Aug 02

Canalys: Android takes Q2 smartphone market share lead in US with 886 percent year-over-year growth

Posted in: Android, Apple, BlackBerry, iPhone, market share, marketshare, nokia, RIM, Today's Chili



We knew Android phones were selling like gangbusters — Google has been none too shy in telling us as much — but numbers were slightly less clear in a larger context. Well, if a new report by Canalys is to be believed, those numbers are just fine in a larger context. Canalys claims that in Q2 Android was up a whopping 886 percent over last year’s sales during this time period (remember, the original Droid didn’t come out until November), and those wild sales put it at 34 percent of the US market, compared to RIM’s 32 percent and Apple’s 21.7 share. Of course, RIM has a big launch on the way, and we’re not sure how much of the iPhone 4’s heady run this report captures, so things could naturally look different for Q3. Also, it’s worth noting that the breakdown of phones actually in use is of course dramatically different. Still, nobody is doing that bad: the smartphone market is up 64 percent year-over-year, and Apple and RIM grew 61 percent and 41 percent, respectively. Oh, and remember Nokia? Yeah, they’re still beating the world with a 38 percent market share and 41 percent growth. Check out the press release after the break for all the percentages your heart could ever desire.

Continue reading Canalys: Android takes Q2 smartphone market share lead in US with 886 percent year-over-year growth

Canalys: Android takes Q2 smartphone market share lead in US with 886 percent year-over-year growth originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Aug 2010 10:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 02

360 Panorama for iPhone Builds Scenes as You Swipe

Posted in: iPhone, Today's Chili

360 Panorama is a new kind of pano-shooting app for the iPhone. Instead of taking many pictures and then stitching them together afterwards, like every other pano app, you just sweep the iPhone across the scene in front of you and 360 Panorama will build a super-wide image in real time, similar to what you can do with some of Sony’s latests digicams.

The app is still taking lots of individual shots: it’s just putting them together as you swoosh your iPhone over the world and working out where the camera is pointing by using the accelerometers. Image-sections pop up onto grid as you go, showing you the app’s progress, and a full 360-degree panorama should take about 20 seconds to complete. You’re going to need a new iPhone to run it, though. Because this is a processor intensive app, it will only work on the iPhones 3G and 4.

The app is $3, and available now.

360 Panorama [iTunes]

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Aug 02

JailbreakMe Unlocks iPhone 4, iPad With Your Browser

Posted in: Hacks, Hacks, Mods and DIY, iPhone, jailbreak, Today's Chili

Jailbreaking has gone into the cloud. Visit the Jailbreakme.com website on your iOS device, slide the big button on the front page (which cheekily mimics Apple’s slide-to-unlock button) and you’re done. It’s that easy. It works for iPhones (including the iPhone 4) and also iPads running iOS 3.2.1.

Jailbreaking – the unlocking of an iPhone or iPad to allow access to the file system and install any app you like – used to be done via your computer with a downloaded program. You’d plug in the iDevice and work from there. It was easy, but this is easier still. No doubt the US federal regulators’ recent ruling that jailbreaking is legal has emboldened the hackers: Apple can’t have the site taken down now, after all.

The cat and mouse game that is jailbreaking is not over, though: Just because unlocking your iPhone is now legal doesn’t mean Apple has to support it. The hack works through a PDF exploit in Mobile Safari. Comex, a member of the iPhone Dev Team (the jailbreaking people), uses Safari’s PDF decoder to run the code. Because Safari automatically opens PDFs, the jailbreak code is run. Expect Apple to close this hole in an update, if only for security purposes.

So how does it work? That depends. Our own Brian X Chen unlocked his iPhone 4 with no problems. He reverted almost immediately because Cydia, the unofficial App Store, has almost nothing in it that is optimized for the retina display. OThers have reported that FaceTime and MMS are broken. Currently, my 3G iPad is stuck in an endless loop and cannot get past the boot screen showing a single, lonely silver Apple. Needless to say, you should back up before trying this, and be aware that you are visiting a website that is doing some rather scary things to your iDevice.

The return of jailbreakme.com! [Dev Team Blog]

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Aug 01

Official: iPhone 4 jailbreak hits from iPhone Dev Team (updated with video)

Posted in: Apple, AppleIphone, breaking news, BreakingNews, hack, hacked, Hacks, ipad, iPhone, ipod, ipod touch, IpodTouch, jailbreak, Today's Chili, video

The Library of Congress made it legal, MuscleNerd showed us it was a go, and now Comex and company have delivered the long-awaited jailbreak to the fourth rendition of iPhone. According to their new page JailbreakMe, the hack works right on the iPhone 4 (or 3GS, or 3G, or iPad, or…) itself, using via the handset’s Safari browser to reportedly break into most any iOS device. The servers are getting slammed pretty badly, and only a few Engadget editors have so much as seen the page pictured above so far, but rest assured we’re testing this as we speak and will have more details up soon.

