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iPhone 5 To Feature Dual-LED Flash?

According to a new report from Digitimes, the iPhone 5 set for a September launch might come with a dual-LED flash system. The publication bases its speculation on “recent market rumors”, citing Taiwan-based Everlight Electronics, Edison Opto and Lite-On Technology as potential suppliers for the new Flash sensors.

Everlight and Lite-On have strengthened their deployments in the smartphone market for a while, with their products already being shipped to the supply chains of brand-name handset vendors, said industry sources.

Edison, which is specialized in the production of high-power LEDs, has begun shipping its LED flash products to branded handset vendors and therefore has a high chance of winning dual-LED flash orders from Apple, the sources noted.

A series of reports in the past months suggested the iPhone 5 could feature a relocated camera Flash because of some allegedly leaked case designs and parts that showed a different placement for the Flash unit on the back of the device. A dual-LED flash mode was rumored before among Apple bloggers and tech pundits, but was never taken in consideration as much as in today’s report from Digitimes. The iPhone 5 is also set to deliver an overall improved camera experience with an 8-megapixel sensor as opposed t the current 5-megapixel one, though recent debates failed to indicated with 100% accuracy whether OmniVision, Sony or Largan Precision would be the suppliers of camera image sensors for the iPhone 5.

Dual-LED flash systems are said to offer wider and brighter light coverage, which could be an important advantage when taking photos in completely dark areas or low-light situations. Mobility Digest posted in 2010 a series of photos shot with the HTC HD2’s dual-LED flash camera, taken in total darkness.

FYI all the photos are treated the same way. The background is blurred except for a bag of Animal Crackers which I zoomed into and set in detail so you can see the actual photo size relative to the inset.

For a little bag blown up that large from 20 feet away it’s very impressive. The light levels are pretty close to those at 10 feet. I was expecting a lot more of a dropoff. Remember, this is total darkness and you can see the amount of light that’s generated by two LEDs.

Instagallery Updates to 1.2.2: We Catch Up with all the New Features

There’s a pair of updates to Instagallery which we first briefly covered in March as an Instagram browser for your iPad, and they bring a ton of functionality to the $1.99 preview-based app that’s sure to excite many Instagram fans.

The update to version 1.2 delivered social sharing to Facebook and Twitter, the ability to open images in Safari, a grid view so you can browse photos quickly, AirPlay so you can get Instagram on your big screen TV, improvements to commenting and tagging, TextExpander support, a history view to browse recent photos, and printing to AirPrint enabled servers amongst of slew of other features.

Yesterday, Instagallery was updated to version 1.2.2 which added translations for foreign languages, author bio and website information, and lots of performance tweaks to keep browsing snappy.

Instagallery is available for $1.99 in the App Store, universally for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

In The UK, 65% Of Connected Apps Run On iOS

Various smartphone OS market share data typically covers the US market, but a report out today by the industry body GSMA has investigated the UK market. The organisation collaborated with comScore to create a ‘connected apps’ index, measuring the usage of apps that had data access. It used that data to calculate what smartphone OS was used most frequently on an operator’s network. At 65% of the smartphone market, iOS takes the lions-share share of the market whilst Android came in second, accounting for 31%. But the rest of the smartphone operating systems, including BlackBerry, Windows, Palm and Symbian took just 3% of the survey.

You see iPhone is hugely over-indexing in terms of connected app usage, Android is doing pretty well, but Symbian – 23.6% of active smartphones but a mere 1% of connected app users

Painting a virtual picture of the UK market using these statistics shows developers that there are a potential of 5.7 million iPhone owners, 2.7 million Android owners but only 119,000 Symbian users. With that snapshot of the UK market it paints a rather depressing picture for those who are developing for anything other than iOS or Android.

[Via The Guardian]

Bloomberg: Next iPhone To Feature A5 Processor And 8 Megapixel Camera

According to Bloomberg, which has decided to enter into the iPhone 5 rumor mill, the next iPhone will feature a more powerful chip and a more advanced camera. Their report of the iPhone 5 including the A5 chip corroborates what is largely expected – it is the chip that is currently included in the iPad 2.

The report also claims that the “more advanced camera” will feature an 8-megapixel sensor, something that Sony’s Howard Stringer had said earlier this year. It’s an increase from what is currently used in the iPhone 4, which is a 5-megapixel camera. Similarly there have been previous reports have an 8-megapixel camera throughout this year.

The next iPhone will, according to this Bloomberg report, be similar in design to the current iPhone 4. It comes after yesterdays report from BGR which backed up an article from This is my next earlier this year which claimed the iPhone 5 would feature an all new design.

Bloomberg’s sources, not identified, also claim that Apple is trialling a new iPad that includes a higher resolution display – one that would be similar to the Retina display in the iPhone 4. Apparently the display will have roughly one-third more resolution than the current iPad and also have increased touch responsiveness.

The report ends with a somewhat bizarre suggestion that Apple is “working to finish a cheaper version of the iPhone” that would be targeted to developing countries. Bloomberg says that it would use similar chips to what is included in the current iPhone 4 but would be smaller in size.

[Via Bloomberg]

Court Denies Samsung Request To See iPhone 5 and iPad 3, Lodsys Asks For Extension To Reply To Apple’s Motion

You may recall that in the current legal battle between Apple and Samsung, Samsung had demanded Apple hand over the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 (or the newest prototypes). Samsung claimed, when it demanded these products, that it was equal to Apple’s claim to getting early access to Samsung products (although they had been previously revealed and put on pre-order). Apple amended its complaint with Samsung last Thursday and after reviewing that, Judge Lucy Koh yesterday made her decision regarding Samsung’s request for early access to the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 and denied it.

