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iPhone 4 Hands Off Review

Ryan Ray — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 16:05:17 +0000

Hands off? What do you mean hands off? Well sadly I am not a mainstream, fancy pants, blogger and can’t work my way into WWDC. This is where after the Keynote lots of high profile bloggers could get their hands on the iPhone 4 and see what it’s all about. Instead I get to look at their pictures and say ooo ahh until the day the iPhone comes out and I rush to get it ASAP. See I’m just a normal person like you! Haha, anyway thanks to Engadget for letting me poach their pictures so I could help illustrate my favorite parts of the new iPhone 4. That’s what we are going to do today, the last post talked about just the new hardware so now we’ll talk about what I’m really excited about on the new iPhone. Let’s get started shall we?

First off I really love the new design, it takes it back a little bit to the original iPhone’s design. Brushed aluminum look, flat back, etc… This new design looks great and from what people say feels great too. I’m very excited to see what Incase comes out with for this thing! It’s also THINNER, you’ll see just how much in the pictures below…

Secondly, I love taking pictures with my iPhone. I also LOVE using my 7D, but there is something different about just being able to pull out your phone and take some pretty decent pictures too. Not to mention the whole screen of image editing apps I have. This camera on the new iPhone 4 is going to be awesome to use, plus it has better low light performance and a flash! I’m very excited to mess with it.

Let’s not forget it also shoots in full 720p! I study video production at school and am definitely going to start putting together iPhone videos. It’s a good marketing ploy and also sounds like a ton of fun. Don’t worry my 7D will get plenty of work in, the iPhone will just move up to being used more for fun video now. I’m so excited!

I can’t wait to see the new screen in person. I’m already getting the chills thinking about going and getting the new iPhone. It’s almost become like a Christmas morning feeling for me. I know every year when the time is coming for the new iPhone and I wait very anxiously for Santa Steve to deliver, and I think he did this time around. I’m sure by now you’ve read everything about the screen, it’s going to be great to use it especially once developers update their art. It’ll be interesting to see where other phone manufacturers go now…

Here are the pics where you can see how thin it is compared to a 3GS. I’m very surprised Apple pulled this off. I thought the iPhone was pretty thin as it is and was just fine if it never got thinner. The engineers though didn’t think so, they went as far as putting the antennas in the actual steel bezel to make room on the inside of the phone for a bigger battery and to make it thinner. That’s wild stuff IMHO. Props to them.

Again, more pictures comparing the old vs new, I think the new one looks awesome.

So hardware aside but running in combination with iOS4 it’s really what makes the iPhone special. Apple almost makes everything that goes into the dang phone so it’s responsive, has better battery life, speedy, etc…

There are two things I’m really looking forward to with the new OS. They’ve finally opened up and gave us a form of multitasking. iPhone users everywhere have been asking for this for almost two years. Their implementation may not be TRUE multitasking, but their background API’s are genius and I will definitely use it to my advantage. I also assume they’ll keep adding to these background API’s allowing more and more true application running in the background. As long as it doesn’t hurt my phones performance I’ll stand by their multitasking.

Lastly on the iOS4, I’m really wanting to use the new app folders. Like I mentioned earlier I have a whole screen full of camera apps, I can now pile all of those apps into one icon and put them anywhere. I’ll soon become a folder whore, and I’m not ashamed.

Take the new design, faster chip, new camera, awesome iOS4, this is going to be a great update to the iPhone. Especially if you already love your current one. This is much better than the iPhone 3G to 3GS update. What are you most excited about, leave a comment and let me know!

Apple iPhone News, Reviews, Hacks, and More Copyright 2008 iPhone Nuts. All Rights Reserved.

iPhone 4 Hands Off Review

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The iPhone 4 Is Here

Ryan Ray — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:55:39 +0000

Read it and weep everyone the iPhone 4 has been announced. Not that most of you didn’t already know, it’s been TWO DAYS since it’s unveiling and I’ve yet to talk about my personal feelings for it. Before we get to that post though I should mention all of the specs, or at least the important ones, just so you know how great this new iPhone is. Ready?

