In Other News: 25/04/2013.

• Oppo's Weibo page share details of the new R809T a device which has a 4.7-inch 720p touchscreen, an 8 MP rear and 2 MP front camera arrangement, an unspecified quad-core processor clocked at 1.2GHz, along with 1 GB of RAM and Android 4.2 Jelly Bean! The whole thing is a mere 6.93mm thick, but at the moment there's no word on pricing or availability, but we can probably expect this to stay inside China!
  Via UnwiredView.

• TorrentFreak have spotted a patent filed by McAfee, the internet security firm, which says that they are working on a system to 'detect and prevent illegal consumption of content on the internet.' This is basically a blacklisting tool and we can see record companies paying a lot of money for companies to block websites with illegal files one. We'll keep an eye on this one!
  Via Bit-Tech.

• Twitter for Mac has been updated for the first time in two years today! The update adds new languages, a host of  fixes, new photo sharing options and support for Retina displays amongst other things!
  Via Engadget.

• Blackberry have confirmed that Skype will their upcoming Q10 smartphone from day one! For those of you with a Z10 there's a bit more of a wait while Blackberry work on a software update to make everything play nice!
  Via Reuters.

• Sprint are rolling out updates to the Motorola Photon Q and the Samsung Galaxy S3. The Electron Q is getting Jelly Bean while the Galaxy S3 is getting multiview, just as T-Mobile are rolling out Android 4.1.1 to the HTC One S through a huge 675MB update!
  Via PhoneDog and AndroidPolice.

• LG are rolling out Jelly Bean to the Optimus L7 and the 4XHD in the UK!

*ANNOUNCEMENT*Android Jelly Bean Update is now available for UK Optimus L7 and 4XHD Smartphones! twitter.com/LGUK/status/32…
— LG Electronics UK (@LGUK) April 25, 2013

• Draw Something 2 is now available for iOS! You can buy it for $2.99 or you can have the game for free if you're prepared to deal with ads!
  Via TheVerge. 

• LG has promised a flexible display will be available by the end of the year on a mobile phone! Apparently this promise will be watched closely because yield on flexible displays are still said to be quite low!
  Via TheVerge.

And finally, a security hole has been found in the Viber app for Android which lets people bypass the lockscreen! Check it out in the video below, but don't worry too much because Viber have said that they're aware of the issue and that a fix is on the way!

Via PhoneArena.

Read More

The Xperia Z joins the lockscreen bypass club as the Xperia Tablet S gets a software update schedule!

   It seems there's a lot of bedroom research going on at the moment as people find new vulnerabilities and ways to get past lockscreens! There's a complicated route which requires a little bit of luck on Samsung's Galaxy devices, Apple's iPhone has a few and now Sony's Xperia Z is the latest to join the prestigious club! 

   The video below outlines the way to bypass the lockscreen, but all you really need is a little knowledge of the test codes for the Xperia Z and well a screen locked Xperia Z! Sony may well have just fixed the Random death issues on the phone, but we expect there will be a patch for this in no time! If you're interested in seeing the exploit in action check out the video at the bottom of this post.

   On a slightly unrelated note, Sony have finally revealed their plans to update the Xperia Tablet S to Android Jelly Bean! The exact statement is no longer available, but it seems that the Xperia blog managed to grab the wording just before. The statement read:

"We will be releasing Jelly Bean for the Xperia Tablet end of April 2013 / early May 2013 for the Xperia Tablet. This update will resolve a memory management issue that may cause the Xperia Tablet to shut down from time to time.
Currently we do not have a roadmap to release the Jelly Bean update for the 1st Generation Tablet (Sony Tablet S)."

   That's great news for Xperia Tablet S owners, but not so good for owners of the OG Tablet S like us. To be fair to Sony they have been very good with their updates to the OG Tablet S and so we can't have to many issues if it doesn't go beyond Android 4.0.3!
Via GSMArena and XperiaBlog.

Read More