Download iOS 5.1.1 Now

Apple has rolled out a surprise update for iDevice owners with the purpose of tweaking a few things and applying fixes, including some to improve the security of the platform.

iOS 5.1.1 is immediately available for download via iTunes or over-the-air (OTA) and improves reliability of using HDR option for photos taken using the Lock Screen shortcut, as well as reliability when syncing Safari bookmarks and Reading List.

The update addresses bugs that could prevent the new iPad from switching between 2G and 3G networks, and bugs that affected AirPlay video playback in some circumstances.

An issue has been fixed where ‘Unable to purchase’ alert could be displayed after successful purchase.

Lastly, the update includes several security patches targeting Safari, the standard web browser on all Apple platforms.

Impacting iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (3rd generation) and later, iPad, and iPad 2, a URL spoofing issue exists in Safari and can potentially be used to direct the user to a spoofed site.

iOS 5.1.1 has improved URL handling which addresses this issue. The problem is not present on Mac OS X systems. Apple credits David Vieira-Kurz of MajorSecurity (majorsecurity.net) for discovering and reporting the issue.

Affecting the exact same platforms, multiple cross-site scripting issues and a memory corruption issue exist in WebKit, a software component required to display web pages in Safari.

With the help of Sergey Glazunov (working with Google's Pwnium contest), as well as Adam Barth and Abhishek Arya of the Google Chrome Security Team, Apple has patched both of these flaws as well.

The impact of these two issues was:
Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to a cross-site scripting attack
Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution

iDevice owners can either connect their devices to iTunes and select “check for updates”, or select Settings -> General, and select Software Update from their iOS device to install iOS 5.1.1.

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Samsung Tizen Device Showcased on Video

South Korean mobile phone maker Samsung has brought to the Tizen developer conference a developer device to showcase some of the main features of the platform. 

The handset vendor is one of the founding members of the Tizen OS, and it does not come as a surprise that it already had such devices in the works. 

The first Tizen developer smartphone is said to pack an ARM-based 1.2GHz dual-core processor, and not an Intel chip, as one might have expected. 

Additionally, the new developer handset is said to sport a touchscreen display capable of delivering a 720p HD resolution, and it also sports WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity capabilities, NFC and microUSB. 

The UI of the new mobile platform resembles in many aspects Samsung’s TouchWiz UX (app icons and some application interfaces appear similar with the popular Samsung software). You can learn more on this via the video above, available courtesy of The Handheld Blog.

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Micron Launches Its First DDR4 Module

The next generation of computer dynamic random access memory is getting closer with each passing day, and now we get to see Micron's first module based on it. 

Micron isn't the first company to demo a DDR4 memory module. Hynix went first, last month, even before JEDEC revealed some key details about the specification. 

What we are looking at here is, however, the first module that Micron has ever brought forth. 

With a capacity of 4 GB, it is composed of a PCB (printed circuit board) and eight 4 Gb DDR4 chips. 

Said chips are constructed using the 30nm manufacturing process and were developed in partnership with Nanya. 

"With the JEDEC definition for DDR4 very near finalization, we've put significant effort into ensuring that our first DDR4 product is as JEDEC-compatible as it can be at this final stage of its development," said Brian Shirley, vice president for Micron's DRAM Solutions Group. 

"We've provided samples to key partners in the market place with confidence that the die we give them now is the same die we will take into mass production." 

Micron intends to produce a complete collection of DDR4 product: RDIMM, LRDIMM, 3DS, SODIMM and UDIMM. 

Initial speeds will be of 2,400 megatransfers per second (MT/s), but later modules will climb to 3,200 MT/s. 

Intel previously revealed that its Haswell-EX platform would only add DDR4 support in 2014, but Micron is one of the companies who want to speed things up. It is in 2013 that it wants to unleash its new RAM upon the world. Volume production will commence in Q4 2012. 

For those wondering, Samsung is the one that didn't much like the idea of DDR4 taking another two years to show up. Alas, even if they do complete their devices by 2013, they won't see much demand if there aren't any motherboards and processors that support them.

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Nokia Lumia 610 Arrives in Malaysia, Priced at $229 USD (€175) Outright

Three weeks ago Nokia officially announced the rollout of the Lumia 610 in Asia. Unfortunately, things did not work as planned, at least in Philippines where the device has been delayed “indefinitely.”

The good news is that Nokia Lumia 610 has just hit shelves in Malaysia and is now available for purchase at all Nokia Stores across the country.

