Archive for the 'Gsm' Category

The CDMA HTC Hero (sold in the U.S. through Sprint) has received its Android version 2.1 and now is the time for the GSM version of the smartphone (released almost a year) to get rid of 'Android 1.6, too.

HTC has officially announced that starting today, the owners of Hero Taiwan Android 1.2 update will receive notification in the air.

We hope that Android 1.2 will reach owners of Hero in other Asian and European markets soon.

Whereas the hero was launched in 2009, probably will not update to Android 2.2 Frøya (a desire), but has yet to Android 1.2 users happy. After all, around 1.6 phones do not update at all.

Via HTC Source

After the banning of IMEI-less phones last December, India’s government has now decreed the banning of all phones produced by China-based companies.

According to Global Telecom Business, the Indian government is concerned about the fact that phones from China could come with “spyware or malware that offers intelligence agencies across the border access to telecom networks in India” – and that’s the reason for the ban.

Manufacturers like ZTE and Huawei, which used to sell lots of phones across India, will certainly be affected by the decision.

Indian telecom operators are also put in a difficult situation, as many of them have ordered phones from Chinese manufacturers and now they have to search for other suppliers. On the other hand, India-based phone makers should be quite happy about all this.

Companies like Nokia, Samsung, LG and Motorola may see a rise in sales across India following the banning of Chinese handsets. Ironically, lots of the phones that come under these big brands are actually manufactured in China.

Via Pocket-lint

Rumor and speculation abound as an unknown Motorola world phone has been spotted at the FCC. The handset includes CDMA 800/1900, GSM/GPRS 850/900/1800/1900, EV-DO Rev. A, standalone GPS, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and WiFi 802.11b/g. This particular feature set suggests that the phone is a smartphone, not a feature phone. It is also reasonable to assume that this is another Android handset as Motorola has embraced Android as its smartphone platform of choice. The phone is identified by the codename “Titanium”  in the FCC documents but may in fact be the Zeppelin. The Zeppelin was revealed by digi.QQ.com to be a dual-sim CDMA/GSM phone slated for China. Digging deep into this initial rumor uncovers the suggestion that the Zeppelin may be codenamed the Titanium. Zeppelin = Titanium = our mysterious FCC phone, which is headed to China and not the US. Case closed?

[Via PhoneArena and digi.QQ]

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It has been long argued that the A5/1 encryption standard used to secure GSM traffic from eavesdropping is, in fact, insecure, and California based security firm H4RDW4RE is pioneering an effort to hammer that point home by cracking the encryption scheme. The A5/1 cipher is based on a 64-bit key — each cell phone has a 64-bit secret key which is also known by the connected GSM network. When you initiate a call the GSM network uses the secret key to generate a session key and encrypt your phone call. H4RDW4RE’s approach will be to crack this session key using a compressed and custom version of the A5/1’s 128-petabyte code book. Yikes. The aim of the project is to: take the vast code book and compress it down to around 2 or 3 terabytes of data, organize the data into rainbow tables, have these tables searched by a free P2P open-source program (much like SETI@home) in order to cipher session keys. Session keys will, theoretically, provide the ability to decrypt and listen in on GSM phone calls. H4RDW4RE’s goal is to push GSM vendors to finally admit that the technology is flawed and move to the more secure A5/3  code book, which is a 128-bit cipher, and already used by newer cellular technologies such as UTMS. Pretty powerful way to send a message, it sure does beat a letter writing campaign… Hit up the article for more details about the project.

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AT&T sure doesn’t miss out on too many BlackBerry offerings, does it? In addition to the original Bold, 9700, and 8900, the Curve 8520 is going to start sharing some of that shelf space pretty soon. It doesn’t have an official release date just yet, only an announcement, but we can only imagine that it’s going to be up for retail pretty soon. After all, the 8520 is already appearing in full AT&T regalia and posing for pictures. If you’ve been wanting a trackpad-equipped BlackBerry for AT&T but the 9700 is on the pricey side, all you need now is a little patience.

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