1. Use your iPhone as a storage device

One of side benefits to the iPod beyond its music-playing capabilities is the fact that you can use it to store files. You can’t do this with an out-of-the-box iPhone. But with the help of a $10 program—and a Mac—you can. The app is iPhoneDrive, a small utility from Ecamm Network that displays the free storage area of an iPhone in the manner of a Finder window in Column view. To add files to the iPhone, either click the Copy to iPhone button or drag a file or folder to the iPhoneDrive Window; dragging from the iPhone or clicking on Copy From iPhone puts iPhone files on your Mac. Note that music and photo files for use on your iPhone are off limits.—CHRISTOPHER BREEN

2. Get a bigger keyboard for Web browsing

Like any other iPhone function requiring data entry, tapping Safari’s address bar summons an on-screen keyboard. However, if you rotate the iPhone horizontally before tapping the address bar, the Safari window will switch to horizontal mode; then, when you then tap the address bar, the onscreen keyboard also appears horizontally. More important, it will also be much larger than the standard vertical keyboard, making data entry a little easier. By the way, Safari is currently the only iPhone application in which this horizontal keyboard appears. (Also worth noting: If you summon the keyboard before rotating your iPhone, then Safari won’t rotate.)—DAN FRAKES

Rotating your iPhone horizontally before summoning the onscreen keyboard produces this horizontal—and much easier to use—keyboard.

3. Create a home page in Safari

With the regular version of Safari that runs on your Mac (and now your Windows-based PC), setting a particular site as your home page is as simple as going to the General tab in Preferences and typing in a URL. You can’t do that on the iPhone, however. But you can use this work-around: Add your would-be home page to your bookmarks list and then move it to the top of your bookmarks list. Yes it’s an extra tap—first the Bookmarks button and then the bookmark itself—but it will get you to your favorite Web page with a minimum of fuss.—DF

4. Share your URLs

If you want to send the URL of a Web page you’re viewing to a friend, tap the Address Bar, then tap Share. A new e-mail message, containing the URL, will open in Mail; just choose a recipient(s), add any comments you want to include, and tap Send.—DF

5. Scroll through separate boxes on a Web page

If you encounter a scrolling box or list when surfing Safari on your iPhone—say you’re responding to a post at the Macworld.com forums —and try to scroll using your finger, you’ll find that the entire page scrolls, instead of just the box. The trick is to zoom in and scroll such areas with two fingers.—DF

6. Make a call from Safari

If you find a phone number in Safari that you’d like to call—say the phone number at a restaurant you’d like to make reservations at—there’s no need to jump to the phone component. Just tap the number; iPhone will dial it for you. (This is also the case with phone numbers and URL embedded in e-mails and SMS chats; tapping either one will place a call or open a Web page, respectively.)—PHILIP MICHAELS

7. Find out where those links go

When in Safari, holding your fingertip down on a link instead of tapping it produces an information balloon that displays the underlying URL. The same thing happens in Mail when you hold a link, which makes this tip much more useful. Now when those “account update” e-mails appear, you can press and hold on the link to find out if you’re really going to be taken to the site the e-mail claims.—DF

8. Avoid Mail confusion

Don’t name two of your e-mail accounts with the same name, as Mail will get confused and copy the settings from one account to the other. And you can’t fix the situation by simply renaming one account; you’ll need to delete one of the accounts and then recreate it.—DF

9. Mark previously-read messages as unread

There doesn’t appear to be a way to the mark a read message as unread on the iPhone, but it’s in there. While viewing a message, tap Details, which reveals a Mark As Unread option; tap it, and the next time you view your Inbox, the message will display the Unread indicator.—DF

10. Recover ‘lost’ e-mails

Say you try to send an e-mail, but the iPhone can’t get network access. You might think your message has disappeared completely, but don’t worry—it’s still on your phone. A temporary Outgoing folder is created, and the message winds up in there. You can access this temporary folder from the main screen of the sending account; the folder will disappear once network access is available and the message is sent.—DF

