When Siri was announced strictly for the iPhone 4S, the mod community likely took that as a challenge. Before long, the service had been hacked and shortly thereafter ported to a number of potentially compatible devices.

The problem, of course, is that Apple gets to decide what devices are compatible, not the users. So they’ve taken steps to undo the work that hackers and jailbreakers have done to bring Siri to older iOS devices. Today brings a new volley, though it’s only a matter of time before it too is circumvented.

Spire, the jailbreak-related Siri porting tool for non-4S devices, has been disabled by an update from Apple that adds an extra requirement to the Siri authentication process. A new “SetActivationToken” plist file prevents the current hack from functioning correctly. Well, that’s it, everybody go home, Siri is safe from interlopers.

In fact, it has been pointed out that a little deep file management fixes the problem — not a fix a casual user would do, but few casual users will have gone through with the non-trivial Spire install process to begin with. Chances are a small fix will be made available and then a more thorough one will hit when 5.1 hits.

Apple, in the meantime, will continue to desultorily fight back. Their rationale for not supporting older devices isn’t really clear, but it probably doesn’t have anything to do with the older devices being unable to perform the tasks Siri does on-device. Commentators seem to agree that it was a combination of marketing and an inability to scale to support the whole iOS population. That would explain why their work to disrupt non-4S Siri devices has been something less than intense. A hundred thousand jailbreakers won’t knock over the servers, but 50 million iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches would be sure to.

[via Redmond Pie and Apple Insider]

A life spent caught up in the drudgery of retail is usually pretty free of frills, but Verizon Wireless employees may soon be getting a shot at some swanky hardware if some newly-leaked images hold true. According to Android And Me, Verizon has reached out to their employees with an offer they may not be able to refuse: limited edition Droid RAZRs and Droid RAZR MAXXs.

And what’s so limited about these edition then? The employee-only Droid RAZR sports a red and black finish on its backside rather than the monochrome stylings of its more mundane brethren, along with the device’s number within the production run.

Meanwhile, the device’s front sports a “limited edition” engraving just so no one mistakes it for a more pedestrian device. Just to sweeten the pot, Verizon is also throwing in a free multimedia dock for any employee willing to take the bait.

Not a bad deal at all, especially considering the supposed price tags involved: employees will be able to snag a limited edition 16GB Droid RAZR for a scant $99, while a similarly tricked out MAXX will set them back $199.

No word on how big the production runs are or when they’ll be released, but I wouldn’t be surprised if all of these highfaluting handsets get snapped up in a hurry. Even so, I give it about 20 minutes before the first few enterprising Verizon employees try to flip their new toys for a profit on eBay or Craiglist, so the mobile collectors among you may want to keep yours eyes peeled.

CEO Tim Cook described Apple’s conquest of emerging markets today at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference. He said “In 2007, and we didn’t launch the iPhone outside the U.S. until 2008, Apple’s revenue combined from greater China and several other parts of asia, India, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America was $1.4 billion. Revenue for that group of countries last year was $22 billion. We’re only on the surface.”

Cook explained that the iPod didn’t take off as quickly in the developing world “because people were already getting music from their phones. But the world changed for us with iPhone. It introduced our brand to people who had never met Apple before.”

“The iPhone is creating a halo for the Macintosh, and for iPads. We see the synergistic effects of the markets not only in the developed markets, but in the emerging markets.” Next, Apple will focus on Brazil, Russia, and China, where Cook said Apple’s sales were $13 billion last year.

Cook also mentioned his belief that the tablet market will soon surpass the PC market. Regarding the iPad, “55 million units shipped is something no one would have guessed. It took us 22 years to sell 55 million Macs, it took 5 years to sell 55 million iPods, 3 years to sell that many iPhones. It’s on a trajectory that’s off the charts.” Check out MG Siegler’s roundup of Apple’s jaw-dropping Q1 2012 numbers for more the rise of the iPad.

In his final statement, Cook talked about his role sheparding Apple as the successor to Steve Jobs, “I’m not going to witness or permit the slow undoing of it. Steve grilled into us over the years that the company should revolve around great products and that we should stay extremely focused on a few things…and only go into markets where we can create a significant contribution to society, not just sell a lot of units.”

“We’re always focused on the future. We don’t sit and think about how great things were yesterday.”

[Image Credit: MIT]

I’ve played through my share of tower defense games in my day — and have gotten hopelessly addicted to a few of them — but none really approach Andy Wallace’s Doodle Defense when it comes to execution. You see, instead of dragging and dropping pre-made parts onto a field, players must defend against invaders by drawing their own towers and obstacles on a whiteboard.

