Further Indication iPhone 5 Release will be Q4 2011

It’s a rumor which has been around since Apple officially announced the date for WWDC 2011, and now Reuters have added further fuel to the fire.  We’re talking about the next generation of iPhone not being released soon after the conference as has been the tradition, but in September instead.
Quoting a trio of individuals with ‘direct knowledge of the company’s supply chain’, the report says production of the iPhone5 won’t begin until July or August, leading to a September shipping date.This ties in with the previous rumors suggesting a Q4 release for the phone, which given Apple’s preference for short lead times indicated a late Q3/early Q4 announcement.  Why they’ve decided to extend the life of the iPhone 4 this time isn’t known, but it could be down to many things:

1. The White iPhone 4.  It’s still supposed to be on its way, don’t forget!
2. iOS 5.  Perhaps the new software isn’t quite ready?
3. Supply Problems.  Touchscreens, new camera lenses etc.
4. A change in Apple’s release structure across the board.

A September onwards release date should please a few people though, as anyone with an 18-month iPhone 4 contract will be a few steps closer to upgrading to the fifth model than expected!
Reuter’s sources also say the iPhone 5 won’t look all that different to the iPhone 4, something many have also suspected.  If the design doesn’t change, the good news is all those iPhone 4 cases won’t be useless; unlike any iPad 1 cases you may have…
Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference will take place between the 6th and 10th June 2011.

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Amazon.com Already Advertising For The iPhone 5 Online [UPDATED]

Whether you believe one source or another, the iPhone5 announcement is still most likely anywhere from 3 to 6 months away. And yet, we are beginning to see some top retailers focusing their online advertising efforts on the "iPhone 5″ keyword. Does this indicate that an iPhone 5 release could come sooner than even the most impatient rumors suggest?

As it currently stands, the tech world remains transfixed on the issue of when the iPhone 5 will make its way onto the scene. Week after week, tech sites like the iPhone 5 News Blog report and comment on breaking news stories from sources close to Apple, as well as people close to the scene in Korea and Japan who purport to have insider information on the component manufacturing for the next iPhone. One thing, however, is certain: no one is predicting an imminent release of the iPhone 5.

And yet, Amazon.com seems to already be advertising for the iPhone 5.

A simple search of the "iPhone 5″ keyword on Google reveals an eyebrow-raising ad, as seen in the screen shot to the left. Unlike AT&T, who has obviously bought an ad placement for the iPhone 5 but has not written their ad content to include the "iPhone 5″ keyword, the Amazon.com ad is clearly advertising for the iPhone 5.

What does this ad on Google possibly reveal about the release date of the iPhone 5? Could it be that Amazon, the top e-commerce website in the world today, knows something about the iPhone 5 release that has eluded even the most plugged-in Apple news breakers?

Probably not.

As I'm sure you can imagine, the "iPhone 5" keyword is becoming an increasingly popular search term on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other top search engines. This time last year, "iPhone 5″ received fewer than 1,000 searches per month worldwide. Currently, however, the "iPhone 5″ keyword is yielding 1.8 million searches a month worldwide, with 450,000 of them coming from the United States, according to Google's own AdWords keyword tool. And when you consider that "iPhone 4″ currently yields a search of almost 25 million world searches a month, with 5 million coming from the U.S., it's no wonder that Amazon would want to capitalize on the marketing potential of the keyword.

However, one has to wonder if the added traffic from putting up the first iPhone 5 keyword ad will stoke consumer anger, since there is currently no iPhone 5 on sale there. To be sure, large e-commerce websites are notorious for launching sprawling ad campaigns that encompass large swathes of keyword phrases — even if they don't carry the item you're searching for.

There is always the outside chance that Amazon is aware of an impeding surprise iPhone 5 announcement and are simply laying the groundwork for their own online advertising campaign. But the greater likelihood is that they are simply trying to funnel in more referral traffic. One thing is for sure, however: when large corporations like AT&T and Amazon begin to target the "iPhone 5″ keyword, it proves nothing less that iPhone 5 buzz has reached a fever pitch . . .

. . . and we still might be anywhere from 3 to 6 months from the iPhone 5 actually being released.

What do you think? Does it irk you when an online retailer puts up a "bait and switch" ad that doesn't deliver when you click on it? Let us know!

The phanton iPhone 5 ad by Amazon has been changed to read "iPhone 4." 

UPDATE — April 11, 2011

While no official word from Amazon has come over the phantom iPhone 5 ad, today it seems that the ad has changed from "iPhone 5″ to "iPhone 4." While there is no way to know exactly who implemented this change, it would be safe to assume that the widespread coverage of the iPhone 5 Amazon ad (which broke here on the iPhone 5 News Blog first) precipitated the change in the ad's content.

