The Venue Pro delay situation certainly isn’t getting any clearer with Dell’s latest update on its support forums, but we know this much for sure: the new kid on the smartphone block still has a few things to learn about shipping handsets. A post from a Dell moderator says the company is working directly with Microsoft to draft a battle plan and that current Venue Pro owners (those that got their devices early on from Microsoft stores, that is) “might require another hardware swap” to get their issues solved. The rep says that she’s hearing that some orders could still potentially ship this week, but she doesn’t know which ones, and that affected customers are welcome to cancel their orders if they wish. So yeah, kind of a good news / bad news situation there. We’re still clinging to hope that we’ll see these things on the streets before the end of 2010, but it certainly seems like an iffy proposition at this point.
Update: Dell’s posted a new blog entry on the matter, too, though it’s not much help — basically, you could get your phone before January 6th, but it’s anyone’s guess. They’re promising to keep people abreast of the situation as it develops.
Oh boy. We’d actually passed over reports that the HTC HD7 suffers from a “death grip” issue this past week, since we think it’s been well-proven that you can get almost any phone to drop some signal if you hold it exactly right, but apparently the furor’s gotten loud enough to merit an official HTC response. Here’s the statement, sent to Computer Weekly:
Quality in industrial design is of key importance to HTC. To ensure the best possible signal strength, antennas are placed in the area least likely to be covered by a person’s face or hands while the phone is in use. However, it is inevitable that a phone’s signal strength will weaken a little when covered in its entirety by a user’s palm or fingers. We test all of our phones extensively and are confident that under normal circumstances reception strength and performance will be more than sufficient for the operation of the phone when network coverage is also adequate.
Yes, that sounds almost exactly like what Apple said during its iPhone 4 Antennagate press conference, but that makes sense — we wouldn’t honestly expect HTC to say anything else, even though John Gruber points out that the company told the Wall Street Journal that Apple’s reception problems were “certainly not common” in July. But we do find it extremely interesting that the HD7 is clearly based on the HTC HD2, a handset which came out over a year ago and suffered from reports of similar reception issues. (In fact, a post at xda-developers in June noted that the HD2 has the same death grip issue as the iPhone 4.) Whatever the case, much of the problem seems to stem from the fact that the HD2 / HD7 antenna is located at the bottom of the phone where it’s most likely to be covered by a user’s hand, so it looks like the ultimate answer for HD7 owners is a familiar one: you’re holding it wrong. Video after the break.
Researchers from security firm SecTheory have described a handful of flaws in webOS, saying that the platform — by its very nature — is more prone to these sorts of things than its major competitors because Palm puts web technologies like JavaScript closer to webOS’ core where system functions are readily accessible. At least one of the flaws, involving a data field in the Contacts app that can be exploited to run arbitrary code, has already been fixed in webOS 2.0 — but the others are apparently still open, including a cross-site scripting problem, some sort of floating-point overflow issue, and a denial-of-service vector. We imagine Palm will get these all patched up sooner or later, but as SecTheory’s guys point out, how long is it until mobile malware becomes a PC-sized problem?
If you detected a hint of anger in our headline, please forgive us, but we’re sure many of you are going through the same rollercoaster of emotions — after all, Dell’s lovely portrait QWERTY Venue Pro has only been sold in ridiculously limited quantities through Microsoft’s seven retail stores so far, making them virtually impossible to buy for most of us. Anyhow, in the event you were lucky enough to get one, you’ll be pleased to know that Dell is aware of the problems you might be having connecting to secure WiFi networks, and the next batch won’t be afflicted — which might explain why they haven’t offered a steady stream of devices through the stores this week. They also mention it’s a “software glitch,” but there’s no mention of timing on an update for phones in the field.
There’s also been a problem with batteries on these inaugural devices being labeled as “engineering samples,” apparently, but Dell assures that they’re production-quality cells that have simply been mislabeled. They say that customers wanting an exchange either for the WiFi issue or the mislabeled battery can get one at their local store “beginning at the end of next week,” so we’d take that to mean there won’t be any stock filtering in for anyone until then. Patience continues to be a virtue we don’t believe in.
Apple is warning iPhone users that the daylight savings time glitch that plagued Europe affects US iPhones too, meaning you’ll wake up an hour late if you rely on the Clock app built into the device. Though Apple representatives say there’s a permanent fix in the works, it’s not due until iOS 4.2, so the company suggests you set a new alarm today if you want to rise on time. Since the bug apparently only affects certain repeating alarms, you can create a new one-time alarm (i.e. with the repeat option set to “never”) instead, and the iPhone clock will take care of the rest. Don’t be the gal or guy blaming your tardiness on failed technology, folks, when it’s this easy to be able to point the finger at traffic, family, or spontaneous bouts of dance fever instead.
Update: Did we say tomorrow morning? It’s actually Monday when the bug will strike, meaning you’ll have to deal with Daylight Savings related hijinx two days in a row. Good luck getting to work on time.
