News

Yes, the iPhone 4S is Bluetooth Smart Ready, but what exactly does that mean? It may be the first smartphone to support the new Bluetooth 4 wireless standard, however many consumers are in the dark about its improvements and benefits. So how will the addition of the latest Bluetooth technology really affect prospective iPhone 4S buyers and owners of the device?

The upgraded Bluetooth was one of the top iPhone 4S surprises not mentioned at the Apple keynote presentation. One of the reasons it was left on the back burner could be the fact that peripherals using the new standard with iPhone 4S don't yet exist. Although this is an area where future development looks bright, the technology hasn't hit prime time.

There's word that Sprint plans to deploy its own 4G LTE network next year to compete with Verizon and AT&T, but right now everyone is talking about 3G speed problems on the iPhone 4S. Unfortunately for Sprint the carrier seems to be experiencing the same woes that plagued AT&T after its record iPhone launches of days past. Support forums are full of people asking questions and wondering why their iPhone 4S is so slow compared to other devices on the same network.

Now reports indicate Apple has stepped in and the problem could be a software issue affecting Sprint iPhone customers nationwide. CNET reports that an internal memo was leaked explaining just that, and a fix for the problem is in the works. Apple made no official statement regarding the issue.

Accessing your iPhone filesystem directly with a command line console can be convenient and makes it possible to run utilities such as OpenSSH without the need to buy separate standalone clients. The MobileTerminal app has been around for some time and provides this functionality to jailbroken iPhone users. Unfortunately, the latest version of MobileTerminal available in Cydia crashes in iOS 4 and iOS 5.

The app is still available and easy to install, without having to manually decompress archives or copy files directly to your iPhone. The easy way to install MobileTerminal in iOS 4 or iOS 5 doesn't even require a computer. Follow these steps directly on your jailbroken iPhone to install a working copy of MobileTerminal:

The Steve Jobs biography written by Walter Isaacson is officially available for download from Amazon's Kindle store starting today. If you prefer to do your reading on paper, the 656-page book is also available in hardcover.

The authorized biography of Steve Jobs is based on hundreds of interviews conducted with family, friends, colleagues, adversaries and the Apple CEO himself. Although Jobs cooperated with Isaacson on the book, he did not exert any control over its direction, and did not request to read it before publication.

Developers are moving closer to an untethered iOS 5 jailbreak every day. Thanks to BigBoss, now you can protect your tethered iOS 5 jailbreak from making your iPhone unusable during a crash or unplanned reboot. The solution to the problem, known as a semi-tethered jailbreak makes it possible for the iPhone to come back up when you can't be near your computer for a full tethered boot.

There are some quirks to the SemiTether package, but having an iPhone that will start up is much better than one that just stays on the Apple logo. You'll still have to get back to your computer eventually to boot tethered for access to jailbreak apps and Cydia. Safari and Mail will also not be functioning when the iPhone is in a semi-tethered state.