Posted: May 7, 2012

There are a lot of iPhone 5 rumors circulating online (we have certainly reported on a number of them here at the Inquisitr) and it is sometimes hard to tell truth from fiction. This is especially true when dealing with Apple, which zealously maintains its secrecy.

The Inquisitr has previously reported on rumors that the next-generation iPhone, the tentatively named iPhone 5, will feature a larger screen to match those of the leading Android devices. Now those rumors have a little more meat to them, given recent developments in Apple’s iPad line of tablet computers.

The new iPad features an LTE radio for high speed internet, which seems to indicate that Apple has hopped onto the 4G bandwagon. This is why the newest iPad from Cupertino actually weighs in heavier than the iPad 2 and is slightly, yet not noticeably, thicker.

There doesn’t seem much of a chance that Apple will stop at adding 4G to its tablets while forgoing the iPhone, its flagship product, and the inclusion of LTE is in itself the surest sign that the handset’s screen will grow in its next iteration.

Wired’s GadgetLab blog summarized the latest thinkingby Apple fanblog iLounge as follows:  ”it all comes down to LTE. LTE radios take up more room in a smartphone than 3G radios and use more power. To put LTE capabilities in the next iPhone, you need to make room not just for the radio, but find enough juice to power it without significantly decreasing battery life.”

“The problem is there’s just not a lot of room inside an iPhone for anything more than is already there…Over the past five generations, Apple has packed in everything that makes up an iPhone about as densely as possible…If it’s going to fit anything else, Apple needs to make more room.”

In order to maintain current levels of battery life and make space to include the electricity gulping LTE radio, the iPhone is going to have to get bigger in some way.

There’s been a lot of talk over the last couple of years that with the iPhone 5, Apple would bump the display up to a larger four inches, but the rumor’s always had a lot of problems. Increasing the iPhone’s display while maintaining its current 3:2 aspect ratio would make the device wider in the hand and harder to operate one-handed. it would also either decrease the pixel density of the iPhone’s Retina display, making it less “retina-ey” and more jaggy to the eyes, or require more pixels per inch to compensate, causing iPhone developers to design their apps for multiple resolutions (the exact same kind of fragmentation problem that’s bitten Android on its ass). No good.

That’s why conventional wisdom (until a couple months ago) was that Apple would keep a 3.5-inch display and eschew LTE until the radios were sufficiently small and power-efficient to fit into the current iPhone’s form factor. But with the new iPad’s WiFi + 4G release, Apple has made it abundantly clear that it is finally ready to embrace LTE. And the way the company is going to do it is by making the iPhone’s display longer, but not wider.

The next-gen iPhone, claims iLounge, will also feature a smaller dock connecter, making your 3rd party accessories obsolete. Let’s hope that one isn’t true.

iPhone 5 Will Be Taller, Have 4 Inch Screen

Android phones mainly use memory cards or SD cards to store data, files and folders. anyone can access his/her Android phone and removable memory card through mounting it to his/her laptop or computer. Basically mounting is recognized as putting it in normal mass storage condition or mode, which allows everyone to open the Android phone and removable memory card or SD card as an extra window on your laptop or computer. After that anyone can remove or add information, files or programs from the memory card or SD card. here …

How to access Android memory cards to your computer or laptop

I’ve said it a million times: software keyboards are alienating and clunky. They’re not exactly comfortable to use and making mistakes is much easier to do on a virtual keyboard than it is on a physical one. What’s worse is correcting said mistakes. Placing the cursor accurately can be a cumbersome and frustrating task. And neither the magnifying bubble in iOS or the drag-and-drop method in Android and Windows Phone make things any easier.

While the added display real estate of a tablet makes it great for many things, like viewing Web pages, watching movies from virtually anywhere and providing hours of non-stop entertainment, it only improves text entry and editing so much.

Nonetheless, I do it day in and day out. Most of you know by now I’m a tablet fiend and that I do a lot of my Web browsing and writing from the keyboard-less slabs. In fact, every article I have written in the past several weeks has been written almost entirely on either the Transformer Prime or a (new) iPad. (I usually only switch to my MacBook to publish.) In short, they keep me focused on a single task at a time versus trying to do everything at once from a PC.

But there are few who would argue that soft keyboards couldn’t be better.

On an iPad, you are at the mercy of Apple’s software engineers. And currently, there are only three different keyboard modes on the iPad: portrait, landscape and split. the landscape keyboard isn’t all that bad. (It’s what I’m using to write this.) the letters are nice and big, and all the essential keys are easily accessible. but make a single mistake and might find yourself stumbling all over the place, trying to fix a single typo.

