Now we bring you the never ending tales of the Antennagate Saga! Yes that's right folks there has been yet another twist in this apparently never ending drama. This time it's Apple themselves filling a few column inches with their decision to pull the videos showing rival's handsets from their American website. There was no reason given for the move and to be honest there probably won't be one issued either, but that doesn't stop rampant speculation from wondering as to the motive behind the deletion. Could it be legal action? A PR damage limitation exercise? Both valid theories, but interestingly the videos were not removed from Apple's UK website (EDIT: The videos now appaear to have been removed from the UK website). Legal action, or the possibility of legal action is certainly a possibility, especially given some of the reactions from rival manufacturers. The PR damage limitation theory is also viable, especially if Apple were hoping that they had put an end to the matter with their press conference. We imagine we'll hear more on this issue before too long ... 

Wondered what jailbreaking was good for? If you're using an iPhone 4 you can download My3G, a program that convinces iOS that it is using WiFi when it is really using 3G. This, in turn, lets you run Facetime over 3G.

The app costs $3.99 and is available in the Rock app depository.

Features:
- In-App popup request to enable/never ask for My3G to be enabled for that app
- In-App indicator when My3G changes the network from 3G to WiFi
- Ability to select which apps are My3G enabled and not.
- Default Apps – no configuration for the most popular apps!
- SBSettings Toggle! You can temporarily enable My3G for all apps or toggle back using your defined Apps list
- Dynamic enablement – Higher successs rate (near 100%) then 3G Unrestrictor (which does one off solutions for apps). My3G enables 3G indicators more dynamically.

If you've been waiting for the promised iPhone 4 jailbreak, you'll be glad to hear that the waiting is now over. You can jailbreak your precious phone straight away. iPhone 3G, 3GS, iPod touch and iPad are welcome to join the party as well.

Jailbreaking the iPhone has never been so easy. Well, almost never, we've seen JailbreakMe.com in action before, haven't we? You only need to visit JailbreakMe 2 webpage using your device's Safari browser and follow the instructions (read "slide to jailbreak"). Now, you're a few moments away from jailbreaking your iThingy.

Keep in mind that due to the increased number of users servers may be overloaded. In this case use this link. Just for safety, sync your iDevice to iTunes before you get on to it, so you have a recent backup in case situation head south.

We recently had to toss out an old PC a huge beige box with a 300MHz CPU (overclocked from 266), that was handmade ten years ago for major bucks. Then someone said "geez, my phone now is three times faster than this". It made us think about the advances in chip miniaturization and raw speeds that have been happening lately. Smartphones pose the most daunting task to combine performance with the lowest power consumption possible, and thus play a huge role in the mobile processing war.

1GHz processors on high-end handsets are all the rage now, but 1.5GHz puppies with more than one core have finished sampling and are being shipped to manufacturers. These are already desktop clock speeds, but how much is enough? Will the mobile CPU war fall victim of the same delusion the desktop one had that faster is better? Or will it try to find the sweet spot between raw power and energy consumption as their laptop counterparts did? 

We think the answer will be known sooner rather than later as we've already attained the magic 1GHz number, and the upcoming CPUs promise even higher clock speeds with the same power consumption. Hummingbirds and Snapdragons these 1GHz animals are offering all-in-one solutions to cell phone manufacturers. Called system-on-a-chip (SoC), they take care of both the system tasks and the hardware video acceleration, often along with all baseband and RF connectivity, the GPS module and the multimedia processing. They are designed to fulfill the longest lasting dream of any electronics user to carry one device that does it all decently.

Qualcomm, Samsung, Apple and Texas Instruments are currently the major SoC players, and they have something in common – all of their chipsets are based on the ARM architecture. ARM Holdings owns the intellectual property rights on processor architecture; they develop the next generation’s schematics, and then sell them to chip manufacturers to come up with their own custom SoC solutions. The current 1GHz mobile CPUs are based on ARM's Cortex-A8 generation, but Cortex-A9 is just around the corner, and it is exciting. 

Qualcomm's Snapdragon family is probably the household name when it comes to 1GHz mobile CPUs. It's been around for more than a year now, shining initially in the Toshiba TG01, then powering such prominent phones as the HTC HD2, the Nexus One and the HTC EVO 4G. The Snapdragon's Scorpion core takes care to add better multimedia instructions and power management to the Cortex-A8 core of ARM Holdings. 

