Plenty of us use the WiFi hotspot capabilities of our smartphones on a daily basis, helping us get online with laptops, gaming systems, or other devices without their own cellular radios. Like setting up any WiFi network, part of using hotspots involves setting up a password, keeping your little impromptu network secure. Unfortunately, it seems that the default password generation behavior in iOS has some serious flaws, and as currently implemented in iOS 6 (presumably, this is still an issue with the 7 beta), creates passwords that can be cracked in about 50 seconds. Normally, iOS ...

There have been a bunch of leaks attempting to show off components which will supposedly find homes in the iPhone 5S, but a lot of what we've seen so far has been a little... meh. That is, we've seen buttons, connectors, and other tiny parts, but not so much in the way of more substantial hardware. If you've been craving something more significant, we just might have what you need, as a couple new leaks have revealed what just might be the iPhone 5S's motherboard and its display panel. There have been fakes in the past – especially when it comes to iPhone circuit boards – so what makes ...

We've seen a big uptick in interest lately towards bringing a proper console-quality gaming experience to smartphone users. While the processing power has been there, the larger issue has been about control – touchscreens are fine for plenty of things, but traditional gaming ain't one of them. On the Android front, we've seen projects like NVIDIA's Shield attempt to meld console-style controllers with a smartphone to overcome those limitations. There's a similar movement taking place over on iOS, and that accessory pictured up above just might be one of the first Apple-certified ...

Synthetic sapphire crystals have one big thing going for them: they are fantastically resistant to scratching. That might make them seem like the ideal material for a smartphone display – and we've already seen them in luxury phones like those from Vertu – but they're also not without their problems: they're expensive to produce, and though they have excellent protection against scratches, they're still subject to shatter damage. Still, that no-more-scratches business is so compelling that we've been following the technology in hopes of a sign that it could one day come to a more ...

It took Apple quite some time to make an iPhone with a larger screen. Now some even larger iPhone rumors are popping up on the interwebs and Reuters is citing some sources who are allegedly familiar with matters. Let's break the rumors down into categories. As far as size is concerned, the larger iPhone rumors are talking about the possibility of 4.7-inch, even 5.7-inch screens. They refer to next year, 2014, and the report hints "at least two" larger Apple phones. "They constantly change product specifications almost to the final moment, so you're not really sure whether this is the ...

Who's the person responsible when a smartphone company really nails a handset launch? Who do we blame when a product bombs? While there are any number of engineers, designers, marketing folk, and executives involved with the release of a new device or service, when it comes to giving one of these corporate entities a face, more often than not we look to the company's CEO. Sure, up on this same level we can find all matter of presidents, board members, and chairpeople (persons?) overseeing a company's business, but in the end it's the Chief Executive Officer making the managerial decisions ...

At long last, iOS has been made different. It seems that since 2007, we've complained about being frustrated by sameness. Well, that sameness is now a thing of the past because iOS 7 is a deep change. It touches every toggle, every app, every menu of iOS, and it represents a dramatic modernization of the mobile operating system that propelled the smartphone industry forward six years ago. We got a hold of the developer preview, which seems to be quite stable, in our iOS 7 hands-on. Battery life seems worse than the latest stable version of iOS 6, but overall stability and performance ...

Today is the day every iOS fanatic has been awaiting for years. From the time iOS was first announced to the last major update, iOS 6, the operating system has looked mostly the same. Apple added features along the way but, for the most part, it has always been the same iOS. For the last six years, the interface has remained mostly unchanged. And few viewed that as a serious problem. The vocal minority and us tech writers have griped about it for years, about how stale iOS has become as new and existing operating systems have been graced with new looks and groundbreaking features. But the ...