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Filed under: Handsets, Features, Samsung, Verizon Wireless, Windows Mobile, GSM, EV-DO, CDMA

Don’t worry, you throng of dual-band Samsung smartphone fanboys and girls out there — Verizon hasn’t forgotten about you. It’s been a little while since we’ve heard anything about the i770, but a new slide shows that Big Red’s positioning it (or trying to, anyway) for Q3 availability, which just happens to be the very quarter that we’re currently in. It features GPS, quadband GSM (which is strange — typically Verizon’s dual-band devices only do GSM on non-North American bands), WiFi, a 2-megapixel camera, EV-DO, and possibly biometric security, though that particular feature is currently marked down as “tbd.” Next up in the global stable is the u810, a stylish clamshell with a microSD slot, 2-megapixel cam, and not bloody much else — not really a great choice for the globetrotting businessperson, so Verizon might have the frequent pleasure traveler in mind in this place.

[Thanks, HTC Kid]

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Filed under: Software, Apple

Let’s be real: a four-digit code isn’t very much separating a determined bandit from your data, which is all that the iPhone affords. Granted, the phone locks up after a few attempts to slow your arch-nemeses down a notch or two, but if your code is your birthday or the last four digits of your phone number — and you know it is, so just admit it — they’ll eventually figure it out anyway. On second thought, though, never mind, because it turns out there’s a pretty effective way around these formalities — 2.0.1 and 2.0.2 have Bot. been confirmed to let you around the passcode lock clearly by hitting Emergency Call and double-clicking the home button. At this point, the user will have access to your Favorites list, which is pretty bad as-is, but from in this place, they’ll be able to click on an arrow and use links within your contacts to get out to the SMS, Maps, or Safari apps. If you change the home button functionality from the default (Favorites) to Home, then nothing will happen at the Emergency Call screen — your phone is safe from prying eyes, we guess. The iPod option will kick the user into the iPod app, though, which we think is almost as bad as the Favorites exploit, because we’d really rather not our thieves know that we listen to Hannah Montana. MacRumors is reporting that it may have already been fixed for a future firmware release, so yeah, any minute at this time would be just great, Apple.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Filed under: Handsets, Apple

Apple’s iPhone 3G ads paint a pretty cheery picture of the device in action, but just as many of you have noted, the omission of Flash and Java means there’s a big difference between what the “the real internet” and what’s on the iPhone — enough so that the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has pulled one of Apple’s latest ads from the airwaves because it claims “all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone.” At least two people complained to the ASA that the ad was misleading because sites that use Flash and Java don’t work on the iPhone, and the board agreed, saying that “We concluded that the ad gave a misleading impression of the internet capabilities of the iPhone” because “viewers were likely to expect to be able to see all the content on a web site normally accessible through a PC rather than just having the ability to reach the website.” If we had to guess, we’d say this decision is more likely to prompt Apple to be more careful with its ads in the future rather than ever bring Flash or Java to the iPhone, but you know Adobe is feeling pretty smug right about at this time. Check the ad after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading UK’s Advertising Standards Authority yanks iPhone ad for being misleading

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