On Android tablets, you have the luxury of downloading and trying out various keyboards. Finding a keyboard that suits your needs is as simple as a Google search or perusing soft keyboards in the Play Store. I typically use the stock Android keyboard for the majority of my Android tablet writing, and I use SwiftKey 3 when holding the tablet instead of propping it on a table or docking it in the keyboard attachment. the soft arrow keys in SwiftKey work wonders, but are still no match for a physical keyboard. (Oh, how I love the keyboard dock!)

Mobile software companies have yet to overcome the hurdles associated with editing text (copying, pasting, selecting, etc.) via touchscreen. Auto-correction and personalization software helps avoid typos, but does not snuff them out completely. Essentially, there is no great way to edit text on a tablet.

On Wednesday, however, a video was uploaded to YouTube by one Daniel Hooper, demoing a way that iPad text editing could be much better. the video begins with Hooper typing, ”Editing on iPad is slow. but it could be better.” He went on to show an altered version of the iPad keyboard that he made. rather than tapping different parts of the text to move the cursor, he simply slid his finger across the keyboard laterally. to move the cursor faster (what looked to be an entire word at a time), he used two fingers. And to selected text, Hooper simply held the shift key while sliding another finger.

I want this, and I want it now. It’s simple, effective, quick and (somewhat) intuitive. just judging by how fast Hooper was typing, selecting, deleting and editing words, his mod seems to be quite effective and relatively easy to pick up on. (I would have to get over my learned habit of swiping right-to-left to delete the last word typed when using SwiftKey, that’s for sure.) the only thing I would suggest, however, are hotkeys for copy and paste.

Lucky for us, something great will come of this one way or another.

Apple has been known to pick up developers, hackers and various software companies with great ideas in the past. just last year, they hired 19-year-old iOS hacker, Nicholas Allegra, as an intern. Many speculated that Apple hired Allegra to beef up iOS security. And, as many of you may recall, Apple acquired Siri, a virtual assistant app, in April 2010 for use with iOS 5 on the iPhone 4S. hopefully, something similar will happen here as Daniel Hooper certainly has some pretty impressive ideas. (The modest developer doesn’t seem to be aiming for a job from the Cupertino-based tech company, and instead just asks YouTube viewers to submit a feature request directly to Apple.)

If Apple doesn’t hire Hooper (or steal his idea), however, all hope will not be lost, as it is very likely either Hooper or another developer will create a similar jailbreak mod for the iPad. the only problem with that is it would only be available to those who are willing to sacrifice their warranty. Hey, you win some and lose some.

Either way, I can’t wait for this feature to be on my iPad, officially or unofficially. what say you?

If Apple wants to improve the iPad keyboard, they need to hire Daniel Hooper

It looks like the rumor cycle for the iPhone 5 (or, more likely, “the new iPhone”) has just hit a major milestone: the first component leak. Chinese website specializing in replacement parts for various kinds of gadgets briefly put up a listing for replacement home buttons for the iPhone 5. if genuine, the buttons tell us a few things about what the next iPhone will look like.

The buttons were originally listed on TVC-Mall.com, and look a lot like the home buttons found on current-generation iOS devices. in fact, they’re externally identical – circular, with a rounded square in the middle.

Nevertheless, they do offer a few hints about what the new iPhone will look like. first, and most obviously, we know two things: the new iPhone will come in black and white, and will, in fact, have a home button. While it may sound silly to confirm that the iPhone will have a home button, the fact is that the home buttons on iOS devices have been a matter of intense speculation for some years. ever since the first Android smartphone appeared without a home button, rumors that the iPhone would eventually go button-less have circulated. if these home buttons are genuine, then that means that the home button will be around for at least one more generation of iPhone.

The other major thing these home buttons suggest is that the next iPhone will be getting an external redesign. The iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S are basically identical from the outside. as such, their home buttons look the same on the inside. This home button looks slightly different, which suggests that the internal components of the iPhone will be shuffled around at least a little bit. considering the fact that the iPhone is due a redesign anyway – and with rumors of a redesigned touchscreen and metal casing – the redesign of the iPhone home button, however slight, appears to be a confirmation that the iPhone will be getting a redesign.

This isn’t the first time that leaked home buttons have provided a clue about a new Apple product. Back in December the home buttons for the new iPad leaked, and their redesign appeared to confirm rumors that the iPad would be getting a bit thicker, as it ultimately did.

That said, most of this is still speculation. to paraphrase Freud, a home button is still just a home button, and doesn’t actually tell us a whole lot. Nevertheless, it does offer some tantalizing hints about what’s to come. And since real details about the next iPhone are still a bit thin on the ground, tantalizing hints are pretty much all we’ve got to go on at this point.

iPhone 5 Rumor: Leaked Home Button Hints At New Design

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The one X is HTC’s new flagship and, even though it hasn’t yet been made available in the United States and most other important markets, is one of the hottest Android handsets around.

With a Tegra 3 quad-core processor under the hood, a very thin body, and a sophisticated and stylish look, the one X is certainly one of Android’s biggest  hopes in the everlasting battle against the iPhone.

But aside from the awesome performance and cool looks, the guys at HTC are also confident that they’ll make a difference with the rear-facing camera on the one X, a camera that is supposedly “better than the iPhone 4S’ shooter”, according to official claims.

That’s a very bold statement, considering Apple’s very popular and capable cameras, but it might not be as far from reality as it sounded the first time, if we are to trust a CNET review from a couple of days ago.

The guys at CNET took both cameras for a quick spin and, after looking at seven photographs delivered in the same conditions, they reached the conclusion… that it’s impossible to reach a clear conclusion right now.

If you are a bit confused, it’s understandable, but let’s take a hard look at the photos, one by one, and see what we can say about the two cameras.

The first one (above) is a sample shot of a CNET staffer’s desk, clearly showing that the iPhone 4S is capable of producing warmer colors than the HTC one X. I think that there’s no question here about which one of the two cameras produced with the brightest, clearest image, so let’s move on.

The second pic (the first one from the gallery at the end of the post), which is a close look at the first images (at 100% crop), brings the first good news for HTC. while it’s practically impossible to set the two images apart, the one X’ shot seems just a tad sharper and clearer if you look at it closely. the guys at CNET are claiming that HTC’s camera was a “bit noisier”, but, in my opinion, the difference is to small to count.

The third face-off  (the second pic in the gallery) is probably the most important one, being CNET’s standard test shot and probably the one thing that interests all technology users. to be honest, I am not that artistic and don’t usually take pictures in low lighting and with all sorts of effects, so I am primarily interested in how normal, regular photos look on a smartphone’s camera.

The iPhone 4S seems to have more natural colors and a slightly better exposure, but then again, for me personally, both these pics look darn good, so I’ll call this battle a tie.

The next CNET photo (the third in the gallery below) is another 100% crop, but I’m not going to insist on it, because we commented on the 100% crop close look earlier, so it’s only natural to reach pretty much the same conclusions.

The lowlight test (the fourth pic in the gallery), on the other hand, is probably the first clear victory for one X. the image on the left is clearly sharper than the one on the right, so, after all, it might seem that the guys at HTC  were on to something when they boldly stated that the one X has a better camera than the iPhone.

HTC’s flagship continues to impress in terms of HDR (high dynamic range) imaging, where there are very notable differences and a clear upper hand for the one X (the image below).

Finally, the close-up section of CNET’s comparison (the last pic in the gallery) seems to be another win for the HTC one X. once more, we have a sharper image from the one X, but the differences are not that significant and we must admit that iPhone 4S’ pic looks pretty good as well.

All in all, even though I haven’t been on the same page with CNET’s editors on all the seven face-offs between the HTC one X and iPhone 4S, I must say that I agree with them on the conclusion. neither of the two cameras can be clearly called the better one right now, as they are both pretty great and have their own set of upsides and downsides.

However, although HTC’s claims seem to be only partially backed in reality, we have to admit that it’s not easy to come close to Apple’s performance in terms of cameras, let alone to defeat them.

Congrats, HTC! the one X, with its beautiful screen, high processing performance, and excellent camera shapes up to be one of the best mobile devices of  2012.

HTC One X and iPhone 4S pitted against each other in camera face off

This week brought tons of great new apps. From a long-distance relationship app that allows you to “thumb kiss” your partner from far away, to a new app for storing your sketches, notes and other thoughts and sharing them on the web — there was plenty of new app action in the past seven days to download on your favorite smartphone or tablet.

Some of our favorites this week also include a new space discovery app that combines 3D graphics with video, text and photos and allows you to explore seven different realms: Subatomic, Atomic, Solar System, Stars, Milky way, Galaxies, and Universe.

