The iPhone 5′s new design could spell trouble for custom back panels

The iPhone 5, though some will argue that it looks similar, is a major departure from its predecessor. It has a larger screen, upgraded internals, and a new unibody design.

And as it turns out, that design could spell trouble for aftermarket back panels. Because instead of a single piece of glass — like on the iPhone 4 and 4S, you have this part-aluminum, part-glass back panel directly attached to internal components…

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Apple “completely blown away” by customer response to the iPhone 5

Unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock the whole day, you probably know that iPhone 5 shipping times have dramatically been pushed back to up to 2-3 weeks, both on the online Apple store and at most carriers – just a mere hour or two after Cupertino with its partners began processing orders. Commenting on the situation, a spokesperson for the company acknowledged pent-up demand for the device, choosing interesting wording from the company’s familiarly colloquial yet effective vocabulary

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Apple could be close to shifting CPU orders away from Samsung

The iPhone 5 comes with a brand new Apple-designed A6 chip for a twofold jump in CPU/GPU performance. In fact, the iPhone 5 could easily be the first ARM Cortex-A15 smartphone on the market. The A6 is likely manufactured on Samsung’s 32-nanometer process, but probably not for long as Apple has been looking to take its chip contract elsewhere.

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Fieldrunners 2 HD now available for the iPad

Amidst all of the iPhone 5 excitement around here, we almost forgot to mention that Subatomic Studios released Fieldrunners 2 HD for the iPad last night.

The long-awaited sequel to the popular tower defense game hit the iPhone back in July, and now it’s available for Apple’s tablet with Retina graphics in tow

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ITC judge says Apple’s devices don’t infringe on Samsung’s patents

US ITC Judge James Gildea has ruled today that Apple’s products did not violate Samsung’s patents. This is the second US victory for Apple over Samsung in the last month.

Samsung originally filed the complaint with the International Trade Commission back in June of last year, complaining that Apple mobile devices violated four of its patents

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How to pre-order an off contract iPhone 5 from Verizon or AT&T

For those wishing to avoid signing up for a lengthy two year contract, Verizon or AT&T’s website will let you easily order an off-contract iPhone 5 that you can configure with a month to month plan.

Signing up for a carrier’s month to month plan will provide you with an unsubsidized phone for $649, $749, and $849, for the 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB versions of the iPhone 5 respectively. Here’s how to do it

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Apple confirms Lightning to HDMI and VGA cables coming

More details have come to light today regarding Apple’s new Lightning connector and its capabilities. It seems it will be capable of wired video output after all.

Previously, folks were worried that it wouldn’t support video out, due to the fact that the Lightning to 30-pin adapter doesn’t. But Apple just confirmed it will

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Walmart also taking iPhone 5 pre-orders, prices start at $189

Good news for folks who couldn’t get their iPhone 5 pre-order to go through this morning, or don’t want to wait two weeks for it to ship. It looks like Walmart will be offering another round of pre-orders today.

According to a new report, the retail giant will start accepting in-store pre-orders for the handset at 8 a.m. local time

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iPhone 5 online pre-order shipping time pushed back to 2 weeks

Wow…it looks like the inventory for the first round of iPhone 5 pre-orders on Apple’s online store has already been completely exhausted. Now, whenever you try to pre-order, you get a message saying that the iPhone 5 will ship in 2 weeks, instead of arriving on September 21st like it originally stated.

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You can now pre-order your iPhone 5

Well, they were a little late, but Apple is now taking pre-orders for the iPhone 5. If you live in one of the initial launch countries, you should be able to log into Apple’s website and snag a handset.

Hopefully, the company has planned ahead this time for the influx in traffic, and we won’t have to spend forever trying to place our orders. Last year it took me 2 hours to pre-order the iPhone 4S

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Everything you need to know about today’s iPhone 5 event

The iPhone 5 is finally here.

After Apple in 2011 unveiled the iPhone 4S — when everyone and his mother expected the iPhone 5 — the wizards of Cupertino introduced a smartphone for everyone. Want something smaller? Check. How about a big screen? Got you covered. Need power? No problem. Although this was the first post-Steve Jobs iPhone rollout, there was enough technology and geekitude on display today that even the Man in Black would have had a tough time fitting in just one more thing.

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Apple’s new A6 chip runs two ARM Cortex A15 cores, quad-core GPU

Surprisingly enough, the iPhone 5 comes with Apple’s in-house A6 chip (labeled “S5L8950X”) rather than a souped up version of the A5X chip, as previously thought. Apple’s Tech Specs page for the iPhone 5 doesn’t even mention the A6 (a norm for Cupertino). The Compare iPhones page names the chip, however without divulging an iota about its architectural underpinnings.

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Ping to go offline for good on September 30th

Alongside a slew of other announcements, Apple has posted an official kill-date for its Ping social network. It appears that the service will be going offline at the end of the month.

