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Posts in iPhone

Cydia Adds Ability to Easily View All Your Past Purchases

Cydia, the App Store equivalent for all those jailbreak required apps that Apple has or would deny, has just received a handy new feature that allows you to view in one place all the packages that you have purchased from the Cydia store.

Jay Freeman, creator of Cydia has been working hard in recent months to improving Cydia in many ways from decreasing the all to common “Reloading” times, improving the polish and adding new features. This new feature has been a fairly common suggestion not only for Cydia but the App Store too, which whilst present in the Mac App Store has yet to reach iOS App Store - something which those of us at Macstories are hopeful Apple will add in the near future.

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#MacStoriesDeals - Wednesday

Here’s today’s deals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get ‘em while they’re hot! Read more

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iPhone Case and Solar Charger Doubles Battery Life

We’re big fans of solar charging technologies here at MacStories: we got excited when Apple patents detailing screen-integrated solar charging surfaced last year, and we couldn’t help but be intrigued by the foldable solar charger for iPad. And even when someone tried to apply the same concept to the iPhone with an awkwardly huge accessory, we were curious.

The Eton Mobius iPhone battery pack is another take on the integrated solar charger for iPhone that looks better than anything else we have seen so far. It doubles your device’s battery life, it gives you 20 minutes of talk per sun hour and, most of all, doesn’t look that bad as an iPhone case. Sure it adds 20mm of thickness to the iPhone, but it sounds like a fairly acceptable compromise when it comes to keeping your phone alive, in the sun.

Too bad it’s always raining these days in my town. [Gizmodo via Geeky Gadgets]

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New Guardian iPhone App Launches, Introduces Subscription Model

Early in December, rumors pointed to The Guardian about to launch an updated version of its iPhone app that was set to feature a new iTunes subscription model which could grant readers access to the app for either 6 or 12 months. The story was interesting because it was the same week blogs speculated Apple may unveil iOS 4.3 with the new rumored “iTunes app subscription” feature very soon.

The updated Guardian app is now live in the App Store and it comes with the previously reported £2.99 / £3.99 price point (for six and twelve month access, respectively), but it doesn’t seem to be using any of Apple’s upcoming subscription system. Rather, the Guardian publishers and developers have implemented standard in-app purchases to allow readers to enjoy the digital newspapers for a limited period of time. The app is a free to download with subscriptions for UK readers, but it’s ad-supported in the US. According to The Guardian, US readers account to only 8% of the downloads.

As explained by the team in an introductory blog post, users who downloaded the first version of the app will have free access for another six months.

The Guardian for iPhone is available here. Check out what’s new in this version below. Read more

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Apple Enters $3.9 Billion Dollar Component Supply Deal

At Apple’s financial report yesterday there was an interesting revelation by Tim Cook that Apple had recently begun entering agreements with suppliers of key components. The agreement is presumed to be around $3.9 billion dollars and would secure the key strategic resources used in Apple’s products going into the future and there are suggestions it’s for high resolution displays.

As to what components are being secured, Cook didn’t elaborate but did say the deals were similar in nature to the flash memory deals of late 2005. That deal, and subsequent deals around flash memory secured supply for many of Apple’s portable devices including the iPhone and more recently the iPad.

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New Music Notifications with Nomis

We cover lots of music apps on MacStories, we even had a Roundup at the end of 2010. What can we say, we’re all big audiophiles here at MSHQ. Today we’re showing you another music app, but this one is unique and a first to the app store. It’s called Nomis, by Taprockets - an independent company in Germany - and it reminds you of new releases for all your favorite music artists. It’s very easy and simple to use. Read more

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#MacStoriesDeals - Tuesday

Let’s hope Steve Jobs’ health improves quickly! Here’s today’s deals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get ‘em while they’re hot! Read more

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White iPhone 4 To Make Its Debut Feb. 27th? Best Buy May Be Telling

The White iPhone 4 was at first rumored to suffer from a series of problems with color, but it was later rumored to be delayed thanks to issues with the camera sensor. As the glass is white, light leakage was affecting the camera sensor. While Apple has kept quiet about the latest White iPhone 4 developments, there were some signs of life in Apple Stores thanks to a 9 to 5 Mac reader spotting a Spring 2011 launch date. Today, MacRumors has a sneak peek at Best Buy’s inventory system (which has been a leaky faucet for numerous tech rumors).

The white iPhone is speculated to have a launch date of February 27th, and the SKUs are identical to the previous white iPhone listings last year before they were pulled. There’s no doubt that there will eventually be a white iPhone, and the question of when may be sooner than later. With a large pool of white iPhones on hand, however, would Apple launch a new series of white iPhone 4s with the next generation iPhone arriving in the Summer on AT&T? Or is this an early indication that Verizon will feature the iPhone 4 for the next year? (And let’s not forget the White iPhone 4 on Verizon snafu.)

[via MacRumors]

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Bump Data Suggests 90% of iOS Devices Running 4.x

David Lieb, founder and CEO of iPhone app Bump yesterday posted some data on Quora to a question about what percentage of users of iOS devices were on 4.x, his answer revealed that 89.7% of Bump users were on the latest major iteration of iOS, 4.x.

Although Lieb didn’t note how big the sample size is, the latest known figure of Bump downloads was 15 million back from August last year. That’s a large sample size and one that includes users of iPhones, iPod Touch’s and iPads, a sample that would suggest the ~90% is a close approximation to the real percentage of iOS device users on the latest major iteration of iOS, version 4.

Ian Peters-Campbell of Loopt, another iOS app backed up Lieb’s data but said for his users take-up was even a little higher. Anyway you cut it such a high take up rate in about six months is impressive. It also highlights concerns over how fragmented Android is compared to iOS which back in December 2010 when Froyo (2.2) was the latest Android OS only had 43.4% take up, let alone Gingerbread (2.3) which as of today ReadWriteWeb says only has 0.4% take-up.

Lieb of Bump, posted a full breakdown of iterations and percentages of users, which is posted after the break. The key data is that 53% of users are on the very latest software update of 4.2.1.

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