Galaxy S III Will Reportedly Have A 1080p Display, Quad-Core Processor

Lately, there have been quite a few rumors and leaks regarding the Samsung Galaxy S III, revealing the device’s possible specifications and a few other tidbits along the way. And a new report out today from BGR sheds some light on just how big of a launch Samsung has in store for the successor to its flagship Galaxy Android lineup. In a nutshell, it will be big. But can you expect anything less for such a significant device, within the Android world?

Apparently, the Galaxy S III will share the spotlight with the most watched event throughout the world; BGR is hearing that the phone will be the official device of the 2012 Summer Olympics, and, as such, the unveiling event will be appropriately hosted in London. Events will also be hosted in NYC, Seoul, and Dubai to commemorate the unveiling of the phone. Now granted, this is rumor – nothing’s official just yet – but this will be pretty big news if true.

While we’re on the topic of rumors, here’s a quick refresher of the rumored specs of the Galaxy S III: A 1.5GHz quad core Samsung Exynos CPU, an 8MP/2MP camera combo, a ceramic case, 4G LTE(of course), a huge 4.8" screen with a 1080p resolution and 16:9 aspect ration display. To get a bit of a feel for the sheer size of this phone’s display, take a look at the HTC Titan Windows Phone, which has a 4.7" display. Quite massive, but this is sure to satisfy those of you out there who prefer phones with larger displays.

The Galaxy S III is rumored to be available in two tasty color flavors: One, a mixture of blue and black, and the second in white. The phone will be available in 16GB and 32GB storage increments. Also mentioned by BGR is that the device will be made out of a ceramic material, which Samsung hopes will improve the build quality of the Galaxy S III. That has to be my one gripe with the lineup, and Samsung phones in general. The build quality just isn’t there, and the phones feel very plastic-y.
There’s no solid date provided for a release, or even the special unveiling event(s) for that matter, but the phone is expected to launch sometime later this month or in May. 10 million units of the device have already been pre-ordered by channel partners interested in selling the popular device once it hits the shelves.








Source : Redmond Pie

Halo 4 Launch Date Announced

In concluding their E3 2011 keynote, Microsoft reaffirmed fans that the Halo franchise wasn’t dead and showed off a short teaser of Halo 4. Master Chief, the Halo series’ protagonist was ordered to wake up and he navigated around some sort of destroyed space station. It was announced that the game will be released by the 2012 holiday season, and Microsoft has just confirmed earlier rumors that Halo 4 will be released on November 6th. And to commemorate the newest title in the infamous Halo franchise, the game will be featured tonight on Conan.

"We are beginning a new saga with Halo 4 and embarking on a journey that will encompass the next decade of Halo games and experiences," said Phil Spencer, corporate vice president of Microsoft Studios. "Millions of fans worldwide have been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to step back into the boots of Master Chief, and, with Halo 4 leading the charge, we’re confident 2012 will be the most successful year in Xbox history."

The press release in which the news was broken about the official release date notes that Halo 3 – which concluded the initial Halo game trilogy – left many questions unanswered about Master Chief. Halo 4 wishes to solve this problem by providing players with the next chapter in the story.

But at this point, have people grown tired of the Halo franchise? On top of the main Halo trilogy, there was also Halo 3: ODST and a remake of Halo: Combat Evolved. This doesn’t include the HaloWars RTS (real-time strategy) game set in the Halo universe. And of course, this isn’t counting the many books, comics, and other non-video game content that surrounds the title. Putting aside the abundance of Halo games and merchandise, however, perhaps it does have a chance at being agood game. I particularly liked the overall Halo story. I just don’t want them to devalue the title in any way by continuing to make games and milk a dead horse.

Source : Redmond Pie

New LuckyCat Trojan For Mac Discovered, Spreads Through Microsoft Office Word Documents

Just as the Flashback Trojan for Mac was being dealt with by OS X users across the world, a new version of a backdoor Trojan for Apple’s operating system capitalizes on an exploit in Microsoft Word in order to spread.
The security firms have been very busy over the past few weeks, and the latest exploit – called"LuckyCat" has been discovered by an expert from Kaspersky Lab. Having carried out tests on dummy infected machine, he found it could be taken over by a remote user who began analyzing the machine as well as helping him or herself to documents present on the Mac.