Your iPhone Secretly Records Your Location Data

Most of you are probably aware that the iPhone can track your location. We've all seen the box pop up that says "Facebook would like to use your location data," and then you tap Allow or Cancel.

But how many of you knew that the iPhone constantly tracks your location and records your coordinates alongside a time stamp to a secret file? I assumed that police might have access to that kind of info through my wireless carrier, but I didn't know it was sitting in a file on my phone…The Guardian is reporting today that scientists have discovered a disturbing file within iDevices using iOS 4.0 and up. Pete Warden and Alasdair Allan are presenting their findings at the Where 2.0 conference in San Francisco today, and it will certainly be interesting to see how the industry responds.

The research group has worked on several location data visualization projects like the map of radiation levels in Japan. They've even researched other smartphones, including Google's Android devices, for similar invasions of privacy. No other mobile OS that they've come across, logs a user's location data like iOS.

Warden and Allen note that the file is moved onto new devices when an old one is replaced, and don't believe that to be by accident. They speculate that Apple might have new features on the way that utilize the hidden data, but the absence of a notice to users or a setting to disable the tracking shows a real ignorance about privacy.

Not only could it be considered ignorance, it might be against the law. The Regulation of Investigatory Power Act says that standard consumer phones cannot record location data.

Want to see the hidden data for yourself? Head on over to Pete Warden's GitHub page here. At the top you'll notice a place to download the application called iPhone Tracker.

It's just a simple app that pulls the location data out of your saved iPhone files and displays the coordinates on a map. For those interested, Warden answers a full list of FAQ and breaks down how to locate the secret file yourself through file browsing.

Why is this such a bad thing? Obviously it's not a good thing that jealous spouses and other inquiring minds have such easy access to a history of your recent travels, but the question of why this information is being recorded still remains.

I'm indifferent I guess because I rarely restore from old backups, and jailbreak frequently. When I tried the iPhone tracker, there was only location data from the last week or two.  But I certainly see that there is an issue here, especially after all that trouble Google got in over its Latitude services.

What do you think?

iphone : 'Color Keyboard' Adds Flair to Your iPhone's Stock Keyboard

Color Keyboard is a recently released jailbreak tweak that potentially allows you to customize your iPhone's keyboard using whatever color scheme you deem worthy.

I use the word potential, because it's entirely up to you as to whether or not you'll squeeze your money's worth out of it.

The name — Color Keyboard — while technically true, might seem as if it's a tad misleading, especially in the shadow of robust jailbreak tweaks like AlertArtist…

Once you drop the two dollars necessary to purchase the tweak, you'll notice a new settings section placed in your Settings.app.

What lies within proved to be slightly disappointing for me, and most casual jailbreakers will likely feel the same.

Instead of utilizing sliders that allow you to adjust the characteristics of your iPhone's keyboard, you're left with a highly anemic selection of stock themes.

There are a total of five themes bundled in with Color Keyboard, and they are as follows: Black, Pink, MoreRounder, BackgroundImage, and Complex Sample.

You can probably figure out what most of those do by looking at their names. It's pretty disappointing, because although the name of this tweak is Color Keyboard, there just isn't much color to be found initially.

One thing I do like about it, though, is that not only can you change the colors of the keyboard but you can also alter it in a way that adjusts its characteristics; take button roundness for example.

Even better, the themes can stack a la WinterBoard, so you can enable multiple themes at a time to come up with some really funky looks.

While that all sounds kosher, the only way to add additional themes is to pull up your sleeves, and dig into the tweak's property list file with your favorite text editor. There you can alter a theme's various properties, or create all new themes for yourself.

As you may have guessed, while the learning curve for this isn't exactly rocket science, casual users will probably shy away from venturing to such depths.

There is a handy tutorial contained on the tweak's page in Cydia, so if you're interested feel free to have at it.

Is Color Keyboard worth the $1.99 investment? If you're someone who likes to go digging around in code, then absolutely.

On the flipside, for those of us who prefer easy to use sliders to make customizations, Color Keyboard might seem like a waste of two perfectly good greenbacks.

What do you think? Have you tried Color Keyboard yet?

AT&T's Q1 iPhone Sales Up 33%, Unaffected by Verizon iPhone

AT&T posted its first-quarter earnings this morning, and the U.S. carrier saw a 33% increase in iPhone activations during the first quarter of 2011. A grand total of 3.6 million iPhones were activated on AT&T, helping to give the carrier a 10.2% overall increase in wireless revenue.

