iPhone News

Tim Cook speaks out on Apple’s patent battles

Along with making announcements regarding its quarterly performance, Apple also uses its financial earnings calls to offer analysts a chance to ask questions. After all, these are the folks that have to essentially guess how Apple will fair over the next few months.

On today's call, there was one particular question that was both interesting and relevant: "In terms of flexibility in cash and providing more color, how should we think about opportunities regarding patent disputes? Any thoughts about settling vs ongoing litigation?

And here's how Tim Cook responded...

Interesting stats from Apple’s earnings call

We just finished listening to Apple's quarterly earnings call for Q2 of this year, and we managed to pick up some interesting statistics.

As we reported earlier, Apple had another record-breaking financial quarter over the last three months. But it also hit several other high points...

Apple reports record second quarter results: 35M iPhones, 11.8M iPads

We've got just a few minutes here until Apple's quarterly earnings conference call starts, but the company has already released its sales numbers for the past three months. And as usual, they are record-breaking.

Apple posted $39.2 billion dollars in revenue for the quarter, netting close to $12 billion dollars in profit. This was led by sales of 35.1 million iPhones, and 11.8 million iPads. Keep reading for a full breakdown...

In Japan, the iPhone outgrows Android as both now account for 95.6% of smartphones

With just one device family, Apple's iPhone has managed to outgrow Google's Android platform in Japan over the past three months, gaining market share, a survey note out today from research firm comScore indicated. While we've known for awhile that Japan's iOS-Android duopoly is a sign of things to come, the numbers are nonetheless eyebrow-raising.

Together, the two platforms accounted for a staggering 95.6 percent of all smartphones sold in Japan, where still just one in five own a smartphone.

Low smartphone penetration rate in Japan, compared to the one-in-two smartphone penetration rate in the U.S., actually bodes well for Apple. As more folks in Japan upgrade their dumb phones, they are likely to consider the iPhone 4/4S and especially a sixth-generation model that Piper Jaffray's resident Apple analyst Gene Munster deemed "the mother of all upgrades"...

Swipebright: adjust brightness by swiping your status bar

This is probably one of the more intuitive ways to adjust your iPhone's brightness from anywhere. Swipebright allows you to adjust your device's brightness by means of a simple swipe of the status bar.

It may not sound all that exciting, but it's a fairly convenient tweak to have, and it only costs $0.99 to add it to your jailbroken iPhone.

Take a gander inside for a full video demo of Swipebright in action...

Google Drive launches with 5 GB of free cloud storage space [VIDEO]

Just as Microsoft took the wraps off of paid storage tiers for its SkyDrive service yesterday, Dropbox updated its iOS and desktop apps with the ability to easily grab a public link for any file or folder on your machine or Dropbox. And now, Google has just beefed up its own cloud storage by launching the brand new Google Drive service, as rumored.

And just as we were processing this news, Google's official video introduction to Google Drive went live on their YouTube channel...

Government officials say Proview owns iPad trademark as court mediates a settlement

The rights to use the iPad moniker in the 1.33 billion people market of China belong to the bankrupt display maker Proview, a Chinese government official told Reuters this morning.

The official quote indicates that Chinese government is very much interested in helping Proview prevail by gently pushing Apple into a court-moderated mediation leading to a possible settlement.

The mediation was first hinted by IDG News Service last week. Should Apple continue its court fight with Proview to lose the case, it could face a big fine plus a country-wide ban on iPad sales in China...

AT&T activates 4.3M iPhones, representing 78% of Q1 smartphone sales

Carrier AT&T announced quarterly earnings this morning, revealing they activated 4.3 million iPhones during the first quarter of this year, with 21 percent new to AT&T. The figure represents a substantial decrease over the 7.6 million iPhones the company activated during the holiday quarter of last year, when the iPhone 4S launched in the U.S.

On a more realistic annual basis, it's a healthy 19 percent growth. And with three out of four smartphones sold in the quarter being iPhones, the nation's second-largest wireless operator definitely remains the iPhone network no matter how you look at it.

Also notable, AT&T's quarterly iPhone activations easily beat the 3.2 million iPhones Verizon activated during the first quarter of 2012. Apple is scheduled to report its quarterly earnings today after the markets close, at 5pm Eastern / 2pm Pacific. The company will webcast the earnings call and we will be at hand to relay important tidbits as they happen...

Cloud storage price comparison: iCloud vs. SkyDrive vs. Dropbox vs. SugarSync

Microsoft yesterday updated its iOS SkyDrive client and released a brand new app for both Windows and Mac desktops while putting into effect paid storage upgrades.

At the same time, Dropbox released an updated iOS client with new sharing capabilities and Google upped Google Docs storage to 5 GB.

iDownloadBlog thought you might be interested to check out how major cloud storage services fare in terms of value so we've put together a handy comparison matrix providing an at-a-glance overview of paid tiers available from iCloud, Dropbox, SkyDrive and SugarSync...

Status update on the iOS 5.1 jailbreak

We've had a lot of folks asking us what the status is on the iOS 5.1 jailbreak, so we figured we'd give you guys an update with the latest info. As usual, pod2g has given us some insight into the progress of the hackers via a recent string of tweets.

The good news is that they have managed to bypass the ASLR (Address Space layout randomization) already. The complicated security measure could've taken much longer. The bad news is that a public jailbreak still seems to be a ways out...

Top jailbreak videos of the week

What a wonderful week for iOS goodness. Not only did we get an iPhone unlock that works across a variety of devices, we also received awesome updates to Mobile Substrate along with a few new Cydia tweaks.

Be warned, there's a lot of content in this week's top videos post. The Nest Learning Thermostat makes an appearance, along with a new iPad multitasking concept video. All of that coupled with a detailed overview of one of the best iPad remote desktop solutions available makes this week's post a can't miss.

Please be sure to share our iPhone, iPad, and iOS video guides by spreading our posts on Twitter and Facebook.

Rumor: Chinese parts vendor leaks next-generation iPhone home buttons

Oh great, it looks like next-generation iPhone part leaks are starting early this year. Apple Bitch points to TVC-Mall, a Chinese parts vendor, who has listed "iPhone 5" home buttons for sale on its website.

While the buttons look fairly similar to those found on current iOS devices, the vendor claims that they are in fact noticeably different...