Taiwan-based Pegatron Corporation, which has long been Apple's secondary product manufacturer after Foxconn, has begun automating production lines where gadgets for other companies are being assembled. As a result of increased automation at the Shanghai plant, the company cut back on new hires, said its chairman TH Tung according to Chinese media quoted Thursday by DigiTimes.
As you know, the next iPhone is expected to ditch the 3.5mm analog audio jack for wireless headphones, powered by Bluetooth, and wired ones, driven by Lightning. Now, certain sources are adamant that the handset may ship with a Lightning-to-3.5-mm audio adapter in the box so that folks could continue using their existing audio accessories.
Today, we get another glimpse of the claimed adapter in a set of leaked images and an accompanying high-resolution video. This latest leak came on Thursday via Vietnamese blog Tinhte.vn, which claims to have received the adapter from a Foxconn factory.
LG Display, one of the Asian companies that provide screens for Apple products, yesterday announced plans to spend an additional 1.99 trillion won, or about $1.75 billion, on its sixth-generation “P9” flexible OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) production line in Paju. More OLED facilities are coming soon in Paju and Gumi, LG said.
Samsung this morning announced results for the second calendar quarter ended June 30, and the numbers are encouraging despite global smartphone sales cooling down. The South Korean conglomerate's mobile division reported “substantial earnings improvement” buoyed by strong sales of its flagship Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge flagship smartphones.
The data is newsworthy given strong competition Samsung has been facing on the low-end from Chinese rivals like Xiaomi and Huawei and on the high-end from Apple's iPhone. This is the best earning result Samsung has posted in two years, by the way.
Last week, revered leakster Evan Blass of @EVLeaks predicted that Apple's next iPhone would launch on the week of September 12. He later clarified that he was referring to the iPhone 7's retail release—which should happen on Friday, September 16—not the launch event. Following up on his claims, Blass wrote today on Twitter that Apple will kick off pre-orders for the device on Friday, September 9.
Phil Schiller, Apple's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, has been named to biotechnology company Illumina's board of directors. According to Illumina's announcement, Phil’s track record and global experience in marketing world-class products “will help guide us as we continue to develop innovative new solutions for our customers.”
Of course, Apple's interest in health-related technologies for the Apple Watch is well known. Illuminas President and CEO, Francis deSouza, said that Phil's vision, integrity and passion are “fully aligned” with Illumina’s core values.
Pokémon GO Plus, a Bluetooth-driven wearable device that helps you catch 'em all without looking at Nintendo's Pokémon GO augmented-reality game on your smartphone, is now set to launch in September, not late-July as previously announced. Nintendo of America tweeted news of the delay earlier this week.
“The Pokemon GO Plus accessory will now be released Sept 2016 instead of the originally expected end of July launch,” reads the announcement.
Over the weekend, Pangu and 25PP launched a jailbreak for iOS 9.2-9.3.3, and not long after, iOS developers found a way to make the jailbreak possible via the Safari web browser without the need to use a computer.
Unfortunately, however, Apple appears to be blocking the enterprise certificate that has been used in this process, so attempting jailbreaks from the device itself isn't currently working.
Apple on Wednesday announced that it recently passed the 1 billion iPhones sold milestone. In a press release, the company said that during a staff meeting in Cupertino this morning, Tim Cook told employees that they had sold their one billionth handset last week.
The news comes just a day after Apple issued its third quarter earnings report, in which it said it sold just over 40 million iPhones during the 3-month period. That number is down some 7 million units from Q3 2015, but obviously they still have a reason to celebrate.
In addition to adding support for Accelerated Mobile Pages to Chrome for iOS, Google also this morning issued a refresh to its native search app on the App Store, which supports Google Now cards. Google 17.0 for iOS, a free download, packs in improvements to help you get things done more quickly in the app such as the addition of a Forward button (what took them so long, really?), a more reliable voice search, the ability to revisit recent pages for a full seven days and a few local search results improvements.
Google today issued a small but important refresh to the Chrome browser for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch on the App Store. The updated software bumps up version number to 52.0.2743.84 and brings official support for Accelerated Mobile Pages that, similar to Instant Articles on Facebook, load in a fraction of the time of their non-accelerated mobile versions. Any news stories and articles from partner publishers that have a lightning bolt and “AMP” next to them in search results will load instantly when tapped on.
Apple's first retail store in Singapore appears to be progressing nicely, with new photos obtained by MacRumors proving that the construction of the store's glass facade and canopy is now well underway. Apple confirmed in November 2015 that its first-ever store in the Southeast Asia city-state will be powered by hundred percent renewable energy, but did not provide a timeframe for the opening.
The store location has been under renovation since earlier this year.