News

The latest version of Google Mobile for the iPhone features some great improvements, including push notification functionality. The mobile Google app (now at 0.6.0.4416) now features an icon badge with the number of unread emails on your linked Gmail accounts. Push notifications that pop up on your home screen can be sent when a calendar event is about to take place on your Google calendar schedule.

Mophie and Intuit have entered the iPhone credit card transaction game with the Complete Card Solution for iPhone. Mophie, known for its iPhone battery pack cases, developed an iPhone 3G/3GS case that includes a magnetic card reader built in. When the card is swiped, data is encrypted before it uploads to the iPhone to be processed by the Intuit GoPayment 3.0 app.

Mophie is working on an iPhone 4 version of the device. In the meantime, Square features a portable card reader that plugs into the headphone jack of any iPhone or iPad. The two competing payment systems have different costs, with Square being completely free to set up. Complete Card Solution is $179 for the card reader unit and requires a $12.95 monthly subscription.

Anyone waiting around for an iOS 4.0.2 jailbreak will be waiting around for a long time if the iPhone Dev-Team has anything to say about the matter. Now that Apple has released a fix for the PDF exploit so cleverly used in JailbreakMe 2.0, the iPhone Dev-Team plans to wait it out until iOS 4.1 firmware launches to jailbreak again.

According to the development team, even though Apple is now shipping iPhones with firmware 4.0.2, which can't be jailbroken with JailbreakMe, releasing an interim solution before iOS 4.1 hits the streets would be a waste of time. iPhone 4.0.2 and iPad firmware 3.2.2 was released for the sole purpose of shutting down JailbreakMe, and protecting users from the PDF security hole that is bound to spawn malicious programs soon.

The wait is finally over for Netflix subscribers interested in streaming video on their iPhones. The highly anticipated Netflix app version 1.1.0 went live in iTunes and can be downloaded for free. Netflix subscribers now have access to their Instant Queue and can watch movies using a Wi-Fi or cellular data connection.

Movies that are interrupted can be continued on the iPhone later or on other devices such as an iPad or a computer. The new iOS app is a universal app, meaning it also works on the Apple iPad. Netflix includes high-speed scrubbing controls and switches between full letterbox format and a zoomed video view which fills more of the iPhone screen.

Chinese news source Caixin reports that China Unicom will indeed offer the iPhone 4 for sale on September 16. This is Apple's second iPhone release in China in under a year. October of 2009 saw the launch of a special iPhone 3GS model that shipped without Wi-Fi functionality due to Chinese regulations. The iPhone 4 slated for China Unicom's network this fall is said to have Wi-Fi.

Grey market iPhones are popular in China, with millions of units in operation. China Unicom allows users with any iPhone that supports its network to purchase data plans. The lack of Wi-Fi and high prices may have kept iPhone 3GS sales lower than expected. iPhones imported from other countries can sell for half the price.