iOS 6 battery saver tips for the iPhone and iPad

Have you updated your iPhone or iPad to iOS 6? Do you feel that you're not getting the same battery life that you were? Here are ten tips to help you bring battery consumption under control and get more work time between recharges.

Apple releases a new version of iOS, and the complaints that battery life on updated devices is no longer what it used to be start flooding in. I've heard it all before. I heard this from iDevice owners when iOS 3 was released, and again when iOS 4 came out. Then exactly the same thing happened as soon as iOS 5 was made available to the masses.

Now that iOS 6 has been out for a few days, and installed its way onto millions of devices, the Hardware 2.0 mailbox has started to fill up with battery-related commentary.

The pattern is so predicable that I'd be willing to bet the farm that when Apple releases iOS 7, people will reminisce about how good battery life was under iOS 6, and start asking me for tips to get more from their lithium-ion cell.

Fortunately, there's a lot you can do to help you squeeze more out of each recharge. Here I'm going to take a look at a few things you can do to save the milliwatts in exchange for a few more minutes of usage time.

(I've tested every single one of these options and each one does seem to have a positive impact on battery life. I'm not suggestion you employ all of them, but turning off what you don't use makes a lot of sense.)

1. Battery life is probably not as bad as you think it is

My first tip is actually an anti-tip, a tip that suggests you do nothing.

Most people seem to overestimate the impact that a new iOS release has on their battery life and start to get into a mad panic over nothing. This happens as a result of a combination of factors:

• Paying more attention to the iDevice because of the new operating system;
• Using the device more;
• Playing with new features.

It's also worth remembering that if your device is older than a year, then the battery life with naturally degrade over time, at a rate of about 10 percent, give or take, each year. This means that an iPhone 4 that started out life with a standby time of about 300 hours will see that cut to about 270 hours after the first year, to about 240 hours by the end of the seconds year, and to about 220 hours after the third year.

That's just how lithium-ion battery technology is. No matter how much you want it, we can't change the laws for physics quite yet.

2. Drop the screen brightness

One of the easiest ways to improve battery life on the iPhone is to drop the screen brightness. When I updated my iPhone 4 from iOS 4 to iOS 5, Apple jacked the brightness up to a gratuitous supernova level, and the same thing happened when I moved up from iOS 5 to iOS 6.

Unless I'm outdoors and in bright sunshine -- which is rare for me, living in the dark depths of Britain -- I usually keep the screen pretty dim.

Settings > Brightness & Wallpaper

3. Kill background apps

While most background apps don't have any effect on battery life, some apps -- such as those that use the GPS for navigation -- can chew away at the battery when your iDevice is doing nothing.

An Apple Store genius recommend shutting down all background apps every so often. To do this double-tap the Home button to bring up the multitasking bar and then press-and-hold one of the apps so they start to jiggle and the close icon appears. Once this is up, tap each icon in turn to close the app before hitting the Home button one last time to bring things back to normal.

4. Update your apps

I've noticed updating apps is a good way to improve iOS battery life. Seems that while apps designed for earlier iOS releases seem to work fine, they're not as efficient as ones compiled specifically for the new iOS release. This means that you should check for updated apps, and install them regularly.

Click on the App Store icon and then on Update in the menu then Update All.

5. Auto-Lock the screen

Another tip that makes a big difference is to lock the screen after a short interval. This helps conserve battery life because it turns the screen off when your handset is not in use. Set it to go off after a minute or two. This not only saves on the battery, but also protects your device from those that might want to snoop through it.

Settings > General > Auto-Lock

6. Selectively turn off/on radios

If you don't need Wi-Fi or Bluetooth or 3G, turn off the radios.

Settings > Wi-Fi

While you're here, disable Ask to Join Networks unless you use this feature often (just turn it on when you need to find a new network). 

Settings > General > Cellular

Settings > Bluetooth

7. Airplane Mode

If you want to disable all the radios on your iPhone, the easiest way to do this is using Airplane Mode:

Settings > Airplane Mode

With Airplane Mode active, you can still selectively enable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth if you want.