Obviously it comes with a fantastic new design, I couldn’t swoon about this design enough. All of your ears would bleed with pain and numbness. The new design is GREAT. It has a very strong glass front and back, and the sides are made out of a stainless steel that also serves a function of the antennas for the device. One of my favorite parts. Here is what the white iPhone looks like…

So sexy, don’t you think? Most of the buttons on the actual phone are the same excluding the volume rocker. The rocker has disappeared and we now have two separate buttons for turning the volume up and down. A welcome change to me.

Also if you notice hardware wise the iPhone 4 has a front facing camera for a feature called FaceTime, which is VIDEO CHATTING on the iPhone. Right now the video chatting only works over Wifi and supposedly with other iPhone 4’s, but Apple says they are working on that.

Next up is their new display that they call the Retina Display. This display has been getting great reviews from people who got to spend a little hands on time with the iPhone 4. It effectively quadruples the amount of pixels on the display I believe, and it just looks awesome. It also has the IPS technology from the iPad so that colors look better and the viewing angles are quite improved. I don’t think any pictures do the display justice, but here is a picture of it anyway…

Of course there are also some great camera improvements, the number one for me is that it records 720p HD video. Not to mention the camera has a new sensor and is bumped up to 5 megapixels. Trust me, if Apple isn’t lying on their website, the pictures from iPhone 4 look really really good. It also has an LED flash, don’t forget about that! With those camera improvements they also developed a mobile version of iMovie! How crazy is that, I think I had talked about that awhile ago and turns out I was right about something!

Inside the phone they’ve beefed up the battery, and to little surprise are using their own custom made silicon. It’s their A4 chip from the iPad, but made a little smaller so the battery in the iPhone 4 could be beefed up. I believe everything else is standard, they will come in the same capacity as the iPhone 3GS which is kind of a bummer, but I will not complain.

Well what else can I say about the iPhone 4 hardware wise? The software is a whole other topic that has been covered before here. Tomorrow we’ll talk about my personal opinions of it all, even though you can tell I’m excited. So what do you all think about the hardware improvements, do you like the new design? Voice your thoughts by leaving a comment!

Apple iPhone News, Reviews, Hacks, and More Copyright 2008 iPhone Nuts. All Rights Reserved.

The iPhone 4 Is Here

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What The iPhone Needs; Nested Texting

Ryan Ray — Sat, 15 May 2010 17:39:51 +0000

Here we are again with another installment of the ever so popular series called, What The iPhone Needs. It’s simply a place where I can rant about what I think the iPhone should have. Really they are either stupid complaints or simple improvements on the existing iPhone. So today I wanted to rant/talk about the SMS app on the iPhone. I’ve never used any other texting app, although maybe I should do some research and see if any others solve my problem. I’ve always just used the standard, Apple supplied texting app. If you know of any better texting apps let me know, I’m open to trying something new.

My issue with this app, or really texting on the iPhone in general, is that texting to individuals works fine. You have an iChat like back and forth conversation. It looks and works great. Your texts on the left and your friend’s are on the left. Yours are green and theirs clear. I don’t really have any complaints for the texting between individuals, I actually quite like it. If you’ve seen other phones and their texting systems it’s quite ugly and annoying to use. But if you want to annoy me with the iPhone and it’s texting try sending mass texts and keeping track of the conversation.

The current way it works isn’t terribly bad, I just believe there could be something better. For starters it’s easy to create a mass text list. Start a new text message and keep typing in friends name and tapping them to add them in. Once you send your first message though that list is permanent and can’t be added or subtracted from. Quite annoying, especially if you forget to add someone or need to add someone later or even delete them from the list. The only way to do this is start your list and convo all over again. That’s not very user friendly Apple! That’s my first glaring issue that frustrates me.

Secondly, once you start receiving responses from people in the list their responses don’t stay in that conversation. It for unknown reasons starts an individual thread with them, which can be useful sometimes. I’d honestly prefer an option though to respond to all and have my text appear in the mass text convo, or to respond to the individual and then it would show up as a single conversation between me and the sender of the mass text. I understand that maybe that’s not possible at the moment since if they replied to all everyone would be getting texts, and it doesn’t work the same on every phone but if it showed up in everyone’s iPhone that had one as a threaded convo that’d be awesome.