11. Create e-mail folders

Well, actually, you can’t create e-mail folders on the iPhone. What you can do, however, with an IMAP e-mail account is create folders on the IMAP server—for example, if you have a .Mac account, using the .Mac Web Mail interface. Those folders will then appear on the iPhone, and their contents will—eventually—be synced between the iPhone and the server.—DF

12. Save e-mail messages as drafts

If you want to save a message you’re working on so you can come back to it later, tap Cancel. Instead of deleting the message immediately, Mail pops up a dialog asking you to Save, Don’t Save, or Cancel. Tap Save and the message is placed in your Drafts folder. If your account doesn’t currently have a Drafts folder, Mail will create one. However, don’t be alarmed if the message doesn’t appear in Drafts immediately; in my testing, it takes a while to show up.—DF

13. Pick where you listen to voicemail

If you’ve got a Bluetooth headset, incoming calls get routed there automatically—not so when you call up Visual Voicemail. However, an Audio button on the Visual Voicemail screen lets you set where you listen to your message: the handset, the built-in speaker, or a Bluetooth headset.—JIM DALRYMPLE

14. Find another way to scroll through Contacts

Everyone knows that you can scroll through the Contacts list on your iPhone two different ways—either flick your finger on the list to scroll up or down, or tap on one of the letters on the alphabet running down the right side of the screen to jump to contacts beginning with that letter. But there is a third way: hold your finger on the alphabetical list and then slide up and down—you’ll be able to scroll through your Contacts in a more controlled manner than by flicking your finger.—JD

15. Use the Favorites and Recents list for more than just phone calls

Favorites and Recents are part of the main Phone screen; the former is iPhone’s version of frequently called numbers while the latter is a list of people who you’ve called and whose calls you missed. But this is not just a phone feature—assuming the numbers in Favorites and Recents belong to a mobile phone, you can send them an SMS message. Just tap the > button next to the contact name or number and then tap the Text Message button at the bottom of the contact listing.—DF

16. Save time in driving directions

One of the primary uses for the iPhone’s Map application is to get driving directions. Both the starting point and destination fields offer the Bookmarks button, so you can quickly use a bookmark, recent location, or contact when searching for directions. The first thing you should do in Maps is find your own address and then bookmark it—this will make finding directions to and from locations as easy as tapping your home bookmark.—DF

17. Recreate some of the iPod’s audio controls

If you listen to an audiobook on an iPod, you probably know that, ever since the fourth-generation iPod’s release, you can alter the playback speed to make it go faster or slower as your preferences dictate. That feature makes its way over to the iPhone as well. Just tap Settings and then the iPod option; tap the Audiobook Speed entry and in the resulting screen, tap to choose among Slower, Normal, or Faster.

In fact, that’s just one iPod feature that also appears on the iPhone. You can also use the Settings screen to turn on Sound Check (the feature that makes volume more consistent from one track to another) and change the EQ with 22 included equalization presets.—CB

18. Change your iPod icons

By default, the icons on the bottom of the iPod screen are Playlists, Artists, Songs, Videos, and More. You can change those first four, just as you would the commands that appear on an iPod’s main screen. Simply tap the More icon and, in the More screen, tap the Edit button at the top-left of the screen. A Configure screen will wipe up from the bottom and display icons for Albums, Podcasts, Audiobooks, Genres, Composers, Compilations, Playlists, Artists, Songs, and Videos. To substitute one of these icons for one that appears at the bottom of the screen, just tap and hold on an icon and drag it over the icon you want to replace. Tap Done when you’re done.—CB

19. Say goodbye to already-viewed videos

Even owners of the largest-capacity iPhone might feel constrained by the 8GB limit when it comes to storing videos. A full-length motion picture takes up around 1GB of storage, which is a significant chunk of space for just one piece of media. To help ease the storage crunch however, the iPhone offers to delete videos after you’ve finished watching them; just tap a button and Pirates of the Caribbean will disappear off your iPhone, freeing up more space.—CB

After you finish watching a movie, the iPhone will ask if you want to free up space by deleting it.

20. Syncing notes with the iPhone

One of the major limitations to the iPhone’s Notes app is that you can’t sync it with data from any application on your Mac. There’s a work-around, however—each contact has a notes field. So create a fake contact and paste any info you’d like to keep with you in the notes field for that contact in Address Book. One sync later, and all that info will be at your fingertips.—JONATHAN SEFF

21. Rebooting your iPhone

Pretend for a moment that your iPhone suddenly becomes unresponsive. Pushing the Home button does nothing. Hitting the On/Off button produces the same discouraging result. What do you do? Apple’s first reset tip is to press and hold the Home button for about six seconds to quit any application that might have locked up your iPhone. If that doesn’t work, trying pressing and holding both Home and On/Off; after about 10 seconds the Apple logo will appear. (This reboot trick takes a little big longer than the iPod equivalent—holding down Select and Menu usually restarts your music player after four seconds.)—CB

Wallet is super flexible - it can be used to keep almost any sort of data you can think of! Domain names, grocery items, locations of downtown WiFi hotspots, etc. are just some of the things you can keep in Wallet. You’ll never have an excuse to forget things again.

Wallet 3 announced ny Acrylic Software, a new version of the personal information management application formerly maintained by Waterfall Software. This software is not free, it costs CDN$20 (US$16.12); upgrades are priced at CDN$5 (US$4.03).

Wallet is a lightweight database application that lets you store important information, such as serial numbers, Web site passwords and other data. The information stored in Wallet is encrypted using 256-bit AES encryption.

The new 3.0 version lets you synchronize a single database with multiple Macs and iPhones using MobileMe. The update also incorporates a new user interface, the ability to extend group fields without limit, attach files to entries and more.

Wallet for the iPhone and iPod touch was also released on Monday; it can sync with its Mac counterpart using MobileMe or directly with the host computer via Wi-Fi. Wallet for the iPhone costs $3.99.

Wallet requires Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard.”

The Finnish phone giant won’t have its closely-watched 5800 phone - Nokia’s music-loaded take on the iPhone - available here until sometime in the first half of next year, according to people familiar with the phone. Nokia wasn’t immediately available for comment.

And even when it arrives, Nokia has lacked a big U.S. phone partner that would provide the subsidy necessary to put it under the $200 range. At full price, it will have a hard time making a big splash.

“You could look at it as having a 100% upside,” says Nielson IAG analyst Roger Entner, referring to Nokia’s measly share of the U.S. market. Make that a potential upside of 95.5% since Nokia’s slice of the U.S. market has now fallen a percentage point from year-ago levels to 4.5%.

These numbers were part of Nokia’s overall solid third-quarter performance reported Thursday. Nokia posted an adjusted profit of 44 cents a share, down from the 55 cents it netted last year, but in line with analysts estimates. Sales fell 5% to $16.4 billion from $17.3 billion in the year-ago quarter and below the $17.2 billion street estimate.

After hitting a new four-year low, Nokia shares rebounded a bit Thursday up 4% as investors took some confidence from the fact that it met estimates.

As Nokia predicted, its worldwide market share fell to 38% in the third quarter from 40% in the prior period. The decline, according to Nokia, reflects the company’s unwillingness to cut phone prices amid a heated price war in some regions.

Nokia has managed to grab and hold onto the No.1 phone supplier position by honing its skills at making low- and medium-priced phones for a global audience. This focus on the mainstream has caused Nokia to be consistently late to fashion trends like flip phones, ultrathin designs and now touchscreens.

After a strong start in the smartphone wars with over half the global market in 2007, Nokia has dropped to a 35% slice in the third quarter from 48% of the market in the second quarter, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Jim Dawson. The alarming sequential drop is a reflection of how strong rivals like Apple and Research in Motion (RIMM) have grown. The smartphone market will get a new challenger later this month with the arrival of Google’s (GOOG) Android-powered G1 phone at T-Mobile.

But while 2008 is not going to be a big year here for Nokia, the trends - aside from the slumping global economy - are promising overall.

Each player comes from with a different specialty to the smartphone market, says Entner. Apple and Google aim for a strong Internet experience and RIM’s BlackBerry Storm hopes to capitalizes on its successful e-mail background with a touchscreen design. “Nokia comes from a mobile phone approach,” says Entner.

“Nokia sees the phone as an integrated device.” says Entner. In the past three years, Nokia has acquired mobile e-mail shop Intellisync, GPS mapper Navteq and digital media delivery system Loudeye in an effort to control the delivery of services like e-mail, navigation, photography, music, videos, games and the Internet.

Of course, all this will matter more in the U.S. when Nokia can deliver the device.

By Scott Moritz

Several users have reported an issue in which accessing Gmail accounts causes the iPhones Mail application to crash consistently. Likewise, any other applications that access Gmail, including Contacts, crashes when Gmail data are present. Apple Discussions poster rowanpettett writes:

“I did a fresh restore, and synchronized mail, calendar and contacts to our Exchange Server with no problems whatsoever. But as soon as I added my Google Apps IMAP account, my Contacts started to crash if I scrolled to the bottom of the list or tried to search.”

There are three potential fixes for this issue:

• Reset network settings: Settings > General > Reset network settings
• Restore the iPhone in ITunes.
• Change password Navigate to your Gmail account page on a computer and change the accounts password. Next, delete the Gmail account from the iPhone and reestablish it.

Dashing Through the Snow: In Line Rider iRide, you try to get Bosh to the bottom of the hill without breaking his neck.

Bosh, the sledder in question, goes caroming around from place to place, occasionally nose diving into an ill-considered obstacle or flipping his sled over all together. Despite the simple line-based graphics, Line Rider is incredibly addictive.

What’s more, the Flash-based version of the game has generated hundreds of user-made tracks, and you get access to them through the Line Rider iPhone and iPod touch game, so you can play back some of the more memorable (or highly-rated) tracks right away.

That online access requires an active Wi-Fi, EDGE or 3G connection and also requires an account, but Line Rider’s developer has thoughtfully added a user account creation option from the log-in screen.

Browsing other user-made tracks lets you find “Most Recent” and “Top Rated.” If you’re a real Line Rider enthusiast and you’re looking for a specific track or a specific track author, you can search for them too.

Some special details have been added to the iPhone version which you may not recognize from its Flash incarnation. The handy “Draw and Pan” option enables you to automatically switch between a drawing tool and a panning tool, because most often you’re going to want to pan to a much larger space than the tiny iPhone screen can accommodate. You can zoom in and out by pinching and expanding your fingers; be warned, though, because as you zoom out, you’ll quickly lose your ability to see the individual lines of your slope (it doesn’t scale very clearly, as the line is so small to begin with).

Gravity Tilt lets you give Bosh a bit of help if he gets stuck on flat terrain—use the device’s accelerometer to tilt him in the right direction. And Night Ride gives you a flashy black-on-white look.

Line Rider gives you plenty of drawing options, so you can get creative with your slope designs, switching between regular, acceleration and scenery terrain, drawing straight and curvy lines (there’s no Bezier tool, yet), a flag tool that lets you save Bosh’s last position if you want to start again from there, and a save/load tool.

There really isn’t a lot more to Line Rider. There is no scoring or goals to reach—it’s just a lot of fun to draw a course and send Bosh on his way down it, even if he crashes along the way. And once you’ve got a memorable design, it’s great to share with other Line Rider enthusiasts by exporting them to the Line Rider Web site.

Line Rider is extremely simple, and extremely addictive, and sometimes that’s all you need to keep you busy for hours. Like many fans of the Flash game I’m delighted to see Line Rider rebuilt for the iPhone, and at $3 I think it’s a fair deal.

Line Rider is compatible with any iPhone or iPod touch running the iPhone 2.x software update.

by Peter Cohen, Macworld.com

AdMob releases a report each month about the mobile advertising space. The company has been providing statistics on mobile ads since September 2007. This month’s report sheds some interesting light on which phones are surfing the mobile Web the most. It ain’t the iPhone. In fact, the iPhone isn’t even in second place.