Wallace cobbled Doodle Defense together as a project for an algorithmic animation class, and the result is a simple-but-novel approach to a cherished genre of time waster. Draw black lines to block or divert the invaders, while drawing red, green, and blue dots create towers that have varying effects on the enemy. Just don’t overdo it with the drawings — a counter nestled in the upper left side of the game field keeps track of how much ink is left at your disposal, a la Okami.

Fun as it looks, Doodle Defense does require a fair bit of setup. The game itself runs on a Mac, and Wallace uses a projector to display the game field on a giant whiteboard. From there, the game interprets the user’s drawings as inputs thanks to a connected Kinect camera, and seeing it in action looks like an ink-slinging good time.

Ultimately, Wallace is looking for crowd-sourced funding to bring Doodle Defense to a handful of other platforms, including PCs and the iPad. I’ll be honest here, it seems like much of Doodle Defense’s appeal disappears when you’re stuck using a more conventional mode of input to play. Still, it’s a very promising project, and I’m looking forward to what Wallace (and the team of artists and sound designers he hopes to recruit) will do with it next.

If you’d rather not donate but still want to play around with the game, you could also just pore through his code: the entire project is open-source and available on Github.

The iPad 3 is coming next month. Or so says the endless rumors. These rumors also state the next iPad will have higher resolution screen and high-speed data connection. But I couldn’t care less. The iPad 3, if that’s really its name, sounds like a stop-gap upgrade to me.

You see, I’m perfectly happy with my iPad 2. Save the addition of an SD card slot, there isn’t a single feature I can imagine that will make me trade up to Apple’s new hotness. I guess the iPad 3 sounds great, but it also sounds boring. That’s not saying Apple won’t sell a zillion iPad 3s. It will. But it’s going to take more than a spec bump for me (and likely many others) to upgrade from the iPad 2.

Prior to most Apple events, rumors swirl, promising a revolutionary device that will change life on planet Earth forever. But then the iPhone 4S launches. A fine piece of hardware, sure, but far from spectacular. But there hasn’t been any wide-eyed iPad 3 rumors but rather just predictable leaks stating there will be a slight hardware bump.

Part of my dystopian outlook is that I’m pretty damn happy with the iPad 2. I passed on the original iPad, annoyed over the lack of external storage and USB support. I instead waited for the Android tablets but quickly discovered Honeycomb’s main fault involves trying to replicate a desktop environment rather than creating a mobile one. I have a dozen notebooks for traditional mobile computing. So I got a 16GB Verizon iPad last summer. I’ve never been so happy with a device. I’ve had it since July 2011 and still use it hours a day. Apps make up 95% of my usage — the majority of which are not available on Android. I fire up Safari just to check TechCrunch and Techmeme.

A prettier screen is not going to change or increase my usage unless Apple backsteps and includes a SD card slot — which it won’t. When the original iPad launched, I dreamed of using it as a on-location photo viewer. I imagined using the tablet in conjunction with a cloud service for iPhoto. But instead Apple released a lame Dock Connect adapter which falls short of my expectation. The current screen looks great. Have you played Infinity Blade 2 or Rage? Awesome.

It’s important to remember that Apple doesn’t need to reinvent the iPad. The company makes piles of cash by outing successful products and keeping them on the market as long as possible. The iPad 3 will likely be just a spec bump to stay competitive for 2012 and 2013. It will match (and outsell) future Android tablets, causing companies like Samsung, Asus and Motorola to quickly redesign and release an even more “powerful” tablet just to get a bit of an edge.

Apple didn’t need to release the iPhone 5 in 2011 because the iPhone 4 was still outselling most other phones. Instead, Apple released the iPhone 4S, which while packing some new innards, is mostly a stop-gap solution allowing the company to milk additional revenue from supply contracts on aging components. It worked. Apple sold 17.1 million iPhones in the last part of 2011 on its way to be the most valuable company. The iPhone 4S gives Apple even more time to refine the iPhone 5 while negating more favorable manufacturing and supply deals.

The same thing could happen to the iPad 2. Apple could release the iPad 2S. It would be faster, packing LTE data and a quad-core A6 CPU along with featuring a higher-res screen. Of course there would probably be a new camera and new software to take advantage of the quad-core CPU — the software would likely be exclusive to just the new model, though.

The WSJ reports that Apple is playing with an 8-inch iPad. But once again, Apple doesn’t need to release an 8-incher right now. Sure, the Kindle Fire is scooping up plenty of marketshare but the tablet scene is far from saturated and the Fire helps bring attention to the product type. If Apple releases a stop-gap iPad in the coming weeks, I fully expect the company to completely reinvent its mobile line before the holiday season including a smaller, cheaper iPad.

I’m sitting the next iPad out. My iPad 2 works just fine and none of the rumored iPad 3 features justify upgrading to me. Apple will likely hype a meaningless feature during the keynote, deeming it a game changer. But I’ve learned my lesson. Heads will stop spinning shortly after the event and reality will set in. Avoid the Apple spin zone. It has a tendency of sucking credit cards towards pre-order buttons.

Sony is working on a new technology that authenticates devices via the power outlet, allowing for a few interesting applications. The system, based on the Japanese Felica standard, would allow authenticated power usage, power management for cafes and offices, as well as payments for power use. The system could authenticate with the power outlet via a chip inside the laptop or device or through a smartcard that user waves at the outlet.

According to the press release, the system will allow building and home owners to control power use from a central location and ensure people aren’t using power willy nilly.

This technology is definitely something we will soon see in modern buildings, at least in terms of energy maintenance. It may feel freaky to log in your power outlet, but if it keeps us from sucking down too many jiggawatts, we’ll probably all need to get on board.

via TheVerge

Even if it isn’t my favorite new device, I’m glad to see the Galaxy Note bring something totally different to the mobile table. At first glance you’d think it was a tablet, especially when you set it next to a “regular” phone, but you’d soon realize the Note has a 4G LTE radio tucked inside to let you phone home.

Unfortunately, you might look a little crazy with that huge thing up to your face. I found that it was really difficult to get comfortable with the device, never feeling like I had complete control over it as I would with a smaller phone. On the other hand, the mobile video experience offered by the Note can’t really be beat thanks to that stunning 5.3-inch 1280×800 HD Super AMOLED display.

AT&T’s 4G LTE didn’t give me any trouble in NYC, and I didn’t see any particularly disheartening performance. But I will say that I can’t stand TouchWiz. Samsung makes amazing hardware, and I’ll admit that a few features of its UI are helpful, but in the end TouchWiz really bogs phones down.

To be clear, the Note’s 8-megapixel camera is faster than most Samsung devices, but that doesn’t mean it’ll beat out the iPhone 4S or even certain Moto handsets. Still, it gets the job done.

As far as the S-Pen is concerned, I have mixed feelings. I can see this being useful for anyone who draws or jots down notes a lot, like a graphic artist or a mom perhaps. But past that, it seems like a gimmicky feature that won’t get much use after the first few days — a novelty.

Don’t get me wrong. S-Pen performance was absolutely wonderful. There were a few lags, and missed marks, but it was still a much better stylus experience than I’ve had before. You can tell that a lot of time and energy went into making the S-Pen as functional and smooth as possible. But that doesn’t mean I need it.

As I said, adding a personal touch to photos or sending someone a handwritten note via mobile can be really cool. But that’s it. It won’t change the way I interact with my phone (touch is much more comfortable), and I don’t see myself getting in the habit of taking down notes or doodling. Some people, likely the ones I mentioned before, will see this as a godsend. But to each his own, right?

The Samsung Galaxy Note is already available for pre-order at AT&T, and if you place your pre-order before February 16, your phone will arrive on the 17th. It’s available in Carbon Blue and Ceramic White, and there are plenty of cool carrying cases and accessories that go along with it should you choose to go all in.

ThinkGeek’s 8-Bitty Gamepad Promises Fun Times And Blistered Thumbs

ScottEVest Releases The Transforming Transformer Jacket

Motorola Droid 4 Review: Head-To-Head With The Droid 3 And iPhone 4S

False Alarm: Why The Apple/Foxconn Debacle Clouds The Real Manufacturing Mess

Motorola, You Screwed Up. The Droid 4 Alienates (And Pisses Off) Your Core Demographic.

In what may, in a couple years, be remembered as a telltale remark of overconfidence, Samsung’s AV product manager said today in an interview “TVs are ultimately about picture quality. Ultimately. How smart they are…great, but let’s face it that’s a secondary consideration.” Pride goeth before a fall, Samsung!

It’s true in a way. But only in the dumbest possible way. Yes, TVs are about picture quality. Because that’s all Samsung and Sony and Sharp have been willing to improve for the last half a century. As soon as someone comes along and changes what TVs are “ultimately about,” it’s going to be a bloodbath. Will it be Apple? I don’t know. But it sure as hell doesn’t look like it’s going to be Samsung.

To be fair, the AV product manager (his name is Chris Moseley) isn’t paid to have a lateral point of view. But his orders do come from on high, and if they say they want twice the contrast ratio of the competition and that’s what they’re selling on, well by god that’s what the AV product manager will arrange. And that’s what on high has been ordering since the TV was invented: make it look better. That’s starting to change a bit now, as we saw at CES, but it’s going to take a while to turn this ship around. The experimental stuff they’re showing off is going to be years behind anything put out by a big, UX-heavy company like Apple or a smaller, more agile one like Boxee.

Not that there’s anything wrong with a good picture. But LCD-based TVs, which will probably remain the standard for at least five or ten more years, are kind of peaking right now. You can buy a TV for under five hundred bucks that’s 90% as good as the five-thousand-dollar one. And furthermore, it’s already ten times better than what you could get for the same price a few years ago.