8. Location, location, location!

iOS 5 bought with is a lot of Locations Services features, and iOS 6 has taken these to a new level. But the problem is that all of these features have a negative effect on battery life.

Settings > Privacy > Location Services

Either disable the whole lot, or selectively enable it for a specific set of apps. The more apps that can use Location Services, the more juice they'll use.

iOS 6 has some hidden tweaks too (hidden because you have to scroll to the bottom of the Locations Services screen and click on System Services to find them):

You can keep Location Based iAds and Setting Time Zone off permanently (your time is set by the local carrier automatically anyway).

9. Notifications

Another revamped feature in iOS 6 is notifications. The new notification Center in iOS 5 gives you a greater overview of what's happening, but that comes at the cost of greater battery consumption.

Settings > Notifications

My advice here is two-fold. First, disable notification for any apps that you don't care about by clicking on the individual apps and switching off Notification Center: 

Second, control which apps are visible on the Lock Screen by switching off View in Lock Screen. The more you have showing, the more often your screen will flick into life, draining precious battery power.

10. Disable diagnostics

Another potential battery-eating culprit in iOS 5 is Diagnostic & Usage data. Set this to Don't Send.

Settings > General > About > Diagnostics & Usage

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Fighting and Chaos Spread Through Syrian City, as Services Vanish

A Free Syrian Army fighter during clashes with forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo, the nation’s largest city.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Chaos continued to spread in Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, on Monday, as rebels attacked the towering municipality building with rockets, sending civil servants fleeing from one of the few government buildings still functioning as dozens of soldiers worked to defend the city center.

“We don’t want to hurt the employees, but we want them not to come to work or they will be killed,” Sa’id Abu Abdo, 25, an armed insurgent, said in Aleppo after the attack. “We will liberate each building in the city.”

In a city that was once considered a bastion of support for President Bashar al-Assad, and for a time was spared armed conflict, two months of pitched battles have taken a heavy toll, disrupting the city and threatening to open new rifts among ethnic groups that have long coexisted there.

Compared to six weeks ago, the contrast observed on Monday was striking. Municipal services have collapsed in many areas, and Christian, Kurdish and wealthy Sunni Muslim neighborhoods that had felt secure when fighting began have been the site of clashes once limited to the poorer Sunni areas. In one Aleppo neighborhood, corpses lay uncollected, gnawed by cats and dogs, and piles of garbage attracted clouds of black flies.

Most of the city’s malls and many health centers in antigovernment neighborhoods were closed. Even police stations appeared abandoned; the force draws mostly from rural and working-class areas where support for the uprising is strong. Some residents reported that their neighborhoods had been without drinking water or electricity for weeks.

Some Christians, historically a vital part of Aleppo’s bustling ethnic mix, have taken up arms to guard their neighborhoods and churches. Many of Syria’s minority communities have either sided with President Assad, fearing his fall would leave them vulnerable to the Sunni-led opposition, or stayed out of the conflict because they did not trust either side. One man patrolling his largely Christian neighborhood with a Kalashnikov rifle said the government was arming Armenian Christians in what he called an attempt to draw them into the conflict.

“Today it is clear for us that the Muslims from the countryside want to destroy our city,” he said. “They have nothing to lose.”

He identified himself as Gano, an Armenian member of what he called a popular committee recently organized to defend the neighborhood, Aziziyah, which was sheltering refugees from other Christian neighborhoods where fighting had broken out.

But he said he mistrusted the government, which he said was trying to revive an armed Armenian group it had once supported against Turkey.

“No way, because we will be a legitimate target for the Muslim rebels,” he said. “The regime wants to use us. We want to live in peace or leave. We are a minority in this country and cannot face the Muslim majority.”

As the fighting raged across the city Monday, 11 people were killed and 20 wounded when a shell fell on the Othman Bin Matghoon Mosque in the neighborhood of Masaken Hnano during dawn prayers, the Local Coordinating Committees, an anti-Assad group, said. The Syrian state news service said that government forces had retaken control of two rebel neighborhoods and quoted residents as saying they “stressed their rejection of all acts of terrorism and sabotage committed by the mercenary terrorists,” its shorthand for rebels.