The Motorola Razr V3, Krzr Kc1, W386, and Z6m, and the BlackBerry Pearl and the Palm Centro all beat out the iPhone in terms of the number of ads requested and the number of ads viewed on the mobile Web. Just so you have the hard facts, the Razr has 8.7% of the mobile surfers, and the iPhone has 3.2% of the mobile surfers.

What makes this interesting is that the iPhone has a far superior browser than the Razr, which is limited to WAP sites and can’t see the HTML sites that the iPhone can. But the numbers win out. The Razr continues to be the best-selling handset in the United States, so it shouldn’t be all that surprising that it is the device most used to access the mobile Web.

The real interesting trend to watch will be how smartphones in general creep up in the rankings compared with feature phones.

Posted by Eric Zeman

Farrow demonstrated how he used HD Moore’s Metasploit tool to gain root access to the iPhone and install an application that can record conversations on and near the iPhone, transforming the device into a spy tool. It also allowed him to remotely access recently modified files, locally stored emails and view the iPhone’s web-browsing history.

“Using a specially crafted web page utilising an iPhone exploit (now patched) he gained root level shell access to the phone — which means he could do anything that the iPhone is capable of from his laptop,” explained Jarno Niemelä, security researcher for the security vendor, F-Secure.

“This exploit actually involved you doing something with the iPhone, or in this case, I do something with the iPhone to get the exploit to work. This is not at all unusual. Most PCs are actually exploited because people visit a website and wind up being exploited,” Farrow told US business and technology publication, Fast Company.

According to analysts, Apple’s decision to run every application on Safari as root exposes the iPhone to greater risk, and quite possibly repeats a mistake made by Microsoft some years ago.

“It strikes me as strange that Apple took the shift and moved to Unix as their operating system, but don’t seem to have learnt the lesson that you don’t run everything as root. This was the same lesson which Microsoft had so many issues with when they intertwined Internet Explorer with the Windows operating system, and it’s something which they are now digging themselves out of,” security analyst, James Turner, Intelligent Business Research Services, told ZDNet Australia.

“I think the inference we can make is that Apple decided that the risk of running applications as root was worth it. There used to be a saying that Windows 95 was Apple 84. Now it seems that Apple want the iPhone to follow a similar path to Internet Explorer. Sure, Apple will get market share, but at what cost to their reputation for security?” he added.

However penetration testers say that Apple’s operating platforms are in general still more secure than those of its competitors, and this instance simply highlights the problem of running a desktop operating system on a phone.

“This vulnerability isn’t particularly special as it’s just exploiting a vulnerability in Safari. Now it is patched, users will get their phones updated by iTunes when they next sync,” said Chris Gatford, security expert from penetration testing company, Pure Hacking.

“I think Apple’s operating system on the whole is far more reliable and secure than the other competitors and I am sure some of these kinks will be eventually ironed out,” he said.

The potential threat to iPhone users however is not isolated to Apple’s phone, explained Farrow.

“This is a problem for any smartphone, for any widely distributed computing device, which will eventually be attacked and exploited,” he said.

Although malware threats to mobile-phone operating systems are uncommon today, security companies have been keeping a close eye on the sector. According to F-Secure, there are currently 373 known pieces of malware for all mobile-phone operating platforms, 364 of which work only for the dominant smartphone operating system, Symbian, which is used in Nokia’s phones.

Future threats for mobile-phone operating systems, according to F-Secure, include rootkits, self-propagating worms, mobile-phone botnets and large-scale profit-oriented malware organisations.

Liam Tung
news.zdnet.co.uk

Citing a report in the Chinese-language Commercial Times, DigiTimes reveals research from Taiwan’s Topology Research which claims Apple will see volume sales climb 30 per cent year-on-year in 2008.

This is likely to translate into a one percentage point addition to Mac marketshare in 2008, the report indicates. It predicts 116 million laptops (from all vendors) will ship next year, up from 93 million units in 2007.

