According to N4BB.com, BlackBerry holding company Research In Motion’s (RIM’s) co-CEO Jim Balsillie stated during a Q&A investors call, that the forthcoming update to BlackBerry OS 6 (OS6.1) will now be known as BlackBerry OS 7.

 

This change has been prompted by the fact that the update includes a new “liquid graphics” design, magnetometer, and a lot of other additions. According to Balsillie the scope of the update is far too wide for it to be called OS 6.1. The new OS will reportedly be powering a range of new devices to emanate from the Canadian smartphone (and tablet PC) makers stable the likes of the BlackBerry Torch 2, as well as the Bold Touch.

 

 

First Apple sued Samsung claiming that the Korean manufacturer’s Galaxy line-up of smartphones as well as tablet PCs, infringes upon some of its patents and trademarks. Then Samsung countered with its own lawsuits against Apple in its native South Korea, Japan as well as Germany, stating that the Cupertino-based company infringed on ten of its patents within the iPad (the iPad 2 is available in SA from today) and iPhone.

 

According to Bloomberg, Samsung has brought this legal action against Apple to the US this week when it filed a new lawsuit with the federal court in San Jose, California. The legal ball in now once again back in Apple’s court.  

 

 

 

News broke this week of Apple being sued by two users of its products, over an alleged invasion of privacy as well as computer fraud. This action came in the wake of two security researchers analysts revealing that consumers using an iOS 4-running iPhone or 3G-enabled iPad tablet, regularly have their position recorded into a hidden, unencrypted and unprotected file, saved to their PC when the devices are connected.

 

According to Detroit News.com, Google has now also been sued over this very issue. Julie Brown and Kayla Molaski, both from Michigan in the US, are suing Google over location data collected by its Android devices. This $50 million lawsuit against the search giant aims to stop the company from selling Android-powered smartphones (even though Google technically doesn’t make the actual devices, only the OS) with software that can track a user’s location.

 

The lawsuit was filed in US District Court in Detroit with the women’s lawyer Steven Budaj stating in the complaint that this feature places “users at serous risk of privacy invasions, including stalking”.

 

The publication stated that the pair’s lawsuit followed an acknowledgement by Google that Android-running smartphones store some location data directly onto the mobile phones for a short amount of time, in cases where the user has selected to employ GPS services.

 

The company stated that this was done “to provide a better mobile experience on Android devices,” and highlighted that any location sharing is done with the user’s permission.

 

 

 

Last year Nokia and Intel became operating system (OS) bedfellows, announcing that they’ve combined their two OS platforms, Maemo and Moblin, to give life to the new MeeGo OS. Things looked bleak for MeeGo though after Nokia jilted Intel in favour of Microsoft and its Windows Phone OS. It made Redmond’s mobile OS its primary smartphone OS, pushing MeeGo and Symbian to the fringes.

 

All is not lost for MeeGo as the knight on a white horse appeared in the form of LG and co. (ZTE and China Mobile) joining a working group that is going to develop a handset version of this software.

 

According to MeeGoExperts, LG Electronics (LGE) is going to present prototype devices during the MeeGo Conference next month in San Francisco (May 23-25). LG is showcasing some MeeGo (vesion 1.2) ports on a number of prototype devices, such as tablet PCs and smartphones.

 

 

 

 

Google has announced video chat for Android-running devices via its Mobile Blog. Users will now be able to video or voice chat with their friends, family and colleagues (who use a compatible Android tablet PC or smartphone) via their Android-powered smartphone. They will also be able to make calls over a Wi-Fi (like Apple’s FaceTime), 3G or 4G data network (if their carrier supports it and unlike Apple’s FaceTime) to users that are using Google Talk on their PC.

 

Google Talk with video and voice chat (video posted below) will be gradually rolled out to Nexus S smartphones within the next few weeks, as part of the company's Android 2.3.4 over-the-air update. It will also be made available to other Android 2.3+ devices at a later stage.