You don’t have to believe in conspiracy theories to understand the dangers of Carrier IQ. Carrier IQ is a dangerous application that monitors the keys you press on your handset, the apps you download, and everything else you do over your phone. Sounds scary, right? You might think Carrier IQ would be a virus or spyware program. But you would be wrong. Carrier IQ is deliberately installed on Android smartphones by providers like AT&T and Sprint. Apple also preinstalls Carrier IQ…
This past week, Apple found out the hard way that the grass is always greener on the other side. After ditching Google Maps for a faulty, problematic Apple Maps app, Apple realized just how difficult it was to design a powerful mapping application like Google Maps. But most Google Maps users aren’t even using the app to its full potential. Writer JR Raphael took a look at some of the best hidden features of Google Maps for Android. Here is what he discovered in his ComputerWorld.com…
How would you like it if all the data on your phone was suddenly erased by a hacker? That’s exactly what could happen to Samsung Galaxy S III owners who haven’t downloaded a recent patch. An exploit in the TouchWiz UI (which is installed on all Samsung Galaxy smartphones and tablets) apparently allowed anybody to gain remote access to a system and wipe all of the data on the device. At first, the issue was only suspected to affect the Samsung Galaxy S III, but since the problem is…
Google recently announced that its app store, Google Play, had passed 25 billion downloads. As a reward to its millions of Android users, Google is offering massive discounts on a number of different apps and games. How much of a discount? Well, apps that previously cost $1 or more will cost only 25 cents for the next 5 days. Here is the list of apps included in the promotion Angry Birds Space Premium Draw Something Asphalt 7: Heat Granny Smith NFL Kicker 13 Symphony of…
Apple has made product launches an art. In fact, Apple is so good at its product launches that, in the past, some users were willing to buy anything released by Apple without fully understanding how it was different from the previous versions of that device. It looks like those days may be in the past. Despite Apple reporting recording epic presale figures from the iPhone 5, the final sales tally a few days after launch appears to be disappointing. To make matters worse, many…
It didn’t take long for the Android community to root the new Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system. While the update still hasn’t rolled out to most phones yet, a member of the XDA-Developers forum named Bin4ry has released a small script which is able to root “nearly all” devices running Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean. Bin4ry is adding and tweaking the code on a regular basis, which means more devices are being added. So far, members of the XDA Developers forum have confirmed…
Android 4.1 Jelly Bean was released by Google several months ago, in June. However, we’re now nearing the end of September and less than 2% of Android devices are currently running the latest version of Android. Expect that number to rise sharply over the next few days, because it looks like Samsung is ready to release its Jelly Bean patch to Samsung Galaxy S III owners. According to early reports from here and here (among others), Polish Samsung Galaxy S III users have begun receiving the…
Through no fault of its own, Google Maps has been in the news a lot this past week. Many Apple users are complaining about the iOS 6 update and its deletion of Google Maps, an app which is vastly inferior to Apple Maps. Why? Well, the first problem is that Apple Maps claims to help you get to places but actually does nothing of the sort. In response to the Apple Maps fiasco, Google is taking its Maps app to more places in Android than ever before. A recent update to the Android app ‘Google…
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my Facebook friends to see every picture I have on my Android phone. However, that’s exactly what an upcoming Facebook app upgrade might do. Facebook is currently trialling a feature that would automatically upload photos from your Android phone into a special Facebook album. Fortunately, this feature isn’t as dangerous as it sounds: you still have to press ‘Sync’ to upload all photos to Facebook, and the app won’t…
iOS 6 was released yesterday, and despite all of the fanfare surrounding Apple’s latest upgrade to its mobile operating system, many users are unimpressed. Apple Maps is the feature that has drawn the most criticism thus far. A few months ago, Apple announced that it would no longer be carrying Google Maps on its mobile operating systems. After all, the two are major competitors over the mobile marketplace, and having Google Maps installed on every iPhone and iPad in the world was bad…