The road from Damascus to Aleppo was crowded on Saturday with government troops headed for the city.

In a city that has been a commercial hub for millenniums, business seemed to have almost halted; shopping malls were closed, and the few open shops were selling bread for five times its normal price.

In the city’s medieval center, much of the old marketplace lay in smoking ruins on Monday. Heavy, ancient stone walls had collapsed.

Nearby, the 12th-century citadel at the heart of the old city appeared to be damaged, its heavy wooden door pockmarked with bullets and a few stones broken from its gate. Government soldiers had taken up positions there, as well as in the old city’s Umayyad Mosque, where snipers could be seen on the minaret.

Even residents who supported the uprising appeared dejected about the damage to the city, where traces of fire and ash littered the old city and smoke lingered from a blaze the day before in the paint and chemical supply shops of Bab al-Nasr.

“It is a very sad city — it has been sad for the past few months,” said an anti-Assad activist who gave his name as Mohammed.

Abu Mahmoud, a wealthy, white-bearded garment merchant, exuded sadness even inside his well-appointed, undamaged home. He said he was on the verge of fleeing to Turkey, where his sons had opened a small clothing business.

“The rebels came to liberate the city,” he said. “But we got destruction, not freedom. The Assad forces don’t care about the stones or the people. The regime is ready to destroy each house, each shop and each building to keep the power for the Assad family.”

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Asus rolling out Jelly Bean update for Transformer Prime

New Delhi: Asus has begun rolling out Android v4.1 (Jelly Bean) for the Transformer Prime. The Transformer Infinity will also receive the update later this week. The Jelly Bean update brings Google Now, performance improvements through Project Butter, and better functionality to the two tablets.

To check if the update is available for your device, head to the ‘About’ section in the settings and select the check for firmware updates option. It is recommended that you charge your tablet to at least 80 percent before you download the update and install it.

The Asus Transformer Prime was launched in India in March this year for Rs 50,000. Only the Wi-Fi model is available in India at present and it doesn’t seem like they’ll be making a 3G version, since this will eventually be phased out and replaced with the new Transformer 700. The Prime came with Android v3.0 (Honeycomb) at launch, but was upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich a few months ago.

The tablet runs on a 1.3GHz Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, which is the first quad-core CPU for hand-held devices. It has 1GB of RAM. On the screen front, it sports a 10-inch LED backlit display with a resolution of 1280 x 800. It has an 8-megapixel camera on the back, along with a flash that can be useful in low light environments. You can even expand the storage capacity of the tablet through microSD cards up to 32GB in size.

Here is a quick look at the highlighted features of the Asus Transformer Prime:

- 10-inch IPS Capacitive Touchscreen with a 1280 x 800 pixel resolution

- EDGE, GPRS, Wi-Fi (3G version available too)

- GPS with A-GPS support

- Bluetooth with A2DP, USB 2.0

- 8 megapixel camera LED flash, 1080p video recording

- 64GB internal storage, expandable via 32GB microSD card

- Stereo FM radio with RDS

- 3.5mm hands free socket

The much-talked-about Google I/O 2012 saw the search giant unveiling the latest flavour of Android, Jelly Bean. Some of the highlighted features of the Jelly Bean OS include Project Butter, which as the name suggests, aims to make the operating system on Android devices significantly smoother than Ice Cream Sandwich; improved text input with a faster and a more accurate keyboard; a new UI and gestures to the camera app, allowing users to swipe sideways, if they want to access a gallery and delete images by swiping them off the screen; and a big upgrade to the notifications bar – you can choose to reply to text messages, or call people directly from the notifications panel itself.

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Apple apologetic for flaws in Maps, urges use of Google Maps instead

Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook has apologised to customers frustrated with glaring errors in its new Maps service and, in an unusual move for the consumer giant, directed them to rival services such as Google Inc's Maps instead.

The rare apology follows Apple's launch of its own mapping service earlier this month, when it began selling the iPhone 5 and rolled out iOS 6, the highly anticipated update to its mobile software platform. Users complained that the new Maps service - based on Dutch navigation equipment and digital map maker TomTom NV's data - contained geographical errors and gaps in information, and that it lacked features that made Google Maps so popular from public transit directions to traffic data and street-view pictures.