It’d just offer a simpler way for me and everyone to keep track of mass texts like that. Perhaps this needs a SMS standards committee to insure the same experience on every phone. At the very least though, Apple listen up, we could have the ability to edit our mass text conversations and add or delete people as needed. That’s the least you could do!

Apple iPhone News, Reviews, Hacks, and More Copyright 2008 iPhone Nuts. All Rights Reserved.

What The iPhone Needs; Nested Texting

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AT&T Finally Gives The U.S. MMS

Ryan Ray — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:08:19 +0000

Yup, we can sing praises finally about 3 months after the launch of iPhone software 3.0 us people over here in the states can send an MMS message. Hopefully after all of this hype around the iPhone and it’s lack there of of the ability to send an MMS, you all know what one is. In a few short words it’s just a way to send a multimedia message. With the iPhone you can send pictures, video, contacts, etc… Which is pretty sweet.

MMS is an antiquated technology that at first I believe Apple was trying to phase out of the cell industry. Although it seems to be true that the first iPhone is disabled by hardware to send MMS, Apple may have done that on purpose and wanted to push email as the main way to send anything. If only EVERYONE’S phone had email on it then we’d be set. This isn’t true for everyone. So the Apple loyals cried out for MMS, something that should have been there since day one. We’ll never know why it wasn’t, but thankfully it’s here now.

This is what it looks like to send a picture to someone else through MMS.

As you can see the picture is in it’s own little bubble. If you are sent an MMS yourself and you want to save it, just tap on the picture and it’ll slide to a full screen view of it. From there you can save it and that’s all you can do. Then from saving it you can email or forward it on in another MMS. Simple enough. If you have video saved to your phone you can send that, you can send contact info to other iPhones, etc…

The bad thing about updating to MMS is that you have to have iPhone OS 3.1, which finally killed off my favorite tethering hack. Also of which AT&T has yet to let us have. In a side note AT&T really needs to get their stuff together! I’ll be waiting for a new tethering method until then. There have been a few people that have stuck on 3.0 and just downloaded and applied the new carrier files which are at version 5.5 I believe. If you want to do that, then search the internet. It’s not hard to find or do. Just beware it probably violates some law somewhere.

So what do I think about MMS? Well so far I’ve only used it to send my cute girlfriend a few pictures, and she’s sent me some. I know before MMS was available for me my mom has tried to send me pictures. I just never got them. So it’ll be great to get those cat pictures, or dog pictures finally! My uncle loves to send me Obama hate since I’m an Obama supporter. In other words the use is mostly trivial for me. I enjoy it for the most part, but I can still use email and send a lot more pictures and videos, etc… Just for those people who haven’t caught up yet to the email revolution MMS still works great. I’m glad AT&T and Apple let us FINALLY have it. It rounds out the iPhone, but isn’t a deal breaker for me. MMS is so-so

Let me know what you think about MMS, is it life changing for your iPhone or just another cool thing to do. Will it replace email, or twitpic’ing? Leave a comment and let me know. Thanks for reading and participating! Have a good one.

Apple iPhone News, Reviews, Hacks, and More Copyright 2008 iPhone Nuts. All Rights Reserved.

AT&T Finally Gives The U.S. MMS

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Top 3 Uses For The iPhone’s Camera

Ryan Ray — Sat, 16 May 2009 03:45:35 +0000

As of lately this is one of the greatest revelations I’ve had in my daily iPhone use. Want to know what it is? It’s the camera! Being a photography junky I know that the iPhone’s camera isn’t top of the line quality, and that initially turned me off from ever using my iPhone’s camera. It was semi slow, clunky, and only rings in at 2.0 megapixels. Also there’s no flash or zooming…BUMMER! This was until a man that goes by the name Chase Jarvis opened my blind eyes to a fun tool we have on our iPhones. Mr. Jarvis claims to take between 1-1,000 pictures a day with his iPhone, and since he’s a professional photographer I believe it. His website even has it’s own iPhone portfolio, you should CHECK it out.

