The iPhone 4, recording your movements wherever you go

Two security researchers in the UK have uncovered a disturbing truth. It appears iPhone 4's everywhere have been tracking their users movements with startling accuracy (unbeknownst to the users) and what is more, the ease at which this information can be deciphered is apparently as easy to open as say, a JPEG.
To some this might not seem like so much of a problem, but invasion of privacy and secret data collection can be a serious issue. The seemingly undocumented tracking abilities appear to have started logging data since the iPhone 4's June 2010 update and haven't stopped since.

A gang of smartphones meets up for a microscopic display shootout

Now that is something refreshing - using a microscope to compare the different types of screens used in today's smartphones. Thanks to an industrial microscope at a 201x zoom, you can really grasp the differences between the Super AMOLED, Super LCD, LCD and IPS LCD displays.

Optimus 3D, XPERIA Neo, Galaxy S II and more to hit T-Mobile UK

Seven new Android smartphones are now humbly waiting on the T-Mobile UK coming soon page for their release dates to arrive. The LG Optimus Black, Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo, Samsung Galaxy S II, LG Optimus 3D, HTC ChaCha, Motorola ATRIX and HTC Sensation are all due to hit the UK in the upcoming months.

The super sexy dual-core Samsung Galaxy S II is due to launch in June, but if you don't think its worth the wait, you can the get the LG Optimus Black as soon as next month. Also for June are planned the LG Optimus 3D, Facebook-oriented HTC ChaCha, and the Motorola ATRIX.
Understandably, pricing and plan details are not yet available, but be sure we'll update you as soon as those hit T-Mobile UK's site.

BlackBerry Curve Touch might be announced at BlackBerry World

Yet another leak of a touchscreen-packing BlackBerry. This time it’s the BlackBerry Curve Touch – with rumored T-Mobile branding and a possible appearance at the BlackBerry World next month.
Unlike the other Curve models, this one drops the keyboard and relies on the touchscreen exclusively.So much so that the new mockups of the BlackBerry Curve Touch appear to have dropped even the trackpad.
We wouldn’t put too much stock in those images though, they seem kind of wonky (in the side views, what are those bumpy things on the bottom half of where the touchscreen should be?).

Still, a more certain rumor (as far as rumors can be certain) is that the BlackBerry Curve Touch will be announced at BlackBerry World next month with a June or July launch. T-Mobile will reportedly be carrying the phone.

The Curve Touch is the GSM version of the BlackBerry Malibu, both of which should have an 800MHz processor, 512MB RAM, 3.25” HVGA screen and 5MP camera with HD video recording.

BlackBerry World will take place 3-5 May and if these rumors pan out, we’ll see the BlackBerry Curve Touch go official then.

iOS has more users than Android in the US, comScore says

comScore has conducted an intriguing study about the reach of Apple products running iOS, compared to Google's Android across the U.S. The research is quite extensive and concludes that the iOS platform outreaches Android by the whopping 59%.


Consumers in the United States using iOS-running devices account for 37.9 million among all mobile phones, tablets and other connected media devices. The number of users owning an iPhone is greater than those with iPod Touches, but unsurprisingly both of them account for approximately twice the number of iPads sold.
Compared to the 37.9 million iOS users, Google's Android user base only accounts for 23.8 million users. Interestingly, only 10.5 percent of all Apple iOS users access the platform via more than one device. As far as mobile subscribers, iOS holds a 16.2 percent share, compared to the 10.2 percent share Android has.
comScore are preparing the results for their study in Europe and will release the data in the coming days, so stay tuned.

HP Veer Rescheduled, says O2 Germany

Contrary to what you might have been expecting, the HP Veer won't be showing up in stores quite as soon as was promised.

As the history books show, O2 Germany's Twitter feed, 'o2inside', has been a steady source of all things Veer and one of their latest posts eludes to a June release, rather than May as was previously thought. This doesn't sit with the tiny handset's big launch party in the US which is still scheduled to take place on the 2nd of May and so we can only assume this rescheduling is primarily going to affect its European release.