As FOSS Patents explains, the reasoning Judge Koh effectively gave was that “Apple’s request for expedited discovery was far more justified and far less prejudicial”. Going into more depth on this, Apple had required early access to Samsung products because it needed to evaluate whether or not to include them in their complaint. In addition, Samsung’s products were already circulating and details were known about them, unlike the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 which have not been revealed in any manner.

The judge made a lot of effort in her 11-page order to explain that Samsung is entitled to “parity” but its motion was overreaching in this case.

However, it wasn’t all good news for Apple, with the Judge potentially suggesting that Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction on certain Samsung products may be delayed or denied.

Instead, it may be necessary for the court to evaluate such a motion against the background of the iPhone 5 (as far as any Samsung phones are concerned) and the iPad 3 (as far as any Samsung tablet computers are concerned), whenever Apple is in a position to present those products.

In other (related) news, Lodsys has asked for a two-month extension to respond to Apple’s motion to intervene. They had been required to respond by next Monday (June 27) by they’re asking the court for a two-month extension until August 27 to respond. Although it will effectively delay proceedings, Lodsys claims that it is “not for purposes of delay” and furthermore states that they have conferred with Apple’s counsels – who apparently do not oppose the extension.

The request does have to be approved by the court, but the court can choose a length less than requested, say just one month instead of two. Despite this, Lodsys is continuing to issue patent infringements to various developers, with a large number of Android developers receiving notices yesterday.

[Via FOSS Patents (1) (2)]

Rovio Teases “Summer Pignic” Angry Birds Seasons Update

With a new video posted on their official YouTube channel, Rovio has announced an upcoming update for Angry Birds Seasons for iOS, Android, Mac and PC dubbed “Summer Pignic”. In what it appears to be an update that will add new levels to the existing game, Rovio says the new version will be released “soon”, this Summer. Which means any day from now until September – following Rovio’s tradition of teasing updates with a few days in advance, we wouldn’t be surprised to see Summer Pignic dropping as early as next week.

You can find Angry Birds Seasons with free versions on the App Store [iPhone, iPad] or paid apps for both iOS devices [iPhone, HD version]. As far as summer releases go, Rovio had already announced it would finally flip the switch on the Angry Birds Sync platform to keep game data and progress synchronized between devices and platforms (though it’s likely they’re now considering iCloud for that) and “new Angry Birds games”. Check out the video below.

Update 06/22: The “Summer Pignic” update for Angry Birds Seasons is now available on the App Store. Download the new version here: iPhone, iPad
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DaisyDisk Update Brings Gestures, Faster Volume Scans

DaisyDisk, the beautiful disk analyzer tool for Mac we’ve reviewed a couple of times here on MacStories, received a minor version number update today (2.0.7) that, however, brings some welcome new functionalities to the app, making it an even better solution for those users in need of a simple yet powerful way to see what’s eating space on a Mac. For those who missed our previous DaisyDisk coverage, this app allows you to generate a visual map for your Mac’s drives and partitions, enabling you to explore the contents of your filesystem with ease to see what folders and files are consuming space. The bigger the section, the bigger the file. DaisyDisk lets you collect items to delete, open enclosing folders in the Finder for a manual deletion process, or simply browse around to get some knowledge on, say, those iTunes backup files that are wasting 10 GBs.

Among the new features in today’s update, the possibility of starring folders (marking them as favorites) should ease the process of navigating to a recurring location. But what I’ve noticed on my iMac with multiple volumes and partitions is another feature: DaisyDisk now comes with improved support for multiple scans at once, reducing hardware load and improving scan speeds. It’s really, really fast even on a non-SSD machine. When you’re done scanning and you want to open a map, but then you want to go back to the volume list, a new 3-finger swipe gesture lets you do just that in seconds. Other new features include:

  • Hidden disk space detector
  • Volumes of the same disk are now visually grouped together
  • Improved disk/volume descriptions
  • Eject volumes, not disks
  • Fixed UI lag on directories with tens of thousand files
  • For terabyte disks, free and used space is displayed in GB

Daisy Disk 2.0.7 is available now on the developers’ website, and the new version has been submitted ti Apple for App Store approval. You can download the app here and receive the update for free once it comes out.

Apple Set To Renovate Retail Stores In Hawaii And Miami

Over the past few months a couple of Apple retail stores have begun to go under renovation, including the flagship Fifth Avenue Store in New York. Two reports today are saying that the Hawaii Ala Moana store and the Miami Lincoln Road store are set to undergo renovations sometime in the near future.

ifoAppleStore is reporting that the Hawaii store, whilst it is being renovated, will be moved to a temporary location just a few doors down. That temporary store will open sometime this week but will be much smaller than the current store – which is already quite busy. It isn’t known what the exact renovation plans are but the expected cost is $250,000.

Meanwhile MacNN notes that Apple recently had to retract a proposal to demolish their Lincoln Road Apple Store and move into another nearby building after the Historic Preservation Board rejected Apple’s plans. The Historic Preservation board had wanted the new building to match more closely to the architecture of the surrounding region as well as being smaller. It’s unlikely that this means Apple will give up on Miami renovation plans, instead they will probably rethink their design plans or find a more appropriate location.

[ifoAppleStore and MacNN via TUAW]