“The best camera is the one you have with you” is the quote beginning his gallery of shots, and is the one that changed my mind on the iPhone’s camera. It speaks so much truth, if you don’t have your SLR or point and shoot with you use what you have. All you need is some great composition, lighting, and luck to get some great photos. There are also some great photo apps out there that we’ll talk about soon. With that in mind I want to talk about 3 great ways that I use the camera on my iPhone. Please read along and enjoy.

#3 -Candid Shots

Many times I’ll see something funny/unique/etc… and with the iPhone I can usually catch a candid shot. Imagine someone picking their nose on the metro, or someone showing off their butt crack on accident. Perfect uses for the iPhone’s discreet camera. Whip out your iPhone and pretend you are texting someone, reach up into the air like you are searching for signal and snap your photo. That’s been my technique and no one has ever known. Good luck!

#2 – Geotag photo locations

This is one of my favorite things to do, especially paired with the new iPhoto, Flickr, Twitter etc… it really becomes useful. For instance I’m taking some pictures for a friend of mine, and one day we just drove into the city and scouted for some great locations. I used my iPhone’s camera to geotag the locations of many great backdrops, not only will we use the map locations to get back we’ll use the colors from the backdrop to organize outfits for each location. A big time saver and a big convienence. This should be a trick to every photographers sleeve.

#1 – Share your photos socially with Twitter & Facebook

Finally we are at my favorite and most used tip. Since falling back in love with my iPhone’s camera I’ve been relentlessly snapping and posting via Twitter & Twitpic. For example I was recently in Philadelphia and Washington D.C. and as I explored each city I took pictures and posted them via Twitter. My Twitter then updates my Facebook so all my friends on both networks could see what I was seeing in almost real time. There are a lot of photo services for Twitter, but I recommend Twitpic. It was the original and the best IMHO.

I’m still new to playing around with the camera, but I’m making good progress. Soon I’ll have some news on some great camera apps that enhance your iPhone’s camera’s capabilities. I’m pumped for that one. For now it’s your turn to tell me how you most use your iPhone’s camera. I know I am missing a lot of ways to do so, and I’m sure they are all great and creative. Help me out and let me know your camera secrets. Thanks again for reading, hope you enjoyed.

Apple iPhone News, Reviews, Hacks, and More Copyright 2008 iPhone Nuts. All Rights Reserved.

Top 3 Uses For The iPhone’s Camera

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To Jailbreak or Not To Jailbreak?

Ryan Ray — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:12:02 +0000

At one time I did have an iPhone that was Jailbroken/Jailbreaked? It was pretty cool, I can’t lie and say that it wasn’t. Don’t tell Apple though. I remember I could change the background of my screen. Not just the lock screen but of the screen where the actual apps sat. I liked it for a little bit. I could also get some apps that weren’t even allowed yet, because for one the app store didnt exist at this time, and two since there was no app store there were no restrictions on apps. There were things such as NES emulators, Tethering, Leveling apps, etc… Many of the same apps that have appeared in the legit app store these days. So what would be the point to jailbreak today when we have so many great apps available?

That’s the same question I ask myself. One of my friends just got his iPhone 3G and we were talking about jailbreaking and if I’ve ever done it. The very same question arose as to why would you jailbreak anyway? I could think of a few useful instances to jailbreak these days. Copy and paste, tethering, dirty apps, (such as pornographic ones…) Skype, MMS, and to make the iPhone more customizable. Things like screen brightness, backgrounds, etc… I’ve given it a lot of though lately and even considered doing both of our iPhones soon.

In came the iPhone OS 3 announcement where a lot of my needs seem like they are going to be met and with Apple’s style marked on them, something I really like. Copy & Paste is coming, MMS, video recording, tethering is in the works. Many, many of the requests have been met by Apple this time around. Things I’d still like to see would be letting an app change the screen brightness. There are numerous times I am out playing frolf around midnight and I lose a frisbee in a bush. So I must go into my settings change my brightness to all the way then go into the flashlight app and then finally look for my disc. With it jailbroken I can simply open the flashlight app and it automatically adjusts my brightness from within the app.

Also another great thing would be the ability to theme your iPhone. I know once jailbroken there is an app just for theming your iPhone. I’d love to just be able to try different themes on my iPhone, depending on the week and my mood. Some of the creativity that people have put forth should be recognized and I’d like to do so on my home screens.

