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3G coverage survey gives British smartphone users little to smile about
The UK has plenty of endearing olde worlde attributes, but its lack of fast mobile data access isn't one of them. The country has yet to enter the LTE era and, according to a crowdsourced survey by the BBC, it's still plagued by "not spots" where you can't get 3G reception either. More than 40,000 Brits downloaded a tailor-made Android app that recorded their local street level access and their results proved that many city centers and rural areas are effectively no-go swamplands for smartphone users -- although coverage was good over 70- to 80-percent of Her Majesty's territory. It's about time we did a similar survey in the US. Oh, and check out the source link to watch a Galaxy II-owning village vicar vent his frustrations in the politest possible way.
UAE says BlackBerry is now compliant with regulations, free to rock on
The latest thrilling installment in BlackBerry's Middle East saga has turned out not to be so thrilling after all. Having set an October 11 deadline for RIM to comply with its "telecommunications regulatory framework," the United Arab Emirates is today reporting that the BlackBerry maker has managed to make the necessary changes with plenty of time to spare. Consequently, there'll be no state-ordained curtailing of email, web, or BBM services within the UAE, which mirrors similar agreements that BlackBerry has managed to finagle with India and Saudi Arabia. Of course, the grand purpose of the UAE's ultimatum was for RIM to allow the state access to encrypted messaging communications, and while the current announcement is pointedly missing details on what's been done to appease the Abu Dhabi decision makers, we can't imagine them giving up the fight without RIM making some type of concession. And the shady, undisclosed concessions happen to be our least favorite kind.
iPhone cellular data not working? Try resetting your network settings
The "Reset Network Settings" button on the iPhone not only resets your Wi-Fi settings -- resulting in a clean slate with respect to Wi-Fi access points and their passwords -- it also resets your phone carrier settings. Several months back, I had the darndest trouble with cellular data access. I could place and receive calls, but couldn't get cellular data access no matter what I did. I tried going into and out of airplane mode, turning the phone on and off, and resetting it, all with no luck. So I decided to call AT&T. Apparently, one of the cell phone towers near my office was having trouble and fell out of and back into commission. And although the tower was back up and running, my iPhone was stuck in cellular data purgatory. AT&T support suggested that resetting the network settings on the device would likely resolve the issue: and it did. Resetting network settings has also helped me resolve an issue I was having with Visual Voicemail on another occasion. To reset your iPhone's network settings, tap your way to Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings. With great power also comes great annoyances, like having to reconnect to previously remembered access points and having to re-enter passwords.
Spintronics magic appears again, aims to vastly accelerate data storage and retrieval
As the list of "awesome things that won't ever happen" grows ever longer, we've got a brilliant team of French physicists who have seemingly concocted a method for storing and retrieving data on hard discs that's around 100,000 times faster than usual. Yes, 100,000x. The trick is based around spintronics, an almost mythical procedure that involves the use of lasers, magnetic sensors and mutant abilities to shuffle data around at a dizzying rate. This particular method, however, improves upon the comparatively sluggish attempts of the past, as it uses photons that "modify the state of the electrons' magnetization on the storage surface." In layman's terms, this all means that the HDD you buy in 2098 will probably operate significantly faster than the one you picked up during Circuit City's going-out-of-business sale. Got it? Good.
