News

Samsung is about to hand over a billion dollars in damages to Apple after being found guilty of infringing on several of the Cupertino-based company's patents. Weeks of drama ended in the jury awarding Apple with a major win that will impact tech company patent cases for years to come.

Of course as AppleInsider points out, there are still a number of major patent suits around the world that have yet to be settled between the two companies. In this case, Apple won damages on not only its utility patents, but on design patents as well.

More confirmation of the next generation iPhone release date has arrived from wireless carrier AT&T Mobility. Staff have received notice that a vacation blackout is in effect between the dates of September 21 and September 30, 2012. This matches similar regulations imposed on Verizon Wireless employees.

The news comes from TechCrunch's sources within the company, who state that AT&T employees are training for nothing less than an "iconic release". There's nothing much on the near-term mobile device horizon that sounds as iconic as the highly-anticipated iPhone 5 launch coming this fall.

As promised AT&T rolled out its new Mobile Share data plans on Thursday. The new plans are designed to help new and existing subscribers share data on up to 10 devices. Existing customers do not have to switch to a Mobile Share plan, but can do so without a contract extension if they choose to.

The Mobile Plans start at $40 for 1GB of data with unlimited talk and text. You can add an additional smartphone for $45, basic phones cost an additional $30, additional laptops and mobile hotspot devices cost $20, and tablets and gaming devices are $10 each per month. At least one smartphone is required to be part of an AT&T Mobile Share group. You will of course need more data for each device you add, so plans range from 1GB to 20GB of data. The price of an adding an additional smartphone does decrease until you hit the 10GB tier.

Version 5.0 of the iPhone and iPad Facebook app has finally landed in the app store! Facebook has rebuilt the app from the ground up making it much faster. The app now launches immediately and the news feed and photos load a lot more quickly.

The new app allows you to easily scroll through your news feed without having to refresh, and now features notification banners for recent posts. The app doesn't look any different, but you will immediately feel the changes the first time you use it. Facebook did not add the must asked for "Share" button featured on the web version.

Instagram fans will want to check out Instacube, a digital picture frame from designer D2M (Design to Matter). The Instacube allows Instagram users to easily display their photo feeds via Wi-Fi on a 6.5-inch, 600×600 capacitive touch screen. The 7.5-inch frame is powered by Google Android and an ARM processor. It features 4GB of internal memory and has 256MB of RAM.

Instacube is easy to use. All it requires is a Wi-Fi connection and an Instagram account. There are only three buttons: one for toggling feeds, one for power and one for liking photos. Instacube is fed from the cloud so you can easily tell it to display custom content, or just let it feed photos from your stream.