And add to this the fact that many people don’t understand, recognize, or even care about the difference between 720p and 1080p, to say nothing of 4K or HDR or local dimming or what have you. Moseley teases Apple, saying “they don’t have 10,000 people in R&D in the vision category.” And what have those 10,000 researchers, and their counterparts at Sharp and Toshiba and the rest, done for them lately? TV sales are down, nobody cares about 3D, and everybody wonders why it’s so hard to get content for their big screen.

People are curious about Roku and Boxee Box. Netflix Streaming has reinvented home movies. And the big TV companies are, contrary to Mosely’s suggestion, realizing that the way you interact with the content is becoming as important as the content itself.

And it’s here that Apple (and Google, and Netflix, and Hulu) have a leg up on Samsung. Sure, Samsung has 10,000 researchers putting together slightly better TVs every year. But TVs aren’t ultimately about picture quality, they’re about what that great picture quality is showing. The other guys have been working on that piece for years.

Picture quality is going to take a much-needed break while more important things take its place among the yearly updates and spec points. And as long as Samsung is of the opinion that how things look is the only metric worth considering, they’re going to be paying someone else for those new features.

Droid 4 reviews are popping up everywhere. We’re doing ours a little different. Instead of posting a “review” after spending just 24 hours with the phone like other sites, we’re living with it for a week, publishing several articles on it and then concluding with a full review after actually living with the phone for a while. But one thing was clear even before the phone launched: Motorola messed up forgoing a removable battery for a meaningless reduction in thickness.

The original Droid started the Android revolution. It was the anti-iPhone: an open OS, sliding QWERTY keyboard, available on Verizon and featured a removable battery and expandable memory. Now many of those advantages are moot points. Android is no longer viewed as open, most people are sold on virtual keyboards, the iPhone is available everywhere, and now, thanks to Motorola, the Droid 4 features a built-in battery. Sorry, power users.

You see, Motorola, like every other phone maker is racing to produce the thinnest phone possible. Apparently they feel thinner phones will result in more sales and/or street cred. I don’t know. But it’s silly. Phones are already thin enough — I know how that sounds. But think about it: The Droid 3 is 12.9mm thick where the Droid 4 is 12.7mm thick. Even the Droid RAZR MAXX, with it’s extra-large battery, is still a slim phone in my opinion. It’s 9mm thick verses 7.1mm of the standard RAZR. The difference is hardly noticeable even when the phones are sitting next to each other. You’ll never notice it when it’s in your pocket.

The Droid 4 does feature a larger battery than its older counterpart. The phone is also more powerful and packs a slightly larger screen. But none of those things counter the mistake of not including a removable battery even if the Droid 4 is a marvelous piece of hardware. The new keypad is fantastic and so is the updated sliding action. It’s completely possible that Moto engineers decided to permanently affix the battery to allow for the improved sliding mechanism or something else critical to the redesigned phone. But in doing so, the phone loses a major selling point even if it’s an under-utilized feature.

I’d venture to say that the vast majority of users never buy extended batteries for their phones. But it’s likely a large portion of owners like the idea, and it’s certainly a nice option to have. There are light users who will probably coast along with the non-removable battery and never experience a problem, while people who lean on their devices more than others could be left in the lurch. I don’t think Motorola made the decision lightly, but the move almost feels like Motorola is trading their power users for wider adoption.

The Android landscape is filled with copycats. Motorola (and others) need to do something to make their phones stand apart. So what are the Droid 4′s selling points? Just the QWERTY keypad and that’s not enough to compete. Sadly the days of the swappable battery are probably numbered. I’d bet my dog Ferrari that the Samsung Galaxy S III and most of 2012′s flagship phones will not have a removable battery.

Bring back the swappable battery for the next Droid, Motorola. A millimeter or two is well worth having a legitimate selling point over the iPhone and other Android phones.

How often has this happened to you: you’re trapped in a Wampa cave on Hoth and your sleeve is trapped under a fallen icicle and you can’t reach your light saber. The only way out is to pull your sleeve off quickly. But if you unzip your sleeve, you’ll wake the Wampa. If you had the ScottEVest Transformer, you could simply pop off the sleeve with one swipe, freeing your blaster arm and saving your life. Instead to lie there and wait for the sweet release of an icy death or, barring that, the razor sharp teeth of the Wampa.

“If only I had bought a ScottEVest,” you think as your shuffle off your mortal coil, your midichlorians dying en masse.

That’s right: ScottEVest, makers of clothing with lots of pockets, have finally answered that common complaint of today’s knowledge worker: “I wish my jacket were a vest sooner.” This is basically a convertable jacket with a few tricks up its sleeve.