The prevailing concern for the company was to make a mobile SoC that can go all day on a single charge, thus Snapdragon was designed with low power consumption in mind. For the graphics tasks, Qualcomm relies on the AMD Z430 processor after purchasing Imageon - the mobile graphics department of AMD, then rebadged their GPUs (originally developed by ATI) under the Adreno moniker. This first generation of Snapdragon is produced with the older 65nm technology, which fits less transistors on the same space than the new, upcoming iteration of these chips, manufactured with the 45nm process. 

The 45nm production method fits more transistors on the same space, or achieves the same performance from smaller chips, which leads to a better battery life, more functions, and extremely thin and light devices for the power they house. We won't be boring you much with electronics lingo, but this new 45nm version of Snapdragon is already in manufacturers’ hands, and speeds things up to 1.3GHz with two thirds of the power consumption. 

The third generation of the ubiquitous Snapdragon is the most interesting one, of course. The MSM8260 and MSM8660 chipsets for high-end smartphones will be dual-core, with each core running at up to 1.2 GHz. Even faster version supporting larger screen resolutions is QSD8672 – two cores humming at the sweet 1.5GHz, which will most likely go into tablets, or the likes of the Dell Streak. Qualcomm has the advantage of having finished the sampling of its next generation SoCs, and HTC is rumored to be the chief beneficiary, so they might be first to deliver a smartphone with two processor cores. 

What do these dual Scorpion core Snapdragon chips promise for us spoiled brats waiting on the shiny new toy? Full HD 1080p video recording and decoding plus dedicated low-power audio engine for multichannel home-theater surround sound, for starters. Add to that a GPU subsystem based on the new Adreno 220, and capable of up to 80mln triangles per second for enhanced 3D gaming plus an integrated low-power GPS. All these “low-power” adjectives are not coincidental - the third generation is supposed to use 30% less energy than the single core Snapdragons, also because the work will be evenly distributed between cores.

A chief differentiation of Qualcomm for their Snapdragon architecture is to make it a truly all-in-one solution for the various tasks on a modern smartphone.  After spending more than a decade in CDMA devices, its baseband modem chips are now integrated in the Snapdragon SoC, saving manufacturers the effort to add third party silicon. The MSM8660 Snapdragon will even support both multi-mode HSPA+ and 1xEV-DO Rev -  a true world phone with dual-core prowess.

Samsung Hummingbird and Apple A4:

The next-gen Snapdragons above will be produced with the 45nm technology, but there are actually phones on the market with CPUs that utilize this technology right now. Enter Samsung’s Hummingbird chipset, a SoC which powers the company’s first bada OS phone – the Samsung Wave, and the Galaxy S with its US carrier versions. 

Today the iPhone 4G is launched in Canada for this Morning. Lines formed early and stayed strong through much of the day, and generally, camaraderie seemed high always a good thing when you're standing a foot away from the same handful of people in summer heat for hours on end. As you might expect, the wait for subsidized phones was longer than for the considerably pricier unlocked ones.

Apple has been facing problems with its latest version of iOS on the iPhone 3G, namely that many users are reporting sluggish behaviour after upgrading. Now to be fair to Apple they did make it clear that iOS 4 wouldn't be bringing all its bells and whistles to the 3G e.g. no multi-tasking since the 3G's hardware simply can't support such features comfortably. However, Apple presumably didn't envisage the sort of problems people are now reporting and there is apparently an investigation underway on Apple's part into the issue. That might produce something in the long run, but in the here and now users are complaining and the whole process is looking rather annoying for those who own a 3G.

Indeed French network SFR are advertising the problems on their website for 3G owners thinking of taking the plunge. Whilst SFR warn that the upgrade process is 'irreversible' that isn't exactly true as a downgrade is possible, albeit not necessarily as easy as the upgrade. All in all it's another mess for Apple at a time when they could really be doing with some good publicity for a change.

This is kind of a strange rumor, and if it ends up being true, the Peel will be a strange device. Essentially, Sprint is developing another variation on the wifi hotspot but this particular product works directly with the iPod Touch.

Now assuming you can control the wifi hotspot with the iPod, and that it provides a data connection for said iPod, I like it. The interface would certainly be more convenient than the USB port controlled version we used last CES. We as users would consider this rumor to be a strong possibility, since it's based of an FCC filing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’ll ever make it to market. it would have been nice to have this type of technology attached to my iPod Touch.

Citigroup Inc. said its free U.S. mobile-banking application for Apple Inc.'s iPhone contained a security flaw and advised its customers to upgrade to a newer version that corrects the problem.

In an incident that highlights the growing security challenges around wireless apps, Citi said its iPhone app accidentally saved information—including account numbers, bill payments and security access codes—in a hidden file on users' iPhones. The information may also have been saved to a user's computer if it had been synched with an iPhone.