Since the iPhone was made available on Verizon, a drop in iPhone sales on AT&T has been expected. Instead, AT&T announced that this past quarter was its best first-quarter earnings ever. Looks like the Verizon iPhone isn't really enticing customers away from AT&T…A few points from AT&T's press release,

• Best-ever first-quarter smartphone sales of more than 5.5 million
• iPhone activations increased nearly 1 million year over year to 3.6 million, with 23 percent of subscribers new to AT&T; iPhone subscriber churn unchanged year over year

Smartphone Sales Remain Strong. AT&T had another strong quarter of smartphone sales. More than 5.5 million smartphones were sold in the first quarter, the third-highest quarter ever and an increase of more than 60 percent year over year. During the quarter, 3.6 million iPhones were activated. Approximately 65 percent of postpaid sales were smartphones.

It's interesting to see how well AT&T is doing in iPhone sales against Verizon. 23% of iPhone sales this past quarter were from new AT&T customers. The thought was that many people would jump ship and move to Verizon when the iPhone was made available, but it appears that most people are happy with the service AT&T provides.

Although Verizon's iPhone sales have not been released, the numbers are supposed to be lower than expected.

Why do you think AT&T is doing so well in iPhone sales? Did you recently switch to AT&T or renew your contract? Will you be leaving AT&T for Verizon?

White iPhone 4 Running Mystery Version of iOS Spotted in the Wild

Here's some double news for you. Vietnamese site Tinhte, who has a pretty good track record of verified Apple leaks, is back at it. This time, they are demoing on video what they claim to be a test version of the white iPhone 4 running a mystery iOS.

While it's hard to tell whether this iOS version is legit or not, I can't imagine it being a jailbreak tweak. I think if it was, we would have figured it out by now…Perhaps the most interesting part of this iOS is the way it handles multitasking. As you can see on the video below, instead of showing the app switcher, it shows you a minimized view of each app opened, a la MultiFl0w. Just like MultiFl0w, you can tap on one of the windows to go to this app, or you can delete it by tapping and holding, then tap the " X ."

On the second video, you can see how folders are implemented. While they look very similar to the current folder implementation, you can tell there is a slight difference. Additionally, there are some interesting settings end users have never seen before – namely Carrier and Internal settings.

So, is this real or is this fake? Well, it seems to be 100% real and what these videos show appears to be a test iPhone 4 running an internal build of iOS 4, as shown in the image below, extracted from the video at about 1.35 min (thanks @H4R4SM for the tip) – iOS 4 Build 8A216.

Well folks, it seems that these videos shed light on what we'll most likely see in iOS 5. Excited or what?

iphone : 'Color Keyboard' Adds Flair to Your iPhone's Stock Keyboard

How to Downgrade iPhone iOS 4.3.2

Posted at 22:51' 21/04/2011

iPhone 5 on September 13th: five reasons release isn’t worth waiting for

If the iPhone 5 really is to be a September baby, it’ll be unveiled in September 13th. And that being the case, our official advice has changed: if you’re sitting around waiting for more information on the iPhone5 in order to make a decision on whether to buy an iPhone 4 now or keep waiting, and it turns out the iPhone 5 really is coming in the fall instead of the summer, go ahead and take the plunge on the iPhone 4 now. Bear in mind that this advice is conditional upon the iPhone 5 being held back until the fall; if it does indeed arrive this June then you’re best off simply waiting another six weeks. But Apple traditionally holds its fall press event on the second Tuesday of September, namely the 13th in 2011, and if that event is to be the first sign of the iPhone 5 along with the iPod models which will debut that day, don’t bother waiting. Here’s why.iPhone 4 rocks: Several members of the Beatweek staff have been using the iPhone 4 since last year, and while we’ll likely all upgrade to the iPhone 5 as soon as it arrives, here’s what we’ve learned about the iPhone 4 in the mean time. It’s by far the most ideal smartphone on the market. It’s faster, more versatile, thinner, and lighter than any previous iPhone model, and offers significantly more battery life with a much better screen. The supposed “iPhone 4 antenna issue” simply does not exist except in the minds of the deviants who concocted it. On its own merits, it’s nearly the perfect smartphone; we’d be hard pressed to come with things we don’t like about it.

4G pipedream: Even if the iPhone 5 does end up offering 4G networking, that’ll only work in the scant areas  in which Verizon and AT&T have actually built 4G networks. For the vast majority of iPhone 5 customers, it’ll be the same 3G or even EDGE experience that they’d have gotten on the iPhone 4. Unless you live in one of a handful of big cities where 4G LTE will arrive early, this is not a reason to wait for the iPhone 5.