The report notes that component shortages seem to have impacted 2007’s laptop sales, which would have been higher if such parts had been more readily available.

The good news doesn’t end there. Research from NPD reveals Apple’s iPhone has grabbed over a quarter of the US smartphone market since the device launched in July.

The firm reports that of the 4.2 million smartphones sold in the US between July and September, 1.12 million were iPhones - giving Apple an astonishing 27 per cent share of the market, and almost matching the total number of smartphones sold in the same quarter of 2006.

This report implies that Apple’s introduction of the iPhone has invigorated the entire smartphone market in the US.

“The mobile phone market is not only growing, it is growing smarter,” said Ross Rubin, NPD’s director of industry analysis. “The nearly threefold increase in smartphones shows that this once negligible niche is becoming a more influential force in the consumer market - attracting entrants such as Apple and the Open Handset Alliance.”

Jonny Evans
www.macworld.co.uk

2. Insert the DVD you’d like to convert to your computer’s DVD drive.

3. Click ‘File’ menu and ‘Open DVD’, or directly hit ‘Open DVD’ button to load the DVD. Set the profile to be iPhone 480*320 mpeg-4 video which is the default DVD video quality.

4. Click around in the DVD’s menu to set up DVD playback as you like, select the subtitle and audio sound tracks etc, then begin to play the movie through the software by click the play button.

5. The following window will pop up. Here, you can rename ‘Title Name’, set ‘Save Path’ and output quality, then click ‘Yes’ button to start ripping DVD to iPhone MP4 or iPhone H264 video from the point that the movie starts. That is all. Just so easy!

If you’d like to record from certain time point, or want to change some parameters like ‘output format’, ‘video bitrates’, ‘frame rate’, ‘audio bitrates’, please click ‘No’ button to close the window.

Optional parameters settings
* Select subtitles and languages
Click ‘Subtitle’ or ‘Audio Track’ in the ‘Setting’ menu, choose the related value you like.
* Set output formats
Choose the target file format from ‘Profile’. The software supports converting DVD to iPhone 480*320 MP4 video,iPod MP4 video, iPod h264 video, MP3 audio.

* Set the start time to convert
Use the video playback controls to queue up the point at which you want to start ripping. Or click ‘Setting -> Go to’ and jump to previous/next chapter.
* More parameters
Click ‘Setting -> Output video settings’, here you can choose different profile, video/audio bitrates, video size, disable video/audio, aspect ratio, frame/sample rate, etc.
If you are not familiar with these options, please view the descriptions listed at the bottom of the window.
*Crop/cut&Resize the movie
If you want to make the widescreen dvd(16:9) to be outputted as fullscreen(4:3) video, you can use the crop function.
Set Crop to “Crop both black bands� and resize to be “stretch to full screen� if you don’t need to keep the subtitle.
Set crop to “Crop the upper black band� so you can keep the subtitle in the down black band.

*Direct/batch conversion
If you want to rip you DVD movie into one whole file, please use the direct ripping mode described above.
If you want to rip your DVD by chapters to into separated output files (for example your music DVDs, TV Episode DVDs), you can use the batch conversion rip mode, just ticket out the titles you want to convert and click convert.
You can switch this two modes by clicking on the mode-Direct&Batch.
7. Hit ‘Convert’ button, choose the recording time point and quality, then click ‘Yes’ to begin to convert DVD to iPhone video or audio quickly.
8. After ripping, transfer the converted files to iTunes, and then sync to iPhone.

www.ifun.de

However, despite the short time that has elapsed since the platform’s announcement, a debate has already been sparked around the security of its development. Can the open-source model produce secure code? Will phones based on Android, dubbed “Gphones” by many, be more or less secure than Apple’s iPhone, which has been developed using proprietary software? What will Android’s developers be able to do to stop authors of malicious code for mobile devices capitalising on its openness?

Security vendor McAfee, which produces proprietary security software for mobile devices, has been quick to defend open-source practices for developing mobile code. McAfee is a member of the Linux Mobile (LiMo) Foundation, a group of companies formed to develop an open mobile-device software platform. Many of the companies in the LiMo Foundation have also become members of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), which Google has formed to develop and promote Android.

