Malware eats your Android, Apple brings in the lawyers and your phone's not making enough noise in public

Kia Ora!

Apple is aggravatingly heavy handed when it comes to maintaining control over your iPhone, but when we hear reports about malware already appearing on the Android system, we have to wonder if a bit more diligence on Google’s part might not be warranted.

Apparently, this new app promises to optimise your Android phone’s memory management, but users have been complaining that it’s optimising them to the point at which there’s nothing left. Wiped cards, documents lost, adware appearing on the screen and a sudden influx of spam texts seem to be the result. Read the PocketPicks report and beware.

Perhaps this highlights the danger of freeing your iPhone from its jail, but then again, a free Apple can be a mighty rewarding device. There’s just too much missing from a locked iPhone - features that the home hacking community is putting right, like this sweet Bluetooth file transfer function.

Indeed, a locked iPhone might as well not even have Bluetooth for all the good it does, but hopefully this jailbroken app will encourage Apple to loosen the reins a little.

Probably not though.

But Apple’s not the only body wanting to tell you what you can and can’t do with your own phone. A US congressman is backing a bill to make it the law for camera phones to make a noise when they take a picture - presumably as some small safeguard against secret snapshot taking.

There’s some sense to his proposal, and similar laws already exist elsewhere, though the current proposal wouldn’t actually affect digital cameras - making this, in all likelihood, just another greaseball political play by a media-starved politician.

The US legal system is seeing plenty of mobile phone action lately, though, as Apple gets its multi-touch touchscreen patent awarded.

In itself, this doesn’t sound likea particularly big deal, but it could cause considerable trouble depending on how it gets interpreted. There’s a strong hint toward it covering any touchscreen interface that uses pinch or pull gestures, swiping or other basic actions used by the iPhone.

If this is what Tim Cook was referring to when he said Apple would aggressively protect its IP, Palm’s new Pre handset might find itself in dangerous legal waters.

The Android is apparently multi-touch capable, but currently doesn’t officially implement it, which is a shame considering the new Opera Mini 4.2 browser has now been made available for the Google OS.

The original effort was pretty shabby, though this new version apparently fixes most of the bugs and fills in a lot of the holes. The most appealing aspect is how lightweight this application is, which can improve handheld web browsing no end.

This won’t be affecting Australian manufacturer Kogan, which had hoped to bring the second Android powered handset to the market with the budget-ranged Angora phone. The handset’s run into repeated problems lately, however, and now it seems as though it may have been scrapped all together.

Kogan is fairly upbeat about the whole thing, but admits it’s gone back to the drawing board on the Android phone front.

It’s unlikely to be the second one to the market now, or even third or fourth. There are new Android handsets announced every day, such as the sleek-looking General Mobile DSTL1 handset - featuring 4GB of onboard memory, a 5 megapixel camera and full touchscreen.

Let’s just hope this chic beauty doesn’t tread on Apple’s patent before it’s officially announced, eh?

Kia Ora!