After months of waiting the Chronic Dev Team (a team of iOS hackers dedicated to freeing Apple products from their obnoxious constraints) began teasing followers with tidbits of information on the release of the jailbreak.

At first it was just tweets stating they were working on it tirelessly and that they “were close” and then, much to everyone’s delight, a video was released showing an untethered iPhone 4S sporting Cydia (see it here on YouTube). This video literally sent many into “check twitter every 10 minutes” mode – their perseverance was only rewarded with more frustration when the Chronic Dev Team released the Mac version of the iOS 5 jailbreak. Finally on the 21^st the jailbreak titled Absinthe was released for Windows.

Since the jailbreak was hosted on the Chronic Dev Team’s servers the first  hours after the release the servers crashed multiple times with only a lucky few getting their jailbreak done. Now, days later, the Dev Team is totaling the amount of jailbroken devices.

Jay Freeman (aka saurik) is a leading part of the hacking team that produced the jailbreak. Via Twitter saurik released some astonishing figures: “So, @MuscleNerd’s 205k number was just the number of on-Cydia iPhone 4S’s; I believe that is now 494k. iPad 2 5.0.1 adds an additional 463k.” Additionally it was reported that Absinthe was downloaded over a million times so far and this is only a few days after the release of the jailbreak – imagine what the totals will be a week from now!

Jailbreak Your Device in 5 Easy Steps!

1. Jailbreaking your iOS 5 device is incredibly easy. First go to the Chronic Dev Team’s site http://greenpois0n.com/  and choose the correct file at the top right (there is Mac or Windows).
2. Once you’ve downloaded the files connect your ipad 2 or iPhone 4S to your computer and then launch the Absinthe program.
3. Once that is launched you’ll be told to back up your device so do so. If you attempted to download the Mac jailbreak and use that on your iDevice then you will likely lose all of your data when reverting the jailbreak as we attempted that and found out firsthand what impatience does!
4. Now that you’re all backed up and ready to go then hit the “Jailbreak” button on the right side of the Absinthe program. It will now begin the jailbreaking process starting off with a restore so be patient as it can take a while!
5. After the restore is done unlock your phone and then click the Absinthe icon and your device will reboot after it’s made contact with the GreenPois0n servers. In a few moments your device will be done rebooting and your Absinthe icon is going to be replaced by a glorious Cydia one!

Qualcomm Chief Executive Paul Jacobs had the pleasure of announcing the thinnest and lightest e-reader at the CES 2012 the other day. It’s called the Hanvon C18 and Hanvon utilized Qualcomm’s new energy efficient mirasol display for their new e-reader.

Mirasol is a technology Qualcomm has been working on for several years and it is a solution to the energy consuming LCD displays that other devices utilize. Mirsol is a type of display screen that utilizes soft indirect light which is then tuned and reflected back at the viewer. Overall the Mirasol display uses 1/10^th of the power to create a vivid image than an LCD screen does.

The Hanvon C18 is not the only company to use the new mirasol display; in fact it’s the third company within two months to utilize it in an e-reading device which means we can definitely expect to see Qualcomm’s new display more widespread in the future.

So, back to the Hanvon C18 e-reader, what makes it different from other e-reading devices like the Kindle or Nook? Well, for starters it is incredibly light – it weighs only 300 grams which is just over half a pound! Next, this device is only 10mm thin making it simple to fit into any purse, book case, or incredibly large back pocket!

The display is a 5.7 inch XGA touchscreen that utilizes the mirasol technology as mentioned above. Hanvon C18 runs on a 1.0 GHz Snapdragon processor and it runs on a custom Google Android core Operating System. Thanks to the mirasol display you can also safely assume that the battery will last you weeks and it will also be able to support video as well as other media formats.

A big draw to the Kindle and Nook is the book selection however Hanvon has this covered. The Hanvon C18 will have access to thousands upon thousands of e-books, over a hundred different newspapers, and more than three hundred magazines. Additionally users can utilize the handwriting recognition feature termed Hanvon Input that is unique to this device.

If you are looking to get your paws on this nifty e-reader then you will not have to wait too long. It will be out on shelves around mid February of 2012 however neither Hanvon or Qualcomm have disclosed how much it will cost. Unfortunately for anyone outside of China they will likely not see this device as it is specifically designed for the Asian market, but they could see the mirasol screen being utilized in the near future.

Sad to say the Hanvon C18 will not be available to North American residents – another e-reading device would have been great to have on the market to help lower the prices more for us consumers.

Ice Cream Sandwich is the first Android version that is capable to run on both mobile phones and tablets and also the first one that completely changes the UI, design, style and so on. When Apple released the iPhone they introduced a whole new way of interacting with the phone and later with the tablet. This experience was simple, fast and beautiful.

When Google announced Android mobile operating system and Open Handset Alliance, we expected to see a real competitor for Apple, but we end up with some disappointment. It took 4 full years for Google to understand the real meaning of keeping things simple and only a person was necessary to completely change Android from top to bottom.