If you’re interested in exploring other countries rather than space, Babbel’s language-learning apps are now available for Android. And if you prefer to keep your travels a little closer to home, another new app this week lets you explore the art available on NYC’s transit system, as well as plan your own transit art tour.

When it comes time to pay your friends back for your portion of the dinner bill this weekend, this week brought with it an app that lets you send cash via PayPal by just tapping your phone against theirs.

Check out the gallery above for a look at our favorite new apps from the week. Be sure to let us know in the comments which ones were your favorite (or what cool new apps you think we missed)!

7 Apps You Don't Want To Miss

When the iPhone 4S came out with the same form factor as its predecessor the iPhone, a lot of people were astonished. The latest iPhone received mixed reactions from the public. Many were dismayed as they were expecting a bigger screen on the 4S. there are also others who felt that the few changes in the phone’s specs were enough to keep Apple with its Android and Windows Phone competitors. we all know that this is not Apple’s first attempt to stick with their old and famous design. The same happened with the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 3G.

Let us now talk about the phone’s design. If you look at the two handsets, you will notice that almost everything on its outer appearance is the same. This is even true with the phone’s dimensions (115.2 x 58.6 x 9.3mm), the only difference is that the latest handset from Apple is a bit heavier than its predecessor. It now weighs at 140 grams while the other one is only at 137 grams. The two differs slightly due to the placement of the buttons. The buttons of the 4S are raised a bit compared to its predecessor. It is that hard to tell the 4S from its predecessor this if you are looking at them from a distance.

Let us now talk about the camera. The phone’s physical appearance may not be that different but Apple made sure that the latest iPhone is better than its predecessor. This is most especially true if you check out the phone’s innards. one of the biggest upgrade is the phone’s camera. The older model uses a 5MP camera while the latest one is equipped with a whopping 8MP camera. also, the addition of the new 1080p on the handset is a welcomed change. The phone’s photo and video resolutions are now made better. This is all thanks to the phone’s 5 element lens.

The said lens totes an aperture of f/2.4 and is backed up by the new CMOS sensor with backside illumination. It also comes with a new Hybrid IR filter for a more realistic color rendering. You will end up with snappy and accurate colors at all times. You will also enjoy videos in 1080p and in full HD.

Let’s now move on to the Software. The latest iOS5 contains tons of new features. but the good news is, iPhone 4 users shouldn’t feel that bad at all. This is of course with the exception of the now famous Siri. but then again, all of the iOS5 features can also be found on the 4th generation iPhone. The only difference is that the 4S is packed with a faster and snappier A5 chip for its processor.

These are just some of the differences between the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S.

iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S – Their Differences

Plus inside a Google search quality meeting, French open data, Apple’s mystery maps and more

A quick burst of 9 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Sir Jonathan Ive: the iMan cometh >> Evening Standard

Good (if a little London-ish; understandable, as the Standard is a London local paper) Q&A with Jonathan Ive of Apple.

Hardware-accelerated audio/video decoding in Gecko (bug 714408) – mozilla.dev.platform >> Mozilla mailing list

Andreas Gal is one of the Mozilla team leaders:

I want to land bug 714408 on mozilla-central as soon as I get review for it. it adds hardware-accelerated audio/video decoding support to Gecko using system decoders already present on the system. Android, for example, ships by default with a number of decoders, and in particular for such mobile devices we really have to use these hardware-accelerated decoders for good battery life (and performance).

looks innocuous; in fact, it’s the Firefox team caving in and using system decoders for H.264 and AAC and MP3 (patent-encumbered all), and essentially admitting that the open source WebM video codec is not going to get any traction on the web. Those with long(ish) memories may recall which company said it would drop H.264 support from its browser – but so far hasn’t. Read the whole thing; fascinating.

How does £15,000 of startup investment sound? >> Bethnal Green Ventures

Bethnal Green Ventures is an accelerator programme for technology startups working on things that matter. how it works: once a year, we work with a group of very early stage companies and provide them with up to £15,000 of investment and a three month programme of support based in Bethnal Green in East London.

tell a friend.

Nokia Money shot: Indian mobile banking service axed >> the Register

Nokia is axing its banking service in India, the only place it was ever launched, as the company continues to scale back to focus on selling mobile phones. following trials going back to the start of 2010, leading up to a national launch across India late last year, Nokia Money is shutting down in the face of increasing competition from local rivals. the company’s new focus on making mobes has seen a load of periphery projects lopped off.

