A researcher at North Carolina State University is warning of an Android 2.3 security vulnerability that gives attackers access to your personal information, further proof that Gingerbread isn’t all sugar and spice (to be fair, that SMS issue has since been remedied). According to Xuxian Jiang, the bug allows malicious websites to access and upload the contents of a user’s microSD card, including voicemails, photos, and online banking information to a remote server. The flaw apparently resembles a similar bug in previous version of Android, thought to have been addressed with Gingerbread. However, as Jiang points out, that fix is easily bypassed. Apart from removing the microSD card, disabling JavaScript, or switching to a third-party browser, Android 2.3 users have little recourse in squashing the bug. The folks at eWeek reported that Google is working on a solution to the problem, but there’s no word on when we can expect to see an update.
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.
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!
Looks like AT&T and Alcatel-Lucent have finally sorted out the software glitch that’s resulted in slow HSPA upload speeds in certain markets — we were just told on the record that a patch is being rolled out and the update will be completed over the next two to three weeks. That should mean iPhone 4 and laptop data modem customers should start to see their upload speeds creep back to higher levels after being capped at UMTS rates for the past few weeks, so that’s good news — let us know if things are getting better for you, yeah?
As we’d suspected, AT&T isn’t intentionally limiting upload speeds on iPhone 4s in some markets where things suddenly got slow over the weekend. Or that’s the company’s claim, anyhow — and seeing how they’re actually calling out a supplier in the process, we tend to buy it. Specifically, AT&T says that some Alcatel-Lucent equipment (which isn’t used in all markets) is causing uploads to fall back to non-HSUPA UMTS speeds “under certain conditions” affecting “less than two percent” of the company’s customers, and that they’re working on developing a fix. “Less than two percent” seems a bit optimistic, but regardless, at least it shouldn’t be a permanent condition for anyone. Here’s the full statement:
“AT&T and Alcatel-Lucent jointly identified a software defect — triggered under certain conditions – that impacted uplink performance for Laptop Connect and smartphone customers using 3G HSUPA-capable wireless devices in markets with Alcatel-Lucent equipment. This impacts less than two percent of our wireless customer base. While Alcatel-Lucent develops the appropriate software fix, we are providing normal 3G uplink speeds and consistent performance for affected customers with HSUPA-capable devices.”
It hasn’t gotten quite the attention of the iPhone 4′s antenna problems or its proximity sensor troubles, but iOS 4 has caused some heartbreak for corporate users who connect to Exchange servers — checking mail or syncing contact and calendars can stall out interminably, with no option but to restart and try again. We’ve definitely had this problem ourselves, but happily Apple’s right on the case with this one — iOS 4 users who need to get their Exchange on can download an updated configuration file that seems to make things better. The new settings don’t seem to do much other than increase iOS 4′s idle timeout, but if it works, it works — and in our limited testing things appear to be going swimmingly. Okay, that’s one — now let’s polish up the rest, shall we?
The iPhone 4‘s antenna issues have sparked off a firestorm of debate as to the root cause — Apple says holding the phone differently or buying a case are the best answers, while other are going down a more voodoo path — but our friends at AnandTech have done some more scientific testing of the problem and come up with a few interesting results. Turns out the iPhone 4 actually performs slightly better inside a case than a phone like the Nexus One, which has had similar issues crop up, but it’s slightly worse when held in the hand, reporting an average signal drop of 20dB. Here’s where it gets a little wacky, though: the signal meter in iOS 4 is logarithmic, so that 20dB drop can either leave you looking steady at five bars or drop you all the way to zero, depending on what the actual signal level in the area is like. Take a look at the chart above and you’ll get it: the range of values between one bar and four spans just 23dB, while the range for five bars is 40dB. That means holding the phone in an area with a strong five-bar signal will have no apparent effect — you can lose 20dB at full signal and still see five bars — but holding the phone in an area with weaker coverage will easily drop the meter to one bar, since the 20dB signal drop covers almost the entirety of the remaining 23dB scale. Oops.
Of course, that’s just the on-screen display, which Apple can and likely will tweak in a future iOS update. The real question is whether the reported signal has anything to do with performance, and Anandtech agrees with our general experience, saying that the iPhone 4′s improved signal to noise ratio means it actually does a better job of hanging onto calls and using data when there’s low signal than the iPhone 3GS. In their words, “this iPhone gets the best cellular reception yet, even though measured signal is lower than the 3GS.” However, there’s no getting around the fact that we’ve definitely dropped a couple calls with the iPhone 4 by holding it the wrong way, and Anandtech says the only real solution to the antenna issue will be for Apple to either subsidize free bumpers or add an insulative coating to the antenna band. We’ll see what happens — we’ve got a feeling an iOS update is on the way, but we’d definitely love to see Apple pursue a more aggressive solution to this problem.
Ever since Apple decided to do little about the iPhone 4′s pronounced reception issues except suggest that users hold the thing differently and / or buy a nice case, the voodoo engineering remedies have been flying in full force — sure, we’ll admit we tried sticking some tape over the side of our phone (no dice), but we stopped short when people suggested we try a couple coats of nail polish (insanity). Even we have limits, after all. But the latest snake oil fix is definitely the craziest we’ve heard so far: according to a 13-page (and growing) thread at MacRumors, the iPhone 4′s reception issue can be fixed by adjusting or even trimming the micro SIM so the contacts don’t touch the metal tray. The popular belief is that touching the side of the phone somehow shorts across the micro SIM, causing (mumble mumble) and leading to dropped signal. Making things more interesting, Apple and AT&T are apparently using several different types of micro SIMs, including one with a significantly larger contact area — you can check a shot of two of our iPhone 4 micro SIMs side-by-side after the break.
So does all this hocus pocus actually work? In a word, no. We tried it on a few of our particularly bad iPhone 4s — the ones that consistently demonstrate the issue — and achieved no meaningful results. We even went so far as to line the edge of one of our trimmed micro SIMs in electrical tape (pictured above) to ensure that no contact was being made, and we were still able to flatline the phone using the “death grip.” Sorry folks — we wanted this to work too, but it looks like people are just being hopefully optimistic. We’d say the real fix is going to have to come from Apple — and given the growing discontent over this relatively severe issue, the sooner the better.
Uh oh: on top of reports that the EVO 4G suffers screen-detachment issues, we’re also starting to hear that the touchscreen sensor is inconsistent, particularly when the phone isn’t grounded. We’ve seen more than one report and video purporting to show the EVO’s touchscreen failing to smoothly register touches when the phone isn’t being handheld (and thus grounded). We haven’t been able to reproduce the issues ourselves, but trust us when we say we’ve heard from enough unhappy EVO owners to believe that the problem is real. What’s more, there’s also an older video showing the same problem on three different Droid Incredibles, which obviously shares strong family ties to the EVO. We’ve pinged HTC, we’ll let you know what we hear — for now, get your sad faces on and watch the videos after the break.
Apple is warning iPhone users that the 
