PhoneLon

 

Rumours suggest Facebook are teaming up with Taiwanese mobile phone manufacturer HTC to release a new handset with deep Facebook interaction within its operating system.  Codenamed “Buffy” after the Vampire Slayer played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, a possible Facebook phone release in the next 12 to 18 months would use a modified version of Android in a similar fashion to the way Amazon recently launched the Kindle Fire.

Is a Facebook phone a viable product that would interest social media addicts? Creations such as the HTC ChaCha and the AT&T HTC Status already have their own dedicated Facebook button, allowing a user to post status updates and share multimedia content straight to their wall. Despite the innovation these mobile phones barely registered a poke against its smartphone competitors.

Such a creation may be the result of Google phones pushing their Google Plus social network and the favouritism of Twitter integration within the latest iPad updates. As neither Facebook nor HTC prefer to comment directly upon these rumours they released the following statement: “Our mobile strategy is simple: we think every mobile device is better if it is deeply social. We’re working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers to bring powerful social experiences to more people around the world.”

Whether project “Buffy” turns out to be true or just a spin on the rumour mill, it seems certain Facebook are looking to continually progress their accessibility for mobile users worldwide.

Students at Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii, are using Mac notebooks to research class assignments and show results in ways they never could before. These include songs and podcasts recorded and edited in GarageBand, digital presentations and portfolios created in Keynote, campus news videos edited in iMovie and Final Cut Pro, and even iOS apps built using Xcode. Says sixth grade teacher Sandy Chang, “The Macs in my classroom are completely indispensable.”

Apple recently released an update to the 5.0 software. The first issue they tried to address is battery life. I was defiantly having this issue on my iPhone 4S (AT&T) as my battery would be drained by about noon every day. I am a heavy user but my iPhone 4 always made it all day

Apple recently released an update to the 5.0 software. The first issue they tried to address is battery life. I was defiantly having this issue on my iPhone 4S (AT&T) as my battery would be drained by about noon every day. I am a heavy user but my iPhone 4 always made it all day on one charge. This recent update did help and now I’m up to about 5:00pm each day. Apple has stated they are still working on more battery issues.

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The next issue Apple addressed was adding multitasking gestures to the iPad 1. There is a hack in Cydia for this but now it’s not needed. You can just turn in on in your Settings app. Here’s a quick video of how these work:

Next is documents in iCloud were not syncing back to devices correctly and were even getting completely wiped out. Not kewl! I lost a lot of mine but between email and my iTunes backup, I restored them. Here’s an article explaining how I restored them. I don’t have a way to test this now so let us know if this helped you out.

Last, voice recognition has been improved for Australian users. Again, I don’t have a way to test this but if you feel this has or has not been improved, please share in the comments.

iOS 5.0.1 Software Update

This update contains improvements and other bug fixes including:

• Fixes bugs affecting battery life
• Adds Multitasking Gestures for original iPad
• Resolves bugs with Documents in the Cloud
• Improves voice recognition for Australian users using dictation

Products compatible with this software update:

• iPhone 4S
• iPhone 4
• iPhone 3GS
• iPad 2
• iPad
• iPod touch (4th generation)
• iPod touch (3rd generation)

For information on the security content of this update, please visit this website:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222

In a CNET Editors’ review, Jason Parker gives the new GarageBand for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch 5 out of 5 stars, citing the app’s “uniquely designed and authentic-sounding instruments, smart touch interface, and tools that make song creation easy.” He adds: “Anyone with even a passing interest in creating music should download GarageBand for iOS. Frankly, we wish we could give it more than five stars for the virtually unlimited song possibilities, ease of use, and excellent touch-screen controls.”

New York Times columnist David Pogue reports on AssistiveTouch, an “amazingly thoughtful” iOS 5 feature that makes it possible to complete Multi-Touch gestures using one finger or a stylus. Writes Pogue: “I doubt that people with severe motor control challenges represent a financially significant number of the iPhone’s millions of customers. But somebody at Apple took them seriously enough to write a complete, elegant and thoughtful feature that takes down most of the barriers to using an app phone.”

Some of you Apple iPhone fans with older models that haven’t managed to be able to bag yourself a new iPhone 4S may be disappointed. An unofficial statement was leaked from Apple’s engineering division today regarding the new personal assistant software, Siri.

It looks as though there’s a strong possibility that Siri will only work on iPhone 4S with no plans to support the older generations. Now there are rumours that this could possibly be a sales and marketing strategy to keep the sales for the iPhone 4S high due to the significant drop in price for the iPhone 4. There are hackers out there though, trying their very best to port Siri over to the older devices and if they are successful, then this could prove the latter rather than it being down to technical deficit.

In the meantime though, for those of you that are looking for the new iPhone 4S, here at Mobiles.co.uk we now have it back IN STOCK.

We have some great deals at the moment with the iPhone 4S 16GB free at ?36 per month from Vodafone on a 24 month contract term.
Just order your iPhone 4S before 4pm Monday to Friday and you’ll receive it the next day.

Apple announced that GarageBand, its breakthrough music creation app, is now available for iPhone and iPod touch. Introduced earlier this year on iPad, GarageBand uses Apple’s Multi-Touch interface to make it easy for anyone to create and record their own songs, even if they’ve never played an instrument before. GarageBand 1.1 for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch is available on the App Store for $4.99 (US) to new users, or as a free update for existing GarageBand for iPad customers.

Wired Magazine reports that Newsstand, a new feature of iOS 5, is “hitting it big with traditional media publishers thanks to its windfall delivery of new digital subscriptions.” Newsstand keeps all app subscriptions for newspapers, magazines, and journals in one convenient place on the iOS 5 home screen and makes it easy to shop for new reading material. Wired cites Conde Nast and The New York Times among publishers seeing large spikes in app subscriptions since Newsstand launched.

Vogue’s “Need It Now” column features the new Cards from Apple, which lets users create and mail beautifully crafted cards personalized with their own text and photos from their iPhone or iPod touch. Each card is just $2.99 when sent within the U.S. and $4.99 when sent to or from anywhere else — postage included. Vogue calls the Cards app “nothing short of genius” for reviving the almost forgotten pleasure of receiving a “real, honest-to-goodness paper greeting card in the mail” and concludes: “This is the kind of vintage innovation we would all do well to download.”