iPhones

Apple supplier Luxshare started discussing potential manufacturing relocations due to tariffs with customers, including a possible production shift to the United States, according to a new report. It cited comments made by company chairwoman Wang Laichun during an analyst call Wednesday. The Chinese manufacturer assembles iPhones and AirPods for the tech giant.

“If there is a commercial guarantee and we are able to conduct a good evaluation, we do not rule out having some products being localized to meet the needs of the US market,” Wang stated, adding that the company would carefully weigh “long-term development and safety considerations” before making such moves.

Anker recently launched its new Anker 625 Solar Panel, which coverts 23% of sunlight into energy and outputs a maximum of 100W.

It folds up to carry easily by a handle and it keeps Anker’s portable power stations and other gadgets going.

Apple’s A14 chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is gearing up for “risk production” of its next-gen chips, Digitimes reported Friday.

The chips in question are TSMC’s 3-nanometer chips, expected to be the eventual successor to the current 5-nanometer chips. Risk production refers to the dress rehearsal process for manufacturing, in which things appear ready to go, but are not quite ready to go into mass production just yet.

A 34-year-old Chinese citizen living in Switzerland has been sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail for a massive fraud involving Apple’s AppleCare+ warranty system. His 56-year-old mom, who helped him pull off the scam, was given a suspended 18-month jail sentence.

The pair, who have not been named, bought cheap copycat iPhones from China, before swapping them out for 111,000 new authentic iPhones. AppleCare+ allows customers to replace defective devices with new models when they are damaged.

Apple’s current share of the smartphone market in India is just 1%. But if Apple could somehow raise that to 4% it would bring in approximately $4.6 billion in extra revenue — alongside earnings upside of 65 cents per share.

That’s according to Evercore IMI analyst Amit Daryanani. And Daryanani thinks Apple may be able to do it, too.

The federal government has awarded Apple a patent for iPhone users to transfer data by bumping together handsets.

If this sounds familiar, it is because bump transfers for both iOS and Android have been possible through apps, most notably an app called Bump that debuted in 2008.

In today’s edition of Deals & Steals, we found a brand-new 12-inch rose gold MacBook for $400 off. We also have great deals on a Logitech universal remote bundle, a surprisingly stylish router and a cheap smartphone.

The iPhone is lagging behind competitors in China. But if Apple notices a sudden uptick in sales, they may have an old friend to thank.

At a tech conference in the Guangdong province of China Tuesday, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak praised Chinese manufacturers for making smartphones with great functions and affordable prices.

But Woz said the iPhone is still worth the extra money.

Smartphones may be changing the shape of our eyes, leading smartphone users to wear multifocal contact lenses, claims ophthalmologist Andrew Bastawrous in an intriguing new article for Wired U.K., marking 10 years since the launch of the iPhone.

Bastawrous says that smartphones may be linked to the phenomenon of more people becoming shortsighted than they were a decade ago, caused by the growth of their eyeball. The results can include glaucoma retinal detachment and another retinal problems. And sadly there’s no app for that!

If you’re a computer scientist, you can never have too many Macs. Just ask Richard Crossley, a Ph.D. candidate currently studying “optimization in high-performance computing to achieve maximum resource efficiency.”

It probably shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise that Crossley’s got a pretty vast Mac collection. Check out his system, as well as other impressive Mac setups, in this week’s episode of iSetups. It’s Cult of Mac’s new monthly show highlighting the best Mac setups submitted by viewers — plus tips and tricks for how to improve them.

If your iPhone feels precious out of the box, hand it over to Dmitry Lischina for a couple of weeks. Afterward, you will then understand precious as you hold an iPhone unlike any other.

Lischina’s company Aurum Editions could have made phone cases, but instead developed a business around pulling apart iPhones and plating them with 24K gold, exotic animal leather and diamonds.

This is the second story in a three-part series on jailbreaking iOS.

Apple may have used “Think Different” as a marketing slogan once upon a time, but there is a kind of underground network of iOS developers who claim the two words as a reason to exist.

But with their idea of “Think Different,” they add this: “Look Different.”

Before corporate shine and the smell of success, there was a counterculture aura and a whiff of weed. Pot and the dreams of some industrious guys shared a garage where the personal computing revolution incubated under the Apple brand.

