With just three days left before the launch of BlackBerry 10, the anticipation for Research In Motion’s forthcoming platform and accompanying handsets has reached new heights.

Over the past few months, we’ve wondered whether to expect physical, full-QWERTY keyboards or touchscreens, whether we’ll likely see a traditional form factor, and whether we can expect RIM to follow competitors into the so-called ‘phablet’ market, as trends suggest consumers want larger smartphone screens.

A series of anonymous leaks and hints from RIM itself suggest we could be seeing two consumer-ready BlackBerry 10 devices, set for a wide-ranging global availability. The Waterloo, Ontario-based firm has yet to officially confirm any BlackBerry 10 handsets but, in the meantime, we’ve taken a closer look at the two devices the rumour mill is hedging its bets on.

BlackBerry Z10

The BlackBerry Z10 is hotly tipped to be RIM’s flagship handset for the forthcoming operating system. Rumoured specs point to a dual-core TI OMAP 4470 processor clocked at 1.5GHz, with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage, expandable through a microSD slot. Its 4.2in screen is expected to have a 1,280 x 768 pixel resolution. The Z10 is expected to have an 8-megapixel rear camera, capable of 1080p video-recording, and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera.

The Z10 has been showed off in a number of leaked images and videos, including one (below) that shows it going toe-to-toe with the iPhone 5. A recent Carphone Warehouse leak suggests that it will be available SIM-free to the tune of £479.95, making it roughly £30 cheaper than a 16GB iPhone 5, despite boasting a slightly larger display with a higher pixel-per-inch density than Apple’s smartphone. Of course, the most important comparison will come down to the BlackBerry 10 operating system, though we’ll have to wait a few more days to finally see how it measures up.

BlackBerry X10

While there’s been a lot of talk about the full-touchscreen Z10, it would be remiss of RIM to introduce BlackBerry 10 without acknowledging the seemingly significant portion of its customer base that is loyal to the full-QWERTY physical keyboard. “We know what our strengths are. And it would be plain wrong to get rid of the physical keyboard,” the company’s chief executive Thorsten Heins told CNET last year.

Accordingly, a dual touchscreen-physical keyboard device named the X10 is expected to accompany the Z10 as a secondary handset option. The X10 looks similar to previous generations of BlackBerry devices, with a large display that sits above a traditional four-row QWERTY keyboard.

Spec details are sparse, but the BlackBerry X10 is expected to be similar to the Z10 under the hood. Display-wise, it’s tipped to have a resolution of 720 x 720 pixels and a pixel density of 330 ppi. Rumours also point to NFC integration, an 8-megapixel rear camera shooting video at 1080p, and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera.

For a closer look at up-to-the-minute BlackBerry 10 news and analysis this week, visit ITProPortal’s dedicated BlackBerry 10 page.

Image Credit: Tinhte.vn (Z10), BlackBerry Empire (X10)

by Rawiya Kameir

PC giant Lenovo is downplaying a recent report that the company is looking to acquire BlackBerry manufacturer Research In Motion.

The rumour spread on Friday following a Bloomberg report that cited Lenovo chief financial officer, Wong Waiming, as saying that the company is “looking at all opportunities – RIM and many others.” In a statement  on Monday morning, Lenovo said it does not comment on mergers and acquisition rumours or speculation, but clarified Waiming’s statement.

“We are aware that Lenovo’s CFO Waiming was speaking broadly about M&A strategy in a recent interview,” the company said. “RIM was raised as a potential target by the journalist and Mr. Wong repeatedly answered in a manner consistent with all of our previous statements on M&A strategy: Lenovo is very focused on growing its business, both organically and through M&A. When inorganic ideas arise, we explore them to see if there is a strategic fit.

Meanwhile, RIM also issued a statement about the report, but did not directly address the possible Lenovo bid. The company said it is focused at this time on the delivery of its long-awaited BlackBerry 10 operating system, which will be unveiled at a press event tomorrow, 30 January.

“As [RIM CEO Thorsten Heins] said on our most recent results conference call on December 20th, we continue to examine all available options to ‘create new opportunities, focusing on areas where we will be more effective partnering rather than going it alone, and ultimately maximizing value for all stakeholders,’” RIM said in a statement, according to The Next Web. “We do not have anything new to report on our strategic review at this time.”

