This iPhone 4 started to glow red and smoulder with dense fumes in the middle of a flight to Sidney, Australia. Fortunately, a flight attendant stopped it from exploding violently, something that has happened before with other gadgets.
The owner of the self-combusting iPhone wasn’t doing anything extraordinary with it. The iPhone’s battery just started to overheat in the middle Regional Express’ flight ZL319, going from Lismore to Sidney. According to the airline, the flight attendant extinguished following standard emergency procedures. Nobody was injured.
The phone now is being analysed by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.
We are so close to living in a world where everyone can be David Hasselhoff. Thanks to an enterprising programmer named Brandon Fiquett and Apple’s Siri app for the iPhone 4S, there’s at least one Acura TL out there in the States that’s responding to voice control in awesome Knight Rider fashion.
While not quite up to the level of interactivity that Hollywood dreamed up for the Knight Industries Two Thousand, Fiquett’s TL will remotely start itself and turn off the ignition on his command. The system works by relaying the Siri command to a proxy server, which sends the instructions to a Viper car automation and security system. About the only thing missing here is William Daniels doing the voice of KITT – and that awesome black Trans Am itself.
Fiquett has put his source code up for download, so if you’re interested in trying it yourself and you’ve got some coding skills, have at it on his website. Otherwise, just click through the jump to watch the video.
Apple is touting Siri as the most important feature of the iPhone 4S, but will older iPhones ever get a chance to meet the robotic assistant?
When Apple announced the iPhone 4S, Siri was hailed as one of the biggest and most important features. However, if you thought she might someday make her way to the iPhone 4, or even older models of the iPhone, it looks like you’re going to be disappointed. Apple has said it has no plans to bring Siri to older iterations of the phone. How could you?!?
Michael Steeber reports that someone he knows contacted Apple via a bug report with the suggestion that the company offer iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4th generation users the option to upgrade to a ‘special’ build of iOS 5 that would include Siri for a fee of $19.99. This would avoid developers illegally hacking Siri onto devices other than the iPhone 4S, Steeber’s friend told Apple. However, it seems Apple is not interested in making an extra $20 from iPhone 4 users. Steebler says his contact got the following response from Apple:
Engineering has provided the following feedback regarding this issue:
Siri only works on iPhone 4S and we currently have no plans to support older devices.
Though it’s a bit disappointing to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth, we can’t say we weren’t expecting such a response. If Siri is being touted as one of the iPhone 4S’s best features, it stands to reason that Apple wouldn’t want her heading to other, older devices. Still, all is not lost. Siri may not be arriving on the iPhone 4 (or iPod touch) in any official capacity, but there are ways of getting her to play nice with older devices.
In short: everyone expected an iPhone 5, we got an iPhone 4S. A lot of the letdown and confusion was the result of rumor mill over-grindage, but Business Insider says the iPhone 5 was real—and Apple scrapped it.
According to their report—which is based on completely anonymous, unsubstantiated claims—Apple had an iPhone 5 prototype floating around, with the big screen and new form we had all counted on. Sure, sure—same old guesswork put in the microwave and served up before Thanksgiving. Even the crew at BI says “You should probably still read this post with a nice fat dose of salt.” Right. The requisite sodium dose might kill you.
But what is interesting is their buried claim that the iPhone 5 was spiked because Jobs thought a new, differing screen size would ruin the iPhone line. It’d fragment it. It’d Android-ize it—and anything resembling Android would be anathema to Jobs.
Of all the non-technical reasons we’ve seen behind the iPhone 5′s absence, perhaps this is the most likely. We know what Jobs worshipped: minimalism and uniformity were chief among them. So to create a branch in the iPhone family—many with smaller screens, one with a larger display—would be to end the lineage’s uniformity. The phones wouldn’t resemble each other. Apps wouldn’t look the same from a 4 to a 5. And most poignantly, the seal would’ve been broken; Apple would have signed off on differing designs, opening an aesthetic future of variance upon variance. A Jobsian nightmare.
True or not, the rumor makes us consider whether, with Jobs’ specter over Apple’s design squad, the iPhone will ever diverge significantly from its current screen size. A redesign is inevitable, of course—I’d love to see that glass on the back swapped out for something a little more practical than glass—and of course the thing will slim down.
On the other hand, phones are getting bigger. People are liking bigger phones. People are buying bigger phones. And the longer Apple stays on the 3.5-inch trajectory, the more of a design legacy—and more rigid precedent—they’ll face fragmenting.
As far as assistants go, Siri can be rather demanding. In fact, she apparently requires that your iPhone 4S’s proximity sensor be on whenever the handset’s screen is activated. That’s the conclusion iFixit arrived at, upon discovering that, unlike previous generations which flip on the sensor upon firing up a phone call or Skype conversation, the 4S kicks on the infrared detectors whenever the screen turns on. The change would allow Siri to detect just how close your face is as you speak to her without the handset pressed up against your face.
