INQ Mobile intros new phones; adds Twitter

Cellphone maker INQ Mobile is launching two new low-cost cellphones optimized for social networking applications to give mobile subscribers alternatives to more expensive smartphones.
INQ, which is owned by Hong Kong's Hutchison Whampoa, launched its first low-cost, "smartphone-lite" device earlier this year. And now the company is expanding its portfolio with two new devices, one of which has a full QWERTY keypad.
The phones do not run full browsers and the operating system used on the device is Java-based and not nearly as sophisticated as smartphone operating systems used on devices such as the Apple iPhone or Research in Motion's BlackBerry.
But INQ has integrated many of the most popular Web services, such as Facebook and Twitter, onto their handsets to give consumers a smartphone-like experience at a much lower price point. And because the device is not considered a smartphone, subscribers can typically sign up for less expensive data plans using the INQ phones.
In addition to tight integration for one-click access to Facebook, Twitter, and other Web services like Skype, the new INQ devices can also sync with unprotected music stored in iTunes and Windows Media Player.
Just how cheap are the INQ phones? Well, if AT&T can sell the Apple iPhone for $99 with a two-year contract, INQ CEO Frank Meehan believes that U.S. operators could afford to offer the INQ mobile devices for anywhere between $25 and $50 with a two year wireless service contract. And in many cases operators could even offer the phones for free in exchange for a two-year service commitment.
The two new phones announced this week are the INQ Chat 3G phone, which has a full-QWERTY keypad and looks like a colorful BlackBerry, and the INQ Mini, which is shaped like a candy-bar and comes with a standard cell phone keypad. The devices are expected to go on sale in six countries on Hutchison's operator 3 later this year. These countries include the U.K., Ireland, Sweden, Italy, Australia, and Hong Kong.
The Mini, which will cost less than $150 without a carrier subsidy, will go on sale in September. And the INQ Chat 3G, which will retail for less than $200 without a carrier subsidy, will go on sale in October.
Meehan said the company is still working on a deal with a U.S. operator. But the phones could end up on this side of the Atlantic next year.

by Marguerite Reardon

Clearwire to bring WiMax to 10 more markets

Clearwire, which is using Sprint Nextel's 2.5GHz spectrum to build a nationwide 4G wireless network, announced Monday 10 more markets that will get the company's Clear WiMax wireless broadband services starting September 1.
Eight of the newly announced cities are in Texas: Abilene, Amarillo, Corpus Christi, Lubbock, Midland/Odessa, Killeen/Temple, Waco, and Wichita Falls. The other two markets are Boise, Idaho, and Bellingham, Wash.
These 10 markets will join four other officially launched WiMax markets: Atlanta, Baltimore, Las Vegas, and Portland, Ore.
Some of the additional markets planned to launch in 2009 include Chicago, Charlotte, N.C., Dallas/Ft. Worth, Honolulu, Philadelphia, and Seattle.
Clearwire says it's on track to launch 80 markets by the end of 2010. In 2010, it plans to roll out service in New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., Houston, and the San Francisco Bay Area among others.
It's important for Clearwire to launch more markets, especially in major cities where its joint venture partners can also resell the service. Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks have each invested in Clearwire, along with Google and Intel. Altogether the companies pitched in $3.2 billion. Comcast and Time Warner Cable have already announced plans to start reselling the WiMax service in areas where they offer cable service. These cable companies plan to bundle the 4G wireless broadband service with their existing high-speed broadband services.
Sprint Nextel, another major Clearwire partner, is also reselling the service combined with its 3G wireless service in some markets, such as Baltimore.
Clearwire uses a technology called WiMax, which offers faster speeds than current 3G wireless technologies, but offers wider coverage than other high-speed wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi. Clearwire claims that it can provide up to 4 megabits per second for downloads and 500 kilobits per second for uploading, which is more than double what consumers can expect using a 3G wireless connection.
The Clear WiMax service from Clearwire starts at $20 per month for in-home wireless broadband. And its mobile Internet plans start at $40 per month. Customers can also get a day pass for $10. The company also allows customers to add voice service to their in-home package for $25 per month.

by Marguerite Reardon

VoiceCentral iPhone developer frustrated with Apple

The mystery surrounding Apple's approval process on the App Store is legendary. What gets approved or rejected on any given day can be a source of bewilderment for developers and consumers alike. But the company still surprised everyone when it rejected Google's Voice app for the iPhone on Tuesday.
the story doesn't end there. Apple then proceeded to remove third-party apps from the App Store that it said duplicate features of the iPhone. One of those apps is called VoiceCentral, and the developer is understandably upset.
Riverturn's VoiceCentral has been available in the App Store for the past four months. The app integrates Google's GrandCentral and Google Voice with the iPhone.
Until this week, everything was going fine for the developer. He submitted the app and was approved by Apple. He released updates and they were approved by Apple. Then, all of a sudden and without warning, his app was pulled from the store.
What seems to be the most upsetting part of the whole situation is that the developer can't get any answers from Apple. In a telephone conversation with the Apple representative who was tasked to inform him the app was being removed, the most common answer from Apple seemed to be "I can't say."
In a blog post on Riverturn's Web site Tuesday, the developer paraphrased the call. At one point the developer asks the Apple rep if there's something he can change in the app so it can be resubmitted to the App Store. The response: "I can't say."
The developer then asks, "if we can't figure out the issue then how will we know whether to resubmit the app. And how will we know whether to invest in any other development efforts? Future apps could be impacted."
The response: "I can't help you with that."
As if that wasn't enough, The Unofficial Apple Weblog is reporting that the developer is now being flooded with refund requests from customers. The problem is Apple keeps its 30 percent commission, but the developer has to refund the entire amount to the customer.

