Apple

Another report has surfaced pointing to a summer iPhone 5 announcement from Apple. The analysis from Daiwa Securities claims the next generation device will be revealed at the Apple Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC) in June. This would bring Apple back to its tradition of mid-year iPhone releases.

The shift back to a summer release would mark a departure from last year's October iPhone 4S launch, leaving just eight months between the two generations of smartphones. The normal venue for WWDC already has the dates June 11-15 blocked off for a "Corporate Meeting" and is expected to host the Apple event during this week.

Apple was named with T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T, HTC, Samsung and Motorola in a class action lawsuit on Monday. Sianni & Straite of Wilmington of Delaware and two other law firms from New Jersey (Crutchlow Zaslow & McElroy of Edison and Keefe Bartels of Red Bank) filed the lawsuit with the U.S. District Court in the District of Delaware. The lawsuit alleges Apple and other companies committed an "unprecedented breach of the digital privacy rights of 150 million cell phone users.”

The class action lawsuit is in response to the Carrier IQ software installed in various cell phones that logs the keystrokes, texts and geographic data of its users. Apple admitted using the diagnostics tool in the past, but said they never recorded "personal information for diagnostic data and have no plans to ever do so.” Apple also promised to remove the software from all their devices in a future firmware update.

Apple's universal reader app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch has just been updated to version 1.5. The new iBooks adds several new features including a nighttime reading theme to ease eye strain when reading in a dark room. Some studies have shown that viewing LCD screens before bedtime can keep some people from falling asleep quickly. Maybe the new iBooks will help.

Apple has also added several new fonts including Athelas, Charter, Iowa, and Seravek for your reading pleasure. For those who may have been irritated by the book-like graphics that take screen real estate away from the text, Apple has added a full-screen mode to remove distractions.

The first beta of iOS 5.1 has been seeded to Apple developers, and includes several changes and improvements. First off, code has been uncovered pointing to support for a new piece of hardware, namely a Sprint iPad 2. Apple launched the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 on Sprint's network just recently, and it appears they are taking the next step.

Other changes spotted by 9to5Mac include a new setting in Location Services for geofencing. One source of battery drain is geofencing, when an app such as Reminders puts a virtual perimeter around a location. Notifications are sent when leaving or arriving the location, and in iOS 5.1 each app that uses the feature has a special icon in Location Services.

Apple is currently investigating reported battery life problems experienced by iPhone 4S users. There are many tips and tricks floating around about how to extent battery life on your iPhone, but you shouldn't have to shut down most of the useful functions of your device to get battery life back. Normally these problems are due to specific bugs or corrupted files in the iPhone firmware or applications (this happened with the iPhone 4.1 update).

Apple will often issue a fix in the next iOS update, however in the meantime iPhone users must do what they can to solve the problem or deal with abbreviated battery time. There are many general tips and tricks that can improve battery life on your iPhone, but these involve much compromise and will switch off many features of your iPhone. In the past specific apps such as Ping and Game Center were pegged as culprits. The flood of feedback from users of the iPhone 4S point to these top 5 fixes for short iPhone 4S battery life: