Apple to Double Battery Capacity in Next iPad

Apple to bring more power to the next iPad's battery?

The iPad 2 has an astounding battery that can last up to a month in standby mode. That's all while maintaining the sub-processes that happen when the iPad 2 is sleeping such as pulling in push notifications and powering the hardware to make that possible. A one-month standby battery was also introduced in the new MacBook Air because it was a great feature. Just when we thought that battery life was getting good, industries surprise us with numbers that double the battery capacity of the current iPad 2 with the next iPad.

The current iPad 2 has a battery capacity of about 6,500mAH whereas we are expecting a a capacity of about 14,000mAH in the upcoming iPad battery. It's just slightly over double what we have now. The two producers of Apple's lithium-ion batteries are Simplo Technology and Dynapack - both of which wouldn't comment on the matter.

Spire - A Simple Siri Installer for iOS 5 Devices

A trio of iOS developers: Grant Paul (Chpwn), Ryan Petrich, and Steven Troughton-Smith have recently released a new Siri port called Spire. This port mirrors all the iPhone 4S Siri functionality and works on the following iDevices: iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch 3G, iPod Touch 4G, and iPad (first generation).

According to a blog post from Chpwn, Spire comes in at around 100mb and the developers recommend connecting to a Wi-Fi network for downloading, not a standard cellular network because of its large file size. As of right now, there have been a few Siri ports which have gone public through Cydia but they were all deemed to be unsafe and illegal by the development community. This was a result of these ports distributing Apple copyrighted materials. According to Chpwn, “Spire uses a new method to obtain the files necessary for Siri, so it doesn’t have the copyright issues encountered by previous attempts.”

[Review] Forward All Your SMS to Email

This new tweak lets you email your SMS to yourself.

Are you worried that someone might be using your iPhone when you're not looking? Then a new jailbreak tweak dubbed iForward might be just what you're looking for. The tweak can be downloaded in Cydia beginning today and it's been brought to the Cydia store by none other than Ryan Conigliaro. iForward is compatible with iOS 4 and iOS 5 and it has some configurable settings that you can change in the Settings application as shown in the image above. You can monitor your SMS or calling through email.

After you link your email to the tweak, you will get an email notification every time an SMS message is sent on your iPhone. You can configure only one email address at a time but it will let you know if someone else is using your iPhone. You can get notifications not only for SMS and calling but also for voice mail. Sometimes we overlook our voice mail and missed calls often, and getting a small notification to remind us that it's there is just what we need to get to it.

Untethered 5.0.1 jailbreak for Non-A5 Devices Released

@pod2g has released the iOS 5.0.1 untethered jailbreak for non-A5 devices.

Let that marinate for a minute. Take a deep breath. Start downloading.

The long awaited untethered jailbreak for iOS 5.0.1 has been highly anticipated and extensively chronicled with every little bit of news making headlines in the Jailbreak community. Recently @pod2g handed off his hard work to both the iPhone devteam and chronic devteam.

“A few days ago, @pod2g gave the untether to both the iPhone devteam and the chronic devteam. We’ve put it into redsn0w 0.9.10 and PwnageTool, and the chronic devteam put it into a Cydia package (the same set of exploits is in all three)” — iPhone devteam

Here’s how to finally get the untethered jailbreak:

Boxee's Mac Media Player Will See It's Last Update - New Focus on Boxee Box and iPads

The Boxee project is one that has come a long way from when it first started as a fork of the Xbox Media Center, bringing easy video playback and a couch-to-screen UI to the Mac, then later to Windows and Ubuntu, and now to the company’s dedicated Boxee Box hardware (which is said to support live broadcast TV soon). There’s a solid ecosystem of app developers making themselves at home with Boxee as of right now too.

Report: iPhone 4S to Arrive in China by Chinese New Year

On December 10th, MMi reported that China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) finally issued the network access permit for the iPhone 4S. This permit was the last obstacle standing in Apple’s way to officially sell the iPhone 4S in China. Subsequently, China Unicom said that it expected to launch the device by the end of the month.

Now as we stand on the precipice of January and the start of a new year, one thing remains the same: no iPhone 4S in China yet. And it won't be there before the end of the month - and year - as originally planned. But there's a new time frame in mind for the popular Apple device's Chinese debut: January 23rd.

Italy Dishes Out Million Dollar Fine to Apple

The boot-shaped European nation is putting its boots to Apple's behind this week. On Tuesday, Italy’s antitrust body slapped Apple, Inc. with a $1.2 million penalty.

I'll pause for a moment while you chuckle at how small of a fine that is to Apple.

Okay, now that we've all had a good laugh, let's look at the reason for the fine. According to Italian authorities, Apple is being punished for its misleading tactics in encouraging customers to buy the AppleCare Protection Plan. The problem, according to published reports out of Italy, is that Apple largely fails to inform consumers that the purchase of an iDevice already comes with a guaranteed and lengthy period of compulsory free customer support from Apple.

iOS and Android Activations Reach An All-Time High on Christmas Day - Up 353%

According to analytics from Flurry, devices running Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android platform ended up seeing a huge spike in activations on Chrismas day, growing 353% from average totals earlier in December. In the first 20 days of December, mobile device activations tracked by analytics firm Flurry were around 1.5 million ech day. On December 25th, the firm identified 6.8 million new iOS and Android activations – representing a 353% growth.

BGR: Rumored Physical Attributes of iPhone 5

On Tuesday, BGR posted the latest rumors and chatter coming from its sources with regard to the iPhone 5 - Apple's next generation iPhone scheduled for launch in 2012.

Despite earlier claims from the likes of prominent Wall Street watchers and analysts like Gene Munster, the iPhone 5 may not turn up in early summer, keeping with the new fall-time iPhone launch tradition apparently set this year.

BGR says the iPhone 5 won't reach consumers until the fall of 2012, a full year after the iPhone 4S dropped to record sales. But consistent with the predictions of Munster and others, new design elements will factor into the picture for Apple's next-gen smartphone.

Cydia Gets Updated to Version 1.1.3

Cydia has been updated with the new jailbreak.

This morning voices around the world cheered as hacker pod2g and the Chronic Dev Team whipped up an untethered jailbreak for all A4 devices and older running iOS 5.0.1. The untethered jailbreak was released in two forms - one of which was the new redsn0w 0.9.10b1 and the other was the Cydia package known as Corona that could be installed while you had the tethered jailbreak to untether your iDevice. As most probably simply restored the device to start fresh with a new jailbreak - you probably noticed something different at the bottom of Cydia, or you may not have, and that would be that it has been updated from version 1.1.1 to version 1.1.3.