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Permanent iPhone 4 Unlock is a work in progress

The Dev Team had earlier announced that they will release an Unlock come iOS 4.3. But, the method they were using turned out to be a dud. In a new report Musclenerd tweeted that the team is working on an NCA exploit method which was originally found by geohot in the first version of the jesus phone (iPhone 2g).

Another member from the Dev-team put together a quick FAQ for information about the unlock

Since there is a lot of confusion out there, and since I’m repeating myself all the time (which I do not really like), I made this little write up of questions that are continuously being asked (my personal FAQ). Please not that this is a global explanation. Don’t try to argue with me on specific details.

1. What happened?! I thought the unlock for basebands 02.10.01 & 03.10.01 would be released within the next 2 weeks?

As you know the Dev-Team (MuscleNerd) have been working on the unlock for quite a while now. They were making great progress on the unlock, but they found out that they (accidentally) unlocked “one particular SIM card” instead of the baseband itself. Which means that the unlock would only be an unlock you could use with MuscleNerd’s T-Mobile SIM. So, useless. If the unlock would unlock the baseband instead of “the SIM”, it’d probably be out within 2 weeks (reasonable timeframe which they had hoped). But things turned out to be different. Basically these <2 weeks predictions were a lack of information.

2. What is this NCK-key cracking? How does it work?

The NCK-key is the key generated by Apple if you’d officially unlock you iPhone, and with officially I mean, via your carrier. This “NCK-unlock” method is known over a few years now, actually since geohot started working on unlocking the iPhone 2G. He developed a program that could “crack” this 15 digits long key and unique for every device. Geohots NCKBF program could do around 100,000 keys/second which would produce a hit in many years, or complete a search in 317 years. To get to a point where this is actually doable we would need many orders of magnitude of improvement. Even if you use a PS3 (would we still want to use this??) or special hardware (within 1,000 US$ range) you will only get an improvement of 20-100 times.. which doesn’t help much.

Now, luckily, with the exploits they have now, they can’t unlock your baseband, but they *can* capture more information from the baseband to speed up this cracking process. Since the NORID and CHIPID (unique for every device) are known, you’d apparently only have to check 40 more bits (5 digits). A 40 bits key is theoretically crackable on “home hardware” within a week (24/7). The downside of this approach is that you’ll have to keep your computer turned on, and your iPhone has to be connected. And that is the reason why they never tried it before. Please note that this method is completely theorical and has been NOT tried at all till this moment.

3. Now what? Should I sell my locked iPhone 4?

I’d wait for more information on this “NCK-unlock”. Right now it’s pretty vague what timeframe we’re talking about. If the Dev-Team can pull this method off, it’d be very promising for those waiting for an unlock. If this method turns out to be not doable, I’d consider selling your iPhone 4 and save up for a factory unlocked iPhone 5.

4. Do you think there is every going to be an unlock?

Of course. But that’s unlikely to be any time soon (with soon being <1 month).

5. If the NCK method fails, how long do you think it will take for the Dev-Team to unlock the iPhone 4?

No ETA at all. Could be a few weeks, but it could easily be a few months as well.

What this means is that all those with a locked device could potentially get full freedom from the lock, once this method is truly exploited. The only thing that may bother potential unlockers, the time frame in which this would be released. another moth may get frustrating for those who have been waiting since october.

March 14, 2011
Panasonic’s solar powered wireless charging table

A solar powered table that can wirelessly charge things, what more could you ask for? This isn’t a device that is available right now but Panasonic seem to be readying the stylish technical table for retail towards the end of this year or the start of next year.

The only true problem we see with the design image – Well you cant be inside with the sun, and you possibly cant charge your device in direct sunlight either. Unless they come up with a design like this ambient-light powered display, we don’t see much use for this solar powered table.

March 14, 2011
Nokia Announcing the budget friendly entry level X1-00
Nokia has announced plans to roll out its new entry-level phone, “the Nokia X1-00”. The uniqueness of this music phone is its exceptionally loud speaker and that it offers a five-phonebook feature to enable up to five users to have their own phonebook on the same device.