"We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better," Cook said in a letter to customers released on its website, adding that the company "fell short" of its commitment to deliver "the best experience possible to our customers."

Unusually, he suggested that customers download rival mapping services available in Apple's App Store while the company improves the product. "While we're improving Maps, you can try alternatives by downloading map apps from the App Store like Bing, MapQuest and Waze, or use Google or Nokia maps by going to their websites and creating an icon on your home screen to their web app," he said in the letter.

Apple is typically loathe to tout rival services and the contrite apology by Cook is an indication of how Apple is changing under the chief executive who took over last year from co-founder Steve Jobs just before his death. It also took the additional step of prominently displaying the rival services on its Apps Store.

"It is a bit unusual but at the same time, Tim is keeping Apple's commitment to provide the best user experience for customers," Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu said. "A key reason for Apple's success is keeping customers happy so we think this is a good move."

"People forget that Google Maps started out inferior to Mapquest and Yahoo Maps," he added. Apple's home-grown Maps feature -- stitched together by acquiring mapping companies and data from many providers including Waze, Intermap, DigitalGlobe and Urban Mapping -- was introduced with much fanfare in June by software chief Scott Forstall.

It was billed as one of the key highlights of the updated iOS6 software. But errors and omissions in the maps service quickly emerged after the software was rolled out, ranging from misplaced buildings and mislabelled cities to duplicated geographical features.

New Apple On The Block

The last time Apple faced such widespread criticism was in 2010, when users complained of signal reception issues on the then-new iPhone 4 model. A defiant Jobs at the time rejected any suggestion the iPhone 4's design was flawed, but offered consumers free phone cases at a rare, 90-minute press conference called to address those complaints.

While Apple fixed the issue, Jobs had apologized to users only after he was specifically asked if he was sorry. He also said the issue was shared by all the major manufacturers, naming rivals Research in Motion , Samsung Electronics and HTC Corp. Cook himself played a key role in convincing Jobs to tackle the negative publicity that arose around that issue, something he was initially reluctant to do, according to his biographer.

"Finally Tim Cook was able to shake him out of his lethargy," Walter Isaacson said in his biography on the late Silicon Valley icon. "He quoted someone as saying that Apple was becoming the new Microsoft, complacent and arrogant. The next day Jobs changed his attitude." It remains to be seen how fast Apple can fix the mapping glitches.

Jobs had been in a similar position when he allowed email synchronization software MobileMe to launch in 2008, to deadly reviews. The mercurial CEO took the group to task for it and replaced the group's head. The service is now folded into the iCloud product. Mapping is a complex process that takes a lot of resources and years to perfect, said Marcus Thielking, co-founder of Skobbler, maker of the popular GPS Navigation 2 app, built using the crowdsourced OpenStreetMap platform.

"It helps a lot if you have great data to start with," he said, adding that it appears that different database were thrown together in building Apple Maps. "They (Apple) can offer incremental updates and that's what they will do." Cook said that more than 100 million iOS devices are using the new Apple Maps and that the more people use Maps, the better it will get. He also offered some hints on why the company decided to remove Google Maps. Apple launched the Google-powered Maps "initially with the first version of iOS" and created a home-grown version of the service as it wanted to provide more features, Cook said.

"As time progressed, we wanted to provide our customers with even better Maps including features such as turn-by-turn directions, voice integration, Flyover and vector-based maps," he said in the letter. Google provides turn-by-turn navigation on Android-based devices but the popular feature was not available for Apple devices. Apple Maps replaced Google Maps in iOS 6 and the Google service is now only available through a browser. Shares of Apple fell 2% to close at $667.10 on Nasdaq.

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Spy App Can Turn Smartphones Against You

The smartphone in your hands could get hijacked and used as an accessory to virtual burglary. U.S. military researchers have created a mobile app that creates 3D maps of a phone's immediate surroundings, possibly allowing spies or criminals to steal personal information and "download" the physical space to prepare for a break-in.

Such a troubling scenario comes from the "PlaceRaider" app that could disguise itself as an ordinary camera app for Android phones, according to researchers from the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, Ind. and Indiana University in Bloomington.