The issue affected the approximately 117,600 customers who had registered the iPhone app with Citi since its launch in March 2009, a person familiar with the matter said. The bank doesn't believe any personal data was exposed by the flaw.

"We have no reason to believe that our customers' personal information has been accessed or used inappropriately by anyone," Citi said. Apple acknowledged the issue and encouraged users to download the updated app.

Mobile banking is a popular and fast-growing activity on smartphones, as cellphones become more sophisticated and consumers use them to organize their lives. The Citi Mobile app, currently the 11th most-popular offering in the finance category of Apple's App Store, allows customers to check balances, transfer funds and pay bills.

An estimated 18 million adults, or 7% of the adult population, are "active users" of mobile banking, meaning they use it at least once every three months—a small but growing fraction of the 196 million adults, or 84% of the population, who use any kind of banking services, said Red Gillen, a mobile- banking analyst at Celent, a financial-services research firm.

Citibank, with an estimated 800,000 mobile customers, ranks No. 5 in mobile banking, Celent said, behind Bank of America Corp. at No. 1 with an estimated 5 million users. In between are J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. at No. 2 with 2 million, United Services Automobile Association at No. 3 with 1.5 million, and Wells Fargo & Co. with 1.4 million, according to Celent estimates.

Citigroup advised customers to upgrade to a new mobile-banking app for the iPhone to fix a security problem.

Experts worry that security isn't keeping up with the app boom. Among their concerns is the prospect of "leakage" any time a wireless app logs confidential data. The risk of flaws like Citi's, says John Hering, CEO of mobile security provider Lookout, is that a hacker could devise a malicious app to retrieve sensitive information stored on an iPhone.

Citi said its mobile-banking app is the only application authorized to access the hidden data. The upgraded application, released July 19, doesn't store the information and deletes any account data that may have been saved to a user's iPhone or computer.

Citi said the problem was discovered in a routine security review. The bank told customers of the problem in a letter dated July 20. Other Citi mobile apps such as the app for credit-card customers weren't affected, Citi said in a statement.

Citi developed the application with mobile financial-services provider mFoundry. Drew Sievers, CEO of mFoundry, a private company based in Larkspur, Calif., said his company custom-wrote the mobile-banking part of the application and handed it over to Citibank, which then combined it with custom code of its own.

Citi is responsible for distributing and managing the app, Mr. Sievers said. MFoundry, which provides mobile-banking software to 150 banks and credit unions besides Citi, said none of its other customers were affected by the problem.

Citi said it performed security tests before and after releasing the application, but failed to detect the problem. The bank said it is looking into why it didn't find the vulnerability earlier.

Mr. Hering, the CEO of Lookout, said his company is discovering more apps that could inadvertently expose or leak personal data, such as location information and phone numbers. "Most consumers and app developers don't know what is happening in their apps, because it is moving so fast," Mr. Hering said. "Apps are proliferating so quickly. We will see more and more of this."

A ZTE made case for the iPod touch called Sprint Peel is making rounds at the FCC. The music player will be receiving an update to iOS 4 later this year, and this case is allowing it to connect to Sprint's 3G network to use its data services while on the go. Besides serving as a sleeve, it turns the iPod touch into a Wi-Fi hotspot as well.

There is no word on the pricing just yet, but it seems to be for the current iPod touch generation, judging from the headphone jack opening at the bottom. We will soon find out all about the Sprint Peel as it has already received the FCC's nod of approval.

Well Canada, iPhone 4 launch day is almost here. It's going live tomorrow, and Apple has let it be known when their store doors will open.

7AM on July 30th is the time. Bring your fold out chairs and blankets to camp out at your local Apple Store location tonight, because I can guarantee you’re going to see a lineup. For those of you crazy enough to do so, you can probably look forward to some nourishment from Apple staffers an hour or so before the doors open (I’ve witnessed Apple handing out water and treats to those in line on numerous occasions)… still… pack a lunch.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that things go smoothly, and that enough iPhones will be available to those that want them. If supply runs out, I trust Apple's successful reservation system will be cued up and ready to go. Speaking from experience (I reserved an iPad), the reservation system is a godsend. You reserve the product via your iTunes account, and Apple emails you when the product arrives and is in-store for pickup. When you arrive, you’ll no doubt be greeted by a staffer, and when you mention the reservation and give them your name… they scoot to the back of the store, pickup your product, and whisk you through checkout. Any questions or demos you need walked through will be taken on as well. I really do have to give a tip of the cap to Apple staffers when it comes to this.