Google Knowledge Graph could change search forever >> Mashable

That’s a Mashable “forever”, so bring salt. However:

Google has a confession to make: it does not understand you. if you ask it “the 10 deepest lakes in the U.S,” it will give you a very good result based on the keywords in the phrase and sites with significant authority on those words and even word groupings, but Google Fellow and SVP Amit Singhal says Google doesn’t understand the question. “We cross our fingers and hope someone on the web has written about these things or topics.” the future of Google Search, though, could be a very different story. In an extensive conversation, Singhal, who has been in the search field for 20 years, outlined a developing vision for search that takes it beyond mere words and into the world of entities, attributes and the relationship between those entities. In other words, Google’s future search engine will not only understand your lake question but know a lake is a body of water and tell you the depth, surface areas, temperatures and even salinities for each lake.

Sounds very like the semantic web that Tim Berners-Lee imagined so long ago but is still waiting to happen.

Google Search Quality Meeting: spelling for long queries (annotated) >> YouTube

As part of our continued effort to be more transparent about how search works, we’re publishing video footage from our internal weekly search meeting: “Quality Launch Review.” We hold the meeting almost every Thursday to discuss possible algorithmic improvements and make decisions about what to launch. this video is from the meeting that happened on December 1st, 2011, and includes the entire uncut discussion of a real algorithmic improvement to our spell correction system.

Fun, and insightful. We’re also looking forward too to the video from the week when they debated pushing Google+ results up in the US but not the rest of the world (particularly Europe).

And another point made elsewhere is: if this is Google, where are all the Chromebooks? What’s with the Apple laptops?

Open data comes to France: every public building mapped >> Guardian Data Blog

Alors, j’ai trouvé la Musée d’Orsay. Essayer it yourself.

Why You need to back Young Rewired State Right now >> TechCrunch UK

Even as the UK government seems keener than ever to promote the technology sector as an engine of much needed growth – especially startups – there’s a programme right under its nose which has been running for years which needs help, and now. Young Rewired State has been running annually on very low funding for a while.

Yes, get involved. We’ll do some flagwaving presently, but this is one to back now.

Apple and its maps >> MapBox

Currently Italy and hypothesized based on reverse engineering. neither Apple’s website nor the

Boot up: Jonathan Ive speaks, Firefox and H.264, Bethnal Green Ventures, Google’s knowledge graph and more

For the past couple of months, I’ve been walking around with both an iPhone 4S and a Samsung Galaxy Nexus, with the former running iOS 5 and the latter running Google’s Android 4.0, known as Ice Cream Sandwich. I posted my initial impressions a while back, after having used both devices for a week or two, but now that I’ve gotten used to both, I thought I’d reevaluate how they compare in several categories.

Size: Of course, the Galaxy Nexus, with its 4.65-inch display, is a lot larger than the iPhone 4S, which has a 3.5-inch display. The Nexus measures 5.3-by-2.7-by-0.4 inches, while the iPhone measures 4.5-by-2.31-by-.37 inches. Initially, I thought the size would make carrying the Nexus more difficult, but both fit into my pocket. The Nexus’s size makes it better for reading lots of text on a page and for viewing videos, but the iPhone’s smaller size means it’s easier to carry and to use single-handedly because you can reach all the controls. Let’s call it a wash.

Display: The Nexus display is not only physically bigger, but it also offers higher 1280-by-720-pixel resolution, compared with the iPhone’s 960-by-480. that means you can see more on a webpage, for instance. The Nexus display uses Samsung’s “Super AMOLED” organic LED display, but uses Samsung’s PenTile technology (which has two subpixels per dot, not three); the iPhone uses an IPS LCD display. The basic technology—OLED versus LCD—means that the Nexus has really dark blacks (since it doesn’t use backlighting), and thus better contrast. In practice, though, the iPhone looks quite good and is typically brighter. There are pros and cons, but overall I’d give the advantage to the Nexus, mostly because I do a fair amount of browsing and email, and the larger, higher-resolution screen matters. Advantage: Galaxy Nexus

Camera: The iPhone 4S has an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera; the Nexus has a 5-megapixel one. The iPhone has a VGA resolution front-facing camera; the Nexus has a 1.3MP one. Ice Cream Sandwich gives you a lot more control over the camera settings, with more screen modes and more control over exposure and white balance. But forget the specs; I’ve now used both, in a variety of situations, and the iPhone 4S simply takes better pictures. Advantage: iPhone

