According to a source close to 9to5Mac who’s working at Foxconn, there are a few pre-production handsets of the next iPhone, currently being called the iPhone 5, circling around. While differing in size and overall design by a bit, most of these sample handsets have one thing in common: a screen size of 4-inches or bigger, and that it has a straight body design, not a teardrop shape that tapers on one end (like the MacBook Air).

Another thing of note was that not one of the samples had the same form factor as the iPhone 4/4S, meaning that a complete redesign is in order.

She's not the source.

Going with the same lead time as the iPhone 4S, whose production started ramping up till late spring of last year, 9to5Mac assumes that there is a good possibility that the iPhone 5 will be released like the older versions, i.e. a summer/ WWDC announcement.

While this is currently still being treated as a rumor, the same source also indicated last year that the next iPhone release will be an iPhone 4S, contrary to the iPhone 5 rumors abound. Given some credibility, one can likely take this rumor with a smaller grain of salt than usual.

Apple today announced its financial results for Q4 2011 and the numbers are nothing short of record breaking. The Cupertino-giants upped their revenue from $26.74 billion from the same period in 2010, to $46.33 billion last year.

The company’s main sales hero was, of course, the iPhone, selling 37.04 million units across all the varieties. Apple also sold 15.4 million iPad tablets – a boost of 111% from last year. The iPod range continued to do well, selling 15.4 million units, with Mac computers tailing along as usual with 5.2 million unit sales.

The profits doubled as well, with the company making a cool $13.06 billion, compared to $6 billion in same quarter last year.

CEO Tim Cook is obviously pleased and has emailed his employees congratulating them for their efforts.

Team,

Tim

Unfortunately, we hardly ever get any sales or other market information about the Middle East and that’s also true for Apple. The iPhone 4S was introduced not long ago, and it’d be so interesting to know how well it has done.

Unless Apple changes its policies and practice in terms of sharing sales figures for the region, we’re left with what we can gather from other corners of the world.

If we look at some of the latest smartphone sales figures from the U.S., I think you will be surprised.

TechCrunch has published figures by research firm NPD that show that iOS came out on top in the October-November 2011 time period with a 43% market share in the U.S. Android is still ahead though with 47% share, which is down from the 60% it had in Q3.

What’s also very interesting – although not very surprising – is that smartphones are occupying an increasingly large part of the mobile handset market. In other words, we buy more smartphones and less featurephones and other mobile phones. In fact, two out of three handsets sold in October-November were smartphones, up from 50% the year before, according to NPD. Furthermore, nine out of the top ten phones sold in the period were smartphones.

That’s a lot of smartphones, no matter how you look at it.

For me the biggest surprise, however, when looking at the NPD numbers is that Apple occupies the top three slots of top models sold. The iPhone 4S is number one, followed by iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS occupies the number-three position.

Yes, that’s Apple ahead of all the Android handsets, including those from Samsung, Motorola, HTC, and LG, and that with its iPhone 3GS, a phone introduced in 2009.

That sure surprised me.

We hear so much about the Android juggernaut, that Android is outselling iPhone, and there’s no doubt that Android has come a long way in a short period of time. And even though I am an Apple fan and currently an iPhone 4S user I occasionally stray over to the Android side, mainly due to the wide range of hardware that is available.

Google executive Andy Rubin posted on Google+ that 3.7 million Android activations were carried out on December 24 – 25, 2011. That’s an amazing number, but it seems that iPhone still trumped Android for the holiday sales, as well. For in-store sales at AT&T in U.S., supposedly 66% was iPhone.

But don’t think for a second that Apple and iPhone now somehow beat Android. Sure, Apple has raked in more money to its already burgeoning war chest, and Android may not be top of all the charts, but the force that is Android will be hard to stop. Just look at all the new devices – from smartphones to tablets and beyond – all running Android, which were introduced in Las Vegas.

However, for now, let Apple bask for a second in the glow of having the top three selling mobile phones in the U.S. for the October-November 2011 period.

Photo by Yutaka Tsutano.

Singapore telecom M1 has now made camera-free iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S available through their service.

We are not sure who wouldn’t want a camera on their salary-consuming smartphone, but apparently the Singaporean military strictly prohibits its soldiers to carry phones with cameras. Which is where this version fits in quite perfectly. I mean, they too have to get their fix of Infinity Blade, right?