The phone is said to be available in select markets starting in April and will cost around Rs 2,000 + Tax etc.
- 1.8-inch colour TFT display
- Built-in loud Speaker rated at 106phon
- Support up to 16GB micro SD card
- Symbian S30 OS
- Dedicated music keys
- FM radio
- 3.5mm audio jack
- Sudoku, Snake Xenia, Brach Rally, Forbidden Treasure, Vacation Solitaire games
- Torch
- One Key Playlist creator
- Weight – 91.05 gms
- Dimension – 112.2 x 47.3 x 16mm (LxBxW)
- BL-5J – 1320 mAh Li-Ion battery
March 14, 2011
Exclusive : Motorola Xoom Goes up for pre-order in India

Don’t fancy a new iPad 2, you don’t even have to wait for another year till it officially becomes available in India. The competition is bound to be here before Apple, and the Motorola Xoom goes up for Pre-Order at a whopping 35,000 INR/-.

Although, Infibeam is know to fake release dates and it does seem a bit early to take orders for something that ships in 2 months. But, we are trying to get an official word from our guys over at MOTO. So that we can get an exclusive details on Launch and pricing. So stay tuned.

[Infibeam]

March 12, 2011
New Revamped Symbian coming by August
Marc Driessen, Nokia Benelux product manager has let out some details on the unannounced updates that Nokia will be offering to Symbian Lovers. Talks about a symbian revamp have been going on for quite some time now, but now the companys own people are spilling the juicy details. According to Driessen, Nokia is targeting a major UI overhaul in the fall, an update rumored to include
- dedicated pull-down status bar up top
- new iconography
- new flexible widgets
- simplified navigation bar
- better menus
Any of those sound familiar to the “rejected by Nokia” OS?

It is also Rumored that that N8 and E7 will get this update faster than others, possibly by Summer 2011.
March 11, 2011
Breaking : Nokia India Puts the E7 up for pre-order for 29,990
Here it is finally folks the Nokia E7 is up for grabs at the Nokia India website.

The Nokia E7
- Symbian^3 mobile OS
- Sports a 4-inch AMOLED display
- A slide-out physical QWERTY keypad
- 680MHz processor
- 16GB of inbuilt memory
- 8 megapixel camera with HD video recording capabilities.
Check out the link for preorder and full spec list.

[Nokia]
March 11, 2011
Apple US Store opens iPad 2 online order

If you are in the US or have friends or family in the US. You can skip the waiting period and get the iPad 2 which is shipping now on the online Apple Store. Pricing information is below:

If instead you prefer picking up the device in person, Sales start in stores at 5PM local time in the area of purchase head down to an Apple Store, Best Buy, Target, Walmart, AT&T or Verizon store .

The accessories you should consider buying:

Smart Cover (Starts at $39.00)

Digital AV Adapter ($39.00)

[Apple]

March 11, 2011
Nokia E6 caught with touch Symbian UI

The Nokia E6 caught earlier, has been detailed yet again in this cleaner more visible picture, and what more this time the display is actually turned on.

The UI looks nice and clean, with large touchable icons. Whats more , the grid layout also looks half decent. YOu can also see the updated Symbian^3 operating system with 4 homescreen dots and different widget placements.

The only thing bothering us is the fact, that despite announcing the discontinuation of Symbian on Smart-phones, Nokia is still persistently set on releasing Symbian based phones this year, which will become obsolete once the company ditches the OS for Redmond’s baby

[mobilesguruji.co.cc]

March 10, 2011
Samsung Galaxy Pop Review with Video and Samples
Samsung has bombarded us with a bundle of Galaxy Phones this season, they are not stopping anytime soon. with several devices to come, we review the cheapest in the line up of Galaxy Phones the Galaxy POP.

Lets start with the Unboxing video.