Customers get to choose from four color schemes, such as: white, cyan, magenta and black. The cheapest Windows Phone device launched by Nokia, Lumia 610 is priced in Malaysia at RM699 ($229 USD or €175) off-contract.

As expected, Nokia Lumia 610 comes pre-loaded with Windows Phone 7.5 Tango (build 8773) out of the box, which is especially designed to work on devices with less than 512MB of RAM.

Aimed at emerging markets, Nokia Lumia 610 is expected to go on sale in China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam. Philippines will also get the Lumia 610 by the end of May.

According to Nokia, the Lumia 610 will be available in other regions as well sometime this quarter.

Even though Nokia Lumia 610 is considered the cheapest Windows Phone manufactured by Nokia, it comes packed with interesting features that will probably make it pretty attractive to some Windows Phone fans.

In this regard, the smartphone comes with a more than decent 3.7-inch capacitive touchscreen display that supports 480 x 800 pixels resolution, and features Corning Gorilla Glass coating.

The phone is equipped with a single-core 800 MHz processor and packs 8GB of internal memory and 256MB of RAM. On the back, there’s a 5-megapixel photo snapper with autofocus, LED flash and HD (720p) video recording.

Last but not least, Lumia 610 comes pre-loaded with Nokia Maps, Nokia Drive, Nokia Transport and Nokia Music, as well as access to thousands of apps via Windows Phone Marketplace.

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ASRock Prepares to Tackle China, ASUS Helps

ASRock wants to expand its operations to include the Chinese market, so it has prepared a budget of NT$100 million for that purpose.

That's $3.4 million / 2.61 million Euro, according to exchange rates. ASUS will help the company compete with Gigabyte, according to Digitimes, by offering motherboards through its retail outlets.

Whether or not this enables ASRock to reach its intended shipment levels for the year (9 million) remains to be seen.

China is one of the few emerging markets and also the largest, so it is understandable that IT vendors would want to gain a foothold there.

It isn't clear for how long ASRock will depend on ASUS in this manner. Starting up a few shops shouldn't take all that long, so we're guessing that a sort of retail channel will be ready by year's end.

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Transformer: Fall of Cybertron Is Adult Oriented

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron will be the first title in the series that is not linked to any movie release and the development team behind it believes that the game can succeed as long as it promotes the tone seen in the initial trailer, revealed during the VGA ceremony.

Greg Agius, the marketing manager working on Fall of Cybertron at High Moon Studios, stated, “We needed to communicate that Fall of Cybertron is an adult oriented game that stands totally apart from anything related to the films. 

“So the team set out to break every rule we could think of for a Transformers trailer: we had zero voiceover, we destroyed main characters, we made the story come to you, and we picked a song that is totally groundbreaking for this franchise.”

He added, “When fans started posting, ‘attention – this is how you do Transformers’ I knew we had done things right. The style and look is all very in line with what gamers are currently playing.”

The High Moon development team needed to make a clean break with the movies based on the Transformers franchise because a number of gamers associated them with bad storytelling and with tie-in games that lacked any compelling mechanics.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron will tell the story of how the home planet of the Autobots was destroyed and the developers plan to use a dark tone and approach a lot of complex themes with their story.

Characters included in Fall of Cybertron include: Optimus Prime, Megatron, Bumblebee, Jazz, Shockwave, Starscream, Onslaught, Blast Off, Cliffjumper, Ironhide, Grimlock, Sludge, Slag, Snarl, Swoop, Soundwave, Brawl, Swindle and Vortex.

Each character will get its own play style, special attack and unique look.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron is set to be released on the PlayStation 3 from Sony and Xbox 360 from Microsoft on August 28 in North America and, presumably, three days later in Europe.

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Nokia Mail for Exchange for Asha 302/303 Detailed on Video

Nokia’s Asha 302 and Asha 303 are getting a taste of the Mail for Exchange application that the Finnish handset vendor is preparing for its S40 devices. 

The application is available in a beta flavor at the moment, so that users can have a look at it and provide feedback on the experience it can deliver. 

However, Nokia is set to make the app available through the official Nokia Store portal soon, and it is actively working on enhancing it. 

Those who did not have the chance to download and install the software on their devices can do so through accessing the Nokia Beta Labs, where the pre-release version is up for grabs. 

“Nokia Mail for Exchange for Asha 302 and Asha 303 is a beta release mobile email application that utilizes widely used Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol,” Nokia explains. 