Update: Sorry folks, we’ve tried repeatedly, but apparently the servers just can’t handle the load — Comex tweets that the purple screens we’re seeing are evidence of server fail. Here’s hoping for a Cydia celebration when the stampede is over.

Update 2: Comex says you might want to reboot if you got stuck staring at that purple screen, and you could also try their backup server (click our second source link) to help the Dev Team divide the load.

Update 3: We successfully got the jailbreak to start working, but it crashed Safari. Upon reboot of our phone we’ve got… nothing but the Apple logo. Take note, this can brick your phone, so proceed with caution! Video of the experience after the break. After a reset, our phone is giving us nothing but the Apple logo. (Update to the update, the phone has been restored).

Update 4: Our intern Sam has successfully jailbroken his iPhone 4 according to this pic, so it can be done!

Update 5: Comex reports that iPads running iOS 3.2.1 aren’t presently working properly, and that MMS problems after jailbreak are a known issue.

Update 6: Good news? Saurik (of Cydia fame) has pitched in to secure JailbreakMe some better hosting. Bad news? Reports indicate that FaceTime doesn’t work after jailbreak, either.

Update 7: Seven updates? You bet, because it’s looking like there’s already a fix for the missing FaceTime and MMS features. Head on over to Redmond Pie (in more coverage below) for instructions to install the Cydia package that brought video chat back to two of our iPhone 4 handsets. If you’re just downloading JailbreakMe for the first time though, you shouldn’t need to do a thing, as Comex claims both have been fixed in a new version of the hack that just went live.

Continue reading Official: iPhone 4 jailbreak hits from iPhone Dev Team (updated with video)

Official: iPhone 4 jailbreak hits from iPhone Dev Team (updated with video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 01 Aug 2010 17:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 01

iPhone 4 Jailbreak Now Available: One Click, No Computer Required [Jailbreak]

Posted in: ios, ipad, iPhone, iphone 3g, ipod, jailbreak, Today's Chili, top

JailbreakMe 2.0, a mobile Safari-based jailbreak app for iPhones and iPads, has just gone live and pretty much opens up any iOS device you have handy, all the way back to the iPhone 3G. More »

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Jul 30

Buying an iPhone 4 from a Canadian carrier? It’s locked

Posted in: Apple, canada, iPhone, Today's Chili

We’ve been tipped this morning (and have now been able to confirm, thanks to our own Myriam Joire braving the lines) that if you buy an iPhone 4 in a Canadian carrier’s store today, you leave with it locked to that carrier — despite Apple’s trumpeting that you can buy it SIM-free. It appears as though the activation process might be responsible for causing the carrier lock — either that, or the carriers’ subsidized models are shipped locked, unlike the full-price devices you can buy directly from Apple. Either way, it’s a bummer, and it’s certainly something to take into consideration before you buy.

[Thanks, Chris]

Update: We’ve now confirmed that the lock is happening at the time the phone is activated — in other words, it begins life carrier-agnostic. Pretty wild stuff.

Update 2: Tipster Mika G. tells us that unlocked phones purchased directly from Apple do not lock upon carrier activation, which jibes with Apple’s wording that “you can change carriers at any time.” Carrier-purchased phones, however, definitely do lock.

Buying an iPhone 4 from a Canadian carrier? It’s locked originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 30

Porn Industry Aroused by iPhone FaceTime

Posted in: iPhone, Phones, Today's Chili

You will not be surprised that the porn industry is all over the iPhone 4 like a bad case of the clap. The latest business opportunity is, almost inevitably, FaceTime, although it probably won’t actually be called Face Time.

In the U.K., the ever-accurate Daily Mail reports that “video-sex chat services […] are hiring workers through internet adverts.” These services would connect you one-on-one with the sex worker of your choice.

It’s a great idea. Because FaceTime is Wi-Fi only, you won’t be surprised at the end of the month by huge and scary charges on your phone-bill. Another advantage is that, because it won’t work over 3G, it’s unlikely that the person on the plane next to you will be indulging. A phone would also seem to be the perfect place for this most personal kind of entertainment. As Quentin Boyer of adult production company Pink Visual told the Mail: “A phone is such an intimate thing, you usually don’t lend it out or have someone else use it.” At least not without cleaning it first, we hope.