Costin Raiu, the expert behind the findings, gave his take on proceedings:

"We are pretty confident the operation of the bot was done manually — which means a real attacker, who manually checks the infected machines and extracts data from them."

The new Trojan, named "Backdoor.OSX.SabPub.a," is only a threat to Mac users, and utilizes a Java exploit to infect a machine it has targeted. Once it has infiltrated the Mac, it then spreads via Microsoft Word documents which exploit a vulnerability called "CVE-2009-0563."

It managed to stay under the radar for over six weeks on the machine before it sprang into action and began siphoning documents and files from the dummy machine. There are thought to be two separate strains of the "SabPub" Trojan, which is labeled as an "active attack."


New variants of the bot are expected to surface in the coming weeks, but let’s hope the situation doesn’t reach the level of widespread panic demonstrated in the last couple of weeks regarding Flashback. The Trojan infected more than 600,000 Macs worldwide, but Apple, with the assistance of a few Java updates, managed to remove Flashback from the machines of those affected. First discovered way back in September, Flashback operated under the guise of an Adobe Flash installer – giving Mac users another reason (if a reason was even necessary), to hate Flash.

Apple proudly declares its Mac OS X doesn’t suffer from the same level of viruses and attacks as Windows, and while this may be correct, there are certainly a few folks out there trying to hinder that reputation.

Source : Redmond Pie

Here’s How You Can Get The “4G” Indicator On Your Non-AT&T iPhone 4S

When Apple flipped the switch to push out iOS 5.1, it wasn’t exactly a mind-blowing update, bringing only minimal changes for users. One of those little updates was one that was only available to AT&T users with an iPhone 4S and came in the form of a ’4G’ indicator in the status bar that replaced the 3G symbol.

There has been a lot of talk about 4G connectivity recently, but with the iPhone 4S using HSPA+, the 4G indicator is relevant as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) recognizes it astrue 4G. The AT&T network is currently the only one in the United States that is actually allowed to use the 4G symbol due to licensing agreements, but it still managed to confuse a lot of users when the indicator started appearing after the iOS 5.1 update.

The bottom line is that the display of 4G rather than 3G is nothing more than a visual replacement. The updated symbol doesn’t offer any additional speed increases to users, with iOS 5.1 doing nothing more than changing the indicator for AT&T users. If you are one of the ones who find themselves in dire need of benefitting from this update, but aren’t an AT&T subscriber, then you can now download the ’4G for iPhone’ theme from the Cydia store.The 4G for iPhone package is a WinterBoard theme, meaning that Saurik’s theming platform is needed to be installed to use this. Once it has been activated and the device has been respringed, the status bar will display the 4G indicator whenever the device has UMTS data connectivity.

Source : Redmond Pie

10 Million Galaxy S III Units Have Already Been Pre-ordered By Channel Partners

After the glorious success of the Galaxy Y, Galaxy S II and Galaxy Note, Samsung is getting set to unveil and launch its next flagship smartphone – the hotly anticipated Galaxy S III.
While we do already know a lot about the device’s specifications based on numerous reports, a new piece of interesting information recently cropped up and it has been discussed after the break!

The news comes from unwiredview in the form of a report in which they discuss Samsung’s current and future market position vis-à-vis the Galaxy S III.
According to their “respectable source”, 10 million units of the device have already been ordered by (channel) partner companies that wish to distribute the device.
While Apple is currently the world’s number 1 smartphone vendor with over 37 million shipped iPhones in Q4 2011, Samsung is right behind it! Samsung has been riding high on the wave of success this past year with increasingly high sales, enhanced revenue and profits and, consequently, ever-expanding market share.
Analysts predict that the Korean company has shipped over 40 million smartphones in Q1 2012 and feel that over 50 million smartphones will be shipped in Q2 2012.

These figures don’t sound impossible when you consider that the 10 million pre-orders of the Galaxy S III do not include the overall sales of device which are expected to be equally, if not more spectacular than the record-breaking sales of the Galaxy S II.
Coming back to the Galaxy S III itself: the device will, according to reports, come with a 4.8” Full HD 1080p display powered by a 1.5GHz quad-core Exynos chip with a 8MP/2MP cameras, 4G connectivity and, of course, be based on the latest version of Android – 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich – with Samsung’s TouchWiz UX on top. All of this will be packed in a brand new ceramic casing which will give it durability and a high-quality “feel” that, to be honest, Galaxy devices don’t generally have.
We’re really looking forward to what the Galaxy S III can bring to the table, especially after all the critical acclaim HTC’s One series has gathered.

