Latest News - Page 3041

The patent war between Apple, and what seems like every other company on Earth doesn't look to stop any time soon. A Chinese company, GooPhone, has already patented the design of the new iPhone, in China.

The new GooPhone i5, yes that's its name, was patented and released before the new iPhone was even announced (and it hasn't even really been announced yet, not until September 12). This gives the Chinese company a legal advantage over the real iPhone maker.

GooPhone i5 runs Google's Android 4.1 OS, and of course its internal goodies would be far different to that of the new iPhone's. The GooPhone i5 sports a 4-inch screen, smaller dock connector, and relocated headphone jack - all rumored to be changes included with the unreleased iPhone.

Riding on the wave of success of their super successful Galaxy S III, Samsung are poised to record a record Q3 profit of $6.2 billion. The Yonhap reports that according to analysts, Samsung could see an operating profit of $6.2 billion, up from $5.9 billion in Q2.

It wasn't too long ago that Samsung had announced they sold 20 million Galaxy S III handsets in just 100 days, as well as announcing and releasing the Galaxy Note II and the Galaxy Note 10.1.

Quarterly sales are estimated to have expanded by 24.5% to reach $45.5 billion or so, which sports a 78% year-over-year increase.

Fox News are reporting that "multiple sources" have teased that Apple will unveil new desktop iMacs next week at their September 12 event. I think we're going to see them, too.

The new iMacs would most likely sport third-generation Intel Core CPUs, as well as Retina displays. Right now there's no confirmation, but I think we're going to see more products unveiled at the event. Maybe a new iPhone, new iMac, new iPad mini, new iPod touch and iOS 6. Count those, that's 5 things. The shadowing on the last teaser posted showed the number 12, with the shadow reading '5'. Everyone thinks it's going to be the iPhone 5, but what if it's actually 5 separate, refreshed and brand spankin' new Apple devices? That would be quite the epic event, especially after what we've seen from Motorola and Amazon in the past week.

Think about it, there have been 6 iPhones, meaning that the new iPhone being called 'iPhone 5', would make it feel out of whack with Apple's numbering scheme. The new iPad dropped its number, and was just called the 'new iPad'. I really think we're going to see Apple do the same thing with the iPhone, and just call it the 'new iPhone'.

Apple, seemingly trying to strike a blow to its favorite legal adversary, has lowered its memory chip order to Samsung for the next iPhone. Samsung has long provided many components for Apple's products, even though Apple and Samsung are constantly involved in legal battles around the world.

Apple has continually been trying to diversify its suppliers and reduce the business it sends towards Samsung, a company Apple continually accuses of copying. "Samsung is still on the list of initial memory chip suppliers (for new iPhones). But Apple orders have been trending down and Samsung is making up for the reduced order from others, notably Samsung's handset business," the Reuters source said.

The reduction in orders is not expected to hurt Samsung by very much. Analysts figure that Apple's purchases of DRAM and NAND chips only make up about 2.5 percent of Samsung's business, so that is the most it could hurt Samsung if they were to completely end their business relationship.

Google has acquired the online virus scanner VirusTotal for an undisclosed amount of money. The deal appears to be a straightforward one, with VirusTotal continuing to operate independently. VirusTotal will gain access to Google's resources and infrastructure, which should help VirusTotal to continue improving their service.

According to the press release, VirusTotal had been one of Google's partners for a long time, so the business relationship with other antivirus companies and security experts should remain mostly unchanged. Google will likely look to integrate VirusTotal's scanning systems into many of their offerings.

It looks as though Apple may be lessening some of its restrictions on apps, if the addition of Conttrol to the App Store is anything to go by. Conttrol is an app that allows the remote control of uTorrent running on a PC, so while the app doesn't itself torrent, it controls a program which does, thus enabling torrenting.

Transmission RPC, a similar app in function to Conttrol, was also approved a few months ago. It's important to note that neither of these apps torrent on the device itself, so this is possibly how they managed to get through the checkpoint. It could also be that they slipped up and accidentally let them through and will ban them as soon as they notice.

"Currently the app supports connections to uTorrent & BitTorrent clients but there are future plans to support Transmission on the Mac, as well as planned development of a native iPad version," Conttrol developer Craig Donnelly said.

Your options for a new computer case have just increased as BitFenix has just launched a new chassis dubbed Ghost. According to BitFenix themselves, it features "superb silence with powerful water cooling capabilities and flexibility for the latest hardware," something everyone wants in a computer case.

"After changing the way people think about the mini-ITX form factor with Prodigy, fans around the world have been wondering what would happen if BitFenix were to design a chassis with focus on silence. Today, it gives us great pleasure to reveal the answer to that question - Ghost," says BitFenix Product Manager David Jarlestedt. "Extremely silent yet surprisingly capable, we believe fans of silent chassis are going to fall in love with our newest creation."

The new case features:

The UK government proposed their controversial Communications Data Bill earlier this year, which would see British ISPs made to keep records of every website that their customers visit for 12 months. Of course, you can see where civil rights groups, and others, would have problems with this.

Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, has stepped up to the debate and joined the opposition to the proposed bill, saying:

The new iPhone looks to be announced next week at Apple's September 12 event, and one analyst estimates the new iPhone could sell as many as 10 million in its first week. The question is, how do Apple amass 10 million (or so) new iPhone's in a short amount of time?

Simple. Force university students to work 12 hours per day, six days per week for around $243 per month on the new iPhone. This is what Foxconn is doing, reports the Shanghai Daily. Foxconn reportedly couldn't get their soul machine to work normally, so they secured more workers from universities, as classes were suspended at the start of the new semester.

Students began working on the new iPhone last Thursday, and are being "compensated" by the $243 per month wage. One student who wished to remain anonymous, claims that the authorities had ordered the schools to round up students to help Foxconn, with the company not informing parents, or signing agreements with students. Another anonymous student said that some universities would go as far as punishing students if they tried to leave the factory.

The original $25 Raspberry Pi was a success, even though it had its fair share of manufacturing hiccups, but the Raspberry Pi Foundation have just announced revision 2.0 of the micro device. We're not looking at it featuring a new processor, or any massive changes, instead we're looking at smaller concerns from the first Raspberry Pi that the team received from the original device.

Revision 2.0 will sport changes to the GPIO pin out, which will add ARM JTAG support and to present a different I2C peripheral. Revision 2.0 also features a reset circuit which can be used by adding an appropriate header to P6. The Raspberry Pi team says that shorting P6 pin 1 to P6 pin 2 will cause the BCM2835M to reset. Resetable fuses that were used to protect the USB outputs on early revision 1.0 boards have been removed, and replaced with links.

Two GPIO pins have been interchanged, while the primary and secondary I2C channels have been reversed. Revision 2.0 has also seen the removal of four GPIO signals that were used for verification identification in revision 1.0, as they were said to be redundant. In their place, will be a new connector site, P5, which the foundation says is perfect for adding a third-party clock and audio codec board.

Yesterday we heard rumors that Sprint would be pushing out Android 4.1 Jelly Bean updates to the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and Nexus S 4G, where today this news has been confirmed. The updates should already be hitting handsets, or will any minute now.

Jelly Bean updates will provide a bunch of new features such as Google Now, which is a Siri-like assistant, an improved notification and voice search system, offline dictation, and more. One of the better features of Jelly Bean is 'Project Butter', which makes the entire OS' UI move at 60fps.

I've been using Jelly Bean for only two days now on my recently-acquired Nexus 7, and it truly is beautiful. If you're a Sprint-based Galaxy Nexus, or Nexus S 4G owner, keep checking your phone for that JB update!

Amazon didn't just keep their high-end fans happy today with the announcement of the Kindle Fire HD range of tablets, or the 4G LTE-powered version, but the retail giant also announced some new lower-end tablets, too.

First up we have the revamped budget fourth-generation Kindle, which is priced at just $69. The revamped Kindle is the company's best-seller, and is now $10 cheaper, while sporting new fonts, crisper text, and 15% faster page turns. This model should ship next Friday, September 14.

Next up we have the new backlit Kindle Paperwhite, which will be priced at $119 for the Wi-Fi-only model, and $179 for the 3G-capable model. Amazon is proud to announce the Paperwhite sports patented technology that distributes light evenly across the Paperwhite's entire surface, just like ambient light. The Kindle Paperwhite measures in at just 9.1mm thick, weighs 7.5 ounces and sports an insane 8-week battery life. Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite will ship on October 1.

Amazon have unveiled two new tablets in the last couple of hours, dubbed the Kindle Fire HD. There'll be two sizes available, 7- and 8.9-inch. The 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD will sport a 1920x1200 display with 254ppi.

It measures in at 8.8mm thickness, and weighs 20 ounces, the screen is also said to feature a polarizing feature that should reduce glare on the screen for those heavy Fifty Shades of Grey reading sessions. Inside the Fire HD 8.9, we're looking at a TI OMAP 4470 processor, dual speakers, front-facing HD camera and HDMI out.

Amazon is happy to brag that the Fire HD 8.9 is the first tablet to sport dual-band MIMO Wi-Fi technology, which the company says makes the slate's Wi-Fi 41% faster than the new iPad from Apple. The 16GB model Fire HD 8.9 will set you back $299, and will begin shipping on November 20.

OCZ lowered their forecast for second quarter earnings due to a shortage of NAND chips that it uses in the production of its solid state drives. This was seen as a good thing on Wall Street and both Micron's and Sandisk's shares jumped. This is because a shortage in NAND chips would stop the sliding price of flash memory that has been dropping lower in recent days due to overproduction.

Micron increased by 5.97 percent to $6.55 and Sandisk managed an 8.0 percent increase to $43.85. "Supply and demand is coming into balance with the cuts and the industry rationalizing its capacity," said Kevin Cassidy, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus. Supply had previously been increased to meet the demand for Apple's iPad and other devices.

Decreased sales had created an overabundance of NAND chips which lead to decreased prices. Toshiba announced back in July that they would be decreasing their output by 30 percent in order to help stabilize prices. Citi analyst Glen Yeung said that the effects have yet to be fully felt across the industry.