The app sneakily uses the phone camera to take new images, while also collecting orientation data from the phone's accelerometer, the device that flips your screen horizontally. PlaceRaider can then upload the information to a central computer that combines the best images into a 3D virtual map of a person's house or office.

"We develop and demonstrate a tool that allows an attacker to visualize and navigate a victim's space in 3D, allowing them to quickly hone in on areas that likely contain sensitive or private information and then retrieve targeted, high-resolution images," said Robert Templeman, an engineer at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, Ind., and colleagues in an arXiv paper submitted on Sept. 26.

The computer experts explained how PlaceRaider would permit hackers to zoom in on sensitive information scattered around a room, such as financial statements, phone numbers, personal checks or a wall calendar showing travel plans.

PlaceRaider also showed how its 3D map, reconstructed from sneaky images, could give spies or criminals tools to plan for physical reconnaissance or burglary. The U.S. military's Special Forces might also find such a tool useful for scouting ahead of dangerous missions.

This example of a Trojan horse app uses the smartphone's own computing system to screen for only the most useful images and avoid transmitting blurry or dark photos. It then uploads the selected information to a command-and-control computer that can perform the actual 3D-map reconstruction.

Past hacking demonstrations have shown how to hijack smartphone microphones to "hear" sensitive conversations, or to harness a phone's accelerometer to "feel" vibrations from a computer keyboardand deduce keystrokes. But PlaceRaider's ability to create a 3D map of the physical space potentially makes smartphones even more effective tools for spying — for better and for worse.

This story was provided by TechNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow TechNewsDaily on Twitter @TechNewsDaily, or on Facebook.

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HTC One X+ hands-on

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Samsung says iPhone5 infringes 8 patents, adds it to US patent suit

Samsung Electronics said on Tuesday that Apple's new iPhone5 infringed eight of its patents, including two standards patents and six features patents.

The Korean electronics giant added infringement claims about the iPhone 5 to the existing patent lawsuit against Apple at the US District Court of California. 

The original complaint was filed April 18, alleging earlier iPhone models infringed the same 8 patents, Samsung said in an e-mailed statement.

In a separate patent lawsuit at the same court, the US federal court jury found on August 24 that Samsung infringed on six of Apple's patents, ordering the Galaxy phone maker to pay $1.05 billion in damages to the iPhone maker, reported Xinhua.

"We have always preferred to compete in the marketplace with our innovative products, rather than in courtrooms. However, Apple continues to take aggressive legal measures that will limit market competition. Under these circumstances, we have little choice but to take the steps necessary to protect our innovations and intellectual property rights," the statement said.

Meanwhile, Samsung won a court order lifting a ban on US sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet computer on Monday. US District Judge Lucy Koh rescinded the ban that she imposed in June, saying the sole basis for the June 26 preliminary injunction no longer exists as the jury found earlier that Samsung did not breach the D'889 design patent.

"We are pleased with the country's action, which vindicates our position that there was no infringement of Apple's design patent and that an injunction was not called for," Samsung said.

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Android 4.1 'Jelly Bean' reaches 1.8 percent market share

While the aging Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" operating system continues to be the most popular version, Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean" finally has the 2 percent market share milestone in its sights.

With Google now seeing some 1.3 million new Android device activations every day, there's no shortage of hardware out there running the mobile operating system, but it seems that the bulk of these devices are running older versions of the operating system.

Data based on devices accessing the Google Play store over a 14-day period up to October 1 shows that Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean" is installed on 1.8 percent of devices accessing the application store.

The problems facing Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean" are two-fold. First, "Jelly Bean" has so far only been made available on a limited number of devices, such as the Nexus 7 tablet and Galaxy Nexus smartphone -- neither of which seem to be mass-market devices. Most of the major OEMs are still pushing out hardware running older versions. Even new smartphones such as Motorola's DROID RAZR M still ship with Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich".

To make matters worse, hardware OEMs and carriers have been dragging their heels when it comes to making "Jelly Bean" available as an update for existing hardware. Both would rather consumers just bought a new smartphone or tablet than give them a new operating system for their old hardware for nothing. There's just no incentive for any of the players -- even Google -- to push updates to older hardware.