RIM last year hired bankers from JPMorgan and RBC Capital to help evaluate its strategic options after facing several disappointing financial quarters in a row as it struggles to deal with the popularity of Apple’s iPhone and smartphones based on Google’s Android.

by Angela Moscaritolo

Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS mobile platforms together accounted for a record 92 per cent share of all smartphones shipped worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to new data from Strategy Analytics.

Android, the undisputed leader of the industry, captured an impressive 70 per cent share of the global smartphone market in Q4 2012, up from 51 per cent a year earlier, the research firm said. Apple’s iOS took 22 per cent during the period, and all other smartphone platforms combined accounted for the remaining 7.9 per cent.

“The worldwide smartphone industry has effectively become a duopoly as consumer demand has polarized around mass-market Android models and premium Apple designs,” Scott Bicheno, senior analyst at Strategy Analytics, said in a statement.

Phone makers shipped an estimated 152.1 million Android smartphones globally in Q4 2012, up from 80.6 million units a year earlier. For the full year, almost half a billion Android smartphones were shipped worldwide.

“Android’s challenge for 2013 will be to defend its leadership, not only against Apple, but also against an emerging wave of hungry challengers that includes Microsoft, Blackberry, Firefox and Tizen,” Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics, said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Apple grew 29 per cent annually, shipping 47.8 million smartphones worldwide in Q4, and 136 million in all of 2012, according to Strategy Analytics.

Overall, global smartphone shipments grew 38 per cent annually, totalling 217 million units in Q4 2012 from 157 million units a year earlier, the research firm said. For the full year, smartphone shipments reached a record 700 million units, increasing from 490.5 million units in 2011. Shipment growth slowed from 64 per cent in 2011 to 43 per cent in 2012 as smartphone penetration began to mature in developed regions like North America and Western Europe.

In other news, recent research from IDC revealed that while Samsung and Apple lead the market, Huawei and ZTE both made gains to earn a spot among the top five smartphone vendors in Q4.

by Angela Moscaritolo

Apple today released iOS 6.1, which adds LTE support for more carriers and the ability to purchase Fandango movie tickets via Siri for US users, among other things.

“iOS 6 is the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, and with nearly 300 million iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices on iOS 6 in just five months, it may be the most popular new version of an OS in history,” Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, said in a statement. “iOS 6.1 brings LTE support to more markets around the world, so even more users can enjoy ultrafast Safari browsing, FaceTime video calls, iCloud services, and iTunes and App Store downloads.”

The update adds 36 iPhone carriers and 23 iPad carriers to the list of those that support LTE, something Apple CEO Tim Cook first tipped during an earnings call last week. LTE is available on iPhone 5 and the cellular versions of the iPad mini and fourth-generation iPad.

LTE will now be available from carriers in regions like Italy, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland, the Philippines, and several Middle Eastern countries, Cook said last week. A full list of those carriers is available on Apple’s website.

Meanwhile, users with a Siri-enhanced iOS device will be able to purchase movie tickets via the Fandango app using Apple’s voice assistant, but only in the US. On the music front, iTunes Match subscribers will also be able to download individual songs from iCloud.

In addition, Apple said iOS 6.1 adds a new button to reset its Advertising Identifier, which controls how your Web activity on the iOS device is shared with advertisers. You can find it via Settings > General > About > Advertising.

To see if iOS 6.1 is available for your phone, navigate to Settings > General > Software Update. The update requires at least 1GB of storage to download and will take about a half hour over Wi-Fi. You can also connect your device to your PC and download via iTunes.

Your device will need to reboot once the update is installed. You will then have to re-enter your Apple ID credentials for iCloud, iMessage, and FaceTime purposes.

by Chloe Albanesius

Common bugs in networking systems are placing PCs, printers, and storage devices at risk, according to security researchers.

According to the security team at Rapid7, technology used worldwide in both routers and standard networking equipment is making it possible for hackers to potentially infiltrate approximately 40 million to 50 million devices worldwide.

The vulnerability lies in the standard known as Universal Plug and Play (UPnP). This standard set of networking protocols allows devices, such as PCs, printers, and Wi-Fi access points, to communicate and discover each other’s presence. After discovery, devices can be connected through a network in order to share files, printing capability, and the Internet.

In a white paper released today, researchers from the security software maker said that while UPnP might make network setup cheaper and more efficient, it harbours a severe security risk.