Hardware

The device packs a semi decent set of Specifications
- 3.14” capacitive touch screen
- 1200 mAh Battery
- 3.15 MP fixed focus camera
- Android 2.2
- 600 MHZ processor
- Wifi, bluetooth
- Proximity/ ambient sensors
- Accelerometer
- AGPS
- Hardware navigation buttons on the bottom of the display
For an entry level Android phone thats quite a lot of specs, At the price bracket this device is in you can only expect dunb-phones. This device promises and delivers a lot more than you bargain for.

Display and Touchscreen

The Galaxy Pop features a 3.14 inch capacitive touchscreen LCD display, that has a native resolution of 240 x 320 px. While on the outset the device is fully capable and display is good while navigating through menus and using the phone in its basic functions.

The quality of the Display really shines( or blackens) when you actually put it to test while browsing the internet, or watching videos. The display has a poor case of pixel love. The website text is highly unreadable and you need to zoom in to high levels to get basic text to readable state. There is no auto reformatting of text , so you will constantly be panning and rotating your device to get one article or basic letter read in the browser.

Lets just say the Display on the Galaxy POP = FAIL

The touchscreen on the other hand is a marvel. Samsung has made an overall improvement in how the touch digitizer reads the input, thereby making the touchscreen technology used in their devices a brilliant aspect of their lineup. The new Galaxy POP is not left behind and utilizes the same new touch technology along with the optimized Android 2.2 makes using the phone a bit more cheerful.

Camera and Multimedia

The Camera on the Galaxy Pop stands at a semi decent 3.15 MP , the disappointing bit is that its fixed focus. The picutre quality is only decent and you will find yourself struggling to get the right focus even in the brightest of light conditions. The camera is a complete failure in low light situations due to lack of flash LED. You will also find that the video quality is as you would expect from a VGA video capable camera, half decent.

You do however get a huge array of selectable features in the Camera APP and thus letting you select b/ Several shooting modes, scene modes, it lets you add effects and choose resolution etc. Making the Camera app a “princess designed for a pauper”( camera hardware).

Multimedia features are let down by the overly poor (as mentioned earlier) low res display, video just does not cut it on this screen and is just a poor feeling once you get down to watching videos. Audio however is a story told differently , and throughout the new Galaxy series you will see that the audio quality goes from good to excellent as you progress up in the chain. The speakerphone on the Galaxy POP is very impressive and will not be a let down. The phone features an FM radio and thanks to android is capable of playing almost any file format under the sun thanks to its impressive array of Apps.

The included earphones also provide good isolated audio, with a little tweaking from a good equalizer,

Phone and Messaging

Every phone need to be good at one thing, “being a phone”. The Galaxy Pop does just that with the ability to impressively make phone calls the earpiece, microphone and loudspeaker do their job well and promise good conversation abilities. In our tests we found that the device had close to none calls dropped and almost full network bars throughout.

The swpe keyboard makes messaging and emailing on this a breeze, with a bit of learning curve you will find yourself texting away in a marathon. Although, if like us you prefer the normal keyboard, that option is available too.

Conclusion

The Galaxy POP is a semi decent low price entry level Android 2.2 device from samsung. But , we think you deserve better, the display quality is just not acceptable and lets you down on several levels. The phone is plasticy in build and looks like a toy at the end of it. It performs all the functions it intends to do, But makes you fell let down all the way. gaming performance is also average with several games blocked from the marketplace.

Battery Life
- 3.5 – 4 hours talktime (2g)
- 2 hours on 3G
- 4 hours of browsing the internet (3g)
- 5.5 hours of browsing the internet (Wifi)
- 9 hours of audio playback
- 2.5 hours of video
Quadrant benchmark score : 530-540

Price : downwards of INR 9,000/-

Overall we would recommend that you look at other options if display and gaming performance is your main criteria. Save your money for the time being or change your budget (if you can).

