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Nexus S hacked and tweaked to slaughter benchmarks, reality be damned
It's always a good idea to take benchmarks with a grain of salt -- their synthetic tests don't always match up with real-world performance. But, we wouldn't blame you if you wrote them off completely after spying these results from Android Community forum member Simms22. Simms took his Nexus S, blessed it with a little Cyanogen Mod 7 pixie dust, overclocked it to 1.544GHz, and made a few other tweaks for good measure. The results? An absolutely unbelievable score of 10,082 in Smartbench2011. To put that in perspective, the 1.2GHz dual-core Exynos powering the Galaxy S II hit only 3,053 -- and remember, the Nexus S is working with a one core handicap. The creator of Smartbench has acknowledged there are bugs to be worked out (did besting the Xoom by 400 percent give it away?) but we're not quite ready to dismiss the numbers game completely -- then what excuse would we have for publishing copious amounts of bar charts? Update: The creator of Smartbench2011 confirms he's working on a new version, 1.2.1, which should fix the bugs.
iPhone OS 4.0: Multitasking support hidden away for pre-3GS devices
After Thursday's iPhone OS 4.0 event, when asked why multitasking was being excluded on devices older than the iPhone 3GS, Apple said that the older devices just couldn't do it. However, that wasn't quite true. A developer, who's been messing around with the iPhone OS 4.0 preview, has found that by simply switching just one variable in preferences, multitasking can indeed be enabled on the iPhone 3G. As far as we know, there won't be a flag in the final release version of the OS, but it looks like you can switch it on by tweaking one file on your own phone (which will require jailbreak). Of course, jailbreakers already have access to multitasking, and they'll be able to use Apple's official method as well, it seems. Steve and Scott Forstall have a little explaining to do -- why were we told yesterday that all of the devices before the 3GS couldn't multitask? It's certainly possible that they don't do it well, or that they can't handle as many processes as the 3GS might be able to handle. Unfortunately, this looks like Apple is trying to force an upgrade rather than get the software right (as this NSFW blog post complains). It was even mentioned yesterday (from the Engadget liveblog): "If that's an incentive for them to upgrade to a new device... terrific." We'd hope that Jobs and co. wouldn't purposely force a hardware upgrade, but it would be nice to to have some clarity about exactly what the problem with is multitasking on an older iPhone.
Sketches 1.7 out now
My favorite iPhone artmaking app, Sketches, has been updated again, this time to version 1.7. It's been made compatible with the iPhone 3.0 firmware, which means you no longer have to leave the app to share your pictures via email, and they've added in a few other bug fixes and improvements which will set them up for the next major release, the big 2.0.This release isn't done yet though: "Redo" has been added in -- when you hold the Undo button down in the app, you'll get a whole menu of different options to go to various points in what you've done so far. And the Zoom function has been tweaked and improved as well, offering a quicker response and a better resolution, even when zoomed in.I'm a big fan of Sketches, and expecially of the app's ability to let you pull in a background from almost anywhere (from your phone's camera to the Google Maps app), and then make your own marks on it. It's more than just an art app -- I've used it as a memory jogger, and even as a way to quickly send directions out to others via email or Twitter. It's available to new users on the App Store for $4.99, or the 1.7 update is free to those who already have it.
