When Apple's iOS 6 initially launched back in September, the backlash against the Apple Maps offering was fierce, and Samsung made sure Apple lived to rue its shortcomings by running an ad mocking the Cupertino's paltry replacement of Google Maps. But with Australian police having gone one step further in labeling Apple Maps as a potential no go, Sammy is once again dancing on the proverbial grave, as CNET Australia reports.
There’s no doubt about the fact that the true power of Android operating system comes from the freedom of being able to use various custom ROMs – firmware that have been cooked directly from the AOSP portal, or that differ from the stock ones in features, or those that incorporate elements from other devices. Not only does that bring diversity to your otherwise-boring smartphone or tablet, but also unleash its full capabilities for your usage. However, not all custom ROMs might sit well with your smartphone, and from time to time, there might be a need to go back to stock software to start afresh.
It seems just like yesterday when those 12 bells chimed and 2012 was welcomed with hopes of a prosperous and exciting 12 months ahead, but in just under 3 weeks time that feeling of deja vu will be setting in once again as the curtain closes on another year and we get ready to see what 2013 will bring us. Considering the importance of social media in our lives and the continuing rise in popularity throughout 2012, it's likely that a large portion of us have interacted rather extensively with Facebook during the course of this year, which is something that they are keen to celebrate by offering us the chance to see our 2012 in review directly from our Facebook profile page.
Following on from the release of a bunch of new Mail apps for a number of platforms, Yahoo! has pushed out an update to its Flickr app for iPhone, the key feature being - yep, you've guessed it - photo filtering facilities. Version 2.0 of the Flickr for iPhone app also sports a newly-designed interface, and thanks to the Aviary SDK (which Twitter also utilized with its own mobile client), there are quite a few editing options available to users of the popular network.
The technology industry and mobile space is awash with startups who are striving to create the next big product or service. Some have ambitions to succeed as a viable company with measured growth and expansion, whereas some have their sights up straight from the beginning and are hoping for rapid growth and a buy-out from one of the industry’s big boys sooner rather than later. Grokr is one of the latest startups in the mobile industry, who are attempting to make a splash by releasing an iOS app that attempts to bring Google Now type functionality directly to Apple's mobile devices.
Although Facebook is used every day of the week to upload photos and send millions of chat messages through the website and the company's various mobile apps for different platforms, there are still things that users simply don't like about the service which Facebook offers. Although it isn't brand new, one feature that seems to irk a lot of people is the read receipt status indicator that appears in Facebook Messages that shows when a message has been read, or otherwise commonly known as “seen”. If that bothers you, then it's now possible to install a simple browser extension to disable the feature when using Facebook chat through the website.
The Mozilla team has been busily updating and improving its revered Firefox browser, with more frequent release cycles in place to ensure it maintains competitive with the likes of Google's Chrome. As planned, the foundation has released version 1.0 of the Firefox OS Simulator, and by means of a blog post, Mozilla has also introduced per-window private browsing via the Firefox Nightly channel.
Android has now become a generally pretty stable platform/operating system for smartphones and tablets, and every new iteration only adds to that. Long gone are the days when an Android device would go into constant freezes, get repeated app Force Closes, or would generally become sluggish in performance; a huge of contribution of that goes to the open source development community, too, that strive day and night to make our devices more useful and stable. However, there still might be time when you install an app that doesn’t agree with your operating system or firmware version, or that might have some broken pieces of code, or any other issue, resulting in the same problems that we discussed above. Even worse are the cases when you start suffering from severe battery drain, or when the device itself goes into a boot loop after having installed a certain APK. For all those cases, Google has built-in a neat hidden feature in Android, called safe mode.
If you're a regular follower of our coverage here at Redmond Pie, there's a pretty good chance you're into your jailbreaks. As most of you will probably be aware, progress on an iOS 6 untethered jailbreak has been steady, but trying at times, and although the usual dev suspects have been plugging away, Apple's robust security enhancements have made things just that little bit trickier than ever before. So you can imagine our amazement when a group by the name of "Dream JB" took the scene by storm by not only claiming to have found an iOS 6 untether, but set a date for its release. Unfortunately, like most things that seem too good to be true, it would appear this is nothing more than the elaborate ploy of a hoaxer, with various established and credible modders and developers having already stepped out to refute the very notion of "Dream JB."
Samsung Galaxy S III has been one of the most successful devices that the Korean company has come up with to date, and the Android beast boasts everything that is worthy of a flagship, and then some more. The massive 4.8-inch smartphone packs quite a punch when it comes to raw power, and for that reason, it was quick to receive root, custom firmware, custom recovery and lots of developer love in general. However, it’s no hidden fact that the device is perhaps too large for some users, and while manufacturers seem to be generally headed for large screens with lightweight armor, a tad lesser real-estate would be more comfortable for some. To cater to that crowd, Samsung has released the younger, smaller sibling to Galaxy S III, the Galaxy S III Mini I8190.
