners. Not only did the major update end up slowing most iPhone 3G devices to a crawl once installed, but iOS 4.x under the iPhone 3G is missing many of the features like multitasking or GameCenter that other devices get to enjoy.
The good news for iPhone 3G users is that the soon-to-be-released iOS 4.2 update supposedly does a lot to improve the 3G’s sluggishness problems. The bad? Apple’s culling yet another promised feature from 3G owners: AirPlay isn’t coming to the iPhone 3G after all.
Leaving aside why you would want to run Android when you have access to iOS, we were absolutely amazed when hacker David Wong figured out how to install and dual boot Android alongside iOS on the original iPhone earlier this year. Even so, we were reluctant to try the hack ourselves: the process was convoluted, to say the very least.
It’s amazing, though, how far the instructions have come in a little over half a year, though: you can now install Android 2.1 Froyo on your first generation iPhone or iPhone 3G so simply that you don’t even need to have a computer handy to do it.
That’s right: as long as your iPhone or iPhone 3G is already jailbroken and running at least iOS 3.1.2, you can now install Android on your handset entirely through Cydia.
The iPhone 3G’s sluggishness under iOS 4.0 is so legendary that it has sparked an entire class action lawsuit, but does iOS 4.2 improve things any? Yes, according to TipB: they say that Apple has greatly improved the iPhone 3G’s performance when typing, scrolling, pinching, zooming and browsing under iOS 4.2.
Is that enough to end Bianca Wofford’s class action lawsuit? Probably not… but it certainly makes her claims of an Apple conspiracy to force obsolescence of the iPhone 3G a lot harder to believe than it was already.
When owners of the iPhone 3G started reporting massive performance issues with iOS 4, we knew it was only a matter of time before the first lawsuit dropped, and here it is, lodged by plaintiff Biana Wofford in the Superior Court of California for San Diego.
The lawsuit’s even crazier than what we expected though: it thinks Apple conspired to make iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G suck so that users would be forced to upgrade to a new model.
One of the reasons owners of the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS have been waiting for a jailbreak for iOS 4.1 is to enable the iPhone 4’s impressive HDR functionality on their older handsets… a hack which is already available for jailbroken 3G and 3GS users on the iOS 4.1 beta through a Cydia app.
It looks pretty likely, though, that these users won’t need to jailbreak their devices to enable HDR functionality… Apple seemingly intends to add HDR in a software update coming down the line.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAWqUtR9QIM
Are you the owner of an iPhone 3G who is disappointed that you can’t run deathmatch with friends through Apple’s new match making service, Game Center? A jailbreak and some hacking could get you up and running, if you’re feeling bold.
Over at Redmond Pie, Taimur Asad goes through the process of getting jailbreak running on an iPhone 3G… which is (coincidentally for this experiment) the only iPhone that can currently be jailbroken under iOS 4.1 right now.
Stuck on an iPhone 3G or 3GS and jealous of the iPhone 4’s sexy ability to stitch three photos together for a beautifully optimized high-dynamic range snapshot of what it sees out of its tiny oculus? A Cydia tweak is on its way just as soon as the Dev Team releases their iOS 4.1 jailbreak, bringing HDR capability to legacy devices. Of course, the iOS 4.1 jailbreak is still an unknown amount of time away, so we could be waiting on this for sometime… but at least there’s some hope in sight.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q0jVRwHy00&feature=player_embedded#!
If you’re an iPhone 3G owner wondering if iOS 4.1 is going to save your device from the slow mercury hell of a sluggish post-3.1.3 device, good news. The fine lads and lasses over at Lifehacker find the last point iteration a marked improvement upon its predecessor, and to prove it, posted this chipper, chiptune-backed side-by-side comparison.
All I can say is, “Wow.” iOS 4.0 was that slow for 3G owners? How did Apple even let that update get out the door?
Another glimmer of hope for iPhone 3G owners running (or crawling with) iOS4; MacRumors reports today on another Steve Jobs email, this one sent to a disgruntled iPhone 3G user:
I’ve waited patiently through 4.0.1 and 4.0.2, looking for a fix that will make my phone work again. I’ve read the forums that advise me to jailbreak my phone or use some other method so I can downgrade back to a version of iPhone 3, however I’m not prepared to use a method that is not supported by Apple.
Jobs’ response is typically succinct:
Software update coming soon.
Sent from my iPhone
Presumably this means iOS4.1. Apple acknowledged last month that it was aware of the performance problems with iOS4 on the iPhone 3G and was “looking into” the issues, which include very sluggish performance and poor battery life.
As an 3G owner myself this fix can’t come soon enough; I’m doing the double hard reset every other week and have disabled spotlight indexing, but this only makes things tolerable at best. Is this ordeal finally going to end soon?