Besides those two reasons I don’t know if I can bring myself to go through the work and risk of jailbreaking my iPhone again. It has gotten to be an easier process I’m sure, but am I up for it? I’m going to let you all decide. Simply leave a comment telling me yes you should jailbreak and why, or no you shouldn’t jailbreak and why as well. Both my friend and I will jailbreak if you vote yes for us. Leave your vote now!

Apple iPhone News, Reviews, Hacks, and More Copyright 2008 iPhone Nuts. All Rights Reserved.

To Jailbreak or Not To Jailbreak?

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What The iPhone Needs; iPhone Scripts, Key Combos, & Custom Gestures

Ryan Ray — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 01:33:08 +0000

First, before I start my rant, let me wish everyone a Merry Christmas. 2008 has been a good year, even though when it seems like it’s not been so good. I mean, for one thing the iPhone 3G was released. That’s good enough for me. Not to mention this website was born. Which for me has been an awesome experience. It doesn’t get much better than blogging about the iPhone, especially since I’m quite the Apple fanatic. As if you couldn’t tell from reading this website. Anyway, Merry Christmas to everyone who reads this post. We wish many blessings on you and your family.

Now, here is another entry in my “mini-series” that I like to call What The iPhone Needs. It’s just a little post where I can rant about something I think the iPhone should have. They usually come from me using my iPhone and going, “Hey, that would be great if they could add that!” And that’s exactly what I did today. I could almost say my idea today came from a dream I had the night before. I was just waking up this morning, in a sort of conscious but not quite yet state. We’ve all had those right? I often find myself going through a whole day like that. Perhaps even a week, just depends on how busy it is.

None the less, as my alarm was going off on my iPhone, I have figured out you can hit the top button and it is just like hitting the snooze button. That’s a little tip in itself if you didn’t know that yet, but what came to my mind next was what if you could create Apple Scripts, but for the iPhone? I guess they would be called iPhone Scripts then right? The iPhone is powerful but what if it we were able to add even more power with scripts? Just as an example this was the first thing that came to my mind in my weird state between dreaming and reality. I wanted to be able to create a key combination and send a pre made text message to someone to wake them up. Imagine I was able to create a folder in my text messages and assign them to certain people. Once that’s done I could then create a key combo, such as press the sleep/button twice then press the home button to send that text message. That could also apply to sending emails, press and hold the home button while pressing the volume up three times. Even better yet, let’s add custom gestures to this. That could be activated by holding the home button, or any button you’d like… Swipe with three fingers to the left to do this. Tap the rhythm to funky town to dial this person. Craaaazzzy, I know! Sort of like this picture below for Japanese handwriting recognition.

I know at the moment this idea seems nonsensical, and may not even be worth the thought. But can anyone make more sense of this idea for me? Can you imagine anymore ways to use scripts on the iPhone. I know someone out there has the brains for this. I just can’t help but think of all of the Scripts out there for iTunes that add to it’s functionality, and dream that someday that idea could be added to the iPhone. What are your thoughts on that idea?

Apple iPhone News, Reviews, Hacks, and More Copyright 2008 iPhone Nuts. All Rights Reserved.

What The iPhone Needs; iPhone Scripts, Key Combos, & Custom Gestures

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The iPhone In Highschool & College vs. Business

Ryan Ray — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 06:20:11 +0000

First, let me ask a question. Do you think the iPhone is more of a “business” phone, or is it more of a “consumer” phone? For instance would you expect to see more Highschool & College students carrying one around or more suits from the office carrying one in their breast pocket? I know when the iPhone was first released it had no business implications at all really. The things that Blackberry users expect from their phones was not available to them if they wanted to switch to the iPhone. They had no Exchange support for many many corporations use Exchange as their email servers. There was no PUSH support where they could easily have everything like email, calendar, contacts immediately available to them.