[xrr rating=2.25/5 label=”We Rate it” imageset=shiny_yellow_star display_as=fraction_stars]

Scroll down for sample shots and Full Video Review

SAMPLE IMAGES From the Camera of the Galaxy POP

Full Video Review
March 10, 2011
Microsoft confirms sale of 10 Million Kinects and 10 Million Games

The homebrew hacked, popular Microsoft Kinect has sold in quantities over 10 million. Alon with that news they also sold in excess of 10 Million standalone titles, that 10 million more than the bundled games.

Press Release

Microsoft Announces 10 Million Kinect Sensors and more than 10 Million Kinect Games Sold to Date

LONDON –9 March 2011

Following one of the biggest launches in consumer electronics history, Kinect for Xbox 360 continued its momentum in 2011 reaching 10 million Kinect sensors sold worldwide to date. Not only were sensor sales an overwhelming success, but Kinect drove significant game sales with more than 10 million standalone Kinect games sold worldwide to date.

Guinness World Records: Kinect for Xbox 360 is Fastest Selling Consumer Electronics Device

In a nod to the recent sales success of Kinect, Guinness World Records has officially named Kinect for Xbox 360 the fastest selling consumer electronics device

March 10, 2011
Apple Releases iOS 4.3, just before they ship the iPad 2
You can now download iOS 4.3 for you iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

The new software brings a speed boost to the mobile Safari web browser through a new JavaScript engine, personal hotspot Internet sharing functionality for iPhone 4 users, and a feature that lets users share the iTunes library around their home.

The update also adds support for the new iPad 2 and additional functionality for AirPlay, a wireless feature that allows streaming of videos from an iDevice to an HDTV.

Here is the total spec Sheet

(% For all those relying on unlocks to use their devices should stay away from the update )

About iOS 4.3 Software Update

This update contains new features and improvements, including the following:
- Personal Hotspot*
  Share iPhone 4 cellular data connection with up to 5 devices (combination of up to 3 Wi-Fi, 3 Bluetooth, and 1 USB)
- iTunes Home Sharing
  Play music, movies and TV shows from a shared iTunes library on a Mac or PC (requires iTunes 10.2)
- New AirPlay features**
  Play videos from the Photos app including the Camera Roll album, iTunes previews, enabled third-party apps and websites on Apple TV
  Play slideshows from Photos on Apple TV using transitions available on Apple TV
- Faster Safari performance with Apple Nitro JavaScript engine
- HD video out using the Apple Digital AV Adapter***
  View 720p HD videos from Videos app, iPod app, Photos, YouTube, Safari, Keynote, and enabled third-party apps on an HDMI display
- Ping features
  Push notifications for comments and follow requests
  Post and Like songs directly from the Now Playing screen
  Parental controls
- New Settings
  Messages setting for number of times to repeat an alert
  iPad side switch setting to lock screen rotation or mute audio notifications and sound effects
  Single tap conference call dialing with a pause to send a passcode
- Bug fixes
*Requires iPhone 4 with tethering data plan
**Requires Apple TV (2nd generation) running software version 4.2 or later
***iPhone 4, iPad, iPod touch (4th generation)

For information on the security content of this update, please visit:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222
March 10, 2011
iTunes 10.2.1 rolls out right after iTunes 10.2
iTunes is quite a money-baby for Apple. Right after the iTunes 4.2 which was supposed to enable sync with iOS 4.3, Home Sharing etc. the new update promises
- Improved Home Sharing. Browse and play from your iTunes libraries with Home Sharing on any iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iOS 4.3.
A good idea would be to continually update the software if you use premium services on iTunes. This keeps all your media and information safe. The update also fixes certain bugs, that were causing home sharing issues with the beta releases of iOS 4.3
March 9, 2011
Samsung shows off ambient-light power source based transparent LCD display

Before we begin to talk about this next piece of hardware, let me tell you that we want one! The Samsung ambient light based transparent LCD shows what technology has achieved today. What we saw in movies and SCI-FI flick is becoming real day by day.

What you see here is a prototype 46-inch display with 1920 x 1080 resolution and ten-finger touchscreen capability. The device generates is power from surrounding light, much like our calculators.

