So far, January has been filled with news in the tech world (which includes mobile devices, of course), and the past week was no exception. There was a lot of stuff going on, and below you’ll find the top news in the mobile industry for the past week:
Verizon expanded their LTE coverage
Verizon Wireless added five more cities to their ever-growing 4G LTE network. Their coverage map has now increased to include Glens Fall and Utica in New York, Brownsville and McAllen in Texas and Lawton in Oklahoma. Alongside with that, the coverage and signal strength increased in Atlanta, Houston and Spokane.
Samsung may be releasing the Galaxy S2 HD in the UK
The new Samsung Galaxy S2 HD popped up for a short time on UK’s MobiCity online store, which means that they are getting ready to announce the product officially, and this is great news for everyone, as North America is most probably next in line. The Galaxy S2 HD was recently announced at CES 2012 and is an improved variant of the Galaxy S2, with a 4.65 inch Super AMOLED display and 720p HD resolution, big 1850 mAh battery, and the fastest dual core processor inside running at 1.5 GHz.
The iPhone 4S and iPad 2 received an untethered jailbreak
The iPhone 4S and iPad 2, both of which have the same dual core A5 processor, have finally received an untethered jailbreak, courtesy of the Dev Dream Team. The developers said that the A5 was quite harder to crack than its predecessor, but nonetheless, they were successful in bringing additional capabilities to the users (and voiding the warranty along the way). Up until now, users could still jailbreak their A5 devices, but they needed to connect their iPad 2 or iPhone 4S to their computer in order to keep the jailbreak settings and reset the phone.
Apple revealed the iBooks 2 platform, with e-textbooks for the education system
Apple has announced yet another potentially revolutionary product – the iBooks 2 platform, which includes the new e-textbooks that are supposed to revamp the education system and make it better for everyone. And we can see how that might actually work – having all of the textbooks in electronic format saves a lot of paper, plus the cost of the digital editions themselves will be lower than $15 – that’s practically nothing compared to the usual cost of paper textbooks that students have to buy every single year. The e-textbooks are quite big in size (3 GB for Pearson’s Biology alone), so it’ll probably be wise to get the biggest iPad model possible, unless the iPad 3 will have a micro SD slot.
A German court has ruled against Samsung’s patent infringement claim against Apple
Samsung doesn’t seem to be faring well in Germany at all – after one of the courts found that the company is infringing on one of Apple’s patents, they have also ruled against Samsung’s own patent infringement claim against the iGiant, and although they can still appeal the ruling, it’s highly unlikely that it will change anything.
Sony Ericsson lost $318 million in Q4 2011
Sony Ericsson, which is currently rebranding to Sony after Ericsson’s part was bought out, has posted an abysmal financial record for the last quarter of 2011: they have lost $318 million of pre-tax money, which is even worse than Motorola Mobility’s loss. Sony said that there were a couple of factors contributing to the loss: more competitors, the bad economy, price erosion, the costs of restructuring the former brand, and the effects from the flooding in Thailand. The phones released in 2011 may also be to blame: they’re not exactly the best when it comes to hardware and software, focusing more on style, and it seems that Sony knows that, judging by the improvements in the new Xperia ion and Xperia S.
There’s always something going on in the industry, and you can keep up to date with the most important things on Gadgetmania.com!