Obviously no company that relied on these techonologies would switch to the iPhone. Now though, we’ve got the 2.0 software. The 2.0 software update was huge. This software update brought to use Exchange support, it brought the push support, it brought everything the big wigs needed to start adopting the iPhone as a real business tool. Instead of some hip tech toy that many people use it as. To me personally I see the iPhone as a boundry crossing device, I use my iPhone for both business and pleasure. But definitely I can see where the iPhone is not taken seriously in either business or consumer worlds. I roughly try and keep up with two jobs, 17 hour schedule, Ultimate Frisbee, drum practice, etc… and the iPhone crosses over beautifully through any environment I need it for. Keeps all 5 of my email accounts in order, keeps my calendars all straightened out. It really is quite beautiful to see it happen. Also when I’m tired of meetings I just flip over a few home screens and start playing something like Tris, or Hangman haha.

The point I may be trying to make is that the iPhone really is an all-in-one device. The funny thing is that I see the older generations carrying around a blackberry and then a RAZR or something similar to that setup because neither of their phones cover all bases. Especially those super annoying head pieces. For one I think they are ugly, and then you see people talking on them thinking they are talking to themselves. Also another thing I hate about cellphones are the waist holsters, GAG ME. Then I see students and people from my generation or younger and we all have iPhones if we are serious about our phones. It’s really funny to observe these difference. Although one of my professors has the iPhone 3G and carrys it in a holster!!! I must say I believe my iPhone covers all of those bases. But you give me your thoughts. Is the iPhone for us trendy college students, or is it a serious Blackberry competitor? What about both? Tell me where you think the iPhone fits in.

Just for fun, here are some quick iPhone stats that come from Piper Jaffray. They surveyed some high school students about the iPhone and where they got the music. It still points out that the iPhone is wanted no matter what generation. Thanks guys!

8% own iPhones, up from from 6% in Spring 2008.
22% of students surveyed expect to buy an iPhone in the next 6 months, up from 9% in Spring 2008.
Of students expecting to buy a mobile phone, 33% specified an iPhone.
iPod market share rose to 84% from 82% in Fall 2007.
Of the 40% of students who legally purchase music online, 93% said they use iTunes (up from 79% in Fall 2007).

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What The iPhone Needs; Voicemail Status

Ryan Ray — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 04:35:42 +0000

Well I’m back again, sorry for the lack of posts coming from me as of late. I finally made the trek across the midwest from Missouri to Indiana. I made it safely and am just about all moved in back at school. This would help explain my absence over the last few days. I’ve been soooo incredibly busy so far. I’ve been training and trying to eat and rest and get my exercise in. I also got some ultimate frisbee in today. All in all a very busy day today. I’ve got another day of the same ahead of me tomorrow so wish me luck. Anyway I wanted to get into this new sort of series, and talk about things I want Apple to add to my iPhone 3G!

The point of this series I dub “What The iPhone Needs,” is to get my frustrations out over a device I love very much, but still could use a few things to make it perfect. The iPhone adds soo much functionality to our lives that we often forget to be thankful for such a pleasure of a phone. Instead we just demand, demand, demand, and more demands come from our mouths every day. We want this, now we want this, instead can we get this? So to funnel this all into one station, one platform of opinion I am going to tell you about one feature I think would be so cool to have on my iPhone.

Let’s discuss Visual Voicemail for a second. It’s genius, one of the best things about this phone is the ability to pick and choose what voicemail you want to listen to. You can easily delete, skip and replay any voicemail you receive. You can even check out the deleted messages with a quick tap of the finger. So what could they do to make Visual Voicemail even better? Well personally I want the ability to treat my voicemail messages as an AIM status. Just imagine this for a second with me. You might be expecting a call from some friends as you are going out to eat at your favorite restaurant. You want them to come but when they can’t get ahold of you, they have no idea where you’re at. Imagine if your voicemail messages were similar to Twitter so that when you type your status it would have either pre-recorded messages to choose from, a custom message, or perhaps it could do something like text to speech. So you set your status and then if a call gets sent to your voicemail it let’s callers hear your custom messages. I definitely think this would be an awesome feature to have. I imagine my friends and I going out to play a game of ultimate frisbee and if someone were to call me I’d want to let them know that they should come play ultimate as well. Setting my voicemail would do the trick for me.

I know this is short and sweet, but what do you think about a feature like this? Do you have any ideas that would add an extra, and welcomed function to your iPhone? Please let me know, as always thanks for reading and get down to the comments now!

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Firmware 2.0.1, Placebo Or Real?