The Transformer features a ring of magnets around the shoulder to hold the sleeves until you’re ready to transform. You can pull the sleeves off in seconds and then reconnect them by simply setting them near the shoulder hole. It’s definitely not rocket science, but it’s pretty cool.

The founder, Scott Jordan, recorded an Apple-esque “keynote” for your edification, describing the jacket in loving, almost religious, detail. Watch it if you have a few minutes.

Why is this on TechCrunch? Well, ScottEVest makes some great travel gear and this one is no exception. It’s quite light – more like a running jacket than a windbreaker – and has twenty pockets including an phone pocket and spot for pens and a water bottle. It basically doubles as a carry-on bag that you wear.

The jacket costs $160 and is available in three colors. It’s available for pre-order now.

Product Page

The folks at ThinkGeek, bless their souls, have a knack for taking off-the-wall ideas and turning them into real products. After their tablet-friendly arcade cabinet made the leap from joke to reality last year, ThinkGeek has turned their attention to whipping up a retro gaming accessory for the on-the-go crowd, and the resulting 8-Bitty already looks like a winner.

Oh, and did I mention that it has fake wood-grain trim? Be still my heart!

In fairness, the 8-Bitty (which I’m really enjoying saying, by the way) doesn’t actually exist yet. In typical ThinkGeek fashion, they’ve put the $25 NES-esque Bluetooth controller on their website along with promises that it will eventually ship to the mobile gaming masses. When it does though, it’ll link up to your iOS or Android device of choice so you can relive those halcyon days of old-school gaming.

The forthcoming 8-Bitty is compatible with all of the iCade games currently floating around in the iOS and Android app stores. That list of games is growing at a steady clip, but sadly the gaming input standard hasn’t gotten much love from bigger publishers so far, and that’s a real shame.

Let’s face it — while there are scores of games that are a joy to play on a touchscreen, some gaming experiences require a level of precision you just can’t squeeze out of a capacitive display. Here’s hoping that big names like Capcom and Square-Enix someday bake iCade support into their retro game rehashes, so we can play the games of our youths the way they were meant to be played, regardless of where we do it.

As you’ll notice quite quickly from this infographic, we’re pitting the Droid 4 against its predecessor, the Droid 3, along with the iPhone 4S. For anyone who isn’t a die-hard Android fan, the iPhone 4S usually comes into the equation when it comes time to upgrade hardware. Since many of our reviews will be of Android devices (and Windows Phone) rather than iOS, we wanted to make sure to let you visualize the differences between the handset we’re reviewing and its biggest competitors.

Sorry for the announcement, but the boring part is over. Onward!

As you can see from our infographic, the Droid 4 is a solid step up from the Droid 3. It packs LTE, touts 1GB of RAM, has a bigger battery, and a front-facing camera. You’ll also see that Moto (awesomely) made the Droid 4 bigger than the Droid 3, while being lighter all at the same time.

As far as the iPhone 4S vs. Droid 4 comparison goes, these are two very different beasts. Obviously the Droid 4′s claim to fame is its physical QWERTY, which is fantastic, while the iPhone 4S’s big name feature is Siri. Clearly, these are two very different methods of interaction with your phone, so it’ll come down to what you need most.

Both the Droid 3 and the Droid 4 retail for $199.99 on-contract, though you can pick up the Droid 4 from Amazon for a cool $99. The iPhone 4S can be had for $200 on-contract, but that’ll only get you the 16GB version, while the $199 Droid 4 packs an extra 32GB of memory via a microSD card.

Samsung is no slouch when it comes to producing smaller tablets — their first foray into the Android tab market was the 7-inch Galaxy Tab, and they recently revisited that form factor with the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus. In fact, Samsung seems to love the concept of a 7-inch tablet so much that they have announced their first Ice Cream Sandwich-powered tablet will be the (take a guess!) 7-inch Galaxy Tab 2.

While the news of a new Android 4.0 tablet is enough to get some gadget fans all hot and bothered, the Galaxy Tab 2′s spec sheet doesn’t illustrate much technical improvement over its forebears. It features the same sort of 7-inch PLS display and 4,000 mAh battery as the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus, not to mention that they both sport a 3-megapixel rear camera and a VGA front-facer.

What’s more, the processor actually looks like a bit of a step down on paper: the Galaxy Tab 2 touts a 1 GHz dual-core processor, as opposed to the 1.2 GHz processor in the 7.0 Plus. I’m sure Samsung had their reasons for running with a different chipset — better battery life, or perhaps improved performance thanks to a new SoC — but it’s still a bit odd to see a major player kick off their new line of Android 4.0 tablets without something more flashy.

