Apple has released a third public beta of iOS 5.1 to developers. It’s available for download from developer.apple.com if you have a developer account.

For the most part this is a bug fix release which doesn’t offer any major new features, but it does return the option to disable 3G and rely on Edge wireless connectivity which can help prolong your battery life (while slowing your internet connection to a crawl).

The update changes the baseband, so if you jailbreak and carrier unlock your iPhone, you should probably proceed with extreme caution before applying the latest update.

HP may have canceled the Pre 2 smartphone, but the company is still rolling out software updates… for now. This week HP released webOS 2.2.5 for some Pre 2 handsets, adding new features including:

• Support for Skype voice calls and instant messages
• Ability to share text messages and calls with an HP TouchPad over Bluetooth
• Sync improvements for Google Calendar, Yahoo Calendar, and contacts

Up until now Skype was only available on the HP Pre 3 or the Verizon Pre 2. This udpate brings it to additional webOS phones — but not all Pre 2 phones will get the update.

PreCentral reports the update appears to be available for unlocked European GSM phones, but not unlocked US phones or Verizon phones.

Motorola has promised to release Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich software updates for some of the company’s latest smartphones. But it could be a while before we see Google’s latest software running on Motorola devices.

The company spelled out some of the details involved in bringing new versions of Android to existing devices in a blog post today.

Basically Motorola needs to:

• Optimize the software for its hardware and add Motorola customizations such as MotoCast.
• Perform quality testing.
• Submit the software to wireless carriers for certification.

Sometimes there’s also a pre-release beta made available to customers before Motorola pushes the full software update. If you read the full blog post, you’ll see that it can take as long as half a year for Motorola to release an upgrade after Google pushes out a new version of Android.

That might sound like a long time, but it’s actually pretty typical for official software upgrades. Samsung, HTC, and other phone makers don’t do things much more quickly.

On the other hand, we’re already seeing unofficial versions of Android 4.0 for a number of devices thanks to the developers behind CyanogenMod and other custom ROMs. Unfortunately the installation process can be a little intimidating for newcomers and you may end up voiding your warranty if you decide to use a custom ROM instead of waiting for an official software update.

Apple has released a new beta of its operating system for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Developers can download iOS 5.1 beta from the Apple developer portal.

The list of changes isn’t all that informative, but the latest version of iOS appears to add some new voice dictation features, fix some bugs, and squash some security holes. It’s likely that Apple has also been working on bugs that have affected battery life for some users, although it’s not yet clear whether iOS 5.1 will deliver better battery life.

If you have a jailbroken device you’ll probably want to hold off on updating to iOS 5.1 until the iPhone Dev Team confirms that you can use redsn0w or a similar tool to jailbreak the new operating system.

via 9 to 5 Mac

Google has released the source code for Android 4.0. This is the first version of Android designed to run on both smartphones and tablets — but the version being released today is designed specifically for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone.

The Nexus S will be the first product to ship with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, but now that the source code is being released it shouldn’t take long for independent developers to start tearing it apart and looking for ways to get it to run on other devices.

Smartphone and tablet makers will also likely be doing the same, which means that we could start to see additional devices shipping with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich in the coming months.

Google has just started to upload the source to the Android Open Source Project servers so it could be a few hours before everything is available for download.

As an interesting side note, the latest code push actually includes all previous versions of Android, including Android 3.0 Honeycomb. Google never released the source code for Honeycomb to the public until now, because the company felt it was incomplete and only suited for use on tablets, not phones.

via Android Central

Google Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich will ship soon on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone — but Google is also preparing to release a software update that will bring Android 4.0 to the Samsung Nexus S phone which was launched earlier this year.

Unfortunately Google’s original developer phone — 2010′s Google Nexus One, will apparently not be getting an official Ice Cream Sandwich update. Android Product Management Director Hugo Barra tells The Telegraph that the phone is too old.

That probably comes as news to the hackers already working to port Google’s new operating system to the aging smartphone. As you can see in the video below, right now ICS is pretty slow on the Nexus One, but we’re looking at an early build based on the Android 4.0 emulator image.

Read the rest of this entry »

Motorola is offering up a few details about its plans for Google Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. For now, the company is confirming that the Motorola Droid RAZR and Droid BIONIC smartphones and the Motorola XOOM tablet will all receive Android 4.0 updates.

That’s not to say that these are the only devices that will be updated. I wouldn’t be surprised if other recent Motorola phones are added to the list, and according a post on Twitter, Motorola will make announcements about any other devices on the list within 6 weeks of Google’s public release of Ice Cream Sandwich.

The first phone that will ship with Ice Cream Sandwich is the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Google is expected to release the source code shortly after that phone goes on sale, so we shouldn’t have long to wait until Motorola makes more details available.

Of course, Motorola phone and tablet users may be able to install unofficial builds of Ice Cream Sandwich long before that. We’ve already started to see developers working on custom ROMs based on Google’s latest OS update.

It’s likely that most of Motorola’s current Android phones will be able to support Ice Cream Sandwich. Google has said that any phone that can run Android 2.3 should also be able to run Android 4.0. Whether Motorola wants to put the time and effort into developing a software update for older handsets is another question.

via Android Police and Android Community

On October 12th Apple will roll out iOS 5 for anyone with a supported iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. But iOS 5 Gold Master is already available for folks with Apple Developer accounts. You can download it today from developer.apple.com.

The Gold Master release is pretty much the version that will soon be available to the general public. If this were anyone other than Apple, we’d be calling it a “release candidate.” There’s still a chance Apple could catch and fix some bugs before next week, but iOS 5 GM should have all of the features we expect from iOS 5 including the improved notification system, Twitter integration, WiFi synchronization, and iCloud support.

In addition to downloading iOS 5 GM today, it turns out developers can also jailbreak it.

The iPhone Dev Team hasn’t yet released an official update to the redsn0w jailbreak utility to support the latest release yet. But Dev Team member MuscleNerd has confirmed that you can use the redsn0w 0.9.9b2 for Mac or Windows to jailbreak iOS 5 Gold Master.

You’ll need to specify the IPSW you want to use, and you should choose the IPSW for iOS 5 beta 7 for now. I suspect it won’t be long until there’s a new version of redsn0w though.

The only catch is that this is a tethered jailbreak. That means if you reboot your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad you’ll need to connect to a computer via a USB cable and run redsn0w again or lose your jailbreak.