“This protocol enables Email, Calendar and Contact data synchronization between compatible Nokia Asha phones and Microsoft Exchange servers.”

Some of the main features of the app include the possibility to access emails while on the go, complemented by the option to flag, move and copy messages. 

The app also provides support for extended text formatting, it can synchronize multiple accounts at the same time and offers autocomplete of contacts when composing emails. 

With Nokia Mail for Exchange for Asha 302 and Asha 303, users will also be able to search for messages locally, view attachment file names and forward these attachments. 

The software was designed to sync email, calendar and contacts data over a secure HTTPS connection, and to offer data encryption capabilities. Application inactivity security lock was also included in the software. 

It also delivers support for essential ActiveSync security policies, such as “Alphanumeric password required - Minimum password length - Minimum password required complex characters - Maximum failed password attempts - Local wipe after maximum attempts.”

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Nokia 808 PureView Spotted at FCC, Possibly Coming to the US

Unveiled back in February at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Nokia 808 PureView was confirmed for a May release in Europe.

Unfortunately, the Finnish company mentioned that the smartphone would not be launched in North America, or at least not in the near future. 

Given the fact that Nokia is trying to conquer the North American smartphone market with its Lumia series, it’s quite understandable that the company does not want one of its own devices to compete with the Windows Phone family of handsets.

However, it looks like the Nokia 808 PureView has just been spotted at FCC (Federal Communications Commission), which gives us some hope that the smartphone might hit shelves in North America after all.

This is not the first time Nokia skips North America with one of its top tier devices. Nokia N9 was very popular worldwide, even though it was the first to come with MeeGo out of the box.

Although it proved its success on most markets where it was launched, Nokia N9 was never officially released in North America. Obviously, the smartphone can be purchased via leading retailers across the country, but none of the carriers offers the N9.

Anyway, the Finnish handset vendor announced last week the rollout of the Nokia 808 PureView has started with Russia and India being the first countries to get it.

According to Nokia, Lumia 808 PureView will be available on the market for a suggested retail price of 450 EUR (600 USD). Still, the Symbian smartphone is priced a bit higher in the UK, as customers can pre-order the 808 PureView for £540 (870 USD or 670 EUR).

Nokia 808 PureView might arrive in North America, just not through the official channels, so we can expect this one to be pretty expensive. Hopefully, one of the carriers will grab this one for its customers.

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Script: Koottam Social jQuery Plugin

The Koottam Social jQuery Plugin is a powerful developer tool to be used when creating our own custom set of social media sharing buttons.

The plugin wraps various social networks APIs and allows developers to create their own social sharing apps.

Koottam is extremely flexible, being easy to style via CSS and adapt to any website layout or design. This is because the plugin handles all sharing logic, leaving the user to control the rest.

Developers can set the general theme of the buttons, their size, various coloring styles, and whether to show a counter or not.

For now, Koottam supports Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Google+, Delicious and RSS feeds.

Extensive documentation and examples are included with the download package, to get developers started on their own set of buttons.

Download Koottam Social jQuery Plugin here.

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Leaked Doc Shows BlackBerry 10’s Screen Sharing, Lock Screen Notifications

Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion is nearing the release of a new flavor of its mobile operating system, namely BlackBerry 10. 

The company has provided a variety of details on this OS only a few weeks ago, but it appears that it hasn’t delivered all of them. 

A leaked internal document from the handset vendor, which emerged over at the CB forums, has unveiled some additional pieces of information on what the upcoming BlackBerry 10 platform might include. 

Apparently, RIM has decided to include a built-in screen sharing feature with the next-gen mobile operating system version. 

The aforementioned leaked doc shows that users might be able to share the phone’s screen while in a call, which means great news for those who would like to share presentations with their contacts. 

The mobile phone maker did not make an official announcement on the availability of this feature, and it might not include it in the final release, but it chances are it actually will. 

Another great capability that BlackBerry devices might sport when the new platform release arrives is video editing, through software provided by JayCut. 

The leaked documents mention it, which suggests that it could indeed arrive on handsets. However, the same as with the aforementioned sharing capabilities, we’ll take this with a grain of salt until an official announcement is made. 

The lock screen of BlackBerry 10 also appears to have leaked via said presentation, showing a basic design, with the clock and notifications delivered to users without the need to unlock the device. 

Tilting the device will deliver more info on a notification, while the unlicking is made through sliding the screen up to at least two thirds. 

All these are great features, which should make BlackBerry users quite happy, provided that they will indeed make it to the new OS. Stay tuned for more on the matter.

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