Tag Archives: iphone

These two new iOS 11 features could save your life

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
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We may not know for sure what it’s going to look like or what it will cost, but we do know that the new iPhone 8 – Apple’s 10 year iPhone anniversary edition – is on its way and it’ll be running iOS 11. And unlike the iPhone 8, iOS 11 has been available now for some time for beta testing and software development. There are a lot of changes – some good, some bad1 – but there are two new features that are especially important to be aware of given that they could – literally – save your life.

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  1. For example, because Apple couldn’t figure out how to get force touch working nicely on the new iPhone, they’ve chosen to deprecate force touch features across the OS, completely disabling the “force touch swipe from the edge of the screen to switch apps” after having completely rearchitectured the task switcher UX to specifically be built around this feature, rather than officially having a feature available on older gen iPhones but not on the latest and greatest. ↩

Free up space on an iPhone by compressing your photo album

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
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Most people that have had iPhones for more than a year or two have accumulated a massive amount of photos, at least several gigabytes in size. With iPhones still only shipping with a puny 16 GiB of storage by default (unless you pony up the $100 for a huge jump to the 64 GiB model with the iPhone 6/6+), Apple has been making a lot of money off of people looking to keep their photos and still have room to take more. But there’s another option: you can optimize and compress your existing photos to make them take up less space, and recover free space for your use.

Using the right tools and depending on the nature of your photos and images, you’ll be able to recover anywhere from 5% to 20% of your photo album size with these instructions!

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Apple finally locks down the USB port in iOS 7

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
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One of the basic principles of computer security is that if someone has physical access to a machine, compromising it is simply a matter of time (yes, even technologies like whole-disk encryption via GPG/PGP, BitLocker, or TrueCrypt are often still susceptible to “Evil Maid” attacks). But while all devices are vulnerable to hands-on attacks, some devices are more vulnerable than others.

Innocuous-looking USB accessories for both PCs and smartphones have long been a preferred for attacks aiming to gain unauthorized access to a machine. Devices that look like USB sticks can easily direct a computer they’re plugged into to dump data to an external device or online file storage by mimicking a keyboard/mouse, an attack no antivirus or antimalware software can prevent. Smartphones have been susceptible to similar attacks, even from something as seemingly-innocent as a regular phone charger. These hardware-based attacks have been well-documented, and while a passcode on the device can mitigate such attempts, it’s no cure-all.

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Gevey Sim and iOS 5 Unlock

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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iOS 5, WWDC 2011

UPDATE: iOS 5 Beta 2 and up!

Gevey unlock (and other turbo-sims/interceptors) do not work on iOS 5 beta 2 and above, including the final iOS 5 release!

Yesterday at WWDC 2011, Apple announced (amongst many other things) iOS 5, the upcoming version of iOS that’s to be released with the iPhone 5 later this year. iOS Developers and certain tech bloggers have been given access to this build, and we’re sure one of the biggest question the hordes of iPhone users around the world are asking is: Will my Gevey-3G unlock SIM interposer work???

With iOS 5 beta (build 9A5220p), the modem firmware has been upgraded to baseband 04.11.04 and cannot be downgraded to earlier versions, meaning the only possible SIM unlock would be a turbo sim/interposer (currently either Gevey-3G or Rebel SIM); hence the worried and nervous questions going around the online iPhone community.

And the answer? A relieving yes. At least for now, for iOS 5 beta 1, it does. The process remains unchanged — just insert the interposer, restart your device, accept the welcome message, dial 112, and toggle the Airplane Mode feature a few times. The Gevey SIM will still work to unlock iOS 5.0 beta.

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SPARQCode / QR Code Scanner for BlackBerry

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
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One of the most popular (and addictive) group of applications making the rounds on Android handsets these days are Barcode Scanners. Barcodes traditionally contain a very minimal set of information, namely just a product SKU that can be used to (somewhat-) uniquely identify items at the store or lying around your home. QR Codes are an extension to barcodes that have been updated for the 21st century: they’re specifically designed to be easily ready by the low-resolution cameras on mobile devices, quickly and accurately. SPARQCode itself is yet another layer of extension to the QR Code. It provides more functionality and adds support for extra usages.

A quick Google search for SPARQCode viewers for the BlackBerry fails to retrieve any interesting results. A similar search on AppWorld also shows no such luck – if you were to believe what you see, BlackBerry doesn’t (yet) have a usable SPARQCode viewer!

But that’s not true. It’s there, though the RIM Geeks over in Canada – in their infinite wisdom – put away that functionality in such an impossibly-illogical location. But it’s there.

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Android: A Fragmented Platform or Not?

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
15

Android RobotIf you were to believe the latest headlines at Business Insider, Android is a fragmented mobile platform and has a negative effect on the applications, for developers and end-users alike. Android is currently in a heated battle with the other two big names in mobile technology (the iPhone and the BlackBerry being the other two), and this is a serious matter definitely worthy of discussion.

But Dan Frommer’s allegations in his latest post on BI don’t really add up. Frommer contends that the official twitter app for Android, which only works on Android v2.1 and up, is proof that Google’s mobile OS isn’t as “unified” as the competitors, and that this is a sign of early-onset serious fragmentation that will only get worse down the line. The thing is… it’s not.

It’s true that Android, available for deployment on any device manufacturers are willing to bundle it with, faces certain compatibility issues. With a multitude of devices, each with its own mostly-unique set of hardware and features, creating software that will run the same for everyone isn’t as easy as it is on the iPhone. But it’s nowhere near as much of an issue as Frommer makes it out to be.

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Why Apple Delayed Leopard for the iPhone

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Yesterday’s news: Apple [[AAPL]] takes developers off of OS X 10.5 “Leopard” to hurry up and meet iPhone deadlines.

Today’s news: Why they did it.

This decision was not about (not) missing deadlines for contracts with Cingular, not allocating enough resources to iPhone in the first place, or otherwise neglecting to do the right stuff at the managerial level – iPhone was delayed, yet Apple chose to trade in an iPhone delay for a 4-month postponement of OS X Leopard. Why would they do that? Is iPhone really a bigger deal than OS X 10.5? Does Apple care more about the iPhone than Leopard?

Apple is notoriously quiet about the future of their products – especially their operating system, OS X. While Leopard is but a bump to the minor version of Mac OS 10, it’s supposed to be a big deal. It’s certainly hyped-up for a lot longer than the actual iPhone – both in and out of Apple. So why this “sudden” shift in priorities? The answer is rather clear, and even self-explanatory.

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