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You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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With just a few quick steps, it’s easy to open the phone app on any locked iPhone running iOS 6.1. From there a person has full access to the photo library, can edit contacts, send emails, text messages or even make a FaceTime call. It’s so easy that it’s downright silly.

As shown in the video here, the process involves holding down the power button and aborting an emergency call. It worked for me although the timing is tricky.

The flaw causes the phone to load the phone app, giving anyone full access to the dialer, contact list, voicemails, call history and photos by editing a contact. An email or text message can be sent by sharing a contact. FaceTime is accessible through the contacts as well.

Update: Apple has reached out to TechCrunch with the following comment:

Apple takes user security very seriously. We are aware of this issue, and will deliver a fix in a future software update.

The exploit is fairly easy to access but the timing is tricky.

• From a locked iPhone running iOS 6, load the emergency dial screen.
• Press and hold the power button and then hit cancel.
• Make a fake emergency call — I dialed 112 like in the video.
• Hang up immediately.
• Hit the power button to put the phone back in standby.
• Hit the home button to bring up the lockscreen
• Hold down the power button and at the three-second mark, hit the Emergency Call button.
• Keep holding the power button until the Phone App comes up.
• Hit the Home Button and release as if you’re taking a screen shot.

The last bit is the hard part. The timing needs to be just right. It took me about 20 minutes to get the timing down.

While new to iOS 6.1, this isn’t the first time a simple workaround has resulted in similar access. A comparable exploit was found in iOS 4.1. 

Apple will likely address this exploit rather quickly. It’s a massive backdoor to some of the iPhone’s core functions.

This afternoon an over-the-air update to the iPhone has been appearing for users across the USA, this upgrade including an issue “that could impact cellular performance and reliability” in the device. At this very moment it appears that the iPhone 4S will be included in the first wave of upgrades and that no other issues are being listed by Apple as the software change comes about. This update comes through less than a month after the initial iOS 6.1 update hit iPhones around the world.

If you’re wondering if your iPhone has an upgrade available, you’ve only to go to your settings and head to “Software Update”. From there you’ll find either an update available to you or a wait in front of you. Don’t fret if nothing is up for you right this minute as the upgrade has just begun to roll out this afternoon – no worries!

This update also comes just days (or hours, in some cases) after a set of warnings and/or messages urging users to skip the iOS 6.1 upgrade were released by carriers like Vodafone. Also in the mix was (and is) evasi0n 1.1, a rather popular jailbreak system that works with iOS 6.0 and 6.1 specifically. Now we get to see if this update breaks that break and that team has to break it all over again.

Meanwhile it appeared that iOS 6.1.1 started to be released back on the 6th of this month, so we’re not long for a wide release without a doubt. Have a peek at the timeline below for additional iOS news from this past week and keep up to date on your devices – update and upgrade daily!

Thanks for the tip, Jake!

iOS 6.1.1 revealed: cellular performance fix aboard is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The latest jailbreak, dubbed Evasi0n, has been the most popular jailbreak ever, with over 7 million iOS devices tampered with since the jailbreak’s launch four days ago. This is according to Jay Freeman, the man behind the jailbreak app store Cydia, who says he noticed around 7 million iOS 6 devices roaming his store.

Speaking with Forbes, Freeman says that this most recent jailbreak has brought in “insanely more new traffic” for Cydia than the past jailbreak releases, including those for iOS 5. According to Freeman, The breakdown of these seven million iOS devices includes 5.15 million iPhones, 1.35 million iPads, and 400,000 iPod Touches.

Of course, the increase in jailbreak traffic could be due to the fact that there are more iOS devices out in the wild, but Freeman says that Evasi0n’s popularity also stems from the fact that it’s taken a lot longer for a jailbreak to come to iOS 6, further intriguing users to want to jailbreak more so than before.

Case in point: It took hackers 136 days to crack the iPhone 5, while it took just 98 days for the iPhone 4S, 38 days for the iPhone 4, and only 14 days for the iPhone 3GS. Freeman says that hunger for a jailbreak for many iPhone 5 users was intense. Sadly, though, this upward trend of a longer wait in between jailbreaks might keep increasing as Apple spends more time and effort to increase the security of their firmware.

[via Forbes]

Evasi0n jailbreak sees 7 million iOS devices hacked in four days is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Yesterday, the iOS 6.1 jailbreak officially released to the public, and it essentially was a scramble for millions of iOS 6 users, similar to how someone announces there’s free food in the break room, and everyone dashes in to get their share. It turns out that the release saw a huge wave of users join in on the jailbreaking fun, and even Cydia became overloaded, resulting in errors that left users without tweaks for now.

Developer pod2g posted up some traffic statistics of evasi0n.com, the website hosting the iOS 6 jailbreak, and the numbers are staggering. As of earlier today, the website has seen almost three million unique visitors, with page views exceeding 17.3 million. These figures don’t even include yesterday’s or today’s statistics, which we guarantee are even more staggering.

Of course, after jailbreaking, users pretty much had no where to go since Cydia was slowing down due to the surge of users downloading various tweaks. Many users would get errors in the app and weren’t able to browse or download tweaks. Jay Freeman, the man behind Cydia, says that he saw a peak of 14,000 hits per second, which is definitely unfathomable.

However, it’ll only be a matter of time before order comes to chaos, so if you’re still trying to get into the Cydia store, you’ll have to be patient. Of course, no one knows exactly when things will start to settle down, but we’re guessing that within the next few days when the initial rush dies down, you’ll be able to dive in finally.

iOS 6.1 jailbreak sees massive numbers, Cydia usage spikes is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.