iPhone 5 To Feature Antenna Integrated Into Logo?

The single biggest gripe with the iPhone 4 was undoutedly the antenna problems it has suffered. With that in mind a rumour circulating today has it that Apple may be considering a different design for the iPhone 5.

Taiwanese newspaper Economic Daily News (how many of you thought I was about to say DigiTimes?) is citing anonymous sources (are they ever not anonymous?) as saying that the iPhone 5 could feature a milled aluminium back with the antenna as part of the Apple logo. Not a million miles from the WiFi only version of the original iPad.

It's certainly conceivable that the hub bub over antennagate has forced Apple to consider how it approaches the antenna in future iterations of the iPhone, but at the moment this is just speculation. However, it's speculation that comes with a rather spiffy mock-up!

Android Honeycomb's music app extracted, brings cloud sync and streaming to phones

Those who are familiar with Android Honeycomb might have already come across its music player'scloud syncing feature, though previous attempts to port said app to phones hadn't been successful. Whatever it was that kept crashing the app back then, it seems to have fixed itself -- after xda-developersmember WhiteWidows slapped the leaked app onto his rooted EVO 4G, the phone started to automagically sync his tunes to his Google account. The modder then swapped in an empty SD card, but he was still able to stream music straight from the cloud after checking the "Stream music" option in the app. Pretty neat, eh? That said, we do wonder if Google will be able to handle the exabytes worth of high-quality Justin Bieber and Spice Girl tracks.

Nokia E7 up for pre-order in the states with presumed April delivery

Dedicated stateside Nokia watchers, we have good news: the E7 is up for pre-order on the company's American storefront for a hearty $679. Set to ship in the beginning of April, this bad boy has beenkicking around Amazon since late last year, and much to our surprise the price hasn't changed one penny since then. Of course, if you'd gone through Amazon Prime you'd have saved $4 on shipping (which you probably need after spending the better half of a grand on a handset). 

Bloomberg: Microsoft to pay Nokia 'more than $1 billion' to make Windows Phones

Though neither Nokia nor CEO Stephen Elop ever said there was an exchange of billions of dollars as a part of the company's tie-up with Microsoft for the Windows Phone platform, Bloomberg is sourcing "two people with knowledge of the terms" in saying that something in excess of $1 billion is flowing from Redmond to Espoo. Though the deal isn't yet finalized -- Elop said as much back at MWC -- it'd apparently call for Microsoft to pay out at least some of the cash upfront with Nokia sending cash in the other direction for device licenses. Interestingly, the deal is said to give Microsoft access to parts of Nokia's expansive patent portfolio -- and they'll have it for quite some time, too: the contract's apparently going to be good for "more than five years." That's more than most marriages, it seems (and roughly as expensive).

ComScore: Android leapfrogs BlackBerry among US smartphone subscribers to take first place in market share

Last time we checked in with ComScore's report on smartphone platform market share among US subscribers three months ago, Android was doing a little happy dance as it overtook iOS for the number two spot overall. Well, the cuddly green bots have self-replicated yet again, enough to overtake RIM this time thanks in part to a 5.4 percent decline on BlackBerry's part (down to 30.4 percent in January) coupled with a 7.7 percent boost on the Android side, moving up to 31.2 percent. We imagine ComScore's next report -- covering the period through March -- will see a little boost on the iOS side thanks to Verizon's iPhone launch, but RIM's knight in shining armor might be further out; we still don't know when QNX-based phones are going to happen, after all, and devices like the Monaco don't really seem like cure-alls.

BlackBerry Protect moves to wider beta, ready to secure your stuff

After a limited beta last year, RIM's BlackBerry Protect service - which combines a host of services into one product; on top of being able to remotely message, lock, and wipe a misplaced phone, you can locate it on a map and take regularly-scheduled wireless backups that make replacing the handset (if it comes to that) as painless as possible - has been opened to a wider test audience with tweaks based on feedback collected in the first round. As you might recall, Protect is a fairly standard-issue suite of security features to put your mind at ease in the event your phone meets its maker or the hands of a thief, including location capability, a remote alarm, wireless backup, and -- of course -- the doomsday remote wipe option. It's available in North America and parts of Latin America for the moment through App World's Test Center, though RIM promises to open it to additional regions "in the next couple of months."