The problems facing Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean" are two-fold. First, "Jelly Bean" has so far only been made available on a limited number of devices, such as the Nexus 7 tablet and Galaxy Nexus smartphone -- neither of which seem to be mass-market devices. Most of the major OEMs are still pushing out hardware running older versions. Even new smartphones such as Motorola's DROID RAZR M still ship with Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich".

To make matters worse, hardware OEMs and carriers have been dragging their heels when it comes to making "Jelly Bean" available as an update for existing hardware. Both would rather consumers just bought a new smartphone or tablet than give them a new operating system for their old hardware for nothing. There's just no incentive for any of the players -- even Google -- to push updates to older hardware.

The slow adoption of new versions of Android affects everyone in the ecosystem. It forces developers to support an ever-increasing array of aging versions, while at the same time preventing them from making full use of new features. For consumers, it means that they are denied new features and not getting security updates that help keep their handsets and tablets safe from hackers and malware. 

As the chart above shows, Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" is the fastest-growing platform, now running almost a quarter of the hardware accessing Google Play. 

By far the most popular version of Android continues to be the now aged Android 2.3 "Gingerbread". This is Google's mobile version of Windows XP, an old version of a platform that both hardware makers and consumers are clinging onto for dear life. It was the platform that was around when Android went mainstream, and as such there are a lot of devices out there running it. You can still find handsets for sale that still "Gingerbread," even though the platform hasn't seen an update since September 2011.

Image source: Google Developer Dashboard.

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Julian Assange costs Britain 11, 000 pounds a day

London: It is costing a whopping 11,000 pounds a day for Britain to ensure that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy here, does not flee the country. 

The final bill could be much more as the 41-year-old continues to defy extradition to Sweden where he is suspected of sexually assaulting two women.

Scotland Yard confirmed it costs 11,000 pounds every day to ensure that the Australian does not flee his bolthole at the Ecuadorean Embassy, the Daily Mail reported. 

The police bill for staking out the embassy where Assange is holed up has already reached more than 1 million pounds. 

Officers have been watching the property in Knightsbridge, West London, since Assange breached his bail and claimed asylum in June. They have been told to arrest him if he puts "one toe" outside. 

Ecuador granted political asylum to Assange in August after he took refuge in the country's embassy in London. 

Ecuadorean foreign minister Ricardo Pinto has warned Assange he could be in the embassy for a decade if he is not allowed to leave Britain. 

Critics have called on the Metropolitan Police to end the costly stakeout. London Mayor Boris Johnson confirmed the policing bill between June 20 and September 10 was 905,000 pounds. 

If the costs continued at the average of 11,000 pounds a day the total would now be over 1.1 million pounds. 

Last week, Foreign Secretary William Hague admitted there is "no sign of any breakthrough" after meeting his Ecuadorean counterpart Ricardo Pinto at the United Nations in New York. 

The comments came after the hacking activist accused the US of persecuting WikiLeaks and torturing Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of leaking classified documents. 

At least four Metropolitan officers guard the embassy, on the second floor of a block of flats behind Harrods in Knightsbridge, West London, around the clock. They have set up a 250,000 pounds mobile command station on the doorstep of the building and occupy positions outside and in surrounding properties. 

Officers from every London borough, specialist police units and undercover squads have been brought in to join the open-ended stake out. 

Critics called on the police to end the stand-off but sources said the force cannot step back from its responsibilities to arrest Assange for breaching his bail. 

Australian hacker-turned-activist is trying to avoid extradition from Britain to Sweden over allegations of rape and sexual assault in August 2010. 

Assange fears that he may be sent to the US, if extradited to Sweden, and face charges punishable by death for publishing some 250,000 leaked American diplomatic cables. 

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Kingfisher Airline to pay salary dues 'soon'

India's Kingfisher Airlines has told the aviation regulator that it will pay staff salaries, held up for the last six months, in the next few days.

Workers have gone on strike claiming they have not been paid

The airline's chief executive Sanjay Aggarwal said they would decide on Thursday whether to resume flights.

