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Pocket Picks roundup: 12th November - HTC readying quad-core phone, bada tablets incoming, iOS5 has hidden camera mode, No more mobile Flash support

All the latest handset and app news from Pocket Gamer’s sister site

Pocket Picks roundup: 12th November - HTC readying quad-core phone, bada tablets incoming, iOS5 has hidden camera mode, No more mobile Flash support
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iPhone + Android + Bada ...

It’s the weekend! Well, not for me as I write these roundups on a Friday, but let's gloss over that fact and open a can of beer/go for a jog/get dragged down the shops by the other half to celebrate.

There’s a good deal of variety in this week’s stories picked from Pocket Picks, with tech-fiends catered for thanks to some upcoming handset news from (who else) HTC, bada-fans getting a rare mention, and a secret feature hidden in iOS 5 that Apple hasn’t told anyone about.

First details of the quad-core Tegra 3 HTC Edge appear on net

HTC-EdgeHTC, not a company renowned for keeping a lid on upcoming releases, has allowed yet another model to leak out onto the internet, months in advance of its official announcement.

The first images and specs of the HTC Edge have been picked up by PocketNow, revealing it to be a 1.5GHz quad-core machine with a 4.7-inch screen, 8-megapixel camera, 720p display, and packing 1GB of RAM.

Details regarding the software it’ll run are a little more sketchy. Presumably the machine will come with Beats Audio (as with the most recent models), but it’s not yet clear whether it will run Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) or be the flagship model for the next version of SenseUI.

Whatever is beating inside its metal heart, we can expect to see the Edge (or a differently named phone with the same specs and design) appear on shop shelves in the first half of 2012

Adobe drops support for mobile Flash plugin

Adobe_Flash_LogoStaying with Android news for a second, Abode has this week informed a number of its partners that it will no longer continue to update the Flash plugin for mobile browsers.

As the email from Adobe puts it, the firm will now focus on “enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores”, rather than updating the plugin to work with later versions of mobile browsers or operating systems.

It’s a massive blow for the Android faithful, especially given that Flash was such a good stick to beat iOS owners with whenever arguments broke out down the pub about which multi-global corporation had the best tablet PC.

Still, it’s not all bad news. Adobe will still support the present version with security fixes should any new loopholes be found.

iOS 5 Camera app has hidden panoramic mode

panorama-111107-2When Apple was shouting about the hundreds of new features it had added to iOS 5, you could forgive us for presuming half of those were things like “slightly nicer shaded menus” and other frivolous, non-essential upgrades to bulk up the number.

Well, it appears the company still managed to end up hiding some pretty nifty features in the new OS that, for some reason, it didn’t feel was ready to be revealed to the public.

Luckily for us, enterprising jailbreakers have discovered the panoramic mode lurking within the code, and have now created an app called Firebreak that can enable it with just the one tap (rather than crawling through numbers to enable it).

You can download the app from the Cydia app store right now (as long as your phone is jailbroken, of course).

Apple working to tighten up Autocorrect for next iOS update

ios-auto-correctMoving onto more official(ish) territory, it appears Apple may finally be looking to ‘correct’ (ho ho) the often unpredictable auto-correct function for the next version of iOS.

As anyone who’s seen the tumblr Damn you autocorrect! (or, indeed, used an iPhone) knows, autocorrect in its present form has this unnerving ability to make the most innocent passage of writing into an embarrassing series of words at just the wrong moments.

The new system, discovered by developer Sonny Dickson hidden in the current version of iOS 5, will work much in the same way that Windows Phone currently works, with a string of potential words it wants to change your typing to displayed above the keyboard.

In theory, this should allow you to pick ‘princess’ for your text to your daughter and not ‘pregnant’. Maybe.

Rumour: bada tablets incoming?

I know this opener to bada stories is getting a bit old now, but, no, ‘bada isn’t dead’. In fact, recent rumours suggest that Samsung may be lining up a new tablet PC that uses the oft-forgotten mobile OS at its core.

While the company itself has said officially that it has no plans for such a move, developers have been telling our other sister site PocketGamer.biz that they’ve already been approached by Samsung to make games for such a device.

Call us doubtful Davids, but when a company wants something made for a device, chances are said company is working on producing it at some point in the future. We’ll no doubt see if this is just a case of Samsung testing the waters behind the scenes over the next few months.

Will Wilson
Will Wilson
Will's obsession with gaming started off with sketching Laser Squad levels on pads of paper, but recently grew into violently shouting "Tango Down!" at random strangers on the street. He now directs that positive energy into his writing (due in no small part to a binding court order).