Kingston, one of the world's largest memory manufacturers, produced a HyperX Red line as a limited edition product earlier this year. The HyperX Red line was designed to be a budget part, an offering to compete against "major on 3rd" products, which have dominated the budget market.

"Major on 3rd" means that a company has taken a major brand memory, such as Toshiba, and added it to a 3rd party vendor's PCB. This is where most of your budget memory comes from. Now, Kingston wants to take some of this market. That is why they have permanently added the HyperX Red product to their line up.

The HyperX Red brand is designed for system builders who want to use major brand memory or for enthusiasts who don't want to spend a lot of money on their RAM and still want to get some performance.

Creative have just taken the veil off of their latest creation, the Sound BlasterAxx range of products. Creative dub this "a whole new generation of Sound Blaster" which is set to "dazzle the new mobile networked generation". In reality, just a handful of cool, new Sound Blaster-based products.

First up we have the Sound BlasterAxx SBX 20, which supports both PC and Mac, as well as iOS- and Android-based devices. SBX 20 sports Bluetooth connectivity, making it that much easier to hook these devices together and get your audio goodness on. Because we live in a world of network-connected devices, Creative Chairman and CEO, also the creator of the Sound Blaster, Sim Wong Hoo, had to really go back to the drawing board when envisioning the new Sound BlasterAxx range of products.

Creative's Sound BlasterAxx SBX 20 is Bluetooth-enabled, features a unique patent-pending "stacked stereo" speaker design that can fill a room with sound, a high-quality, dual-microphone for great voice chat and conversation, hardware-accelerated SBX Pro Studio and CrystalVoice technologies, as well as featuring aux-in for wired connection from other audio-connected devices. The package arrives in a 410x91mm form factor.

Things are looking to heat up for Mitt Romney, with a hacker claiming to have in his (or her) possession, the presidential candidate's previous tax returns. Romney has been accused of hiding something, as he has only released the previous two years worth of tax returns.

The hacker who claims to be part of Anonymous, claims to have copies of Romney's tax returns in the years before 2010 in which he or she posted to Pastebin. The hacker has also described how the files were accessed, where an actual person gained physical access to accounting form PricewaterhouseCoopers' office in Tennessee on August 25, where they copied the files onto a USB flash drive.

The culprit claims that encrypted copies were mailed to PWC, as well as the Democratic and Republican Party offices in Williamson County. The GOP office confirmed to VentureBeat that a USB flash drive had been received, and that the Secret Service had confiscated it and is running an investigation. There was a second Pastebin document posted, revealing the motive of the hacker, where they demand $1 million Bitcoin to a named account by September 28th, or the key to the documents will be released:

We've seen Motorola unveil their Droid RAZR Maxx HD, and their edge-to-edge-sporting RAZR M, now we have the veil lifted on the Droid RAZR HD. Motorola's Droid RAZR HD sports a 4.7-inch HD display, a dual-core Qualcomm 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor, and a 2,500mAh battery, of course, it also receives Android 4.1 Jelly Bean as its OS.

Motorola have built quite a large phone, while trying to keep it as slim as possible, as well as throwing a decently-sized battery in for good measure. Measuring in at just 8.4mm thick, 68mm across and 132mm tall, you'd forget there's a 4.7-inch screen sitting in front of your face. Motorola's Droid RAZR HD also features Kevlar coating which should keep it safe from most things, maybe except a bullet.

We get a micro-HDMI port, as well as micro USB and the usual 3.5mm headphone jack. Motorola are claiming that we should expect 10 hours of movie or TV show playback, and 6 hours of surfing the web. Because of its HD screen and 4.7-inch size, Moto claim that it sports the "same sharp clarity as your HDTV". Moto also claim that the RAZR HD will come with 24 hours of battery performance.

During Motorola's event in New York, Google chairman Eric Schmidt took to the stage announcing some stellar numbers for the Mountain View-based company. Schmidt said that there are now 1.3 million Android activations every day, with 70,000 of them tablets.

How many Android devices in total? An amazing 480 million, that's just a shave under half a billion Android devices - insane. Schmidt continued, talking of how much the Android ecosystem had grown in the years gone by, where he quoted Comscore numbers that show Android is ahead at 53% of the market, and Apple's iOS with just 33%.

Schmidt did step back and say that people do question these numbers, as we don't really know how those numbers are gathered. Google's Dennis Woodside took to the stage announcing that "the new Motorola begins today", also stating "Motorola invented the technology that underpins the mobile industry". Of course he'd say that, considering Motorola is now part of the behemoth that is Google.

Ubisoft has made it official that they are ditching the always-on model for DRM. In an always-on DRM scheme, a user must remain connected to the internet to play a game, something that isn't always feasible. It also has troubles when the central servers go down or are overloaded.

Thankfully, Ubisoft has decided to move away from both this DRM model and the limited activation model. Both of these are good moves for PC gamers and hopefully other companies will follow. The limited activation model creates issues for reviewers who have to reinstall the game many times, often across multiple generations of hardware.