VERIZON 4G NETWORK DOWN IN SOME AREAS

If your Droid or other Verizon 4G LTE-yoked cell, dongle or MiFi isn't pulling down any high speed data then don't worry, at least you're in good company. Judging by reports cropping up all over the internet, the current Verizon outage on its fastest data connection is quite widespread. The company's official statement indicates engineers are currently trying to resolve the issue which cropped up in the last 24 hours, and reminds users the company's voice services and 3G network are still working fine, if you can call downloads maxing out at just a couple of megabits per second working.

A similar outage popped up back in April, and while there's no word on what exactly is behind the issue, we hope this one is resolved even more quickly. Until then, keep an eye on the @VZWSupport Twitter account for updates while we try to keep from letting this collapse of modern technology drag us all the way back into the dark ages of 1xRTT.

iOS 5.0.1 WITH BATTERY FIX AVAILABLE NOW

Apple has released the first official update to iOS 5, which fixes the reported battery drain problems.

In addition to fixing bugs related to battery life, the update to iOS 5.0.1 also adds multitasking gestures for the first iPad, resolves some bugs with Documents in the Cloud, and improves Siri’s voice recognition for people with Australian accents.

Remember that with iOS 5 you can now install software updates over the air. So there is no longer any need to wait until you get home, grab a cable, and connect to iTunes on a PC in order to apply the update. Simply open your Settings app, choose General, and then Software Update to initiate the process. The delta update file is less than 40MB, and should only take a couple of minutes to install over WiFi.

TOSHIBA PROMISES FIX FOR THRIVE SLEEP ISSUE

Toshiba has announced they have developed a fix for the Thrive tablet's sleep addiction and will release it "early next week" via the Service Station app. The update will improve the device's "multimedia playback capabilities," although it didn't tell us how.

APPLE TV UPDATE FIXES FLICKER AND AUDIO PROBLEMS

Apple’s latest software update, version 4.2.1, for the Apple TV is said to do away with the flicker issue, in addition to promising to fix audio issues and a problem where the device goes to sleep and doesn’t wake up — something we’ve personally had an issue with. The update is available now directly from your Apple TV.

GMAIL MESSAGES DISAPPEARING

If you've got a working Gmail account, you might want to back it up every so often -- as many as 500,000 Gmail users lost access to their inboxes this morn, and some of them are reporting (via Twitter and support forums) that years worth of messages, attachments and Google Chat logs had vanished by the time they were finally able to log on. While we haven't experienced the issue personally, we're hearing that the bug effectively reset some accounts, treating their owners as new users complete with welcome messages. For its part, Google says that the issue "affects less than .29% of the Google Mail userbase," engineers are working to fix the issue right now, and that missing messages will be restored as soon as possible.

GOOGLE CALENDAR HAS ISSUES

Some users of Google's Calander have been reporting problems accessing any of their saved entries. A thread over in the Google Support Forums states:

We’re experiencing an issue affecting less than 0.125% of the Google Calendar user base. The affected users are able to access Google Calendar, but are seeing error messages and/or other unexpected behavior.

We will provide an update by February 23, 2011 12:52:00 PM UTC+1 detailing when we expect to resolve the problem.

Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change.

Affected users may be missing entries in their calendars.

The issue is affecting people in different ways. Some are able to open the calander, but it is blank and others get an error when trying to open.

WINDOWS PHONE 7 DATA HOG BUG FOUND; FIX IN THE WORKS

Last week we reported about a problem many people on Windows Phone 7 devices were having with data hogging. Even with everything turned off, the devices was still downloading massive amounts of data, causing some users to go over their data limits. Microsoft has now identified the issue and a fix is in the works.

We have determined that a third-party solution commonly accessed from Windows Phones is configured in a manner that potentially cause larger than expected data downloads. We are in contact with the third party to assist them in making the necessary fixes, and are also pursuing potential workarounds to address the configuration issue in case those are needed. At this point in our investigation, we believe this is responsible for most of the reported incidents.

We are investigating additional potential root causes for the remainder of the reports.

A small (low single-digit) percentage of Windows Phone customers have reported being affected.

We are continuing to investigate this issue and will update with additional information and guidance as it becomes available.

No word on when the fix will be released. Microsoft is also keeping mum on who the offending "third-party solution" is. Also, Microsoft has not commented on any remedies for those users who have exceeded their data caps and have incurred, and continue to incur, overage charges.

WINDOWS PHONE 7 GOBBLING DATA, EVEN WHEN IDLE

Complaints seem to be growing among some users that Windows Phone 7 is consuming an abnormally plump quantity of data when you're not doing anything. Granted, there's lots of stuff on the platform that might need data continuously -- email accounts and live tiles, for example -- but folks are reporting consumption measuring in multiple megabytes per hour, which can add up pretty quickly: 2MB per hour over a month is nearly 1.5GB, which can be a bummer for anyone with a 2GB data plan. The real issue, though, is that at least some of the data seems to be ignoring available WiFi networks and choosing 3G instead, so there's no great way to definitively avoid the leak even when you're in the comfortable confines of your own home. Our money -- our hopeful money, that is -- is on this being fixed in Microsoft's first big update that should be coming any day now, but in the meantime, users look to be getting at least some relief by setting mail accounts to manual update and turning off location services. [Engadget]

GOOGLE ACKNOWLEDGES SMS BUG; PROMISES FIX

Google has acknowledged the SMS bug we reported earlier. The bug is intermittant and would sometimes send SMS messages to the wrong phone. Google released the following statement:

Thanks to everyone for your patience while we’ve been investigating these reports. As it turns out, we believe there are two distinct situations being discussed on this issue chain. Fortunately, we have fixes for both of them.

When some users tap to open a message in the Messaging application, they’re seeing a different message appear instead. We don’t believe this issue is affecting many users, but we’ve developed a fix that we’re preparing to deploy. Of course, double-checking the displayed message before hitting “Send” will prevent any messages from being sent to the wrong recipients. We’ve found in testing this issue, it is more likely to occur if you tap on a message before the Messaging app is fully loaded, so we recommend waiting for all the elements to load before clicking on the message you want to display.

Separately, some users have reported that their SMS messages are being delivered to the wrong people. It took us some time to reproduce this issue, as it appears that it’s only occurring very rarely. Even so, we’ve now managed to both reproduce it and develop a fix that we will deploy.

While we don’t anticipate any persistent problems, we’ll continue to investigate in case we come up with additional ways to trigger these bugs. Thanks again for helping us improve Android.

No word on when the fix will be released, but at least Google has finally taken note and is working on a fix. [Google]

iPHONE ALARM ISSUE STILL NOT FIXED

If you use your iPhone as an alarm clock, it might be time for a backup plan. Beginning on 1/1/2011 a programming bug in the iPhone alarm has kept it from going off. Apple had acknowledged the problem existing but said it would automatically fix itself by Monday, Jan. 3.

However, the problem does not seem to have gone away. There are still a large number of people reporting the issue is still present. Apple has not responded to repeated requests from a number of outlets for comment.

The problem seems to have affected so many customers that it became a trending topic on Twitter by late Monday morning. Most were irate that they had been assured that the phone would work properly for their first day back to work but instead remained silent all morning long.