Hasta La Gadget!

Apple‘s event has just kicked off this morning where we’re expecting tons of exciting news. From the iPad mini, an improved iMac mini, and tons more. While they’ve just got started and we’re patiently awaiting the good news, they are taking time to share some notes on the iPhone 5. Stating it was the fastest selling phone in history.

While these numbers aren’t unknown, and we’ve heard plenty already regarding numbers, it’s nice to hear it right from Apple’s own Tim Cook. Confirming that they sold over 5 million iPhone 5′s just on the opening weekend. Selling out faster than any iPhone to date, and being the fastest selling phone in history.

We’ve been watching the numbers, and reported on these numbers back in September, and you can read more about their 23 iPhone 5 sales a second. Pretty impressive numbers right?

The folks from Apple followed that up with a neat video showing some of the massive excitement, crowds, and families that lined up around the world to get the latest and greatest from Cupertino. Below are a few photos from Apple’s video showing the excitement of launch day. In case you somehow missed it, check out our iPhone 5 Review. Stay tuned right here for all the news coming soon about the iPad mini and more.

Apple announces iPhone 5 as fastest selling phone in history is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Dropbox updated its iOS app today to version 1.5.6, which may not seem like a big update if you just rely on the version number, but the popular cloud service introduced a couple of new features in this update, including inevitable iPhone 5 support and the ability to download photos to your camera roll at full resolution.

Previously, the Dropbox iOS app downscaled photos when it would save them to the iDevice’s camera roll. So, if you had a high-resolution image that was a few-thousand pixels by a couple-thousand pixels, Dropbox would resize it to 960 pixels wide when viewing it on your iOS device. Obviously, this was to cut down on loading times.

Viewing the downsized photos wasn’t particularly aggravating, even on a Retina display, but zooming in on photos to see details wasn’t going to happen since they were now low-resolution. It made the appeal of using Dropbox as a photo storage tool not so great, which was a shame because Dropbox would make a good photo storage tool.

However, there are still some caveats that Dropbox left in. The photos still get decompressed in size. They maintain their resolution, but other things like colors and sharpness will lose some detail. Plus, since the photos don’t get downsized as much as before, downloading photos to your camera roll can take a while, so if you prefer speed over detail, you might be disappointed in this latest update.

Dropbox is a free download and the update is available now in the iTunes App Store.

Dropbox for iOS update enables full-resolution image downloads, iPhone 5 support is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s been just over one month since Apple released iOS 6 to the masses, and it seems all the criticism and issues that users have been complaining about hasn’t stopped other users from upgrading to the new version. Mobile advertising network Chitika announced today that iOS 6 has finally been leveling out with more than 60% of iDevices upgraded to iOS 6.

While iOS 6 is installed on more than 60% of iOS devices, that still leaves 40% left over. Besides iOS 6, what’s the most popular iOS version that users are running? Chitika reports that 25% of users are running iOS 5.1 (myself included), 9% are still on iOS 4, and 4% are running iOS 5, with 1% of iDevice owners running an older version of iOS.

Obviously, you have to take into account that a lot of older iOS devices aren’t able to upgrade to iOS 6, including the original iPad, the iPhone 3G, and the third-generation iPod Touch. So, it would be interesting to see the iOS 6 adoption rate that only counts the devices that are actually able to upgrade to the new version. We’re sure the percentage would be a lot higher.

However, while Chitika says that adoption for iOS 6 has begun to level out, that doesn’t mean it has peaked yet. They expect a slower climb for iOS in the coming weeks, with the possibility of reaching a 70% market share when adoption eventually peaks. They mention that the upcoming release of the iPad mini will likely make that happen.

iOS 6 adoption rate levels out at over 60% after one month is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you thought the BlackBerry platform was coming back simply due to their powerful contracts held with the US government, today’s announcement of the ICE drop might throw you for a loop – especially since they’re moving to the iPhone instead. This update comes from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who says BlackBerry “can no longer meet the mobile technology needs of the agency.” This government agency speaks for groups such as Homeland Security Investigations and has been using RIM‘s BlackBerry phones for 8 years.

The folks at ICE have let it be known that they’ve been analyzing both iOS for the iPhone and Google’s Android smartphone platforms and have come to the conclusion that Apple’s choices ring true for them. This is because, as they say, Apple’s tight controls of the hardware platform and the operating system on the iPhone work best with the government group’s own requirements for security. The agency made it clear that this change will be made soon and will span several organizations.

“[The iPhone will be used by a] variety of agency personnel, including, but not limited to, Homeland Security Investigations, Enforcement and Removal Operations, and Office of the Principal Legal Advisor employees.

The iPhone services will allow these individuals to leverage reliable, mobile technology on a secure and manageable platform in furtherance of the agency’s mission.” – US Immigration and Customs Enforcement

This will certainly not be a welcome bit of news coming up on the feeds of the Canadian company’s own BlackBerry 10 devices. With the BlackBerry 10 mobile operating system coming out early 2013, RIM will be making great strides to keep the groups they’ve already got attached to their company for BlackBerry’s business-oriented security features. Apple’s iPhone appears to have finally started chipping away significant bits of IT business here after the launch of the iPhone 5.

Have a peek at the timeline below to see how BlackBerry 10 has been evolving to get a better view of how RIM will handle the near future of the platform. Let us know if you plan on continuing to use BlackBerry through the future – or if you plan on adopting a BlackBerry 10 phone next year. ICE will not be joining that party, needless to say – but perhaps sometime in the future.

[via Rueters]

US Immigrations and Customs dump BlackBerry in favor of the iPhone is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Welcome to Friday evening, everyone. We’re about ready to kick off the weekend, but before we do, let’s recap the news from the afternoon. Today we heard that the iPad Mini might mean the end of the iPad 2, and that a jailbreak for the iPhone 5 will coming shortly. We learned today that T-Mobile will be holding a product event on October 29 – the same day that Google and Microsoft are holding events – and that the prices of the rumored Mac Mini and iMac refreshes might be staying the same.

We had a few Nexus-related stories hit this afternoon, with a new Nexus 4 leak giving us some details on the phone’s specs, and an internal Staples document telling us that the 32GB Nexus 7 model right be replacing the 8GB variant. The Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga will be launching in Japan as the NEC LaVie Y, and one expert is telling us today that there aren’t many visual differences between smartphone displays in 720p and 1080p.

Stanford Ovshinsky, who created the NiMH battery and helped developed many other products, passed away earlier this week, and YouTube launched Campaigns today, a feature that’s being called a “digital thermometer” for non-profits. Pricing for the rumored 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display could top $1,700, while the Skifta app for Android has been updated with support for Instagram and Dropbox. Moog unveiled its new LEV-96 “sensoriactuator” today, and we got word that T-Mobile is now requiring users to sign up for at least a 2GB data plan when taking home a new smartphone.

Microsoft unleashed the launch trailer for Halo 4 today, while EA CEO John Riccitiello was seen saying that social gaming isn’t dying. One unlucky Nintendo counterfeiter is likely headed to the slammer, Motorola has delivered a list of phones that won’t be getting an upgrade to Jelly Bean, and Rovio released a new teaser trailer for Angry Birds Star Wars today. Finally tonight, we have a new column from Don Reisinger for you to read through, in which he asks “How many tablets do you really need?” That does it for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up, we hope you have an excellent weekend!

SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: October 19, 2012 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.