The paper focuses on programming flaws in common UPnP discovery protocol (SSDP) implementations, which can be exploited to crash the service and execute arbitrary code, the exposure of the UPnP control interface (SOAP) on private networks, and programming flaws in both UPnP HTTP and SOAP overall.

Over 80 million unique IPs were identified that responded to UPnP discovery requests from the Internet due to the “misconfiguration” of the UPnP SSDP discovery service across thousands of products. Over 73 percent of all UPnP instances discovered through SSDP were derived from only four software-development kits (SDKs).

In addition, the UPnP SOAP service was found to provide access to device functions that should not be allowed from distrusted networks–such as opening holes in a firewall.

Rapid7 also said that the two most commonly used UPnP software libraries both contain remotely exploitable vulnerabilities. For example, in the case of the Portable UPnP SDK, “over 23 million IPs are vulnerable to remote code execution through a single UDP packet.” A patch has been released, but it will take a long time before this patch is included in vendor products, according to the firm.

The paper states:

In most cases, network equipment that is “no longer shipping” will not be updated at all, exposing these users to remote compromise until UPnP is disabled or the product is swapped for something new. The flaws identified in the MiniUPnP software were fixed over two years ago, yet over 330 products are still using older versions.

The team’s findings are below.

(Credit: Rapid7)

The researchers say that over 1,500 vendors and 6,900 products were identified and vulnerable to at least one of these security flaws. Vendors with vulnerable products include Belkin, Linksys, and Netgear. These flaws, unless disabled or fixed, could allow hackers access to confidential business files, passwords, or grant them control over devices including printers and webcams remotely.

Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer of security software firm Veracode, told Reuters that the publication of these findings would bring widespread attention to UPnP, commenting:

This definitely falls into the scary category. There is going to be a lot more research on this. And the follow-on research could be a lot scarier.

The firm suggests that in order to combat the possible threat, end users, firms, and ISPs shouldidentify and disable any UPnP endpoints within their systems and networks, and be aware that many devices come with UPnP enabled by default.

By Charlie Osborne for Zero Day

Twitter rang in Data Privacy Day by updating its transparency report with another round of numbers and some changes in how it presents the figures.

The report gives a view on the number of user information requests made by governments around the world. Also included are requests to remove illegal content and copyright violation notices the company receives.

As for the changes, the transparency info was moved to a new homepage. Twitter made the data more visual, and the new site is littered with graphs and charts to help users digest the info.

The social media site also added more detailed information on how the United States asks for this data, whether through subpoenas, court orders or search warrants.

Tweet the police

This is the second transparency report from the social network since it started releasing this sort of data in July. The first report focused on the first half of 2012.

Just like last time, Twitter gave the global numbers while the information is broken down by country for users to sift through.

From July to December of 2012, Twitter received 1,009 requests for users’ information from governments around the world. That’s up from 849 requests made in the first half of the year.

To put that into context, Twitter has about 200 million monthly active users, according to an official tweet from last month.

These information requests are generally for criminal investigations, but are also sometimes used in emergency cases.

Of those 1,009 requests, 57 percent produced at least some information to authorities. Of the 849 requests from the first part of 2012, at least some data was produced about 63 per cent of the time.

The company received 42 request to remove illegal content in the last part of the year, compared to six removal requests from January to June of last year. In later 2012, Twitter got 3,268 copyright notices, down from 3,378 earlier in the year.

For some perspective, Google reported its transparency numbers last week. The search engine received about 21,000 user information requests in the last half of 2012, producing some data 66 per cent of the time.

Ask Google

But Twitter isn’t the only company taking note of Data Privacy Day. Google also published a new Legal Process FAQ on its own transparency site, which Twitter emulates.

The new FAQ is a guide through the legal processes involved when governments request user data. It explains what Google does when it receives these requests and what governments need to do to get access to the data.

One of the more informative sections breaks down what types of data the U.S. government can request through different legal processes. For example, a subpoena can force Google to disclose a user’s registration info on YouTube, and a court order can reveal the contents of Gmail messages.

It’s a good breakdown of the whole legal process involved and gives an insight into how companies in general deal with these requests. It’s also a good place to start if you know you were targeted by one of these requests.

But, as both Google and Twitter noted in blogs, these reports are more about starting conversations than reporting numbers.

“It’s our continued hope that providing greater insight into this information helps in at least two ways: first, to raise public awareness about these invasive requests; second, to enable policy makers to make more informed decisions,” Jeremy Kessel, Legal Policy Manager, wrote on the Twitter blog.

