Google has announced that it will be acquiring one of Motorola’s two department. On Monday morning Google stated that it will be acquiring Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in cash (not stock exchange). In its statement Google mentions that Motorola mobility will still be a separate business. This acquisition will allow Google to have a hold of a strong hardware platform to go along with its Android mobile operating system. In the blog post, CEO Larry Page promises hat Android will still be an open platform and support other companies such as HP, Samsung and HTC.

This acquisition will not change our commitment to run Android as an open platform. Motorola will remain a licensee of Android and Android will remain open. We will run Motorola as a separate business. Many hardware partners have contributed to Android’s success and we look forward to continuing to work with all of them to deliver outstanding user experiences.

But unfortunately, we think Google will be mending the OS over time to better perform with the Motorola hardware. Along with the acquisition, Google will also get ownership of Motorola’s some 17,000 patents and another 7,500 pending patents. This should aid Google in the recently heated patent wars and lawsuits. Apple has yet to comment on the acquisition, but this should definitely step up both companies’ efforts to impress the consumer.

You can read the entire blog post here.

Apple has released the 3rd install of its iOS 5 Beta. This comes with new bets for iTunes as well. Developers can download the latest beta from the Apple iOS Developer Center. Some of the changes include:

• overall speed improvements
• new Reminders app icon
• option to select location services at initial setup
• pop up in Music app noting Video has been moved to its own app
• link to iTunes Store Music app

There are no updates about jailbreak compatibility yet.

Apple has just released the second beta for iOS 5 for developers. If you are a developer (or have a developer account with Apple) you can download the beta by logging into your dev account at the link below. As the release is just hot off the press not many changes have been outted yet, except one main feature. iOS 5 is slated for a fall release, most probably alongside new hardware.

So far main changes include:

• WiFi sync enabled for syncing with Mac OS X
• OTA enabled (no update available)
• new version of iMessage (will not be able to communicate with iMessage on Beta 1)
• new iCloud icon in Settings
• Stocks widget off by default and “No new notifications” displayed when there are no notifications
• Wallpapers are back in Settings

The upcoming iOS 5 will boast an iOS 5-to-iOS 5 messaging service known as iMessage, which will be baked into the Messages app on iPhone and will automatically detect whether the recipient has iOS 5. Like the early FaceTime days, the Mac OS has been once again left out. When Apple first introduced FaceTime, it was only available to iOS devices and then later released for Mac OS. This may or may not be the case for iMessage but have a look at a concept created by Jan-Michael Cart (who was behind some of the iOS 5 concept videos before it was revealed) for iMessage for Mac OS Lion.

[Jan-Michael Cart]

Although many rumours lately have been pointing to a minor hardware update for the iPhone, some sources such as Thisismynext and BGR are reporting that the next iteration of the phone will be an “iPhone 5″ rather than an “iPhone 4S”, meaning that it will be a major hardware update. BGR reports that the iPhone 5 will be announced in the beginning or middle of August with a release date of late August. This breaks Apple’s tradition of releasing iPhone hardware in July and iPod hardware in September. It is also worth noting that Apple has never released a new iPhone without a new OS; iPhone 3G came with iPhone OS 2.0; iPhone 3GS came with iPhone OS 3.0 and iPhone 4 came with the renamed iOS 4. It would be very unlikely that Apple would release the iPhone 5 with iOS 4.3.3 (or a 4.4.x OS) with iOS 5 coming the following month. Apple announced at WWDC 2011 that iOS 5 will be released in the fall, which will most likely have new hardware to go along with.

The iPhone 5 has been rumoured to sport a larger screen than its predecessors with an update 4 inch screen compared to the iPhone 4′s 3.5 inch, but at the same time keep the same width of the device, which would mean a very thin bezel along the sides. The insides will be upgraded to Apple’s A5 chip based on the ARM Cortex-A9 CPU, this is the same one found in the iPad 2 but it may just be a single core chip rather than dual core. The RAM will be most probably remain at the 512 MB level. There have rumours back and forth that the camera will remain at 5 MP or that it may be upgraded to an 8 MP sensor. The case is said to the same as the iPhone 4, consistent with those claiming it will be a minor, “iPhone 4S” upgrade, while the “iPhone 5″ sources say it may be a different design (a teardrop design like the MacBook Air).

[Via BGR]

Apple’s iOS 5 Beta 1 can now be downloaded from our iOS Firmwares section. Do remember you will need to be an iOS developer or listed as a beta tester for a developer by registering your device’s UDID under their account. iOS 5 comes with a plethora of new features including updated iOS apps, new iOS apps, the now-famous Notification Center and many more features. Do remember this is a beta, which means apps may crash, not work properly, or not work at all, you can see our list of iOS 5 bugs here. Enjoy beta testing the new features and helping developers with readying their apps for iOS 5. The new firmware is slated for an official release this fall (likey around the beginning of September) and will support the following devices:

• Apple TV 2G
• iPad 1
• iPad 2
• iPhone 3GS
• iPhone 4 GSM & CDMA
• iPod Touch 3G
• iPod Touch 4G

You can check out our iOS 5 Gallery here.

Thanks to GeoHot.

This may be a bug or a new feature in the works, but it has come to our attention that there are signs in iOS 5 that may reveal a landscape multitasking bar for iPhone and iPod Touch in the works. The iPad has had the landscape bar ever since iOS 4.2 was released, with the ability to multitask and an elegant multitasking dock-like bar to go along with to switch between apps. But iPhone and iPod Touch were (for some odd reason) was left out from this landscape goodness. When you run an app in landscape and you double click the home button to bring up the multitasking UI, the apps in the bar are displayed in portrait while the app you are in is still in landscape mode. Of course, to solve this problem who else to go to other than our jailbreak developers? Within a couple of months of release of iOS 4, the devs released a tweak (Switcher Rotator) that allowed the multitasking bar to display in landscape when the accelerometer detects your device in landscape mode for iPhone and iPod Touch.

As you can see in the following image, in iOS 5, when you run an app in landscape mode, bring up the Notification Center, and then double click the home button, the notification center window slowly rises up as if it is giving space for the multitasking bar to be displayed under it. But the OS actually fails to display the multitasking bar in landscape and rather presents in portrait mode, leaving a very messy, inconsistent, un-apple-like scene.

If, in fact, Apple is working on a landscape multitasking bar for iPhone and iPod Touch, this would definitely be a welcomed feature to all iOS users. We will have to wait and see in the final release of iOS 5 this fall.