Who-ho, a Dubai carrier that sells the iPhone may have just kissed good-bye its chances of doing business with Apple. According to GulfNews.com, the United Arab Emirate’s wireless operator etisalat (yes, without capital “e”) has gone official today on a possible iPhone 5 launch. Here’s what their head of corporate communication said:
Yes, we are in talks with most smartphone manufacturers including Apple on the rollout of the 4G handset, iPhone 5 later this year. As the first telecom organisation to roll out the 4G network, LTE, in the Middle East, we have already started talking to them for the handsets and chipsets in them.”
Yeah, and analysts have promised us flying cars, too. Take this one with a healthy dose of skepticism. On the other hand, here we have a corporate communication chief of Apple’s valued carrier partner publicly hinting at a release time-frame of an upcoming Apple handset. Either he doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about – in which case today will be his last day at job – or he’s just inadvertently confirmed September launch rumors .
The publication’s business editor Saifur Rahman explained that etisalat is finishing up a nationwide deployment of its 4G LTE network, due to launch commercially in the third quarter, when the next iPhone is said to hit the market. Note he also implied in no uncertain terms that iPhone will support fourth-generation networks using Long-Term Evolution (LTE) radio technology. They also covered the Emirate of Abu Dhabi with the advanced fiber-optic network. Etisalat’s 4G LTE network will be capable of download speeds up to 150 megabytes per second, Rahman noted.
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In addition to the newly discovered ability to render 1080p videos on A4-powered devices by scaling down high-definition content on-the-fly, a tipster pointed out that the iOS 5 software development kit ups the maximum resolution for video exports from 720p all the way up to 1080p. The iOS 5 media framework now rocks a new video export option: A 1920-by-1080 full HD preset. Previously, programmers calling system APIs were only able to export video content up to the 720p resolution. The change has been spotted in the export preset strings of AVAsset, an abstract class of AV Foundation framework which has been around since iOS 4.
Programmers use the AVAsset class to work on a detailed level with timed media assets such as videos and sounds. It lets them examine, create, edit or reencode media files, get input streams from devices, manipulate video clips during realtime capture and playback and more. It is now clear that iOS 5 enables devices such as iPhone 4, iPad 1 and 2 and fourth-generation iPod touch to both decode 1080p videos and encode content in 1080p. This completes the picture and is another indication that the rumors of an eight-megapixel camera with 1080p video capture on iPhone 5 are likely true because there is no point in iOS 5 supporting 1080p video exports if users won’t be able to acquire full-HD content on their iPhone 5.
It is already possible to load a 1080p movie on your iPhone 4 which runs a developer preview of iOS 5. It works smoothly and looks great. The system media player automatically scales down a 1080p file in real-time to your device’s display resolution. I’ve successfully tested this myself. First I downloaded a 1080p Tron trailer to my Mac, trimmed it down to a short 19MB segment that I emailed to myself. From there, I checked the email message on my iPhone 4, tapped on the 1080p MOV attachment and it played back without any hiccup. With the new 1080p export option, system apps like YouTube and Apple’s programs such as iMovie will gain the ability to export videos in 1080p. We can also expect that iTunes will enable you to load up your device with 1080p videos when the stable iOS 5 version ships. Best of all, third-party developers will only need to adjust their code slightly in order to take into account the new video export preset.
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Just as MuscleNerd informed the world that the iPhone-dev Team has successfully jailbroken a developer beta of iOS 5, the team two hours ago released an updated redsn0w beta tool that lets you put unsanctioned apps on your devices running a developer preview of iOS 5. Unlockers should avoid this jailbreak as they are very likely to lose their unlockable baseband if they try to install iOS 5, the team warned. Other useful things to know…
The redsn0w beta tool is Mac-only but a Windows version will likely be developed at a later stage, MuscleNerd tweeted. Therefore, this jailbreak is only for Mac users of iOS 5 beta. It supports third- and fourth-generation iPod touch, iPad 1, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 (both CDMA and GSM version). This being a tethered jailbreak also means you’ll need to use the redsn0w tool each time you restart your device and also to use apps like Cydia and Safari. “If you see a white icon for Cydia, or if Cydia or Safari crash when you open them, it’s because you didn’t boot tethered”, the team explained.
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Liz Gannes writes for All Things D that Apple’s social integration in iOS 5 includes much more than Twitter, which was formally announced during the WWDC 2011 keynote on Monday. Look no further than contact cards in a developer version of iOS 5, Gannes writes:
The contact information page in the iOS 5 address book has a field not just for Twitter, but also offers space to add friends’ handles on Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn and Myspace. Alongside a person’s email address and phone number, an iOS user can also add links to their accounts around the Web. Then Apple auto-populates the URL for each of the services. Clicking on the account name opens up Safari to that person’s profile page.
In addition to four additional social networks, iOS 5 contact cards also include an option to add custom service by pasting a profile URL.
Of course, this little discovery in no way means that the final version of iOS 5, which ships this fall, will support other social networks as Apple may have provided said hooks simply to eventually enable greater social integration in iOS down the road. It is also possible that these fields are just what they appear to be, the place to provide links to your contacts’ profiles on popular social networks. It makes sense not to stop at Twitter integration, however, especially given the popularity of other social networks and the fact that social streams are being integrated in rival mobile operating systems.
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Just a little follow up
Gevey SIM is a hardware-based unlocking method for iPhone 4 which works with most basebands. Today, we received a tip from a reader who has tested Gevey SIM on iOS 5… and it works!
It involves using a thinner-than-normal SIM card which actually needs to be inserted along with the actual SIM card into the SIM slot. Then, you have to follow a few steps such as dialing an emergency number (112), turning Flight Mode off and on etc. to unlock your iPhone 4. It works without jailbreaking.
The method is a controversial one as its legitimacy is questionable based on the fact that it is not exactly right to misuse emergency calls.
We wrote about it before back in March and stated that it worked only up to iOS 4.3. Well, it appears that Gevey SIM’s magic still works on iOS 5.
Reader Usman sent in these screenshots of his iPhone 4 hardware unlocked using Gevey SIM running a beta version of iOS 5:
The photos clearly show the iPhone running on iOS 5 with baseband 04.11.04.
Even though the jailbreak, as of now, is tethered. But as time goes by, there probably will be an untethered jailbreak available. The Dev-Team has shown time and time again just how capable they are and we can trust them to deliver again when iOS 5 comes around.
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If you’re outside the US, don’t get too excited about iTunes iCloud music services like re-downloading and iTunes Match streaming, because you’ll likely have to wait until 2012 if not later before it comes to your region. According to The Telegraph, Apple’s iTunes in the Cloud music storage service will not be coming to UK users until the first quarter of 2012 at the very earliest. A spokesman for the Performing Right Society (PRS), which is responsible for ensuring songwriters and music publishers are paid for their work told The Telegraph the bad news.
Negotiations with Apple about ensuring rights in the UK had started but were at a “very early stage”. The licensing team at the PRS have started talks with Apple, but are a long way off from any deals being signed…It is very much the early stages of the negotiations and is similar to the launch of iTunes – which began in the US and took a while to roll out to other countries.
The Telegraph also confirmed the details with a major record label executive who told it that talks had started between the major labels and Apple. Again however the term “early stages” was used and it wasn’t expected to be completed until 2012.
The story will likely be the same in other countries. One look at how widely supported iTunes TV Show rentals, movies, and other services are around the world shows just how fragmented and complicated media licenses remands. Added to that, media executives in other countries might take a wait-and-see attitude with iCloud, watching US performance, before they even negotiate with Apple.