And maybe that’s part of the plan. More than a few people have pointed out that Amazon’s own wallet-friendly 7-inch tablet has been immensely popular, which may be putting pressure on other companies to try and strike a precarious balance between price and performance. I’m looking forward to seeing how exactly Samsung will try and position their the little bugger, and the wait shouldn’t be too bad. The Galaxy Tab will officially debut first in the UK next month, and will presumably begin its world tour not too long afterwards.

I was walking home last week and the entire street – and some of the sidewalk – was blocked by large fire trucks and a gaggle of firemen in full regalia. The ladder truck was already planted firmly on the asphalt, ready to send a stream of water soaring over nearby apartment buildings and more trucks were coming, clogging the one-way street further.

Convinced I was about to see an inferno, I tentatively crossed the street. I assumed I’d be stopped and turned away. Instead, the firemen joked and jostled on the sidewalk and I saw a contractor arguing with someone I assumed to be a building resident. The contractor must have been welding – you could still smell the flux and the smoke – and the resident was clearly concerned.

“I was working,” yelled the contractor.

“I was worried,” said the resident.

I bring this story up because that block is now faced with a dilemma. It’s good that the fire was averted by beagle-nosed residents and it’s bad in that it tied up an entire fire department for an hour while a miscommunication was sorted out. The next time the resident won’t be so quick to phone the fire brigade and the contractor will do a better job of hiding the smoke.

That’s what’s about to happen at Foxconn.

Tim Cook just announced that a blue ribbon panel of fair labor experts will tour the grounds at Foxconn City where they will see all the horrors I saw a few months ago: a huge rice cooker big enough to feed 400,000 people, cramped but not squalid dorms, a handsome cybercafe with couples’ booths, and pools where exhausted line workers can enjoy a few laps before slumping into their loft beds.

What they won’t see are disfigured workers toiling in Dickensian sweatshops, infants crawling through metal stamping machines, and workers chained to their stations until the millionth widget is shipped or they die of exhaustion. Why? Because Foxconn has been working with major manufacturers for long enough to know what they expect and they’ve seen enough European and American plants to know that squalid conditions beget squalid paychecks.

The FLA, without a doubt, will return with a report citing a few underage workers, the recommendation to build bigger dorms, and an overall rating of, say B- in terms of safety and worker quality-of-life. It’s not perfect, they’ll say, but it’s not horrible, especially when compared to garment shops.

What will happen next? Apple will announce an all clear, the FLA will be less likely to attack Apple on rights violations, and Foxconn (and, more importantly, its competitors) will go back to business as usual. And we’ll forget about this whole thing, our fingers worrying our Foxconn-made iPhones like a set of prayer beads.

Then, quietly, the factories that are really running under horrible conditions, hiring workers without checking the particulars, and offering conditions that I wouldn’t wish on any man, woman, or child, will go back to churning out smoke, albeit with a bit more secrecy. By focusing on the biggest Chinese (actually Taiwanese) manufacturer, we inspect the canopy of the tree while ignoring the disease-infested trunk.

If you want to know what is happening in China, listen to this. It tells the story of a mill town South Carolina, Greenville, that has evolved, just as Foxconn is evolving. Back in its heyday the bars were buckets of blood, youngsters quit school at sixteen and clocked in for a great paycheck, and many lived far more comfortably than their agrarian fore-bearers. Now that mill town is shutting down, the last bar housing a pair of jokers who used to travel the world on a factory paycheck, and the real industry is down the road in clean, high-tech buildings where there are a hundred robots per human making widgets no 16-year-old drop-out could piece together, let alone understand.

In the end, Greenville died and was reborn. So, too, will Shenzhen. The good companies in China, for years, supplied a better life for countless post-agrarian workers. They were not drafted into service. Instead, they walked up to the gates and applied for a job. Children were not pulled from their cribs to work in the darkness and noise, they were told they’d have a better life if they sat in chairs and assembled cellphones for fat Americans. This hand-waving by Apple won’t make the bad factories go away and it will encourage the good factories to automate much more. Why hire 400,000 complainers when you can hire 1,000 Chinese PhDs to run the line? Follow the arc of manufacturing in the US and you’ll see the same arc repeated in Shenzhen.

I’m not here to defend Apple or Foxconn nor am I about to sing folksongs about the exploited, migrant electronics assemblers. This is about economics. China’s economy is booming, their unemployment rate was near 4.1% in 2010 (ours is 8.3% now and 9.1% in 2010), and what Shenzhen makes, the world takes. Apple doesn’t like negative publicity, so they’re sending a third party to pick up some talking points and when that third party comes back, all smiles, we’ll forget about real sweatshops in real places. Focusing on two huge companies in the pantheon of Asian manufacturing is like sending the entire firehouse after a little smoke. The real fires go right on blazing while the contractor gesticulates on the sidewalk, yelling “I was working. I was working.”