So what would the late Steve Jobs think if he could see Apple’s iPhone used to keep the growing and selling of cannabis legal? Jobs, who said he smoked it early on because it made him feel more creative, might smile and say, cool!

The name of the game this week is broad sitewide sales. Check out everything from iPads to cables at Groupon, or grab some refurbished hardware at eBay. These and more are in this week’s best Apple deals.

Analysts with sobering certainty say Apple is set to report its first ever decline in iPhone sales. Reports of cutbacks in production and shipments, and chatter about the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus not offering enough new features to inspire a rush to upgrade all point to one bummer of an earnings report.

But they might be overlooking one indicator – sales of older iPhones.

Mark your calendars. Apple is set to announce its Q1 2016 earnings January 26.

Apple confirmed today via its Investor Relations portal that it will be releasing financial results for the first fiscal quarter of 2016 (re: September through December 2015) at 2 p.m. Pacific on January 26.

With the Apple TV ready for a radical refresh, it’s time to start thinking about what you’ll do with your old set-top box once you upgrade to the latest and greatest model.

You’ll find cool projects for your old Apple TV in this week’s issue of Cult of Mac Magazine for iPhone and iPad. You’ll also get updates on new iMacs and an opinion piece on why the end of smartphone subsidies is actually good for Apple.

If your device dies, you can usually find a place to plug in. But that’s only if you carry your charging cord and even if you’re lucky enough to have it on you, you’re stuck at the outlet until you’ve got enough juice to go.

The electronics accessory company Satechi has made it easier to stay charged on the go with three new portable energy stations for pretty much anything with a USB port.

AJ Forsythe couldn’t stop dropping his iPhone and cracking the screen. He also couldn’t afford to be Apple’s best repair customer.

Clumsy but industrious, Forsythe bought parts on Alibaba and found he could fix his own phone cheaply and quickly. Soon, he was running a repair service out of his dorm room at California Polytechnic State University, replacing cracked touchscreens for $75.

Five years later, Forsythe runs a network of 1,700 technicians in the United States with another 400 in 11 countries under the name iCracked.

We don’t know when Apple Watch will hit stores, but if you can’t wait to strap your wrist with the most luxurious Apple product ever created, Mervis Diamonds has the perfect band to match the 18k gold Apple Watch you’ve been lusting after. And it’ll only set you back $30,150.

When you hit the road, you take your iPhone charger. If you’re hitting the road for a long time, you might also take a portable battery along with it.

So redundant. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way for you to roll up your charger and your portable battery pack into a single device? Now, thanks to Nomad, there is, and it’s so ingenious, I can’t believe that Apple hasn’t done this themselves.

Do you think Blackberry is dead? So does T-Mobile, which is why they tried to get Blackberry customers on the network to switch over to Apple’s smartphone. But apparently, Blackberry has some life in it yet… or enough, at least, to get pissed off about T-Mobile counting the Canadian smartphone maker out.

Everyone knows that there’s a lucrative black market in iPhones, particularly in Asia, but did you know that iPhones are increasingly being used as currency? That’s the case in Rome, at least, where at least one journalist is using iPhones as a way to pay his bills.

When Apple first unveiled iOS 7, one of the features that made law-enforcement officials breathe a collective sigh of relief was Activation Lock, which allows users to locate, lock and wipe their iPhones remotely if they are stolen.

Activation Lock is a great system which prevents thieves from simply hard resetting an iPhone once they’ve stolen it, and considering what a big problem iPhone crime is, it’s a big step forward by Apple that helps make owning an iPhone safer all around. And it looks like it’s starting to make a difference, with a new report suggesting that almost 4 out of 5 iPhone users has it turned on.

Smartphones are deceptively affordable. If you buy an iPhone 5s unlocked, it will cost you $649 upfront for a 16GB model, yet if you bundle that same phone with an AT&T contract, it will cost you just $199 upfront. The rest of the balance is subsidized by your carrier upfront, and paid off over the next 24 months in monthly installments.

It’s a decent system that results in massive profits for carriers, but at the cost of an upfront payment to Apple. Go figure, though, AT&T would rather just rake in massive profits without that upfront payment… which is why CEO Randall Stephenson is now saying the are “unsustainable.”