An iPhone bug already seen when Australia switched between Daylight Savings Time and Standard Time a few weeks ago has now hit Europe. Twitter just lit up with reports of recurring iPhone alarms going off an hour later than usual. So even though the iOS clock changed correctly over the weekend, the alarm did not. Thing is, according to a ZDNet Australia report from more than three weeks ago, Apple acknowledged the bug with a promise to fix it with a software update. So why wasn’t it rolled out in time to avoid this mess in Europe? Let’s see if Apple fixes it before North America makes the switch on November 7th, otherwise, you’ve been warned.
Update: Deleting and re-adding the alarms will NOT fix the issue. We’ve now tested a number of scenarios under iOS 4.1 on European iPhone 4 and 3GS devices for ourselves. The bug (demoed on video after the break by Roman) appears when using a repeating alarm for anything other than “every day.” So for example, your alarm will go off an hour late if it’s set for “weekdays,” or “weekends,” or every “Monday.” The following alarms are not affected by the bug:
An alarm that doesn’t repeat (repeat set to “never”)
An alarm set to repeat “every day”
You can test yourself by creating a repeating alarm (but not every day) to go off one minute in the future and 59 minutes in the past.
Update 2: Some US readers are now waking up to alarms reportedly going off an hour early.
Your iPhone’s passcode entry can’t block everything, it seems — at least not with iOS 4.1. We’re hearing various reports that simply inputting a random number in the emergency call field, pressing call, and then promptly hitting the hardware lock button will take you to the Phone app, thereby granting you access to the call history, voicemail, and address book. We’ve tried this with iPhone 3G, 3GS, and 4, all with the same result. We can’t get out of the field without trying to place a call, and after that we’re still stuck back at the passcode screen. Additionally, selecting “share contact” and then the camera icon will give you access to the photo album. Pay mind that your particularly paranoid pals could probably use this to see if you really did stop calling your ex and delete all his or her pictures. We won’t judge, but they will. Video proof of concept after the break.
Update: Feel free to hold down the menu button to access voice control and play some locally-stored tunes while you’re at it. And if you’ve got 4.2 beta like some of our staffers do, this “trick” should work just the same.
Ruh roh. Looks like Dell’s stepped onto its own toes real hard with the Streak’s Android 2.1 update — O2 just confirmed to us that due to some “feedback from users,” it’s decided to suspend said download while Dell gets cranking on a revised software release over the next two or three weeks. We weren’t given the exact reasons behind this quiet withdrawal, but our friends over at MoDaCo might have had the answer for some time — soon after the release, they discovered that the 2.1 firmware was in fact pre-rooted, thus leaving the Streak vulnerable to unauthorized access and modification (although handy for the seriously tech-minded). Yikes. On the bright side, such substantial time frame suggests that the upcoming fix should also address other bugs like incompatibility with the desktop suite, weird loading behavior in the browser, and missing WMV video playback functionality.
And here comes the inevitable question: what about Froyo? Well, neither Dell nor O2 could provide a date for the Streak’s scoop of frozen dessert, but we’ll bet you a white iPhone 4 that it won’t be out in October.
Rest assured this information was never meant to make it into the public eye (not all in one place, anyway), and from Verizon’s perspective, there’s a good reason for that — if you’ve got a Fascinate, you just know you’re going to be looking out for all these bugs now that you might not have noticed otherwise. Sorry to turn you into a nervous wreck, owners, but let’s have a look at some of the bigger problems Big Red has its eye on in Sammy’s latest incarnation of the Galaxy S: GPS lock latency is said to be abnormally long with no workaround available (sound familiar?), pressing the Search button while on a call can hang you up, calendar alerts can’t be changed, and the backlighting on the bottom keys is fixed at five seconds — something we’d complained about on other versions of the phone but is conveniently tied to the keyboard backlight settings on the Epic 4G. Nothing in the list necessarily sounds like a deal-breaker, but for a carrier known for testing the crap out of its phones prior to release, we’ll admit that the list is a bit longer than we would’ve expected.
Okay, so we’ve given you about a day to download, install, and tear iOS 4.1 into microscopic shreds. What’s the end result? We’ve been tipped on a handful of troublesome nuances in the update, ranging from unsolved proximity sensor woes to a sudden onslaught of voicemails — and we’re trying to get a feel for how widespread they all are. Care to chime in? Follow the break!
The Venue Pro delay situation certainly isn’t getting any clearer with Dell’s latest update on its support forums, but we know this much for sure: the new kid on the smartphone block still has a few things to learn about shipping handsets. A post from a Dell moderator says the company is working directly with Microsoft to draft a battle plan and that current Venue Pro owners (those that got their devices early on from Microsoft stores, that is) “might require another hardware swap” to get their issues solved. The rep says that she’s hearing that some orders could still potentially ship this week, but she doesn’t know which ones, and that affected customers are welcome to cancel their orders if they wish. So yeah, kind of a good news / bad news situation there. We’re still clinging to hope that we’ll see these things on the streets before the end of 2010, but it certainly seems like an iffy proposition at this point.
Apple is warning iPhone users that the 