[Image: Inga Nielsen/Shutterstock]

Here are some stories from the past week on TechCrunch Gadgets:

Tesla Unveils The Model X, An Electric CUV With Futuristic Gullwing-like Doors

Microsoft Explains Windows On ARM, The Latest Addition To The OS Family

Lytro Teardown Shows Potential Wireless Capability, Smallish Sensor

Ignite Takes $5 Million Series C To Build World Of Warcraft For Car Racing

Brinno Peephole Viewer Is A Viewer For Peepholes

Before we chat out the Droid 4 there’s a bit of other news we need to address right quick. As you’ll surely notice, we’re doing smartphone reviews a little differently now. That said, this video and my basic hands-on impressions are just the first in a three-part series reviewing the phone. Stay tuned for what comes next!

Alright then, back to business…

The Motorola Droid 4 has spent exactly 24 hours on shelves, and from the time I’ve spent with the phone I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that it’s doing quite well there.

If you keep up with phones you know that the Droid 4 is a big deal, the fourth in Motorola’s Droid brand (which happens to be one of the most successful Android brands we’ve seen to date), and a QWERTY-packing beast if I may say so. The thing about it, however, is that the keyboard (any physical keyboard) is becoming less and less necessary.

To be clear, I think that the Droid 4 keyboard is possibly one of the best I’ve ever used. It gives a solid tactile feedback and is fairly easy to navigate. The fact that it’s backlit only adds to my infatuation. But… a combination of great auto-correct and Swype nearly makes that keyboard useless.

I understand that back in the day typing on a touchscreen was super annoying, since the auto-correct wasn’t quite up to snuff. That’s not really the case anymore, and I almost feel like anyone who insists on a physical QWERTY is doing so simply because they’re so used to it.

Truth be told the transition can be tough from QWERTY to soft keys, but Swype can make that transition a lot easier and you’ll ultimately be much faster in the typing department.

Still, for those of you who demand QWERTY-style satisfaction, I can’t recommend a better handset than the Droid 4. The 4-inch screen compliments the size and weight of the phone perfectly, and it honestly doesn’t feel that much smaller than the 4.3-inch Razr display.

Watching movies and playing games is still just as great, in terms of size, but it only made me feel “eh” in terms of quality. Sure, it’s plenty bright and pixel-dense, but it doesn’t have the wow factor of these 720p displays we’re seeing lately.

I didn’t experience any serious issues with the phone in terms of performance, and it would seem that 1GB of RAM combined with that 1.2GHz dual-core processor can handle basic tasks and multitasking just fine. At the same time, I’ve only spent about 24 hours with it, so things may change with heavier testing.

As you can see in the video, the Droid 4 looks much more like the Razr or Razr Maxx than it does its other Droid family members. I almost wish that Kevlar fiber casing was along for the ride, too, but that might ruin one of the best things about the Droid 4: its $199.99 price tag from Verizon.

We’ll be hitting you with more on the Droid 4 as the week progresses, so stay tuned for the rest of our review.

Note: I mistakenly stated in the video that the Droid 4 runs Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread, when it in fact runs Android 2.3.6. My apologies.

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For And Against The iPad Mini

The Air Force’s Air Mobility Command will be putting in a request for the purchase of a number of tablets soon in an effort to lighten their pilots’ loads. Many commercial airlines are already taking this step, and American Airlines has already gotten FAA approval. The Air Force is feeling the sting of jealousy, and in consequence may be requesting as many as 18,000 devices.

The number could also be as low as 63; the Command was not forthcoming on this point. The lower number would probably indicate a pilot program, so to speak, for a few devices, to determine which should get the big order.

Which tablet would actually be ordered is also not specified. Bloomberg cannily plays up the iPad angle in its report (U.S. Air Force May Buy 18,000 Apple IPad 2s), but the spokesperson they talked to, Captain Ferrero, said the request might also be for Playbooks, Galaxy Tabs, Xooms, or Nooks.

If these were to be general-purpose tablets, this little menagerie would be hard to winnow down. But the fact is they are going to be used as virtual flight bags, and the iPad is the only one that has the thousands of hours in the air that the Air Force will require. In a year, maybe, Android tablets will have a little more experience under their belts, but for now it’s probably safe to say that any tablets purchased by the government for the purpose of being electronic flight bags are going to be iPads.

Eventually, these platform issues will have to be settled, though: if part of the military is going with Android for security purposes, and others are going with iOS for EFB and, say, general communication, there’s going to be a reckoning sooner or later.

Rumors of a 7- to 7.85-inch iPad have been swirling around for a long while now. We’ve seen reports get killed moments after they initially break, only to be sneakily resurrected weeks or months later. The rumor simply won’t die.

The problem, however, is that this one in particular is a tough nut to crack. When you take all the evidence both for and against a little iPad, you’re still left with no real conclusion.

