The iPhone 5 goes on sale in 22 more countries today

Making good on its promise, Apple today is rolling out the iPhone 5 to 22 new countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

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Taking the American Express Passbook pass for a spin

Want a quick and easy way to access recent purchases and account balances made with your American Express card? If you’re running iOS 6, then you can now do so with Passbook.

First of all, just to clear up any misconceptions, you can’t actually purchase goods via Amex using Passbook — that functionality doesn’t yet exist. What you can do, though, is sync your Amex card with Passbook to access the convenient features mentioned above — balances, recent transactions, and the like.

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The iPhone 5′s A6 processor can dynamically vary its clock speed for performance

The A6 chip which debuted on the iPhone 5 earlier this month can do some pretty clever tricks, stemming from a heavily customized ARMv7 design. Benchmark data suggests that the A6 can dynamically overclock itself to up to 1.3GHz and downclock to just 500MHz, depending on workload.

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Ahead of tomorrow’s launch, some global carriers stop taking iPhone 5 pre-orders

With less than 24 hours until the second phase of global iPhone roll-out, some carriers have stopped taking pre-orders for the device due to low supply. Over in Slovakia, carriers Slovak Telekom and Orange Slovakia stopped taking pre-orders amid widespread supply constraints, reports The Wall Street Journal.

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iOS 6 can pull someone’s full name and Facebook photo based on a phone number alone

I’m risking of stating the obvious with this one, but I’d bet my shirt many of your were unaware of this little trick. As you know, Facebook integration in iOS 6 and OS X Mountain Lion can automagically update photos and user names for all matching contacts. What you may not have known is that Apple only needs a person’s phone number to pull this data.

So if a girl you met at a bar last night left you just her phone number, you can easily get her Facebook profile picture to appear on your iPhone when she happens to call you – even if you’re not friends with her on Facebook and even if her profile is hidden on Facebook. Plus, you’ll get her full name in Contacts. How cool is that?

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Where’s my iOS Wi-Fi Plus Cellular toggle?

Apple in early-August seeded iOS 6 Beta 4 to its registered developers. With it came a new feature in Settings, called Wi-Fi Plus Cellular. As Jeff explained in a lengthy post the following day, this toggle basically ensures that apps having trouble with WiFi can automatically switch over to cellular data. But why go implement and then remove this handy capability from iOS 6?

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Report: the iPhone 5 may be headed to China Mobile

Outside of North America, China may be Apple’s largest market. Although the iPhone 5 is set to be introduced by China Unicom and China Telecom during the first three months that the new smartphone is available, the biggest audience is still China Mobile’s 700 million subscribers.

Now Apple watchers believe new technology quietly added to the iPhone 5 could improve the chances the iconic handset could soon be sold by the world’s largest mobile carrier.

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Apple poaches Google’s Sally Cole as Communications Director

Apple is already thought to be aggressively recruiting Google Maps employees and now it appears Cupertino is after other high-ranked individuals currently employed by the search giant. Like Sally Cole, who had up until last month used to be Google’s Director of Internal Communications for almost six years.

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pod2g: I’m not working on a jailbreak for iOS 6

With the recent release of iOS 6, many jailbreakers have held back on the update so they can keep enjoying their favorite tweaks. Looking at conversations on iDB and Twitter, it appears that most jailbreakers are anxious to get on iOS 6, but not at the expense of their jailbreak. Those that find themselves in this situation are now patiently waiting for a jailbreak to be released.

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Report: Apple’s in-cell displays causing iPhone 5 delays

The answer to the question ‘where’s my iPhone 5?’ may have an answer. The smartphone’s advanced display technology is so complex that one supplier was slowed by defective screens, one Wall Street analyst said Tuesday.

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