upgrade

Often one family member on an AT&T Mobility wireless plan is an early adopter, and must have the latest iPhone the minute it's available. Standard two-year contracts exceed the typical iPhone upgrade cycle, which is where a line swap comes into play. Staggering upgrade eligibility around 12 months apart means that someone on the plan gets a new iPhone every year.

Officially, upgrading on an eligible line, then swapping the new device to another line on the same plan is called a "cross upgrade". Cross upgrading from the iPhone 5 to the 5s can be achieved without even contacting AT&T, although to match the phone numbers to the correct device a quick call to customer service (611) is recommended. AT&T condones the practice of cross upgrading, as long as the wireless plan bill is in good standing and there's a line currently eligible to upgrade.

Samsung, the maker of past iPhone processors, has revealed its latest ARM chip. Clocking at an outrageous 1 GHz, this chip only consumes 640mW of power.

The new ARM, nicknamed Hummingbird, uses the same Cortex-A8 architecture featured in the iPhone 3GS. The new chip includes Neon, which speeds up video and audio tasks.

The Hummingbird is the first ARM-based processor design to be built by Samsung using a 45 nanometer assembly process. This keeps energy efficiency at a maximum and lowers the heat emissions of the chip. The Hummingbird only requires one volt of power to operate.

Only a week after the previous release, Apple has made iPhone OS 3.0 beta 5 available. Several new tweaks and features are apparent as the final release date for the new operating system approaches. Apple has also announced that all AppStore applications submitted for approval must be OS 3.0 compatible going forward.

First of all, leaked screenshots have confirmed rumors of a built-in digital compass (magnetometer). Along with the GPS and accelerometer, the compass could improve navigation and make a variety of "augmented reality" applications possible by overlaying graphics on top of live video.

Jibbler? The name may be awkward, however the code buried within iPhone OS 3.0 it refers to could make the iPhone much more talkative. Jibbler works with the SpringBoard and Spotlight in iPhone OS 3.0 to recognize and synthesize speech.

With improved processing power, it's possible the next iPhone could be controlled by the user's voice. In addition, the iPhone could read off contact names, calendar entries, or song titles on demand. A new Voice Services class has been discovered which may mean that Jibbler will be available to developers in Apple's Software Development Kit (SDK).

With the initial excitement of Apple's iPhone 3.0 preview already passed, users of the iPhone OS 3.0 Beta have been finding several new features that appear to be in the works for a next generation device. One such feature is video recording, which reports have indicated would come along with an upgraded camera and possibly a multi-core GPU (graphics processing unit).

Backing up the claim are screenshots from the MobileMe upload screen in iPhone OS 3.0 that say "Publish Video" at the top of the app. Of course, a better camera would mean higher-resolution still photos, too. Other features that look interesting have also appeared in leaked screenshots of iPhone OS 3.0 Beta.