In today’s mobile roundup: Samsung seeks copy of Apple-HTC deal; Windows Phone 8 rebooting issue; a new smartphone that can differentiate between knuckle, finger tip and fingernail touch; and Apple’s iMessage outage.

Samsung seeks copy of Apple-HTC deal

Samsung is seeking to get their hands on a copy of the Apple-HTC deal, thinking it could help them throw some of the lawsuits Apple’s filed against them over the past couple years.  Apple has filed a patent infringement case against Samsung regarding U.S. Patent no. 7,844,915, which refers to application programming interfaces for scrolling operations, and patent no. 7,469,381, which refers to “List scrolling and document translation, scaling, and rotation on a touchscreen display.”

If the Apple-HTC deal has got those patents covered, that would mean their previous statement about not licensing patents to competitors would be voided, and that Apple is willing to “forego exclusivity in exchange for money.”  Details of the HTC-Apple deal will be made available by November 27, 2012.

In other Samsung news, Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has allowed both Apple and Samsung to add more devices in their patent case against each other, which will take place in 2014 and will be presided over by the same judge, Lucy Koh.   Samsung will be adding the iPhone 5 to their complaint while Apple will be adding the Galaxy SIII, Galaxy Note and Galaxy Nexus.  Apple bid to include Android Jelly Bean in the case, but was denied by Grewal who stated that Samsung was not responsible for Jelly Bean, as it was a product of Google.

Windows Phone 8 rebooting issue

Some HTC 8X and Nokia Lumia 920 users have reported that they’ve experienced rebooting, for no apparent reason, of their devices at intermittent periods.  Microsoft, Nokia and HTC haven’t officially provided solutions to resolve the issue and users are getting frustrated with what’s happening to their devices.  But support teams of all three companies have advised users to reboot their devices.  For Nokia users, remove the beta Skype or boot the device without SIM for 10 minutes, then boot with SIM.

Smartphone that can differentiate between knuckle, finger tip, fingernail touch

Our touchscreen devices are heaven sent, but people think that the touchscreen itself hasn’t been used to its full potential.  Chris Harrison, from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania built a prototype of a smartphone that can distinguish if a user used his knuckles, finger tip or fingernail to perform actions.  The point is, when you use a specific part, a specific action will be performed.  For example, using your knuckles will pull up menu options, just like when you click the right button on your computer’s mouse.

“A big problem with touchscreens right now is that they are very simplistic, relative to the capability of our hands. We could do so much more,” Harrison said about FingerSense software which listens for the acoustic and vibrational differences between the three different types of touch.

Apple’s iMessage outage

For the third time in three months, Apple iMessage users suffered from downtime and they were not able to use iMessage and FaceTime for over five hours.  Though the service has been restored, Apple has yet to provide details regarding the cause of the service interruption.  A lot of users have been affected by the service outage as this has been the means of communication for those who do not want to get charged for over testing as the use of the service is not included in a plan.