Another big selling point according to Benzion is that most phones require you to have the solar panel in direct sunlight for at least four or five hours a day in order to truly get a good charge. This isn’t the case for the SolMate, which actually works in the shade as well (just at a slower charging rate).

Directly quoted from the above video, Jamie Wojcik had this to say about the SolMate:

“Everyone that has done a mobile solar charger has to be in direct sunlight, and you have to have the planets align and the sun align exactly … to get any charge out of it,” Wojcik said. “Ours is different. We can charge in the shade, although you won’t get as good of charging, but you should be able to get at least your standby current in any light condition.”

The SolMate is being marked under the company name “GreenSimian” and plans to start developing the device this spring with a shipping starting in May. This was likely provided that they meet their goal of $30,000 from Kickstarter pledges, a dollar amount that they have already exceeded.

If you want to get your hands on one when they start shipping, head over to Kickstarter and invest a minimum of $99.

According to an article on Gizmodo, phone cases are unnatural. The phones that are painstakingly designed by different manufacturers should be allowed to “roam free, nude, as nature intended”, showing off the beautiful designs to everyone. And it’s not worth all the protection as people will end up upgrading to the latest device as soon as their two-year contract is up. The author has even said that a few scratches will also be a great memory, a reminder of who you used to be. And apparently the techies at the above said website are united on the matter as revealed by a quick survey.

But we are sticking to another formula, no phone case = broken phone. And every human being has the tendency to become clumsy at some point in their lifetime. And most families have at least one Bart Simpson type in their home to bring about a few scratches on their most beloved gadgets. So which way do you go?

We can take as example one of the most popular devices out there – the Apple iPhone. Both the faces of the iPhone are made up of glass and those faces have been placed at a raised position above the frame. And the bezel around the edge of the glass is very tiny as well. The conclusion: the device has not been designed to be used without a case.

And of course, it’s fun to show off our latest tech to everyone. But what if there is nothing left to show off? And most people find their device as precious things; they want to keep it with them as long as possible. There is no two year limit to their gadget love. And memories? Seriously, do you want to end up remembering the night you got so drunk that you used your phone as a foot rug?

And we are tempted to say something about that nature intended thing that they were talking about. Evolution did not design man at first with clothes on. Does that mean we should also set ourselves free?

*** Grain of salt alert ***

We have seen a lot of iPhone 5 rumors earlier, but this new one seems to be pretty trustworthy. It comes to us courtesy of the folks over at 9to5Mac who appear to have got the latest info on the next generation iPhone, tentatively called iPhone 5, via a Foxconn worker.

According to the new rumor, the iPhone 5 is ready for production at the moment and the company is planning a summer launch for it. The source has also revealed that there are many sample devices, each differing slightly from the others. So it’s impossible to tell which device will be final.

But all of these samples are equipped with 4-inch or larger screens, with one of them being made by LG. None of the samples have a MacBook Air-inspired teardrop shape (we don’t think that rumor is coming up again). They are symmetrically shaped and not a single one is having the same compact form factor as the iPhone 4 or 4S.

If the device is indeed coming with a larger screen, that will finally put the iPhone in the same display league as many of the competing Android handsets such as the Droid RAZR.

And we don’t think too many grains of salt are needed for this new rumor. Unlike many other rumors which bring out a device’s specs and tons of speculations, this new one is very vague. We have not got any exact display size, no blurry pictures of the handset and nothing about what’s under the hood. If it was made up, it won’t be too difficult for someone to pick a few possible specs.

And there is also the mentioning of the samples. As you might know, reviewing samples before selecting the final model is a standard procedure.  And to add to all that, this is the same source who tipped on the iPhone 5 last year that the device was not coming and suggested we should expect the iPhone 4S. The rest is history.

Jailbreaking was once a major gray area not so long ago, and it stayed that way until a court decision was made ruling that the act was actually fully legal so long as it didn’t directly infringe on any copyrights.