On Monday, Kingfisher suspended flights for three days after a strike by workers raised safety concerns.

The airline cited incidents including violence, criminal intimidation and refraining from attending work.

It declared a partial lock-out until 4 October.

The government said the airline could not fly until its planes were certified safe after the strike.

"We have shared the steps which we are going to take in the next few days with the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). We have explained our position to DGCA," Press Trust of India quoted Mr Aggarwal as saying after the meeting on Tuesday.

"We will clear the pending salaries in the next few days. I myself haven't got the salary," he added.

Kingfisher was in talks with "a couple of airlines" for investment and hoped that talks would conclude "in two-three months", DGCA Arun Mishra told reporters after the meeting.

Reports said the airline told the regulator that they would resume operations from Friday.

'Illegal acts'

Kingfisher, owned by Vijay Mallya, was hit by a strike in July - the airline was forced to cancel 40 flights when workers refused to work saying they had not been paid for months.

In the latest incident, lack of pay was again cited as the reason for a strike that began on Friday and which more workers joined on Monday.

The company said in a statement on Monday that "illegal acts" had been committed by a "small section of recalcitrant employees which were all unnecessary and unprovoked".

It added that the majority of staff were willing to continue operations but had not been able to report to work because of acts of criminal intimidation.

It said it would take disciplinary action against some employees.

'Cash crunch'

The airline has been struggling with a cash shortage and has reported losses for five years in a row.

Analysts said this week's disruption and safety concerns would hurt Mr Mallya's efforts to win the investment needed to save the airline from collapse.

Mr Mallya had said discussions were ongoing for overseas carriers to potentially take a stake in the airline.

It came after the government relaxed investment rules, allowing foreign airlines to buy as much as 49% of domestic airline operators in India.

Mr Mallya is also in discussion to sell a stake in United Spirits, an Indian distiller, to global drinks giant Diageo in an attempt to generate cash.

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Visual Android Trojan as virtual theft aid

The rise of mobile malware in the last few years has been well documented, and the latest reports show that malware sending out text messages to premium rate numbers is the type users encounter most often.

This prevalence will likely not be challenged for a while - after all, there are not many crooks who would say no to a fast and easy buck - but users must be aware that new malicious software with as of yet unimaginable capabilities will surface in time.

One of these malicious programs has recently been unearthed, but luckily for all of us the Trojan posing as a camera app is currently only a prototype created by a team of researchers from the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Indiana and the Indiana University.

The name of the malware in question is PlaceRaider, and its goal is to surreptitiously take photos with Android smartphones' built-in camera in order for attackers to be able to recreate a 3D model of the user's indoor environment and steal all kinds of information (click on the screenshot to enlarge it):

"Once the visual data has been transferred and reconstructed into a 3D model, the remote attacker can surveil the target’s private home or work space, and engage in virtual theft by exploring, viewing, and stealing the contents of visible objects including sensitive documents, personal photographs, and computer monitors," the researchers explained in a recently released .

They tested their Trojan on 20 individuals by giving them infected devices. As they went through their day, the malware would take hundreds of photos (along with orientation and acceleration sensor data) and, after filtering out the uninformative ones, would send the remaining ones to the researchers' remote server. 

The victims were oblivious to the Trojan's activities, as the malware is designed to mute the sound of the camera's shutter.

With the images in hand, the researchers then used a computer vision algorithm to generate a rich 3D model, which can be inspected very closely for valuable information.

The PoC Trojan has been designed for the Android platform, and the scary part is that the permissions it asks - to access the camera, to write to external storage, to connect to the network, to change audio settings - can easily be seen as legitimate when the malware is packaged within an attractive camera app.

The researchers have proved that it is highly likely that successful "visual" Trojans such as this one will eventually find their way into the wild, so in order to prevent users from becoming targets they advise them to get apps only from trusted software developers.

Among other things, hardware manufacturers are advised to implement a shutter sound that can't be muted, and possibly even to make the taking of photos possible only when a physical button is pressed; and Google and Apple (developers of Android and iOS) are urged to make apps also ask permission to collect acceleration and gyroscope data.

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