Tuesday 13 December 2011

Motorola wins injunction against Apple in Germany, again

By on 22:25
Apple has been having a lot of legal headaches lately and now there's a new one. Now, it's Motorola that's causing the Cupertino-based company trouble as it won a preliminary injunction against several Apple products in Germany. It's not the first time either.
Anyway, today's injunction affects practically all Apple gadgets with GPRS connectivity - the iPhone, iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4, iPad 3G and iPad 3GS have been named, but the 4S is infringing on Motorola's patent as well (it came out after the suit was filed so it's not mentioned explicitly).
Motorola hasn’t won the case yet, but if they choose they can enforce that injunction in Germany. To do that, they need to provide a €100 million bond. That's a risk for the company that only recently stopped its decline - if they end up losing the suit, the money will have to be paid out to Apple. Also, Apple might appeal this decision and win a stay of the injunction.
It's hard to say how things will go. Motorola's patent is probably vital for GPRS and Apple can't do without it. Motorola might be forced to offer a license to Apple, but for now Moto's lawyers have managed to avoid that, at least until Apple pays for past damages (starting from 2007).
Apple doesn’t want to pay for past damages - that can turn out to be rather pricy - and is seeking to invalidate Motorola's patent and solve its problem (in this particular case) outright.
A second hearing is scheduled for February, we'll see how things progress then. By the way, Apple is sued for that exact same patent in the US, too, but things seem to be going better for the iPhone maker there (that case hasn’t been resolved yet, either).
The world of patents is very complicated and often confusing. You can read FOSS Patent's blog post on the courts ruling if you have a head for such legal matters.

SIM-free BlackBerry Bold 9790 hits UK on January 9

By on 22:16
We can finally give those of you living in the UK and eager to get their hands on a BlackBerry Bold 9790 a date to circle on their calendars. According to an online retailer the latest Bold smartphone will hit the shores of the United Kingdom on January 9.
And we've also got a saving target for you - pre-orders for the SIM-free Bold 9790 are currently accepted at £399.95. Now that's certainly steep, but neither are BlackBerry smartphones known for offering lots of bang for your buck, nor are they often bought SIM-free.
Unfortunately, we don't know if any UK carriers will be launching the smartphone on the same date. The country is one of RIM's key markets, so the Canadians will certainly strike a deal or two there, but the exact details of those are to follow.
We'll certainly be on the lookout for more information about the new Bold 9790, given that it's one of the hottest RIM devices, so keep watching this space to stay up to date.
For now, you can book your place in the waiting line by placing a preorder, by following the source link below.
By on 22:15
We received an anonymous tip today with a picture of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Y Pro Duos, a dual-SIM version of the Galaxy Y Pro.

Unfortunately for us, there was no additional information regarding the phone so we'll just go out on a limb and say it will mostly be identical to the existing Galaxy Y Pro. The only difference that we spotted from the picture, other than the presence of the Duos logo above the display, is a front facing camera for video calls.
Sadly, once again, we have no information regarding the price and availability of the handset.

O2 new lease plans for iPhone 4S let you have it with no upfront costO2 new lease plans for iPhone 4S let you have it with no upfront cost

By on 22:10
You are living in the UK, desperately want the new iPhone 4S, and you are currently running a little low on cash? If you tick all the boxes, you might be interested to hear that O2 will let you have your dream smartphone on a lease with no money required upfront.
The carrier will let you have the smartphone on a 12-month lease without demanding any cash up front. For £55 per month you are getting the 16GB version of the Apple iPhone 4S without any initial investment, whereas on a regular 12 month contract you'd need to pay at least £49.99 upfront and that's if you go for the £62/month deal.
The lease offer includes 750 minutes per month, unlimited texts, 500 MB of data and unlimited UK Wi-Fi plus insurance for the precious phone. That's roughly equivalent to what you are getting on the regular £42/month contract.
Naturally, there's a catch. And if you ask us it’s big enough to steer anyone that's not completely desperate away from these lease plans. Under the conditions of the Lease contract you are not the owner of the phone and you need to return it to O2, when the 12 months are over, so it's actually more of a rent kind of deal.
So, it turns out that O2 believes that the iPhone 4S will be worth under £100 after 12 months, as that's how much you are saving for giving up on it. And no, it's not that they suppose that customers will treat it badly and that will drop its price. There's a dedicated clause saying that "with O2 LEASE, the phone isn't yours and if you don't return it in satisfactory condition at the end of your lease, you may have to pay substantial charges".
Any takers remaining may head to the source link or just head to the nearest O2 store to get their shiny new Apple iPhone 4S.