As the history books show,

Spy shots of Nokia C2-06 Touch and Type slider emerge

A new member of the Touch and Type family showed up in several spy shots – the dual-SIM Nokia C2-06. It’s a fairly low-end slider, with a resistive touchscreen and a slide-out phone keypad, 2 SIM cards (2G only).
The Nokia C2-06 looks very similar to another Touch and Type slider that leaked in March, though there are some differences (the area below the display mainly). The phone runs the touch-enabled version of Series 40 and has a resistive display (likely, QVGA again).

Apple sues Samsung for copying iPhone and iOS looks

Apple has filed suit against Samsung for patent and trademark infringement, or more particularly, the Galaxy S smartphones copying the iPhone - both the design and the TouchWiz UI. Samsung is preparing to strike back with lawsuit of their own too.

Sony Ericsson Q1 results are in, still not out of the woods

Sony Ericsson announced their financial results for the first quarter of 2011. The company is forming a very tight bond with Android and smartphones account for over 60% of the total phones shipped.
This has driven the Average Selling Price (ASP) to €141 ($200), up 4% sequentially, and the gross margin went up to 33% (was 30% for Q4 of 2010). Sony Ericsson estimates it has a 5% market share for smartphones (in units).
The total number of units shipped by Sony Ericsson fell to 8.1 million (compared to 11.2 million in the previous quarter and 10.5 million during the year-ago quarter). A drop was expected after the holiday season and has mainly affected the feature phone sales.
The new Sony Ericsson Android models – the Arc, Play and Neo – came in a bit late to have a major impact on the first quarter’s sales, so we’ll have to wait until Q2 to see what kind of impact they’ll have.
Still, including this quarter, Sony Ericsson has been profitable for over an year and the net income went up to €11 million (compared to €8 million for Q4 of 2010, down compared to €21 million for Q1 of 2010). This is also the first quarter without restructuring charges in quite a while now.
Sony Ericsson borrowed an extra €375 million during Q1 (putting the total borrowings at €604 million). The total cash balance of the company at the end of the first quarter of 2011 is €599. The company will obviously need a few more profitable quarters to get that balance right.
There are some disruptions to the supply chains caused by the Japan earthquake and Sony Ericsson is continuing to monitor the situation.

White iPhone 4 coming to the UK on 20th April

As we mentioned around this time last month, Apple's Philip Schiller confirmed that the once mythical white iPhone 4 would indeed be finally hitting the shelves ahead of the long run up to the arrival of the iPhone 5.
With this in mind, it begs the question, how many people are still waiting for this? It's a fair assumption that anyone who wanted to get their hands on an iPhone 4 probably bought one between the middle and end of 2010, with those waiting it out for the white version, giving up by Christmas and then joining the happy hordes of classic black iPhone 4 users.

That being said, Apple will most likely always have a stream of people wanting their latest works and for those in the UK it looks like these offerings could arrive, courtesy of Three as soon as April 20th.

Adobe Flash and iOS: The best of friends, sort ofAdobe Flash and iOS: The best of friends, sort of

Unless we have all slipped into a different dimension it appears that some how Adobe Flash content will start to become available on all iOS devices (without jail-breaking, hacking or any other tomfoolery).

Apple's big announcement regarding the coming of Final Cut X is playing second fiddle to Adobe's latest bombshell which is that they will be adding support for HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) to their Flash Media Server.

Motorola Atrix for Orange UK in May, reduced price for the docks

The Motorola Atrix 4G launched in the US a week ago and now the euro version (called just “Atrix”) has a launch date for the UK where it will be exclusive to Orange. The two cool docks will be available at reduced price with certain plans.
We’ve covered the Motorola Atrix in our review (actually it was the Atrix 4G) so all that remains to say is that the difference between the Atrix and the Atrix 4G is the name (and FM radio support). Both have the same network speed, the 4G (HSPA+ in reality) is a marketing gimmick.