Source : Redmond Pie

Sony Is Poised To Launch PlayStation 4 Before The Next-Gen Xbox

Sony has claimed that the next PlayStation will beat the new Xbox to market according to a new report. As if all the rumors amongst fans and the press wasn’t enough. Sony itself has now thrown itself into the rumor mill by suggesting that it will beat Microsoft to market with a new, updated home gaming console.
According to an anonymous source for VG247, Sony believes that this time it has the edge on Microsoft, who managed to get the Xbox 360 out and into the hands of gamers before Sony could push the PlayStation 3 to market. Some would argue that the Japanese firm has been playing catch-up ever since. It is even conceivable that Microsoft’s ability to release the Xbox 360 worldwide so quickly gave the machine the leg-up it needed after lackluster sales of the original Xbox console.

Both Microsoft and Sony are expected to take the covers off their respective next-generation hardware during next year’s E3 conference, but there is a big difference between announcing a console and making it available to the buying public. If Sony can indeed be the first to market then the gaming landscape may change, swinging the battle back into the path of the PlayStation.
VG247 also suggests that developers and their teams are already hard at work making games for the new hardware, hoping to be ready to have their software released alongside the new machine.
Sony needs to go big with its new PlayStation after a less than stellar showing of the PS3, and while Microsoft has been making great strides with the Xbox platform and brand, Sony’s PlayStation has suffered something of a bloody nose over the last few years. Throw the disappointing PSP, PSP Go and now PlayStation Vita into the mix as well, and it is clear that the once proud brand needs a success sooner rather than later. Can the PlayStation 4 be that success?

Microsoft, for its part, will not be resting on its laurels. With the Xbox 360 it has had a runaway success, even with the hardware issues that plagued its early years. If the company can replicate some of the 360′s success with the new Xbox, then us gamers are in for a treat this generation.

Source : Redmond Pie

Sn0wbreeze Updated To v2.9.3 For iOS 5.1 Jailbreak On iPhone, iPad, iPod touch

Apple makes a number of premium products, but it is mainly the iPhone and iPad that have stolen the limelight in recent years. Their smartphone and tablet range are clearly their most successful products in recent years, but one of their other media devices is starting to gain some traction now, thanks to recent hardware and software updates.
Apple announced the new and improved Apple TV during their San Francisco media event at the beginning of March, bringing 1080p video streaming to the set-top box as well as well as dedicated section of the iTunes store for high-definition movies. They also announced the release of the iOS 5.0 (iOS 5.1 9B179b) firmware for the existing second-generation unit (iOS 5.1 for all other iOSdevices) that brings an entirely re-imagined user interface and a number of new native applications. The updates have obviously pleased the masses of Apple TV fans out there, but the jailbreakcommunity is only really concerned with one thing – when will my Apple TV be jailbroken?
Popular developed ih8sn0w has pushed out an update to his Sn0wbreeze restore based jailbreak utility taking it to version 2.9.3. The point update is relatively small in size and doesn’t bring any earth shattering changes, meaning that it has gone relatively unnoticed by many, but it does bring some support for the Apple TV 2 units on firmware version 4.4.3 / 4.4.4. The official change-log has been given as follows:

• Added Apple TV 2 support for iOS 4.4.3/4.4.4.
• Fixed rare issues with iOS 5.0.1 where it would halt on the Apple upon 

The added Apple TV 2 support for the older firmware versions may seem like a rather unnecessary addition considering Apple have pushed out iOS 5.1, but the update is to account for those users who have previously dumped their SHSH firmware signatures for untethered jailbreak. ih8sn0w does make mention in his release notes that those using Sn0wbreeze to jailbreak the Apple TV 2 should expect to see a blank black screen for approximately sixty seconds on the initial boot post jailbreaking, which is entirely normal.

This version of Sn0wbreeze of course can also be used to tether-jailbreak iOS 5.1 on all iOS devices except iPhone 4S, iPad 2, and the new 3rd-gen iPad and Apple TV. For those interested in using Sn0wbreeze to perform a tethered jailbreak on the latest iOS 5.1 firmware for the iPhone, iPad andiPod touch 

Download Sn0wbreeze 2.9.3 [Direct Link]