Hasta La Gadget!

Over at Epic Gamers there’s been an announcement by its founder that the studio formerly known as Impossible Studios will be closed from this point forward. This is the developer umbrella under which the Apple “game of choice” title “Infinity Blade” lived up until now, with the next title in this series “Infinity Blade: Dungeons” now stopped in development indefinitely. The future of the current duo of Infinity Blade games has not yet been commented on.

This announcement was made today that the project known as Impossible Studios has ultimately failed. This project was, for those of you that do not know, a collective of developers formerly known as Big Huge Games. This Big Huge Games has for the past year been working with Epic and here in early February, 2013, they’ve been effectively shuttered.

The developers working with what’s been over the past year “Impossible Studios” will be given 3 months of severance pay and a rather rare opportunity. This opportunity, according to Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney, will be “to form a new company with the Impossible Studios name and the awesome Impossibear logo.” While that’s not unique in this sort of situation, it’s certainly kind of Epic who otherwise stand the chance of being misunderstood as a bit evil corporation in this situation.

It’s also a bit unclear at the moment who will own the rights to Infinity Blade as it was a game being created by Big Huge Games before Epic took in the team to form Impossible Studios. Given the fact that this game was showcased by Apple with the introduction of the iPad 3 (aka The New iPad), there is a bit more at stake here than a simple game title. All that code is out there somewhere!

Infinity Blade’s future cut short: Epic drops Impossible Studios is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Regardless of Apple’s attempt to “warn” its iOS users the danger of jailbreaking their devices, it looks as though millions of people flocked to evad3rs’ recently released evasi0n jailbreak software, which finally offered an untethered jailbreak for all iOS 6 devices.

According to Cydia’s Jay Freeman, it looks as though close to seven million iOS users installed evasi0n on their devices within four days of the jailbreak software’s release. To be exact, 5.15 million iPhones, 1.35 million iPads and 400,000 iPod touches accessed Freeman’s famous jailbreak app store, Cydia. Those numbers, of course, could just be the tip of the iceberg as it isn’t guaranteed all jailbroken iOS device owners would make a beeline to the Cydia store after the jailbreak process is complete, although there’s a pretty good chance they have. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Google Default Search Status in iOS Estimated At $1 Billion A Year, Apple Mysteriously Hires AMOLED Expert From LG,

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.

There are already a variety of apps that turn iOS and Android devices into wireless mice or trackpads or both. Some of them are even free. But a company called Spicebox thinks you’ll want to pay for a peripheral that does just about the exact same thing. Will you want to spend some dollarz for its Mauz?

As shown in the image above, Mauz plugs into the dock connector of an iPhone 4, 4S or 5. It has three main modes, the first of which turns an iPhone into a mouse-cum-touchpad that has virtual left- and right-click buttons as well as a scroll wheel. Its second mode turns iPhones into a motion-sensitive controller, akin to a Wii controller. Spicebox says users will be able to map commands from various programs into gestures, from controlling your browser to your videogame character.

Finally there’s the visual gestures, a Kinect-like control mode that lets you execute commands just by waving your hand above your iPhone’s camera.

Pledge at least $49 (USD) on Kickstarter to reserve a 30-pin Mauz and at least $59 for the Lightning-compatible Mauz. I’m quite intrigued at the possibilities of this so-called “appcessory”, but this is one of those gadgets that needs great complementary software to succeed.

[Mauz via Gadgetell]

Despite regularly hearing how mobile platforms fare within the smartphone space, we rarely get a sense of their place in the wider cellphone universe. Canalys is stepping in with some context. It estimates that smartphones represented just under half of the total pie in the fourth quarter, giving bigger companies like Apple and Google some serious clout. Android accounted for 34 percent of all cellphones shipped, driven by Samsung as well as fast-growing Chinese backers like Huawei, Lenovo and ZTE — all of whom were big reasons why smartphones made up 73 percent of Chinese phone sales in the same period. Apple took a smaller share of the worldwide arena at 11 percent, although it too was riding the Chinese wave to success.

Limiting the scope to smartphones tells a mostly familiar tale. Android staked out 69 percent of the market, taking a 5-point hit as iOS jumped to 22 percent through the iPhone 5 launch. Samsung reigned supreme among individual smartphone makers, followed by Apple and Nokia. The rest are once again Chinese, as Huawei, ZTE and Lenovo scooped up the next three spots. Whether or not regular cellphones are included, the message is the same — if you haven’t been building a popular flagship device or catering to buyers in Beijing, you’ve likely been left out in the cold.

[Image credit: Jon Fingas, Flickr]

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Apple, Samsung, Nokia, Google, Lenovo

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Source: Canalys