iOS 5.1 Doesn’t Fix Battery Drain.

Preliminary reports from developers (and the throngs of tech enthusiasts who signed up for an Apple iOS dev license to get early access to updates) is that iOS 5.1 stilL doesn’t help the battery drain issue affecting not only the newer iPhone 4S, but any device with iOS 5 installed.

Apple’s original goal with iOS 5.0.1 was to tackle an apparent issue loosely related to location based services needlessly checking location far too often and leading to battery drain. The problem: the update fixed the battery drain problem for a small number of users. And now that iOS 5.1 has had several days of testing it’s becoming clear that while the update does extend the battery fix to more users, it’s still far from a final solution.

Of course we must all remember that Apple never publicly came out with claims that iOS 5.1 will/would fix any battery issue — the media did. Nonetheless, Apple does know there is a problem. And after seeing these latest reports, it’s apparently they still don’t really know how to completely fix it.

Did you update to iOS 5.1 beta? Let us know your mileage!

Here’s What Spotify Announced Today…

Spotify’s special event just wrapped up, and with it come details on the company’s future amongst a heap of recent Spotify articles good and bad. The once little known service inside the U.S. has quickly become a music juggernaut. During today’s event, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek stated that Spotify has secured licensing deals with all the major labels and adds over 20,000 tracks to Spotify’s library each and every day. According to Ek, the full library would take over 100 years to listen to from start to finish, and all this reaches 10 million listeners. But enough fluff. Here’s what Spotify announced today…

Box.net Promotion Leaks: Sony Ericsson Owners To Receive 50 GB Of Free Cloud Storage.

Just like they did back in the summer for TouchPad owners and again earlier this fall for iOS owners, Box.net will (soon be) offering up 50 GB accounts for FREE for owners of Sony Ericsson phones. Much like the previous instances, all that’s needed by the end user is to simply sign in to Box.net via their Sony Ericsson device to unlock the 50 GB of storage before the end of next year.

The promotion isn’t ready for prime time just yet as is evident by this response sent by Sony Ericsson to The Next Web:

“On Monday afternoon, we mistakenly posted a promo offering Xperia(tm) owners 50GB of free storage via the Box for Android mobile app. While we’re really excited about working with Box down the road, this offer is not active today. We are in the midst of finalising the details of this promotion and are working to provide this offer very soon to all Xperia(tm) customers so stay tuned!”

If Box.net keeps it up, everyone is going to have 50 GBs of free storage — not that we’re complaining or anything.

All that said, take the above claims regarding the Sony Ericsson/Box.net partnership with a few grains of salt seeing as how a few t’s and i’s still need attending to.

Buzzkill: Kindle Fire 6.2 Update Removes Root. (But You Can Re-root)

It appears Amazon is taking an Apple-like approach to Android root users of the new Kindle Fire tablet. The latest Kindle Fire 6.2 update not only adds vaguely worded “improvements”, it removes the root permissions. But don’t worry. It’s not all bad. You can update to 6.2 and then re-root using the same method that got you to your freed state pre-6.2.

There are also reports that the Android Market is removed, though it doesn’t happen on ever device and any apps downloaded via the Android Market reportedly still function.

We only wish the Kindle Fire had an option to disable auto-updating. While the ability to re-root dramatically lessens the impact for root users, future updates may not be so accommodating.

With that said, the necessary tools to re-root your Kindle Fire can be found right over here.

• Windows: SuperOneClick

• Mac/Linux: RootKindleFire

Samsung Reveals New 2 GHz Dual Core Exynos 5250 Processor.

The nearing release of quad-core mobile CPUs may overshadow any new and upcoming dual-core hardware, but there’s something to be said about Samsung’s new Exynos 5250 2.0 GHz CPU. For starters: It’s 2.0 GHz! On top of that, the new miniature slab of silicon from Sammy supports resolutions up to 2560 x 1600, stereoscopic 3D and transfer speeds pushing 12.8 GB/s.

Considering current 1.5 GHz hardware has been overclocked to just a couple hundred megahertz shy of 2 GHz, we’re pretty excited to see how far and well this new 32nm Exynos 5250 can run. The only downside is the waiting period — Samsung says sampling for manufacturers won’t happen until Q2 2012 meaning us end users still have many months of 5250-less waiting to navigate through.

First BBX BlackBerry (London) Reportedly Renamed “Surfboard”.

Stretching all the way back in time to July 2010 is a Canadian trademark for “BlackBerry Surfboard”, obviously held by RIM. And it is that very (goofy) name that is reportedly the new name of the BBX powered BlackBerry London, RIM’s first smartphone to run the PlayBook’s QNX operating system.

Considering there’s quite a bit of time between now and the rumored mid-2012 release for the London/Surfboard, we’re hoping RIM’s marketing department (or whoever comes up with these names) finds something a little…um…better to roll with for the official launch.

The BBX powered BlackBerry Surfboard — not feeling it. You?

Report: HP’s webOS Decision Coming In Two Weeks.

The long, toiled, and utterly depressing story of webOS over the last 6-10 months has played out in a gut wrenching slug fest online. Much to the dismay of many webOS aficionados, hope for any future for the aspiring mobile platform is all but gone. All that’s left is a slim chance that HP’s current new CEO, Meg Whitman, will save the fledging OS.

While we still haven’t received any concrete timeline in the states, a French newspaper, “Le Figaro” is reporting (Google Translated) that Meg Whitman claimed via interview that the final webOS decision will come in within the next two weeks. Whitman is currently in Vienna for a corporate themed event at which HP is showcasing their new concept of “information optimization”. Sounds completely uninteresting and boring, eh?

“We should announce our decision in the next two weeks. This is not an easy decision, because we have a team of 600 people which is in limbo. We need to have another operating system.”

Here’s to hoping…