Whats impressive is the fact that Samsung has been able to make a working prototype of a Huge touchscreen TV which along with its solar cells, efficiently generates power from your wall light bulb, enough to sustain itself.

Makes you want to throw your calculator doesn’t it? well even your TV/Monitor.

Whats more, there are some rumors of Samsung using this technology to develop larger panels than the ones currently in existence. The biggest panels that the company currently releases is a 65-inch model.

[IT Pro Portal]

March 8, 2011
Samsung Galaxy Pro with 2.8-inch touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard, outed
Samsung has just announced another QWERTY handset which boasts android. But, this time its a portrait QWERTY phone and is not too bad of a looker.

The Pro Has
- 4 row QWERTY keyboard
- 2.8-inch touchscreen
- 800MHz processor
- 3 MP camera
- Froyo out of the box
Its already been announced in the UK by mobile carrier 3 , and should be heading India side soon. We will then have a full review for you guys iGyaan Style.

Full Press Release

Samsung Launches Latest Device in the Galaxy Family

Android powered Galaxy Pro comes packed with entertainment and social media features

LONDON, UK – March 7, 2011 – Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, a leading mobile phone provider, today announced the Galaxy Pro Smartphone. Featuring Samsung’s integrated Social Hub Premium and innovative dual-input control via a touch-screen and full QWERTY keyboard, the Galaxy Pro is also the perfect business partner and social secretary.

The Samsung Social Hub Premium gives one-touch access to emails, instant messages and social networking accounts and benefits from the speed and control of the Galaxy Pro’s dual-input interface. Powered by the Android™ 2.2 ‘Froyo’ platform, the Galaxy Pro has access to over 150,000 high-quality apps and services from Android Market™, such as the latest games for entertainment, up to date interactive maps and news feed services.

Simon Stanford, Managing Director, Samsung Mobile UK and Ireland said: “The Samsung Galaxy Pro is the perfect device for everyone looking to manage their busy work and social lives. The Social Hub Premium provides a simple way for our customers to stay in touch with their friends and colleagues – via work and personal emails, Facebook, Twitter and text messages. You get it all in one inbox, which is so much more efficient. Running on Android 2.2 and with brilliant entertainment features it’s another great addition to the Galaxy range.”

Samsung Social Hub Premium is ideal for juggling work and personal communications, managing multiple social networks and receiving high volumes of messages and emails. The Social Hub Premium brings together email, SNS and IM accounts to a single inbox, for simplified, instant access to all communications. Twitter feeds and Facebook updates, work and personal emails and text messages are collated in one central contact list. Furthermore, the Galaxy Pro is equipped with the “Think Free” Office Document Editor, for viewing and editing MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents on-the-move.

The Samsung Galaxy Pro’s dual-input is a combination of a touch-screen and QWERTY keyboard, for swift, accurate typing, the QWERTY keyboard provides desktop-computing accuracy, while the touch-screen offers fast fingertip control. Together, they provide an efficient and enhanced user experience.

The Samsung Galaxy Pro is equipped with a 3.0 Megapixel camera for still image or video capture. Pictures can be viewed on the clear and bright 2.8″ display before being uploaded online, supported by WiFi and Bluetooth capability.

The Samsung Galaxy Pro will be available during the second quarter in the UK market followed by other European countries, Middle East, South East Asia and India.
March 8, 2011
Microsoft Paying Nokia More Than a Billion for the Manufacture of Windows Phone 7 Devices

While this may me confirmed on many levels, it still remains to be clarified. Bloomberg claims that it has two sources involved deeply in the process citing that there is a flow of $$ from Redmond to Espoo which is in excess of $ 1 billion, directed towards the manufacture of mobile phones holding the MS phone OS. It calls for Microsoft to pay a portion of the agreement before the final merger this year along-with Nokia sending cash in the other direction for device licenses.

Talk about holding the key and the lock in the same hand, still wondering why Nokia didn’t choose Android?

[Bloomberg Businessweek]

March 8, 2011