Anyway, you can reserve a unit in Orange shops or just sign up for updates about the Motorola Atrix here. The phone will be available in May on a £35/mo 2-year contract with 600 minutes and 750MB data.

Samsung readies a 2GHz dual-core smartphone for 2012

Isn't smartphone evolution just wonderful? We've only just arrived at the dual-core stages of the mobile evolution and we are just about to witness another huge leap forward. Samsung has just revealed what their plans for the future hold and there's plenty to get excited about.

HTC might have a 16 megapixel WP7 phone in the works

HTC has never been a competitor into the megapixel race, but this might change soon. According to e a short video ad HTC is preparing a 16 megapixel cameraphone running on Windows Phone 7.

Samsung Galaxy S gets Gingerbread as promised

It looks like April is the month for the big names in the Android world to be rolling out their latest updates. Samsung is getting ready to release the updates to the Galaxy S. The HTC Desire family is looking to be getting some Gingerbread goodness before the month is out too.
Samsung have decided to act on what was promised and have started pushing their mid-April 2.3.3 update for the Galaxy S. Of course there have been custom ROMs based on the Nexus S floating around the internets for some time but now you can get your hands on the real deal. 

Nokia Indoor Positioning promoted on video, looks cool

Back in 2010 at Nokia World in London, the Nokia Research Centre demonstrated a neat concept of navigating indoors. Now, there's a new version of the system and Nokia has put up a video promoting it.

The system relies on a positioning beacon, which acts as a "satellite", but just indoors. It is placed on the ceiling and can track how far you are from your desired destination in real-time and is accurate up to 30cm.

Windows Phone 7 browser aces the HTML5 drawing test

Mangoes are apparently good for mobile web browsers – the Internet Explorer 9 that comes with the Mango update for Windows Phone 7 beat Mobile Safari and the Android Browser at a hardware-accelerated graphics rendering test, demonstrated at MIX11.
The test at hand is HTML5 Speed Reading – it uses a Canvas element to draw an animation.

HTC Sense 3.0 won’t be supported on older HTC devices

It turns out that the new Sense UI 3.0, showcased on the HTC Sensation a couple of days back won't be supported by older HTC devices, due to hardware limitations.
This would really create a serious software gap between the older and newer generation of HTC Androids and the recently released Desire S and Incredible S are on the bad side this time.

Is Sony Ericsson working on a Walkman droid, the W15?

We had pretty much written off the Walkman brand at least as far as phones go. However, rumor has it that it might be poised for a comeback in the face of an XPERIA X8 based Android with all the appropriate sound playing internals.
Right now it’s just a rumor and a photo of a box so no promises. The model number of the droid Walkman is W15, at least that’s what it says on the purported box.

Apple Q1 profits through the roof, iPhone sales keep going up

Apple just can’t seem to stop improving their performance – they announced the financial results for the quarter that just ended and they’ve broken their records. Again. Year over year, iPhone sales more than doubled and profits were through the roof.
Here are the numbers: $24.67 billion dollars in revenue (a record for the quarter), $5.99 billion net profit (again, a record for the quarter), 41.4% gross margin and international sales accounted for 59% of the revenue.
During Q1 of this year (which is Q2 in Apple’s finance calendar), Apple shipped 18.65 million iPhones, a whopping 113% increase compared to the year-ago quarter. During the last three months of 2010, the number of shipped iPhones was 16.24 million.
Meanwhile, the iPad hasn’t been doing so hot – 4.7 million units were shipped compared to 7.3 million the previous quarter. The iPad launched in March 2010 so there are no year over year numbers and the iPad 2 launched in March 2011 so it couldn’t help much with the Apple’s tablet sales. iPod sales fell 17% year over year (from 10.9 million in Q1 2010 to 9 million in Q1 2011).