iPhone 5 specs, release date, and price

It's finally here. The fifth generation iPhone, aka iPhone 5, was officially announced yesterday and it's coming to the stores pretty soon. Let's look at some of the specs and features of the iPhone 5.

First of all, there were some major changes in the exterior specs. The iPhone 5 holds a 4 inch screen. Although it is still relatively a small screen compared to other smart phones, it is a big improvement for Apple as all the iPhones in the past always had 3.5 inch screen. Software wise, a fifth row for app icons on the home screen has been added due to the bigger screen. However, I discovered that the screen is not full HD because the total pixel count is 1,136 x 640 and that 640 line needs to be at least 720 pixels to be a full HD. I thought that was a bit of a disappointment. On top of the bigger screen, the iPhone 5 has gotten thinner from 0.37 inch to 0.30 inch and also got lighter and now weigh 3.95 ounces.

Design wise, you can see that the iPhone 5 has a metal back (again) instead of the glass back which caused some problems on iPhone 4 and 4S where people kept dropping it and it cracking. Apple also changed the color of the metal frame to dark navy ish color. The dock connector has gotten smaller as you all probably know by now and the audio jack was moved to the bottom which I thought was a little odd.

I know this was expected but the 4G LTE network will be available in addition to the GPRS, EDGE, EV-DO, and HSPA data network that's currently available for the iPhone 5. The question is which carrier will support an LTE iPhone 5. In Australia, Telstra, Optus, and Virgin Mobile; in the US, AT&T, Spring, and Verizon Wireless; in Canada, Rogers, Bell, Telus, Fido, Virgin, and Kudo; in Asia, SoftBank, SmarTone, SingTel, SK Telecom; in Europe, Deutsche Telekom and EE. Carriers that do not support LTE will still be able to use the iPhone 5 but will have to run on dual-band 3.5G HDPA+.

Now let's move on to the inside of the iPhone 5. A faster chip, A6 vs the current A5 chip, was installed in the iPhone 5 and the chip will generate much faster speed in graphics yet being 22 percent smaller than the A5 chip. You will be able to see Web pages load 2.1 times faster and the Music app 1.9 times faster. The battery is much more powerful in order to accommodate the battery draining LTE. Battery life is always quite misleading but according to Apple, you will get 8 hours of 3G talk, 8 hours of 3G browsing, 8 hours of LTE browsing, 10 hours of Wi-Fi browsing, 10 hours of video playback, 40 hours of music playback, and 225 hours of standby time.

One last thing, Apple decided to give a name to its camera, "iSight". Nothing really changed about the camera itself but they added a few handy features to it. The iSight has backside illumination, a hybrid IR filter, a five-element lens, and a f2.4 aperture. There is also the new dynamic light mode and you will be able to take pictures in panorama mode.


The iPhone 5 will be available in black and white version on September 21 to Australia, United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. The phone will start selling in other countries by the end of this year. The phone will be available in 16GB for $199, 32GB for $299, and the 64GB for $399.

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Android malware vulnerability statistics

With the technology growing so fast, it's not only the PCs that are vulnerable to viruses but we also need to be cautious with our mobile devices. It has been reported that the rate of Android devices getting infected with malware viruses varies by country.

If you look at the graph above created by Lookout Mobile, a security software for Android mobile devices, the U.S. has the lowest rate of malware infection with less than one percent whereas the Russia has the highest with 42 percent. The second highest is Ukraine with 28 percent, then China with 7.6 percent, and Israel with 2.6 percent. Some European countries like France and Germany have a fairly low risk of infection with less than 0.4 percent. These numbers are based on the calculations of app-based threats and web-based threats. Lookout added all the number of threats on new Lookout users within their first week of use and divided it by the total number of registered users and kept the record monthly.

I want to warn the readers to be cautious of the apps you download because these people can easily create fake apps to infect your hardware. Here's a good tip for securing your Android:

1. Stick to the official Google Play store, if it's available in your country.
2. Password-protect your phone. Always. You just never know when you might lose your phone, but why risk having all that stored data fall into the wrong hands?
3. Download an Android security suite with antivirus detection, for all those apps you sideload.
4. Use a Web shield in your mobile browser to block phishing attacks and other Web-based threats; most suites will include this.
5. Block apps with adware with an app like Lookout Ad Network Detector (unfortunately not integrated in its Editors' Choice suite) or Trustgo Antivirus and Mobile Detector.

source: https://www.mylookout.com/resources/reports/state-of-mobile-security-2012

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iPhone 5 launch date announced

The long waited iPhone 5 is finally going to be officially launched. Apple will be holding a launch event on September 12, unveiling their next generation iPhone, commonly known as the iPhone 5. There seems to have been a lot more hype on this iPhone compared to the predecessors and we're about to find out why. Following this event, Apple will announce the 7-inch iPad in October so there's a lot to look forward to in the Fall season for Apple.

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Pirate Bay founder arrested.

Recently, one of the highly used torrent site was shut down DDoS and now a founder of even a bigger site, Pirate Bay, got arrested in Cambodia. Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, co-founder of Pirate Bay, has been living in Cambodia since 2009 when the officials started tracking down the torrent site owners. In 2009, the four Pirate Bay founders had to pay US$4.4 million and serve one year in prison. Then in November 2010, all four except Warg, who was ill at the time, appealed their sentences. From then, Warg just kept pushing back his dates and finally got the international warrant in April 2012 to pursue him.

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Sony 4K TV coming to Australia in December

It was announced today that Sony's 84 inch TV with 4000 pixels is finally coming to Australia. The actual resolution of this 4K TV is 3,840 x 2,160 compared to 1,920 x 1,080 on most TVs today commonly known as 1080p. People are still questioning whether there are enough 4K contents available for us to spend that much money on a TV. It's nice to see how the technology is evolving, from LCD TVs to OLED TV and now the 4K TV. It's funny tho, because Sony wasn't able to come through with the OLED TV alone. As for the TV, I personally don't like the stand but the body design looks pretty nice.

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Samsung Galaxy Note 2 specs leaked

Samsung's Galaxy Note 2, or what I like to call it Galaxy S3 with better design, is quite stunning. Like most new phones coming out now, it's running on 1.4GHz quad core processor and pretty much have the same specs as the Galaxy S3. However, the Note 2 will hold 5.5 inch screen which is .2 inch bigger than the original Galaxy Note.

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Motorola RAZR M 4G LTE

With the recent announcement of the LG's Optimus G, it seems like the competitors are feeling pressured to win the LTE smart phone battles. This quad core Motorola phone has a 4.3 inch qHD super AMOLED display and it will run on Snapdragon S4 processor, 1GB RAM and a 8MP camera that can take 1080p videos. I personally don't like the design on this phone and the fact that it's a Motorola doesn't seem that reliable. It seems like there are quite a few new phones coming out like I mentioned in the previous post so I'm just gonna wait and see.

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