Apr 02

LG sells 500,000 Optimus G Pro devices, but leaves international release date pending

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LG has sent out a press release proudly celebrating the record breaking sales performance of its latest tablet/smartphone hybrid, the Optimus G Pro. Having gone on sale in Korea at the end of February, before which time it racked up 10,000 pre-orders, the big-screen device has now reached a total of 500,000 sales after 40 days. This makes it LG’s fastest selling smartphone to date.

There’s no doubt this is an impressive figure for what is not only a massive phone, but also an expensive one, proving LG has come up with a winning formula for its first serious entry into the market. Well, we say serious, but LG has yet to provide any solid launch details on the Optimus G Pro for anywhere else in the world.

The Optimus G Pro received a soft-launch just before Mobile World Congress, where we had a chance to spend some time with the phone, and was confirmed for a North American release sometime in the summer. Since then, LG has remained silent. It’s a shame too, as the 5.5-inch 1080p screen and Snapdragon 600 processor make it standout.

So, how is the Optimus G Pro doing compared to the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, it’s closest rival? The Note 2 went on sale in September last year, and managed to achieve three million sales in a mere 37 days, plus by November 2012, it had added another two million to that figure following its release in the U.S. Fair enough, that does include other countries besides Korea, but it proves just how popular the stylus-sporting Note 2 has been. Here’s hoping the Optimus G Pro’s strong debut in Korea spurs LG on to give the device an international release date, preferably before Samsung starts to gear up for the release of the Galaxy Note 3.

Mar 05

Samsung Galaxy S4 specs leak as release date looms

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Features Exynos Octa CPU with 4G LTE support.

Specifications for Samsung’s Next Big Thing have surfaced on AnTuTu, giving us a sneak peek of what to expect when it’s officially unpacked in two weeks’ time.

Information uncovered through the Android benchmarking tool confirms that contrary to recent reports that Samsung is planning a single global model of the Galaxy S4 featuring a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor, it will in fact pack something much beefier.

According to the spec sheet, the Galaxy S4 – or at least the unit tested – is home to an Exynos Octa 5410 CPU clocked at 1.8GHz. For the uninitiated, this Samsung’s latest eight-core system-on-chip that was unveiled in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Interestingly, the handset features GSM, WCDMA and LTE connectivity, which suggests there might yet be a single international variant of the S4 offering 4G support out of the box.

This is teamed is with a PowerVR SGX 544MP GPU and 2GB of RAM, with benchmarks results placing the S4 far ahead of the most powerful smartphones currently on the market, including the LG Optimus G and the Google Nexus 4.

The specs also reveal that the Galaxy S4 is home to a 4.99-inch Full HD (1920×1080) display and a 13-megapixel Camera, as had been rumours for aeons.

Samsung is due to formally announce the Galaxy S4 on March 14th at an Unpacked press conference in New York. Stay tuned for our full coverage of developments in the weeks ahead.

Mar 03

Apple computers ‘hacked’ in breach

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Apple has said its computers were attacked by the same hackers who targeted Facebook.

The iPhone-maker said a small number of its machines were affected, but added there was “no evidence” of data theft.Last week Facebook said it had traced a cyber attack back to China which had infiltrated employees’ laptops. Apple said it would release a software update to protect customers against the malicious software used in the attack. In a statement, the Cupertino, California-based firm said: “Apple has identified malware which infected a limited number of Mac systems through a vulnerability in the Java plug-in for browsers.
“The malware was employed in an attack against Apple and other companies, and was spread through a website for software developers.
“We identified a small number of systems within Apple that were infected and isolated them from our network. There is no evidence that any data left Apple.
“We are working closely with law enforcement to find the source of the malware.”

Java vulnerabilities

News of the hack comes as a US-based cyber security firm claimed to have pinpointed a specific building in Shanghai that was being used to house one of the world’s “most prolific cyber espionage groups”.
Mandiant said Unit 61398, part of the country’s People’s Liberation Army, was believed to have “systematically stolen hundreds of terabytes of data” from at least 141 organisations around the world.
China denied hacking and questioned the validity of Mandiant’s report.
Apple said it had taken measures to protect users from vulnerabilities in Java, a widely-used programming language that was found to have serious security flaws.
“Since OS X Lion, Macs have shipped without Java installed, and as an added security measure OS X automatically disables Java if it has been unused for 35 days,” the company said.
“To protect Mac users that have installed Java, today we are releasing an updated Java malware removal tool that will check Mac systems and remove this malware if found.”

Feb 17

Fix 32-bit application crashes in OS X with a Safe Boot

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A potential cache corruption may prevent applications from launching after certain OS X updates.

A rare but potentially frustrating issue you might run into after upgrading to OS X 10.8 or after applying an update such as the most recent 10.8.2 release is that a number of applications in the system may start crashing when launched. This does not happen to all programs, and those affected may appear to be a bit random; however, it is likely they share common ground in all being 32-bit programs.

If this happens to you, a potentially quick way to manage it is to reboot the system into Safe Mode by holding the Shift key at startup, followed by restarting normally. While the specific cause of the problem is unknown, it does appear to be cleared by some of the maintenance routines performed by loading the system in Safe Mode, which include the dynamic loader that is responsible for mapping libraries that a program needs into the memory space it is using.

It is very possible a problem in the “dyld” shared cache could result in it mishandling the loading of libraries for 32-bit code, and clearing this out should help resolve the issue.

In addition to or instead of booting to Safe Mode, you should also be able to tackle this problem using a third-party tool like OnyX that can access and remove the dyld shared cache and perform other maintenance routines on the system.

If Safe Mode does not appear to help, or if you cannot easily boot to Safe Mode because you have a firmware password or FileVault enabled on the system, then you can use this utility or a similar one to clear the cache and hopefully fix the problem.

Jan 16

FREE Network Unlock for Samsung Galaxy S, S2 II,S3 III,Galaxy Tab, Galaxy Note

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FREE Network Unlock for Samsung Galaxy S, S2 II ,S3 III,Galaxy Tab, Galaxy Note and their Variants

1. Root your GS2, S3… etc.
2. Go to market and search for “Galaxy S Unlock”, the author is “Helroz”.
(Market URL: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.helroz.galaxysunlock)
3. Run the app from step 2. Go to “Unlock SGSII” tab on the top of the screen.
4. Tap on the first item:”Step 1 Backup files….”
5. Tap on the second item:”Step 2 Change lock-bytes”, and wait until your phone restarts.
6.Now, your phone is sim unlocked after the reboot

*** Tested by me: Galaxy s2 (I777 at&t)