While you would think this ruling would forever lay to rest the question of legality regarding a jailbreak, it might not be that simple in reality.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have begun lobbying for users to add their electronic voice to a petition which aims to ask the United States government to declare once again that jailbreaking an iPhone does not violate the DMCA. The EFF are also asking for this initial exemption — which is set to expire — to be extended to cover tablet devices as the Apple’s iPad. Right now, though very similar to the iPhone, it isn’t actually part of the current ruling as it stands.

One very well known iOS developer, Charlie Miller, is an advocate for voicing a change that will redefine the DMCA ruling and add even further credence to the right for users to jailbreak their device.

Not everyone feels this way, and many believe that you shouldn’t be worried as the current ruling should be permanent, and no further action is required.

Miller has been quick to point out that the exemption could expire, making sure that jailbreaking remains legal is very important.

If you wish to lend your voice to the cause and help ensure that, now and forever, jailbreaking remains legal, go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation website and send a comment to the Copyrights Office using the links provided. All comments must be received by February 10th at 5PM Eastern Time.

[ source ]

*** Grain of salt alert ***

Remember that Lytro point-and-shoot box camera we talked about back in October? Well, it appears like Steve Jobs was “interested” in that technology, so that’s enough for people to “speculate” that the sensor might make its way into an iPhone sometime in the future.

The new info comes to us courtesy of the folks over at 9to5Mac who went through a new book by Fortune Magazine’s Adam Lashinsky titled, Inside Apple. According to the book, Jobs met with Lytro inventor and CEO Ren Ng to discuss about the possibilities of using Lytro technology in an iPhone.

Just in case you are wondering what this new tech is all about, the Lytro “whole light field” camera, which contains an f/2 aperture and an 8x optical zoom lens, captures all the light rays flowing in its direction instead of fixed focus pixels. This will allow you to take photos whenever you want and you can focus on anything from the scene at a later point in time.  Yeah I know, sounds wild. Although the first Lytro camera captures just 1MP photos, the technology allows the manipulation of the pictures in many ways: such as changing the depth of field and focus. You can simply forget about getting that shot in focus, and just take it.

The possibilities are endless if this type of technology reaches an iPhone sometime in the future, it will be even better when combined with specialized apps. But there are problems; the big size of the sensor and the picture quality, but that can always be improved in time. And manufacturers will also get a chance to incorporate fixed-focus lenses into the devices instead of the thicker autofocus ones.

But we are not expecting Apple to start playing with the new tech until it matures. It seems unlikely that it will be available on the next-generation iPhone. But we believe it will be just awesome when it finally arrives.

It seems that Absinthe, the new jailbreak method for iPad 2 and iPhone 4S, has already reach about one million users so far. This is pretty impressive, considering it just came to us a few days earlier.

An untethered jailbreak means that a jailbroken device can retain its jailbreak exploit without having to be connected to a PC during a reboot, which is very important to get the most functionality out of the exploit.  This is great news for iPad 2 and iPhone 4S users out there because it gives them a wider access to apps and customization tools that otherwise Apple’s device couldn’t access.

Absinthe arrives almost ten months after the first A5 device, the iPad 2, hit store shelves, largely in part to the fact that hackers found the A5 was a particularly difficult processor to jailbreak.

“The ridiculously complex combination of exploits-within-exploits that make this iOS jailbreak possible have consumed thousands of hours of brain power and effort,” the Chronic team, the folks behind Absinthe, said Friday.

In order to get this jailbreak all you have to do is download the jailbreak software from greenpois0n.com, plug in your iOS 5 device to your PC through USB, and then follow Absinthe’s onscreen instructions. It is also important to note that this originally hit just for Mac OS, but now the Windows version of the jailbreak software is out as well.

A big thanks goes out to all the folks involved in the hacker community that made this possible!

[ source ]

Developed by Greenpois0n, Absinthe for Windows will work with the iPhone 4S running on iOS 5.0 and 5.0.1, as well as on the iPad 2 running on iOS 5.0.1. As with all the other jailbreak solutions that are out there, you proceed at your own risk and discretion. I imagine it’s only a matter of time before Apple pushes out a software update that breaks this jailbreak too. It’s always been a cat-and-mouse game with these people.