We’ve known for a while now that Apple’s iTunes-based social network was on the way out. After a quiet release in late 2010, the service has failed to gain much traction with users

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Apple invites devs to update their apps for iOS 6

Following up on a series of product introductions from this morning, Apple is now emailing its registered developers to download the GM seed of the Xcode 4.5 developer tools and test their warez against the final iOS 6 code, which have both been released as part of today’s announcement bonanza.

The company is putting emphasis on its own mapping solution and is asking programmers to enhance their iOS apps with the new vector based engine in MapKit. Other areas of interest to developers: new camera APIs, tickets, loyalty cards, and other passes with Passbook, integrated Facebook sharing capabilities and more

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Phil Schiller explains why the iPhone 5 doesn’t have NFC

This year, similar to years past, a lot of folks expected to see Apple add NFC to its new smartphone. And even after previous reports all but ruled out the tech, a last minute scoop made it a possibility again.

Alas, the iPhone 5 event came and went, with no mention of Near Field Communications. And the company has since confirmed that the handset does not contain the wireless payment tech. Here’s why

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Undercover Chinese journalist infiltrates iPhone 5 production line

Talk about timing. Just hours ahead of Apple’s highly-anticpated iPhone event, a story has surfaced of a Chinese journalist who recently went undercover as a worker in one of Foxconn’s factories.

The reporter, who works for the Shanghai Evening Post, got a job at the manufacturer’s Tai Yuan plant in China’s Shanxi province, and spent 10 days working on one of its iPhone 5 production lines

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Last minute details surface on new dock connector and headphones

Good news for all of you folks hoping to soak up some last minute rumors before tomorrow’s event. We’ve come across some new details regarding Apple’s expected announcements.

First off, among the many changes Apple is figured to introduce in the new iPhone, is a new, smaller 9-pin dock connector. And apparently, that connector has a name: Lightning

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Unfold tweak updated with new vertical unlock animation

Unfold — the popular jailbreak tweak that brings an accordion style unlocking animation to your iPhone — is being updated with new features, including a new vertical unlock animation.

Unfold 2.0, due soon on Cydia’s BigBoss repo for free, is an update that brings new features to an already solid jailbreak tweak. Developer, Jonas Gessner, provided us with a preview copy of Unfold 2.0 to try for ourselves. Take a look inside for a video walkthrough showcasing what we found

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Zuckerberg talks about Facebook app mistakes, rumored smartphone and more

Taking a break from all the iPhone hubbub, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently sat down with tech journalist Michael Arrington for an interview at Tech Crunch’s Disrupt event.

Over the course of the conversation, Zuckerberg admitted that HTML5 was a bad way to go for Facebook’s original iOS app, discussed the possibility of a Facebook-branded smartphone and much more

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Echofon for Mac updated with Retina Display support

Rejoice Macbook Pro with Retina Display users, another Twitter client, besides Tweetbot for Mac, now features Retina Display support!

Echofon for Mac version 1.6.1 was just pushed to my desktop a few minutes ago, and it finally brings support for the Retina Display, Notification Center, and more

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Crisp shots of the two-tone iPhone 5 design surface

The most visible design change of the next iPhone, up for an announcement tomorrow, is its metallic backplate with two glass stripes at the top and bottom for cellular and WiFi antenna. It’s perhaps the most controversial feature of the next iPhone. According to our own little poll, folks seem to be torn over it.

Making matters even more interesting, a last-minute leak by the increasingly reliable Rene Ritchie has a pair of high-quality photos depicting the two-tone back in detail greater than ever before, in addition to a nice closeup of the handset’s bottom with its smaller dock connector and relocated headphone jack

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Vodafone too has Nano SIMs in stock ahead of tomorrow’s iPhone 5 launch

Right on time, Vodafone in Germany appears to be stockpiling the new 40 percent smaller Nano SIM cards, a German publication reveals. The carrier is one of Apple’s major iPhone distributors throughout Europe and in the United States, where UK’s multinational mobile network operator has a joint venture with the US telco Verizon Communications, called Verizon Wireless (Vodafone has a 45 percent ownership of the joint venture).

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Samsung prepares for iPhone 5 launch with new anti-Apple ad

You have to feel for Samsung, it’s had a rough month. First, it was found guilty of being a blatant copycat and forced to pay more than a billion dollars in damages. And then, its manufacturing arm took a business hit.

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Photo shows iPad mini and iPhone 5 cases compared to an iPhone 4S

Just one more day to go until Apple’s highly-anticpated iPhone event, and surprise surprise, we have more purported case leaks. This time, it’s a photo of an iPad mini and iPhone 5 case, among a 4S and others.

The purpose of the image is to give us an idea of how the unannounced devices measure up to their predecessors. And it’s actually really interesting to see how the iPad mini compares to the third-gen iPad

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Native YouTube app now available in the App Store

Remember back in August when it was discovered that the stock YouTube app was not going to be included in iOS 6? Apple said that its license to include the app in iOS had ended, and Google was working on a standalone app to replace it.

Well, that app just went live in the App Store

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