Ryan Ray — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 14:00:22 +0000

By now we all know that the iPhone 2.0.1 software update is out. It’s probably on everyone’s iPhone as well. It supposedly was full of “bug fixes” as Apple calls all of their updates now. I really wish we received more info on what these updates correct. I remember when Apple used to let us know what the updates actually fixed. It would say something like “This update fixes the issue users were having with exporting photos as jpg’s.” Now we just know that it is a “bug fix.” So this could mean the iPhone 2.0.1 software was nothing more than a placebo. The iPhone 2.0.1 could have just been a sugar pill, or could it have been the real thing.

Now, there were numerous issues that cropped up with the 2.0 software. Many people, including myself, felt like this update was half-baked and not quite ready for prime time. It did bring us a lot of new features, but many bugs at the same time. We got our app store and Exchange support was built right in, but there were issues with apps crashing, data being lost, update an app and it loses it’s spot, annoying keyboard lag, battery life issues, Safari still doesn’t play well with the iPod, etc…It seemed like a simple 0.1 update couldn’t fix all these issues. Well I’ve spent a few days now with my updated iPhone and I’ll fill you in on what I’ve experienced.

Keyboard Lag

My first major concern with my iPhone was the annoying keyboard lag. It seemed my iPhone didn’t have it as bad as other iPhones had it. I didn’t run into the lag all the time as many did. Sure it happened every once in awhile, but it only seemed to happen when I was in Safari trying to type a URL. I didn’t get the lag in any other apps. My texting was smooth in the SMS app, in the app store itself, in the mail app, just not in Safari. I was hoping this update would fix the issue for me, but sadly I still get lag when I’m using Safari. Granted it is better at catching up with my texting, at the same time though this hardly happened before the 2.0 software. I have faith that Apple can fix this, they’ve fixed bigger things before.

Apps Crashing/Updating

The updating part isn’t so much a bug, but something that was overlooked. When you update your app it should keep it’s position in your iPhone’s home screens. This isn’t the case when you update any app from the app store. It automatically gets pushed to the first open spot on your screen. It’s annoying because I already spent the time to position my apps how I want them. Then the update comes in for numerous apps and just throws a rock into your homescreens throwing them all out of order. Secondly there was some sort of glitch where you couldn’t open certain apps without redownloading them. It came out of nowhere and suddenly you couldn’t open Pandora or Last.fm, etc…, you had to delete the apps and redownload them. A major pain, especially over EDGE. I suffered that fate a few times.

With this update I’m experiencing a new kind of crash. It’s not as bad as having to redownload it, but it’s still a crash! Now when my apps crash I get hung in this iPhone limbo world. My screen is all black but the menu bar is grey. I sit there and sit there, nothing happens though. What it takes to get your iPhone back to normal is a push of the sleep/wake button. This turns off the screen then you can unlock it and give it another try. A weird way to fix a crashed app. It works for now though.

Battery Life

Like I said, we don’t know what this update fixed thanks to Apple’s lack of description. I still had hoped though that the update would bring better power management. For instance if you are in an app and push the sleep/wake button or just let the iPhone lock the screen, you are still in that app and it drains the battery very quickly. This update should have fixed that but alas it doesn’t. I haven’t noticed any changes to my battery, but I will never know if this update was supposed to anyway…UGH!

Safari & iPod

This has been a huge issue since the iPhone came out, and it still has yet to be totally fixed. The problem is that if you leave the iPod playing then try to browse the web in Safari, the iPod crashes and your music quits playing. Even I have experienced this iPod crash in other apps. It seems it’s only safe to use the iPod when you are going to use it by itself. If you leave it playing and try to use any other app it’s just going to be bad news. I was hoping the new iPhone software would fix the problem, it didn’t and neither did the 2.0.1 update. I do have to say that the problem isn’t as extreme as it used to be, but if you push it right the iPod will crash.

So these are the issues I am still experiencing with my iPhone. What issues are you having, and is it driving you insane? Do you want to switch phones now? I’m sticking with the iPhone as I know Apple will fix these issues and my iPhone will be better than ever. Many users might not even have updated yet, so let me know what software you are on and if you’ve updated. Thanks!

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