This article is not made for that person, but still we have to congratulate Matias Duarte for what he had done at Google since its arrival in May 2010. If Android Honeycomb 3.0 was already developed when he first started to work for Google and was called like an emergency arrival, with Ice Cream Sandwich update we can discover the brilliant mind of Matias Duarte.

Talking about Android and things related, let’s look a little inside Marketplace. It’s a mess!!! Till now every Android app developer used his own hands to design an app and that’s why there are a lot of apps that try to copy the ones from AppStore.

The good news came just few hours ago at CES 2012, where Matias Duarte announced that Android will introduce a style guide website to guide app developers on how they should design an Android app to keep up with the trend. I used the word guide, because according to Matias, this is not something Google will try to enforce, so anyone can use what style and UI they want. The website is available now and app developers or Android users can visit to discover it: Android Design Guide

On a first view of the website I discovered that Android can indeed compete iOS in the future. It’s because now everyone has a start point, a guide that they can follow and discover the design principles, user interface, typography and the pure specifications of the Android. It’s great because there are a lot of “don’t do that”, or “keep in simple” so expect the best from Android in the next months of years.

Overall, this is good for Android, as I said before, because it gives them the change to finally admit that what they were doing was completely wrong and to raise the bar for the future by introducing these guidelines. If this works or not we will probably see in the next months/years, but till Matias Duarte, the brain behind WebOS is in charge, I thing we can expect to see simple and nice things.

The Nokia Lumia was built exclusively for AT&T (yes, Verizon is left out again!) and it is a powerful new smart phone with a large screen, incredibly thin case, fast processor, and much more! The download speeds alone on the Lumia 900 are as fast as 50Mbs on the AT&T 4G LTE network. These speeds will drastically increase the users experience while using the web. No more waiting for movies to load before watching them, no more wait to view emails – everything responds instantaneously and without pause.

The screen on this new smart phone is a nice 4.3 inch AMOLED ClearBlack display. Web pages look clear and crisp on the Lumia and movies are phenomenal with the 800 x 480 pixel resolution. Despite having a larger screen, the Nokia Lumia fits perfectly into the palm of your hand. It’s smooth, lightweight, and incredibly stylish looking – something AT&T customers will enjoy boasting about to their friends!

So what’s under the hood of this powerful LTE capable phone? Well, you can thank the updated chipset for allowing the 1.4GHz processor to support LTE data transfers. The processor (for those of you who are just dying for the specs) is a Qualcomm Snapdragon APQ8055 + MDM9200. The Lumia also has 512 MB RAM, 16GB internal memory (SkyDrive cloud storage also available), and will run on the Windows Phone OS called Mango.

The surprising thing about the Nokia Lumia is the fact that, despite the larger screen size, its battery life is fantastic. It has a 1830mAH battery that will allow the user an astonishing seven hours of talk time. Additionally it can stay up on standby for three hundred hours and can be switched into flight mode so that you can listen to music for over two and a half days!

Still not good enough for you? Well, how about the phone this bad boy has. The Lumia is equipped with an eight megapixel camera on the back that has a Carl Zeiss lens and an incredibly bright LED flash. On top of being able to take fantastic pictures (in both bright light or dim light) you can also take high resolution video at 720p.

Don’t worry, there is more than one camera on this beast! The camera facing the user is only a one megapixel camera however its primary use is video calls. Also, for you social lights, there is an integrated social networking section on your phone that allows you to view all of your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn contacts!

The Nokia Lumia is a fantastic smart phone that is completely designed for high speed web browsing, video watching, and more! With some innovative features behind it, and the speedy LTE data transfers, this will surely be a fan favorite when it hits shelves!

If you shell out an extra $20 you will get the 16GB tablet. Otherwise, it is the 8GB version. Each tablet has a microSD, 2MP front cam, the NVIDIA dual-core Tegra 2 SoC, and 1280×800 display. The battery is supposed to last as many as eight hours, runtime. But keep in mind that the Iconia is one of the last tablets that still has the full-sized USB 2.0 port.

It is billed as a portable gaming hub, useful also for e-books, music, movies, photography, and more. It comes loaded with Android Honeycomb 3.2 and a resizable app widget. Expansion, connectivity with other devices, HD displays and cameras are all protected from any compromise as the price is placed at an unbeatable value. High performance and full functionality are the goals of Acer for the Iconia tablets.

The tablets weigh a mere one and a half pounds and are sleekly designed. The casing comes in titanium gray, patterned on the back. The easy touch comes from this soft back material and prevents it from slipping out of the grip. The front side is taken up by a 1280×800 resolution HD multi-touch display. It is a crystal clear beauty.

The performance is supported by the NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core that has an integrated GeForce GPU. Sit back and enjoy HD gaming, faster browsing, 1080p vids, and Flash-based apps. A special app that allows the gamer of any age to find optimized games designed for the NIVIDIA Tegra. On top of this, the sensing gyroscope is 6-axis, enhancing the precision.

Other apps that make it easy for users to locate items they might have an interest in are Kindle and Netflix. Finally, if you need more apps you can simply click on the Market and find thousands you can download.