Jailbreaking software already works for 3.0.1 iPhone update

So Apple on Friday released an update to the iPhone OS (3.0.1) that takes care of an SMS vulnerability. It's a fairly important patch, and usually when Apple updates the iPhone OS, jailbreakers have to wait until the Dev Team comes out with a new version of jailbreaking software before they can update.
But according to the iPhone Dev Team's Twitter, this is not the case with the 3.0.1 firmware. In fact, the current versions of redsn0w and ultrasn0w work the same with the 3.0.1 firmware as they do with the 3.0 firmware that came out a few weeks ago. In short, the jailbreaking software already works. I checked with the Dev Team community and had this confirmed. "Restore to 3.0.1, run redsn0w, select the 3.0 file... Bang zoom."
So go ahead, iPhone hackers, and secure your devices soon. You don't have to worry about losing Cydia and other rogue apps.

by Matt Hickey

Facebook erroneously sucking in Twitter updates

Reports are surfacing that Twitter users' updates are showing up on their Facebook walls, quite against their wishes.
Twitter previously developed a Facebook app for users of both services that takes in a user's Twitter content and posts it on Facebook. Apparently a lot of people installed it but left it turned off, and now Facebook is, in error, ignoring the setting and letting the app do what it was designed to do even if users don't want it.
There are also reports that the same thing is happening with the Friendfeed app, which quite complicates things since many people give Friendfeed itself access to their Twitter feeds.
Consensus seems to be that a Facebook bug is causing the platform to ignore users' "off" settings on their Twitter and Friendfeed apps. A solution is to block the offending applications (Twitter, Friendfeed) from accessing your profile.

by Rafe Needleman

Researchers attack my iPhone via SMS

LAS VEGAS--Researchers have discovered a way to take complete control over an iPhone merely by sending special SMS messages and demonstrated it on my iPhone at the Black Hat security conference on Wednesday.
Although an attacker could exploit the hole to make calls, steal data, send text messages, and do basically anything that I can do with my iPhone, the researchers were kind and merely rendered it temporarily inoperable.
Here's what happened: While I was talking on the phone to Charlie Miller, his partner, Collin Mulliner, sent me a text message from his phone. One minute I'm talking to Miller and the next minute my phone is dead, and this time it's not AT&T's fault. After a few seconds it came back to life, but I was not able to make or receive calls until I rebooted.
The attack is enabled by a serious memory corruption bug in the way the iPhone handles SMS messages, said Miller, a senior security researcher at Independent Security Evaluators. There is no patch, despite the fact that Apple was notified of the problem about six weeks ago, he said.
The attack is similar to an SMS attack demonstration CNET News wrote about in April in which mobile security firm Trust Digital was able to send an SMS to a phone that opened up a Web browser and directed the phone to a malicious Web site where malware could be downloaded.
In the more recent research, Android-based phones were found to be similarly susceptible to an SMS attack, only an attacker could temporarily knock the phone off the cell network but not take control, according to Mulliner, who's getting his PhD at the Technical University of Berlin. Google patched the hole last week within a day or two of being notified of the problem, he said.
Meanwhile, a bug in the code written by HTC that controls the user interface on Windows Mobile devices could also be exploited via the SMS messages to make it so there are no buttons to push so the phone can't be used, said Miller.
For the attack to work, an attacker must send hundreds of SMS control messages, which are different from regular SMS messages, according to Miller. Only the initial SMS may be seen, he said.
The researchers will demonstrate the attack on an Android phone and an iPhone during their presentation on Thursday.
Previous iPhone attacks required an attacker to lure the iPhone user to visit a malicious Web site or open a malicious file, but this attack requires no effort on the part of the user and requires only that an attacker have the victim's phone number, Miller said.
Once inside a victim's phone, the attacker could then send an SMS to anyone in the victim's address book and spread the attack from phone to phone, he said.
Previously, Miller discovered a hole in the mobile version of Safari shortly after the iPhone was launched in 2007 and earlier this year he won a contest at CanSecWest by exploiting a hole in Safari

by Elinor Mills

Flying surveillance robots coming soon from Aeryon

Your local police may soon be packing flying surveillance bots. At the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit, Aeryon Labs President Dave Kroetsch gave a compelling pitch on his company, which makes a two-pound robot helicopter that has enough on-board intelligence and stability control to allow it to be flown by people who just point to locations on a Google Map-based interface.

The whole kit, including a table-based control module, fits in a suitcase-sized crate and can be quickly assembled in the field. After the user snaps the flying bot together, he or she just tells it where to go by pointing to a spot on a map. The device has a motion-compensated camera that can take 5-megapixel stills and stream video back to the operator's tablet.

The Aeryon Scout and its tablet-based control computer.(Credit: Aeryon)
More specs: Kroetsch says the Aeryon Scout can fly in up to 30 mph winds for up to 20 minutes. It is limited to 500 feet in altitude (to fly under FAA restrictions). One kit costs $50,000.
Aeryon plans to sell to private security forces, and eventually police departments. Kroetsch is doing things in this order because it's easier to get a contract from a private firm than from a cash-strapped police department or grant-funded program at one.
Obvious other markets include construction (for site surveys), other public safety applications, and of course military.
The company is headquartered in Canada and hopes to have United States FAA approval for its flying robot within six months. Sadly, until that approval comes, the Scout is grounded Stateside. And that means no demos for reporters or buyers unless they head up to Canada.