Archive for the ‘iphone’ Category

Just in case you thought Saturday was too long to wait for an iPhone security patch, no reason to worry: Apple on Friday released iPhone Software Update 3.0.1, which fixes the SMS vulnerability demonstrated at the Black Hat security conference on Thursday. Earlier on Friday, U.K. wireless operator O2 said Apple would release the fix on Saturday.

The flaw, disclosed by security researchers Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner, could have allowed a vulnerable phone, such as an iPhone, to be taken over remotely. Apple attributes the flaw in the CoreTelephony framework to a memory corruption issue in the decoding of SMS messages, and credits the find to Miller and

If the calendar is about to flip over to summer, it must be time for Apple toroll out another smartphone. Just as summer 2007 saw the release of the original iPhone and last summer brought us the iPhone 3G, this year, we’ve got a new model to obsess over – the iPhone 3G S.

And we won’t have long to wait before this new phone winds up in our hot little hands. Apple announced the iPhone 3G S during Monday’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote; it plans to release the iPhone 3G S next Friday, June 19.

Can’t wait until then to find out all you can about the iPhone 3G S? We’ve perused Apple’s product pages, talked to company executives, and made some educated guesses about what you can expect from this latest addition to the iPhone family.

How is this iPhone different from the iPhone 3G?

Well, there’s an “S” in the name. You noticed that, right?

Actually, as far as Apple is concerned, the S is more than just a humble naming convention. “The ‘S’ simply stands for speed,” Apple senior vice president for worldwide product market Phil Schiller told the WWDC keynote audience, and as far as the company is concerned, that’s the main selling point for the iPhone 3G S.

According to Apple, this is the fastest iPhone yet–up to two times faster and more responsive than the iPhone 3G. Specifically, Apple says that apps will launch faster and that it will take less time to jump between apps, say, by clicking a link in an e-mail to open a Web page in the mobile Safari browser. Speaking of browsing, Web pages should render faster on the iPhone 3G S, too.

How much faster? During the keynote, Schiller quoted a few numbers–loading a game was 2.4 times faster on the iPhone 3G S than on the iPhone 3G. Viewing attachments was 3.6 times faster. Loading the NYTimes.com Web page was 2.9 times faster. And so on. Of course, we’ll have to wait until the new phone ships to verify these numbers or confirm if the improved performance is that noticeable.

(more…)