The “non-camera” iPhone 4 starts at $449 while the high-end iPhone 4S is priced at $979. It is unclear if this version will be sold elsewhere. It would be interesting if it would, especially if it carried a slightly lighter price tag.

Would you purchase an iPhone without a camera?

After a long, long wait, greenpois0n has finally released the untethered jailbreak for iOS 5.

Before you go ahead, hacker pod2g had some slightly worrying news on his blog, “A tool named Absinthe and developed by the Chronic Dev Team will install the untether on your device. Also the iPhone Dev Team will release a CLI (command line) tool to help diagnose issues and repair things if it goes wrong. This is a little scary I know, but the chance you break something is really small, since we made lots of tests to verify the process on different devices. But it is the first time we use the backup/restore functions of iTunes to install software, and there are maybe things we are not aware of. As you already know, different security researchers put a lot of energy to work out the different issues we had to install the untether on new devices.”

If you happen to know an iPhone 4S that runs on iOS 5.0, 5.0.1 (9A405 and 9A406 versions) or the iPad 2 WiFi/GSM/CDMA that runs oniOS 5.0.1, they should happily unwind with the aptly named Absinthe.

Currently, only the Mac version of it is online but Windows/Linux versions should appear soon. The process is quite long compared to previous jailbreaks so be sure to have a fully charged device.

You can download the jailbreak from the site, and follow these steps.

Patently Apple recently discovered that Apple was granted 22 new patents. While that in itself is nothing new – we all know Apple’s love of patenting stuff- but one of those patents points to a future where your device will be able to tell you if the garment you own is wearing out.

The patent is called ‘smart garments’, and for now, will be implemented into Nike shoes, although the patent does mention “authorized garments” like shirts and slacks. The ‘smart garment’ sensor will send “tracked garment usage and detected wear patterns to the external database.” It will then alert the user if their garment is reaching its expected lifetime.

The patent could also be tied into a “virtual coach” that would provide real time feedback to a user after a run, comparing their results with a pre-built template.

The patent might not be limited to the Nike + iPod running shoes tie-up, as it states ““Outdoors endurance activities have become very popular not only because they are enjoyable and healthy, but also because they provide opportunities for competition, camaraderie, and a structured regimen. It would be beneficial for an individual participating in an outdoor endurance activity such as running, cross-country skiing, in-line skating, or outdoor swimming to be able to monitor his or her performance in metrics such as speed, distance, slope, elevation, equipment used (thereby correlating an individual’s performance to particular running shoes, for example).”

Steve Jobs would have been so mad. Steve Wozniak, the genius behind the Mac computers and one of Apple’s co-founders, has praised Android in an interview, saying that some features of Google’s popular mobile OS works better than his iPhone.

Wozniak particularly mentioned the voice command function, saying that he had more success with Android than with iOS’s Siri.

“I have a lower success rate with Siri than I do with the voice built into the Android, and that bothers me,” said Woz. “I’ll be saying, over and over again in my car, ‘Call the Lark Creek Steak House,’ and I can’t get it done. Then I pick up my Android, say the same thing, and it’s done. Plus I get navigation. Android is way ahead on that.”

His primary phone is still the iPhone, but he really wishes “it did all the things my Android does, I really do.”

Android is not still perfect for him, and says that it could be complicated for new users and has a slightly higher learning curve.

“If you’re willing to do the work to understand it a little bit, well I hate to say it, but there’s more available in some ways,” he said.

“The people I recommend the iPhone 4S for are the ones who are already in the Mac world, because it’s so compatible, and people who are just scared of computers altogether and don’t want to use them. The iPhone is the least frightening thing. For that kind of person who is scared of complexity, well, here’s a phone that is simple to use and does what you need it to do.”

For the first, Apple has come out with a list of all their component suppliers for their entire product range. As part of their “Supplier Responsibility” report released yesterday, Apple has also disclosed various audit procedures in place for maintaining certain work policies (ethical and safety) in place.

“Apple is committed to driving the highest standards for social responsibility throughout our supply base. We require that our suppliers provide safe working conditions, treat workers with dignity and respect, and use environmentally responsible manufacturing processes wherever Apple products are made.”

In 2011 Apple conducted 229 audits, including surprise audits, an 80% increase over 2010′s 127 audits.

To see a list of all (97% actually) Apple’s suppliers worldwide, check out this report. As for the audit report itself, which covers a whole host of working conditions and safety protocols, and even the results of these audits and failures reported therein, check out this report.