The tablet would not be complete without some sort of Social Networking app. Acer SocialJogger unifies Facebook, Twitter, and others in one place. Acer goes further by mounting a tap ring to launch your favorite apps, access bookmarks and contextual menu options. Multitasking has never been so easy. They have even thrown in a screenshot program, useable from within any application. Snap a webshot, Google map, or article.

Acer has also developed clear.fi, designed to easily connect to other DLNA-compliant devices. Its purpose is to share digital media, setting up the connected devices on a local network, automatically. The files are arranged by type, for ease of navigation.

Overall, Acer has made a significant effort to provide an affordable, yet performance conscious tablet. At the starting price of $329.00 you cannot go wrong with the Acer Iconia Tab A200.

This tablet isn’t as high powered as some other tablets, but it is for children and it is specifically built for low power locations, outdoor use, and has a much lower price tag. Let’s take a look at the overall specs and features of this new child-friendly tablet!

Hardware

Unfortunately the exact measurements aren’t in on the OLPC, however it is just a tad thicker than most tablets but fairly lightweight. It has a rubber back that has raised dots on it – giving it a unique feel and added grip-ability.

On to bottom of the OLPC is a USB and Micro USB port as well as headphone jack and a power jack. With the power jack you can use the regular adapter for it to plug it into the wall/computer, or you can use the various other power sources included (such as the hand crank). The hand crank is somewhat difficult as you have to keep it spinning fairly fast, however it would be useful as I tend to have my electronics die at the most inopportune moments.

The other power source is the solar panel lid that is the alternate lid. The solar panel can be left outside in the sun to charge then plugged into the tablet to power it. No idea yet how long it will take to charge but this is definitely a great solution for kids who are constantly outside and playing!

Display

The OLPC has an 8 inch display with a 1020 x 768 resolution. It has an outdoor readable version as well and the touchscreen is fairly bright despite the lowered cost (a tad sluggish when responding compared to better tablet models).

Software/Performance

There are going to be two separate operating systems for this OLPC tablet. First is an Android version and also a Linux version. It will have 512 MB RAM, 4GB internal storage, and even Marvell Armada PXA618. It is a little slow but that is to be expected since this tablet is a fraction of the price.

Overall

The OLPC tablet is perfect for parents who want to give their children a tablet but don’t want to trust them with something that costs over half a grand. Additionally it has a multitude of power options which make it great for kids on the go. Overall it is a great device but it needs a little more fine tuning. It will be under $200 but hopefully OLPC can make the $100 price on this tablet – if so then this will definitely be an incredibly popular device for 2012.

Aspire Timeline Ultra

Next up in the line of Acer gadgets is the Aspire Timeline Ultra laptop. It will be offered in both 14 inch and 15 inch screen sizes and it will come with the Dolby Home Theater v4 Surround Sound speakers. Additionally each model will feature the Acer instant on function and will have around 8 hours of battery life. Lastly these models will be around 20mm thick.
Acer was a bit stingy on the details with the Aspire Timeline Ultra, however more will be revealed during the CES show for sure. We do know that it will be shipped out sometime during the first quarter of 2012 but the price is still unknown.

AcerCloud

Cloud services are rapidly taking the digital world by storm and Acer saw the opportunity to create a new service for their customers called the AcerCloud. This service will be available with all Acer Pc’s starting in the second part of 2012. The service is free and it allows users to back up all of their files and keep all of their important documents/pictures on the cloud permanently.
For mobile devices such as phones and tablets, the files will have an expiration date: thirty dates only and the user will be given the option to download them as well.
If this feature sounds somewhat similar to a fruity competitor, then your suspicions would be justified. Unfortunately this doesn’t make the list as Acer’s most innovative entry in the CES however they do have several other gadgets that will delight you!

Acer Iconia Tab A700

Acer is definitely stepping up their game when it comes to tablets with this new Iconia Tab A700. This tablet boasts a 1920 x 1200 screen resolution, a fast 1.3 GHz quad-core Tegra 3 processor, the Ice Cream Sandwich OS, and it comes packaged in a very light 9.8mm thick sleek looking case.
This Iconia Tab will also feature an HDMI port, microSD Slot, and it will also feature the Acer Ring – a launch menu that lets users select apps from the lock screen. The camera features are unknown as well as the battery life, release date, and price, however you can bet Acer will reveal more during the CES later!

All-In-One Aspire Z7871

Thin is in, and this Acer Aspire Z7871 is an incredibly thin All-In-One desktop computer. It’s a 27 inch desktop with a fantastic keyboard. So how thin is this Aspire AIO? Well, the majority of it is 3.5cm thin, however a portion of the computer has a bump on it that makes it a little larger (but not by much!).
Overall the Aspire Z7871 has a sleek aesthetic look with a very minimal stand and a thin chicklet keyboard. The specs aren’t in on the desktop yet however the keyboard did have something interesting on it: a virtual numpad. The numpad is activated via the screen and it will be interesting to see how users take to the numpad when it is released in the second quarter of this year!