In any case, the direct download link for Absinthe Windows can be found on greenpois0n.com. Enjoy!

Video is about the mac version but essentially is the same thing.

The undisputed leader of all sales from all carriers that offers the iPhone is the iPhone 4S for last two months of 2011. Who would have thought otherwise?  More interesting and telling is the struggle for second place. The Samsung Galaxy S II looks like the leader for the second spot, except for Verizon where Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus took the position in December 2011, while in November 2011 it was Motorola’s Droid RAZR as Verizon’s second big selling phone.

T-Mobile doesn’t offer the iPhone 4S, so their best selling phone is the Samsung Galaxy S II. But it’s easy to imagine that if they could cater iPhones to their customers, the iPhone 4S would have been the leader with T-Mobile, too.

Another interesting feature in these trends is the fall of original iPhone 4 popularity which can be seen on a full span of six months research. Can Samsung’s Galaxy S II overtake iPhones one day? I don’t think so. Samsung is still the fourth in the race for the best vendor prize,  after Apple, HTC, and Motorola. Even if Samsung is on the rise now, who knows how much time it will take them to beat HTC? And if it will be quite rather long wait, then there will be the iPhone 5 available by then which will start a totally different game.

Carriers which are piggybacking on “big guys” bandwidth didn’t make it into this report. But volumes of their sales of handhelds most probably cannot really change the picture.

It seems that 2012 is the year of ‘waterproofing’. I find this ironic, since in the movie “2012”, the world is destroyed by a variety of disasters, ending in massive flooding.

Maybe companies are thinking, “Hmm… just in case?”  All jokes aside, we’ve seen some interesting pushes towards waterproofing technology such as P2i’s Aridion technology, and the new waterproof Pantech Element.

Now it seems that both Apple and Samsung might be making a move down this road as well, as both are actively looking into a hi-tech spray that make smartphones waterproof, and such technology could even arrive with the iPhone 5.

Keep in mind that this technology isn’t about deep scuba diving or water-sports, but it is still an innovative way to ensure that you don’t have your phone destroyed by accidental water damage.

I can personally attest to how you useful this could be, since about a year ago my then 1 ½ year old daughter actually did manage to get ahold of my phone and took it to meet the bathroom sink. While I was wise enough to have a replacement plan, having waterproofing like this would have made things a whole lot easier.

In recent demonstrations, a working iPhone and Samsung Galaxy, using this type of coating, were dunked into a bowl of water and were still working even below the surface.

The hi-tech coating will be available ‘pre-sprayed’ on iPods and other Apple devices in the near future it seems. Even if Apple and Samsung don’t officially offer devices that are pre-sprayed, part of the company, Zagg, is to incorporate the HZO coating into custom iPhones next year, and offer pre-treated phones for sale.

So will 2012 be the year of waterproof smartphones and tablets? It certainly looks that way.

[ source ]

The iTunes App Store is filled with a lot of apps that allow the managing, editing or sharing of photos. Although most of the apps are quite helpful, it’s very rare that we find something that can be called impressive. But the newly launched GroupShot app is pretty special.

If you love taking photos, you should know that it is quite difficult to keep people still while taking snaps. Some tend to blink with perfect timing while some people look away or do something else. Whatever they do, the photo won’t turn out to be what you wanted. That’s where GroupShot comes in.

The new photo editing app, from Israeli-based startup Macadamia Apps, is coming with face-swapping. With the new app, you will be able to select two or more photos from your iPhone’s camera reel, iCloud’s PhotoStream, or from the photos you clicked directly with the cam.

If you want to replace a face on a photo, you just have to rub over the face and the app will automatically swap out the face with a better-looking one from the other photos. The result will be a perfect picture with everyone on it facing the cam and smiling. The app can also select good photos for you to work on.

And while using the app you won’t have to know anything about the complex work that it is doing which includes checking the alignment of different photos, background, where the hair is and more.

The company is planning to launch more image processing apps, including Android ones, in the future. From the looks of things, the upcoming apps are going to be pretty good. You can download GroupShot from here.