It’s often said that the porn industry drives technical innovation, but it might be more accurate to say that it is the ultimate early adopter. People scoffed at the idea of smut on cellphones until the iPhone made it easy to browse the web and the number of mobile porn sites took off. And the iPad, a device ridiculed for its lack of Adobe’s Flash plug-in, has seen adult video sites rushing to re-encode their catalogs in the iPad-friendly Quicktime format. Pushing sex over video chat has been pointless until now but, as the number of customers with easy video-calling explodes, so will the business opportunities.

Being the sensationalist rag that it is, the Mail veers off into talk of the dangers to kids (“children and sexual predators are often ahead of parents when comes to technology”) and tries to make a case that Apple somehow doesn’t like adult material on its devices (ridiculous, as Safari on the iPad is probably the best porn browser on the planet). But the best point in the article is made by adult actress Teagan Presley, who highlights a technical shortcoming of the face-to-face nature of video calls.

“You can have the phone on your face, or other body parts,” says Presley, “but not both at the same time.”

Now Apple iPhone 4 users can make video calls to X-rated stars with Face Time [Daily Mail]

Photo: Joe Loong/Flickr

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Jul 30

Validas study finds Verizon smartphones consuming more data than iPhones

Posted in: att, carrier, cdma, iPhone, mobile broadband, mobile internet, MobileBroadband, MobileInternet, study, Today's Chili, verizon, Verizon Wireless, VerizonWireless, wwan

You know how we’ve good reason to believe that Verizon Wireless is at least mulling the switch to capped / tiered data plans? Yeah. An independent Validas research report has found that, between January and May of this year (pre-AT&T caps), Verizon’s stable of smartphones collectively averaged more data consumption per month that Apple’s iPhone. Of course, this quite literally compares an Apple to every smartphone on Verizon save for BlackBerries, but given how much squalling we’ve heard from Ma Bell about this rampant iPhone data usage, we’re pleased to see a few facts that spin things the other way. The company’s full report is due out in September, but investigation of over 20,000 wireless bills found that VZW smartphones “are consuming more wireless data than AT&T iPhones by a ratio of roughly 1.25:1,” with the average Verizon user eating up 421MB per month and the average iPhone user consuming 338MB per month. It also points out that “nearly twice as many Verizon Wireless smartphone users are consuming 500MB to 1GB per month compared to AT&T iPhone users.” You learn something new everyday, right?

Continue reading Validas study finds Verizon smartphones consuming more data than iPhones

Validas study finds Verizon smartphones consuming more data than iPhones originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 30

GPad: Another iPhone Gamepad Case

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, controller, Games, iPhone, Today's Chili

Somebody needs to make an iPhone game-pad already. The iPhone is great for games and all, but for old-school platformers and beat-’em-ups like Streetfighter IV, nothing beats having some real buttons to mash. Enter the gPod, a be-buttoned case into which you slide the iPhone. It has a d-pad, four control buttons along with select, start and a pair of shoulder-buttons. It is the perfect thing for playing old Super Nintendo games.

But we doubt you’ll ever be able to buy one. It could be easily made, we’re sure, even though the current prototype is compatible with the first-gen iPhone only, but games would have to be written to use buttons. As only a small percentage of iPhone and iPod Touch owners would have this add-on, that would be a tiny market.

I’d buy one, though, even if it only worked with jailbroken iPhones: what would be better than spending an afternoon with this and a SNES emulator full of old game ROMs? Nothing, I tell you. Nothing at all. It even makes a pretty cool-looking case.

iPhone Game Pad [CP Design via Dr. Crypt]

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Jul 30

Kindle for iOS Brings iPad Search, Dictionary, Fast-Switching

Posted in: e-books, ipad, iPhone, kindle, tablets, Today's Chili

Just days after updating the hardware Kindle with a smaller, cheaper model, Amazon has updated the Kindle app for iOS devices and it remains the same size and the same price (free). This release brings something for everyone in the form of iOS4 compatibility and general improvements.

There are a few dull but worthy additions: fast app-switching on the iPhone 4, improved search on the iPhone and iPod Touch and something has been done to the line-spacing on the iPad to “improve” it. But that’s boring. Much meatier are Google and Wikipedia lookup for words, along with a 250,000-word dictionary. Interestingly, this dictionary isn’t included in the download itself, but is pulled down the first time you highlight a word. Google and Wikipedia lookups whisk you off to Safari. An in-app browser would be nice, but I guess with the fast app-switching, it wouldn’t save much time.

The best news for iPad users is that there is now searching inside books, so buying cook-books from the Kindle store now makes sense. And that’s it. Like the new Kindle, none of the new features is huge in itself, but together they make an already good product better.

Kindle for iPhone and iPad [iTunes]

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