Verizon already has the iPhone: For those Verizon customers who wanted an iPhone but skipped the iPhone 4 because they thought the iPhone 5 was just around the corner, we’ll ask you this: what exactly have you gained by waiting? A few more months of being stuck with your existing phone, which you clearly don’t want? And now you’re looking at another few more months of doing the same? You’re not winning this battle.

Question marks: In other words, it’s all we know about the iPhone 5. Will it offer better specs and features than the iPhone 4? Certainly. What will those specs and features be, and will any of them be relevant to you? No way of knowing. Waiting means you’re gambling that the iPhone 5 will offer something over the iPhone 4 which will have justified your wait. Waiting does not equal playing it safe; it’s just a different kind of gamble.

Have it both ways: The real clincher is that even if you buy an iPhone 4 now, you can still buy an iPhone 5 later. Sure, you’ll end up paying $200 above sticker for the iPhone 5 because you’ll have used up your upgrade cycle on the iPhone 4 purchase. But nothing says you can’t turn around and sell your iPhone 4 in September (for more than you paid for it, thanks to the magic of unsubsidized pricing), and put that money toward paying your iPhone 5 ransom. You’ll still end up having paid at least little bit for the privilege using an iPhone 4 between now and iPhone 5 launch day, but it won’t preclude you from getting to experience both iPhone generations. Here’s more on the iPhone 5.

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Did Sony CEO Howard Stringer Spill The Beans About An 8MP iPhone 5 Camera?

We’re recently reported that very few new features appear to be solid for the iPhone5. But a recent slip-up by the Sony CEO suggests that an 8-megapixel camera might be a definite upgrade for the next iPhone. read Charles Moore’s new article:

MacNN, Appleinsider,, CNET, and several other Apple-watcher sites reported over the weekend that Sony CEO Howard Stringer may have inadvertently revealed that Apple is gearing up to equip the iPhone 5 with an eight-megapixel camera.

9To5Mac’s Seth Weintraub, who attended the event, reports that Stringer, in a Talking Tech with Sony event interview with The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall in New York, commented that his company’s camera sensor plant at Sendai, Japan, is among 15 of the company’s facilities damaged by last month’s catastrophic earthquake and tsunami, and that the supply interruption will delay shipments of sensors to Apple. Since Sony sensors are not used in the iPhone versions 4 and 3GS, which employ 5-megapixel and 3.2 megapixel OmniVision camera sensors respectively, it’s not a major deductive leap to infer that the higher-resolution CMOS sensors sourced from Sony would most likely be destined for the next revision iPhone 5.A PhoneArena blog from six weeks ago notes that OmniVision shares nosedived last summer when a rumor spread that due partly to complaints about a yellowish color shift in still photos shot with the OmniVision sensor camera, Apple might be moving to Sony for its next generation iPhone camera sensors — possibly Sony’s Exmor R sensor unit that is used in the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc and Xperia neo. That 8MP sensor is backlit to help it finesse low light conditions, similar to the way the iPhone 4′s 5MP OmniVision sensor does. Indeed, rumors of Apple dropping OmniVision in favor of Sony as its iPhone camera supplier are longstanding.

PhoneArena also reports that OmniVision has announced that it has an 8MP camera sensor of its own coming, the OV8820, which incorporates the same low-light performance enhancements, plus HD video at 60fps, and Full HD at 30fps, and which had been projected to begin mass production in March, but that production problems have occurred.

Not everyone agrees that Apple will use Sony CMOC camera sensors in the iPhone 5. Analyst Yair Reiner of Wall Street’s Oppenheimer & Co. is quoted by Appleinisider isaying he expects OmniVision to remain Apple’s camera supplier for the fifth-generation iPhone, corroborated by checks with contacts in Apple’s supply channels, dismissing the notion an Apple-Sony hook-up as “rather silly.”

Whatever, regardless of whether the iPhone 5‘s camera supplier is to be OmniVision or Sony, it looks like camera sensor supply problems may be a significant factor in Apple’s evidently postponing the iPhone 5 introduction from an anticipated Worldwide Developer’s Conference release until some time later in the year. With the iPad 2′s camera performance being that unit’s most unanimously panned feature in reviews, Apple will want to get the camera right in the iPhone 5, where it is arguably a much more important feature than it is with the tablet product.

Also, with Sony Ericsson rumored to be getting 12MP+ camera equipped phones ready for summer release, Apple will need at least the 8MP sensors to remain even ballpark competitive in that context.

[iphone5newsblog.com]

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