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Will Nokia Sue Android?

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Apparently Apple isn’t invincible after all as it looks like the dying brand known as Nokia has actually beaten the Cupertino giant at something.

Apple has settled a lawsuit with Nokia, infusing the company with some fresh cash as well as future earnings via royalties paid out by the Cupertino giant.

While this episode concludes the Apple-Nokia war that seemed destined to drag on into the next decade, it may embolden Nokia to go after Android manufacturers according to FOSS Patents (who predicted Apple would settle).

Although Google is already embroiled in several Android lawsuits (including one with Oracle), Nokia may limit their targets to companies who have yet to embrace Windows Phone 7 as Microsoft is known to protect OEM’s from legal attack (to a certain extent of course).

Currently HTC, Dell, Samsung, and LG all sell Windows Phone 7 devices as well as Android, which means that unless Nokia wants to disrupt their relationship with Microsoft the Finnish company may have to “overlook” patent infringements from at least half of the Android industry.

Even though Nokia could go after companies like Motorola for violating their IP, it might be wiser for the company to focus their energy into making a decent smartphone as the latter will help boost Nokia’s global image (not to mention their coffers as well).

(Image Credit: Android Headlines)

Originally posted on June 14, 2011 @ 2:56 pm

Firefox 8 Mobile Targeted at Honeycomb Tablets Running Android

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Fans of the popular open source browser Firefox will be happy to hear that the Mozilla team has started development of their mobile browser, Fennec, specifically for Android based tablets.

The aim of the team is to release Fennec, together with Firefox 8, and provide a TabletUI, working with Android tablets using Honeycomb (or higher). The work page already includes links to UI mockups, which we added below.

Firefox Fennec for Tablets - Honeycomb: Fullscreen internet
Firefox Fennec for Tablets - Honeycomb: Fullscreen browsing

Work is on-going and the crew hopes to be able to release the final UI early in the development cycle of Firefox 8, which is scheduled for this year.

Enjoy more mockup images after the jump. [Read more…]

Originally posted on July 23, 2011 @ 10:38 am

Google To China: Try Phishing Somewhere Else

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It looks like China is going to have yet another reason to loathe Google after the search engine giant caught an entity trying to hack Gmail accounts via social engineering.

Through the strength of our cloud-based security and abuse detection systems*, we recently uncovered a campaign to collect user passwords, likely through phishing. This campaign, which appears to originate from Jinan, China, affected what seem to be the personal Gmail accounts of hundreds of users including, among others, senior U.S. government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (predominantly South Korea), military personnel and journalists. (Official Google Blog)

Although Google isn’t directly accusing the People’s Republic orchestrating these attacks, they did note how unusual it was for those engaged in Phisihing campaigns to target specific users instead of going after the general audience.

Google thwarted the Phishing campaign and is encouraging everyone to utilize their 2-step verification feature to prevent similar attacks in the future.

Note: Is it me, or does it seem like China is either instigating or turning a blind eye when it comes to these types of attacks?

Originally posted on June 1, 2011 @ 5:14 pm

Best Of The Smartphones – Android vs iPhone 4

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Android phones have been quickly catching up with iPhones in the mobile market and are now considered their main contender. Below is an infographic comparing the success in the high street  and the pros and cons of each handset for the first half of 2011.

 

Thanks to Infographiclabs for visualising this data.

Originally posted on July 29, 2011 @ 9:49 am