Jan Volzke, global marketing manager for McAfee Mobile Security, said that Linux is not new to the mobile arena and maintained that secure coding practices can successfully be built into the Android development process.

“Japan has a large deployment, with 60 percent of phones powered by Linux. McAfee protection has been integrated in the majority of these mobile Linux phones for many years,” said Volzke. “For any mobile-device platform, security should not be a developer option but a mandatory requirement. Consumers — as well as operators — expect devices to be safe from the outset, with no effort required from them.”

Volzke said security can be built in from the beginning of the development process by collaboration between security companies, although, at the moment, McAfee is the only security player in the LiMo Foundation.

However, open coding practices still seem ripe for abuse. Making source code available to everyone inevitably invites the attention of black hat hackers.

“Linux has so far been used on the enterprise server-side, with most deployments being professionally IT administrated,” said Volzke. “Due to a number of industry initiatives, especially the LiMo Foundation — and now also the Open Handset Alliance — Linux will become more widely available in the consumer space. As a result, visibility to already experienced hackers increases. Open means open to everyone — with [both] good and malicious intent.”

The debate about the relative security merits of open-source as opposed to proprietary software development has been a very long-running one. Open-source software development has the advantage of many pairs of eyes scrutinising the code, meaning irregularities can be spotted and ironed out, while updates to plug vulnerabilities can be written and pushed out very quickly. However, one of the disadvantages of open-source development is that anyone can scrutinise the source code to find vulnerabilities and write exploits.

The source code in proprietary software, on the other hand, can’t be directly viewed, meaning vulnerabilities need to be found through reverse engineering. However, as fewer people see proprietary source code, critics argue that code is more likely to be buggy. Some observers also claim that, once vulnerabilities have been found, updates are slower to be pushed out, especially by large multinational software companies.

Most security vendors try to avoid commenting on whether open-source or proprietary software is more secure, often arguing that it is like comparing apples to oranges.

Volzke said it was not possible to compare the security of development practices for Android-based devices and Apple’s iPhone handset, which will be released on Friday. “Apple’s iPhone has nothing to do with open source. Instead Apple will provide a software development kit,” said Volzke. “Comparing the security challenges for an open-source device platform versus a device-specific software development kit will result in different conclusions.”

However, one security vendor was willing to grasp the nettle, albeit gingerly. Ben Whitaker, head of security at mobile security development company Masabi, came down cautiously on the side of open source. “Gphone is open source, which means it can get a good kicking and shoeing, and can be worked on by just about anyone,” said Whitaker. “It’s starting out in a better way than the iPhone, which has seen vulnerabilities. However, any new consumer [of both the iPhone and Gphone] won’t be secure when the first product comes out.”

Whitaker said that the iPhone has a number of vulnerabilities and that, as a smartphone with full internet connectivity, it would be more vulnerable than a strictly Java-based mobile platform, which he classed as “semi-smart”. It will not be known until the Android software development kit comes out on Monday whether the Gphone will be strictly Java-based.

“[In the case of the iPhone], with any brand new web browser, malicious websites will take advantage of Ajax, JavaScript and ActiveX vulnerabilities,” said Whitaker. “The less smart a phone is, the less vulnerable it is. [Android] developers should stick to a semi-smartphone platform because the Java sandbox can protect against the normal kinds of attacks.”

Whitaker added that, like the iPhone, Gphone devices will have vulnerabilities. “The Gphone could allow full apps to run on it, which would open it to keyloggers,” said Whitaker. “At the moment, the Gphone platform doesn’t run on an encrypted file system and has a vulnerable log-in. It’s so stealable that these [an encrypted file system and a secure log-in] should by default be included.”

With much development work yet to take place — and the UK market still waiting for both the Apple and Google-based devices to arrive — the jury remains out on which model will be most secure. But one thing is for certain: no device which connects to the outside world can be totally secure, and neither of these will prove to be the exception.

Tom Espiner
ZDNet.co.uk