Network: This is going to vary a lot depending on which carrier you choose, and where you live and travel. The Galaxy Nexus is currently only available in the U.S. as a Verizon LTE phone, whereas iPhones are available on multiple networks. mine uses AT&T’s HSPA+ network. As someone who works in New York but travels to the West Coast pretty often, there’s just no question: Verizon’s LTE network is faster. I’ve been particularly happy using it with a hotspot feature (and have stopped using a separate mobile hotspot as a result). For voice calls, Verizon seems to be a bit more reliable than AT&T, but I find that varies a lot by location. I still get no service from Verizon when I’m on the train tracks at Grand Central Terminal, for instance, but AT&T works fine there. at my home, both are fine; at my office, both are horrible. (I thought midtown Manhattan was getting better for a while, but it’s gotten worse again.) Traveling, I’ve seen lots of variability. on balance, I’ll give this to LTE. Advantage: Galaxy Nexus

Battery Life: In part, it may be the LTE support, but this really isn’t a competition. I almost always can get through a day with the iPhone 4S without concern but I’m always worried about battery life with the Nexus, and often drain it. Third-party apps to better manage the battery have helped, as has an extended life battery, but it’s just not as good. Advantage: iPhone

Browser: I like the iPhone browser, which is quite fast, but the Nexus’s has more features. Sure, everyone talks about the ability to run Flash on Android, but actually, the feature I found most useful was the ability to request the desktop site instead of the mobile one. Advantage: Galaxy Nexus

Apps: There are plenty of great Android applications, and you will probably be very happy with the selection on either platform. There are a few more iPhone apps, and in some cases, they are a bit more polished, but Android is catching up. Advantage: iPhone

Voice recognition: Apple has given Siri a lot of attention. There’s no question that its ability to query multiple databases simultaneously and generate an answer is more advanced than the relatively straightforward Google Voice Search on Android. still, other than as I demo, I don’t find myself using voice very much; most of the time, I can get what I want a lot faster through a browser. Apple has a noticeable lead here, though I really can’t say it matters much to me yet. Advantage: iPhone

Operating System/Stability: Overall, I’ve found many reasons to applaud the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android. I really like the way it handles multitasking; a single button that shows you thumbnails of all your loaded applications, making the switch among applications faster and easier. I’ve seen crashes on both systems (not to mention on Windows and Mac OS X), but in general, the iPhone has been more reliable. As a result, I’m giving Apple the point here, but minor tweaks to Android could change things. Advantage: iPhone

Reviewing this list, the iPhone wins in more categories. For the most part, that comes down to software; Apple’s iOS 5 is just a bit more refined, and a bit easier to use. make no mistake, though, Android 4.0 is narrowing the gap quickly. from a hardware perspective, the Android ecosystem just gives you more choices. Users can get a larger display on the Galaxy Nexus, a keyboard on the Droid 4, or  a much less expensive Android model. that diversity is a major strength of the Android platform, and Apple can’t really compete with that. If I had to pick just one, though, I’d still choose the iPhone 4S today.

By the way, in addition to the iPhone 4S and the Galaxy Nexus, I always have my BlackBerry Bold 9810, which still has the best corporate mail solution, even if it lacks the application array of the other two. Carrying three phones all the time probably makes me look like a nerd, but that’s not really new news.

A Closer Look: Comparing Apple’s iPhone 4S and Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus

There’s an app in the Android Market called Fake iPhone 4S, which is designed to “Trick your friends into thinking you have the new iPhone 4S!”

That’s what the app description says. I guess having idiot friends is a prerequisite.

The description continues:

This app is a full-screen working replica of the iPhone 4 home screen. it even replaces your phone’s status bar, so there’s no hint of Android underneath.NEW: Swipe down for notifications! Now you can access notifications without having to leave the app.NEW: Actual network operator shown in status bar – you’re no longer stuck with AT&T!most of the icons on the screen will open up the relevant Android app when clicked. if there’s no suitable app, or the app isn’t installed on your device, it’s replaced with a sponsored message. The advertising revenue helps support the future development of this app, so please bear this in mind

It’s apparently been available for a while, but this is the first we’ve heard it (hat tip: Redmond Pie). it looks like a few more obscure Android sites have noticed it before. Over 13,000 people have downloaded. I wonder how many people it’s fooled given that it does not physically change the design of your Android device.

Something tells me this app won’t be around very long as it gains more exposure. at least in the description, it says, “iPhone is a trademark of Apple Computer Inc. this app is not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple.”

A couple weeks ago, we saw a “Siri competitor” make its way to Android.

Fake iPhone 4S App For Android: Trick Your Stupid Friends