Apple releases iOS 5.1 beta 2 to developers

By on 07:02

The second beta for the upcoming iOS 5.1 update has been seeded to developers. The big change in this update is the ability to delete individual images from Photo Stream.

Currently, when you take a picture on an iOS device, Photo Stream (a feature in iCloud) automatically syncs it with all of your Apple devices. With iOS 5.1 beta 2 onwards, you can manually delete an image on a device running this update and it will automatically get deleted from other iOS devices running this update. Older images, however, will have to be deleted manually from all the devices.
In other news, Apple has also released iTunes 10.5.2 update that brings "several improvements for iTunes Match" and "fixes an audio distortion problem when playing or importing certain CDs".

HTC Desire HD, Incredible S and ChaCha getting Android 2.3.5

By on 06:55

We reported a couple of days back that HTC is seeding the 2.3.5 Gingerbread update to the Incredible Swith the Desire HD in the waiting list.


HTC UK have confirmed that the 2.3.5 update has been released in the UK for the Incredible S and Desire HD, which will get some good Sense 3.0 loving along with all the bug fixes and optimizations in the update.
While the update has been confirmed for the UK only we've received reports from other European countries as well, so be sure to check your Desire HD for an update even if you live outside the UK.
Reportedly the HTC ChaCha has been also getting an OTA update to 2.3.5 (at least in New Zealand) but its Sense version has remained on 2.1. We'll update as soon as we get some official information.
Thanks, Cosmin Gaman and Ryan Brown for sending this in!

EXCLUSIVE: Big Sony Ericsson Arc HD (Nozomi) live shots pop up

By on 06:51

Now look what we found in our mailbox this morning. We just received photos of the upcoming Sony Ericsson flagship and some specs to go with them. Unfortunately, we didn't get the name cleared out so we don't know if the earlier, Sony Ericsson Arc HD rumors carry some water or not.
The smartphone codenamed Sony Ericsson Xperia Nozomi will come with Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread at launch and will be built around a 4.3" LCD display of HD resolution (1280 x 720 pixels). The 12 megapixel camera with FullHD video recording was also confirmed by our tipster.
Next, the rumored Snapdragon chipset featuring a couple of 1.5GHz Scorpion cores and the Adreno 220 GPU is indeed what you will be getting on the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc HD. There will be an HDMI port as well, so sharing 1080p content with your HDTV will be a breeze.
Sadly, the Arc HD will lack a microSD card slot and you'll have to make do with the 16GB or 32GB of onboard storage (depending on the version you pick). At least, with 1GB of RAM your multitasking needs should be taken care of pretty well.
Interestingly, though, the handset uses a microSIM slot and the battery seems non-user-removable.
Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc HD Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc HD Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc HD Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc HD
Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc HD a.k.a. Sony Ericsson Nozomi live shots
The tipster couldn't provide us with an official launch date, but we are keeping our fingers crossed for an announcement at CES at the start of next year.
Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc HD Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc HD Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc HD 

HTC Wildfire S gets to Android 2.3.5 as well, no Sense 3.0 though

By on 06:49

HTC continues its series of Android 2.3.5 for its lineup of smartphones with the entry-levelWildfire S. The Taiwanese company is now seeding the new Gingerbread release to the most affordable of the trio of smartphones that it announced back at the MWC in February.
Much like the HTC ChaCha, though, the Wildfire S won't be getting to taste Sense UI 3.0. We suspect this has something to do with the hardware of these not being unable to handle the latest version of the HTC home-brewed UI.
Early user reports suggest that the update fixes the Wildfire S bugs with unlocking and call answering, but there's no detailed changelog provided just yet. We also don't know if it's already available globally or if it's only available to some markets for now, so if you happen to own a Wildfire S, feel free to drop us a line in the comments mentioning if you got the update and your country.
Details about further updates for the HTC lineup are also scarce for now, but we guess we will know more in the following weeks.