Vooma’s new Peel PG92 handset case isn’t the first to bring dual-SIM capability to the iPhone 4, but it may be the most elegant. The accessory, which has yet to be released, essentially consists of an extra battery pack and an unlocked SIM slot. All you have to do is download Vooma’s customized app to your jailbroken iPhone 4 or 4S, strap on the Peel PG92, and insert your spare SIM card into the case (judging from the photos, it appears that the device is tailored for mini-SIM cards, rather than micro-SIM). Once that’s taken care of, you’ll be able to place calls via the app and external SIM, using a dialer interface that’s only slightly different from what Apple offers. No word yet on pricing or availability, but you can sign up for more information at Voom’s website, linked below. Otherwise, check out the coverage from TechCrunch, who managed to get their hands on a pre-release model.
Did you want in on iOS 5′s hidden panorama feature, but weren’t down with the whole jailbreak shindig? You’re in luck, because RedmondPie found a roundabout solution. All interested parties need is an iTunes backup, a little elbow grease and a program called iBackupBot. That last item will allow you to bust open your device backup, where you’ll find a preference file that needs an “EnableFirebreak” value changed from “false” to “true.” Once that’s done, a quick restore is all that stands between you and some epic panoramic vistas, bro. A full step-by-step guide awaits you at the source, just triple check that backup’s recent before you obliterate and restore, okay?
Somewhere deep within the bowels of iOS 5 lurks a panoramic camera function, and hacker Conrad Kramer has unlocked it. The trick, according to Kramer (AKA Conradev), is to set the “EnableFirebreak” key to “Yes” within an iOS preference file. Alternatively, you could just grab fellow hacker Grant Paul’s Firebreak tweak, which just hit the Cydia storefront this morning. Once installed on your jailbroken phone, Firebreak will allow you to take full panoramic shots directly from the iOS interface, as pictured above in Paul’s screenshot. No word yet on if or when Apple plans on flipping this function live, but in the meantime, you can check out the links below for more details.
Consumer Reports recommends the iPhone 4S.” It’s only half a dozen words, but to the engineers (and marketers) at Apple, it spells “relief.” After being profusely impacted by Consumer Reports’ decision to recommend against buying the iPhone 4 due to those Antennagate issues, the entity has allowed all in Cupertino to breathe a sigh of relief by effectively declaring the reception issue dead on the newest edition. To quote:
“Apple’s newest smart phone performed very well in our tests, and while it closely resembles the iPhone 4 in appearance, it doesn’t suffer the reception problem we found in its predecessor in special tests in our labs. In special reception tests of the iPhone 4S that duplicated those we did on the iPhone 4, the newer phone did not display the same reception flaw, which involves a loss of signal strength when you touch a spot on the phone’s lower left side while you’re in an area with a weak signal. (The iPhone 4, which is still available, continues to exhibit that problem, we confirmed in tests of new samples of the phone. Because of the flaw, we continue to omit the iPhone 4 from our list of recommended models, despite its otherwise fine performance.)”
In other words, even the newer samples of the iPhone 4 continue to have antenna quirks, but at least the latest and greatest seems to have addressed ‘em. Hit the source link for the full report.
Yes, you read it right! Legendary iPhone hacker chpwn has, with a little help from stroughtonsmith, managed to successfully port Apple’s new system-wide voice recognition feature through to the equally legendary old-timer that is the iPhone 3GS.
The iPhone 3GS has been a great asset to Apple since it’s launch all the way back in the middle of 2009, and continues – to this day – to sell and compete with more recent devices on the smartphone market.
Since Siri was launched along with iPhone 4S as an exclusive feature to Apple’s very latest smartphone, it has scarcely been away from the headlines. Developers have been plugging away to see what the software can really do when unleashed, and if the progress thus far is anything to go by, Siri will be singing songs whilst flipping eggs for your breakfast in no time!
Jokes aside, though, the latest inroads only further increase the suspicion that the fruit company kept Siri as an iPhone 4S-only feature in order to increase sales. It was said that Apple’s first dual-core smartphone was the only device capable of handling the new, exciting technology; but the work of chpwn and friends has certainly made that claim appear as a simple, sensible marketing ploy.
Although it appears to run as smoothly on the aging 3GS as it does on its younger brother, and the predictable kinks are currently still being ironed out. Activator integration is also subject to further testing, so as we say, the 3GS port is not yet the finished article. It’s exciting nonetheless, and even connects to Apple’s servers. More importantly, it demonstrates just how dedicated and talented the hackers and developers are.
Those who doubted the need for jailbreaking and hacking to continue with Apple bringing 200 new features to iOS 5, (many of which had been lingering annoyances since day one), need look no further than here, because despite the positive progress being made by the Cupertino company in delivering the updates to its mobile operating system, the inroads being made within the jailbreaking spectrum are just as exciting – and just as important in dictating the future direction of iOS.
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