Ooo, “invasive.” We like the language.

By Clint Demeritt 

Riding on the heels of the recent U.S. lawsuit against Google for Safari tracking, Apple users in the U.K. have now launched their own similar case against the Web giant.

Peeved that their online privacy was violated, roughly a dozen people are suing Google in a class action suit, according to The Guardian. The case alleges that Google secretly tracked their Internet habits via cookies in theSafari Web browser. The lawsuit revolves around the way Google may have sidestepped Apple’s security settings on the iPhone, iPad, and desktop versions of Safari.

“This is the first time Google has been threatened with a group claim over privacy in the U.K.,” Dan Tench, a lawyer at the London-based firm Olswang that is representing the plaintiffs, told The Guardian. “It is particularly concerning how Google circumvented security settings to snoop on its users. One of the things about Google is that it is so ubiquitous in our lives and if that’s its approach then it’s quite concerning.”

The plaintiffs want Google to say how it used the information it allegedly got its hands on, according to The Guardian. Additionally, they want to know how much of their personal data was supposedly taken and over what period of time. They are suing Google for breaches of confidence and privacy, computer misuse and trespassing, and breach of the Data Protection Act of 1998.

In November, a U.S. judge agreed to fine Google $22.5 million in a similar case. In this suit, the Federal Trade Commission also claimed that the Web company illegally bypassed user privacy settings in Safari. The FTC and Google previously reached a settlement in August when the company agreed that it “placed an advertising tracking cookie on the computers of Safari users who visited sites within Google’s DoubleClick advertising network.”

At that time, Google said it takes privacy very seriously and that it didn’t intentionally sidestep Safari’s default settings.

According to The Guardian, damages in this suit could be in the millions since the U.K. has 10 million people who use the applicable Apple products and could sign on as plaintiffs.

CNET contacted Google for comment. We’ll update the story when we get more information.

Before: Pyongyang (Picture: Google)

Google is starting to compile a clearer picture of North Korea after releasing an updated map of the secretive communist state.

The internet search engine giant’s Google Maps page for North Korea was largely a blank canvas up until now with its access to the east Asian country limited.

Users can now access detailed images of the country ruled by supreme leader Kim Jong-un and explore some of its famous landmarks after Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt paid a visit to the country.

Even some of the country’s infamous prison labour camps have been marked by people who used the Google Map Maker tool to compile the maps, including the Bukchang gulag for political prisoners.

Google Map Maker executive Jayanth Mysore said the update was ‘a crucial first step towards helping people access more information about parts of the world that are unfamiliar to them’.

‘The goal of Google Maps is to provide people with the most comprehensive, accurate, and easy-to-use modern map of the world,’ she said in a blog post.

‘As part of this mission, we’re constantly working to add more detailed map data in areas that traditionally have been mostly blank.

‘For a long time, one of the largest places with limited map data has been North Korea. But today we are changing that with the addition of more detailed maps of North Korea in Google Maps.’

The updated records were compiled on Google’s Map Maker, a collaborative community effort aimed at improving mapping details in countries where the data is not available.

Apple have now released the latest version of their operating system, iOS 6.1, for the iPad and iPhone. The important question is what new features does iOS 6.1 bring to Apple devices ?

Well, the major new addition is support for more 4G LTE networks worldwide with another 36 carriers now supported which brings the total number up to 56. However, this is pretty irrelevant to UK users because the smartphone was already supported on EE’s 4G network.

However, that doesn’t mean it’s not worth updating because the update also includew a number of other important additions. One such addition is the option to download individual tracks from iMatch , which was strangely removed in iOS 6.

Apple have also added a new button to reset the “Advertising Identifier” which is what advertisers use to bombard users with targeted adverts. You’ll now be able to reset the data , as well as having the option to opt-out of receiving targeted adverts.

US users will also now be able to use Siri to book cinema tickets thanks to the Fandango application.  In essence users will now be able to order tickets using their voice alone, which is surely a sign of things to come.

iOS 6.1 also includes a number of security and bug fixes which are always an important inclusion in any operating system update. While, the overall speed and reliability of the operating system has also been improved.

iOS 6.1 is available to download right now on the iPhone 3GS and later and the iPad 2 and later. As always 3G recommends you backup your data before installing the update in-case anything goes wrong.

By Simon D Thomas