So conclusion aside, here are some of the reasons Apple may, or may not, introduce the little iPad:

For:

The greatest threat to Apple’s iPad is the 7-inch Amazon Kindle Fire. It retails at about $300 less than the iPad, sports a solid browser, has access to plenty of Android apps, and is a great hub for any and all of Amazon’s media content. It also happens to be a 7-inch tablet. Should Apple choose to offer a smaller iPad at a lower price (which the market would most certainly demand), it could snatch back the market share Amazon’s stolen in the past few months.

Gaming on tablets is big, but too big a tablet ruins the fun. According to numbers out of comScore in November, 2011, gaming topped the list of entertainment activities on a tablet, beating out watching video and listening to music, with 67 percent of owners gaming at least once a month, and 23 percent playing daily.

That said, Apple’s 9.7-inch iPad isn’t what I’d call the best for gaming. Graphics and display quality are top-notch, to be sure, but holding the device for very long — especially stretching that thumb around the edge — can be incredibly tiring. Despite the fact that it has failed me considerably, I still prefer playing games on my 7-inch BlackBerry PlayBook, even if there aren’t many games to choose from.

Most smaller Android tablets use a widescreen aspect ratio, leaving a dead zone in the middle of the screen that’s mostly untouchable. The iPad 2 sports a 4:3 screen, which makes even the 10-inch model full touchable. A 7-incher would only be that much better, with greater pixel density and a lighter, easier feel in the hand.

Apple is kind of obsessive when it comes to “thin and light,” and a smaller iPad would also mean a thinner iPad. See, if Apple were to build a smaller iPad, chances are it’d be built using the normal screen assembly technology that allows for the iPad 2′s incredibly thin profile.

However, a smaller iPad/screen means a smaller battery, which usually takes up a solid chunk of space under the hood. Less screen means less power needed for backlighting it, which inevitably takes us back to a smaller battery.

Thin and light! Thin and light! Thin and light!

Amazon may release a 9-inch Fire… Why not fight Fire with fire? The word right now is that Amazon has plans to release a 9-inch Fire to compete with the iPad. While, like the 7-inch Fire, it probably won’t have all the capabilities of the iPad, a larger Fire will still retail at a (much?) lower price point than its competitor. For people who mostly browse the web, read, email, and Facebook/Twitter, a lower price point will be more than enough incentive to venture away from the iPad.

To be clear, it’s not like Apple’s in some dire position. Cupertino still dominates the market with a 58 percent share as of January, 2012. But that’s down 10 percent from the previous quarter, while analysts claim that 40 percent of Android’s 39 percent share in the tablet market are attributable to the Nook Tablet and the Fire.

It’s undeniable: Apple is slowly but steadily losing share to Android, most notably the Fire, and what better way to steal it back then by launching a 7-incher right in Amazon’s face?

Against

The most notable and evidential reason why Apple wouldn’t release a little iPad is because Steve Jobs said so. In an earnings call in October of 2010, Jobs said that “7-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the iPad. These are among the reasons that the current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA — dead on arrival.”

Jim Dalrymple points out that Apple made both a 7- and a 9.7-inch iPad right at the beginning and chose to go with the bigger version, which at a first glance would indicate that it’s not going to happen. At the same time, that was a long time ago if we’re counting in tech years and it wouldn’t be the first time Jobs obliterated a product category only to announce something similar to it shortly after. Anyone remember iBooks?

Why release a product to compete in a market you already own? Though its market share has fallen since its debut, Apple still absolutely dominates the tablet market right now. A 58 percent share of a market, with not one of its competitors anywhere near that share, leaves Apple with no real reason to put anything smaller in stores.

I’m sure some of you will say I made an entirely contradictory point up there with Amazon grabbing share, but it’s all about perspective. Perhaps one person thinks that now is the time to plug up any leaky market share dribbling into Amazon’s hands, while someone else may think that Apple should wait until it absolutely has to throw a lower-priced option into the ring.

Too many choices can be a bad thing, and Apple’s well aware of this. Look at iPhone releases: one model at a time. Apple’s all about making one absolutely stellar, blow-your-mind, make-you-believe-in-magic product and selling it well. Design, sell, repeat.

Tablets are meant to be simple, easy-to-use products. It’s not like a PC, where users have to review list after list of specs and configurations before figuring out what fits. Some companies, like Samsung, want to stretch across every category of the tablet market with different spec’d and sized models under a shared brand. One of the iPads greatest advantages is being the iPad, rather than an iPad Lite, or an iPad Air, or whatever.

It would be a deviation from Apple’s current strategy and over-arching mission statement of “Keep it simple, stupid” if they were to start switching things up now.

So… Will Apple release a 7-inch iPad? Truth be told, your guess is as good as mine, but it would seem that there are advantages in either case.