Category: iPhone

Apple Patent Shows Media Sharing for iPhone? [Updated]

The United States Patent and Trademark Office released patent application number 20090143007 today. Titled “Methods and systems for mixing media with communications”, it shows methods for sharing digital media files like music, video and images in as part of a communications connection, without ending the original connection.

Apple iPhone Patent 2

The present invention permits a user to initiate a communications operation with a recipient, or to receive a communications operation initiated by another individual, and to transmit a selected media item over the same communication path used for the communications operation without terminating the communications operation. This combined transmission can occur regardless of the type of media selected by the user to be added to the communications operation.

iPhone Media Sharing Patent

Read the Patent

The New iPhone Pictured? [Updated]

iphone-500x375

iSpazo recently received an image of what appears to be the new iPhone model.

The picture appears to be taken from a computer inside the Apple site. It has the rumoured black frame and a front camera, video calls maybe?

The photo seem’s to comply with many of the rumours that have been spreading around, the frontal camera and the black frame around the phone. The picture looks quite authentic, however we won’t know till WWDC.

iphone3

This second photo shows the tethering feature of the new iPhone also with the black frame round the screen.

This second picture which wasn’t sent to them but leaked doesn’t seem as real, the font is different and the spacing is also.

Here are some more pictures that have been leaked out.

New iPhone Leaked 2

Leaked iPhone_2

Palm Pre, iPhone Killer? Not Quite.

So with the upcoming release of the Palm Pre and the rumoured release of a new iPhone following WWDC. People are saying that the Palm Pre, is the iPhone killer.Palm Pre

Over the last few years touchscreen devices has become very mainstream and most brands have their touchscreen phone, however none of them have come close to what the iPhone has done to the market.

However even with the Palms quicker CPU and sleek design with a physical QWERTY keyboard, here are the reasons that the Palm Pre will not kill the iPhone.

  • The App Store, with over 1 Billion downloads since it’s launch there has never been a mobile software store like it.
  • Games, you may not think it but the iPhone is considered a gaming platform as well as a Phone, due to the App Store and the works of the likes of Electronic Arts, the iPhone have some high quality games. However at current standing the Palm Pre has no games and unless Palm allow deeper access to their SDK, developers will struggle.
  • Show off factor, Yes it may seem a strange thing to compare but if you pull an iPhone out people are drawn to it, they want to see the Apps they’ve seen on TV and heard everyone talk about, but with the Palm Pre people will just assume it’s just another touchscreen phone.
  • The Palm Pre does come with a 3 Megapixel camera with LED flash but for most people who own an iPhone 2 Megapixels works fine.
  • Easy typing, this is only true for some people but I now find it a lot easier to type on an iPhone keyboard than a normal mobile phone, however with a QWERTY keyboard it may be easier but the keys look small and aren’t as adaptable as the iPhone’s on-screen keyboard.
  • iTunes, Yes some love it and some hate it, but it gives users an easy well to purchase new music on the go and a central place for all their media.

Those are just a few reasons that I believe the Palm Pre will not kill the Apple iPhone, it may give a bit of a go at it, but overall the iPhone will remain at the head of it’s market, majority because of the App Store and the 1000’s of Apps.

How Will In-App Payment Affect Crackers?

iphone30So if you use an iPhone or iPod Touch,  I’m sure you have heard of  ‘cracked apps’; these are App’s that have been legitimately purchased but then been cracked so that it can run on a modified device with no cost.

But with the release of iPhone OS 3.0 drawing ever closer, how will the cracks work with In-App payments?

Because if an App comes with just the bare-bones of the App and you must pay for the extras then using the cracked App in theory will not work, seeing as In-App payments will be done server-side and not in the App.

So if an App gets cracked and used then will In-App payments work or will they work a way out to crack those too. Anythings possible but just an interesting theory.

iPhone Headphone Problems

iPhone HeadphonesI’ve had my iPhone 3G for about 3/4 months with frequent use and my right headphone is starting to deteriorate, so I searched for a replacement pair from Apple, thinking that this problem was maybe caused by myself, however to my suprise the reviews on the Apple store page shows that everyone has this problem. Here’s just a few:

When I first got the phone the headphones were nice and loud, now after a few months they started to fade and get lower soundwise, and a few days ago the right ear completly stopped working.

——

I’ve had this headset with my iPhone for 6 months. Already after about 2 months the first problems started showing: Little digital clicks when you wear the phones and walk. The clicks got more and more frequent with time and use. After about 3 months the answer butten started getting dodgy, and now after 6 months it isn’t working at all.

Reviews

So as the reviews show people are having numerous different problems with Apple’s iPhone headphones, most people after 4/6 months experience the right headphone to completely stop working, currently mine has just got really quite causing me to have to put my iPhone on full volume or use the left headphone.

Apple need to fix this problem as I don’t want to spend £19 every 3 months on a new pair of headphones, please Apple fix this otherwise I will just buy a more expensive pair of 3rd party headphones.

The New iPhone Ideas

iphone30So with WWDC rolling ever closer we’re expecting the release of a new iPhone. With the references found in the firmware and the release of the new iPhone OS 3.0 all arrows are pointing to a new phone. But what will change and what will remain.

  • The screen on the device will most likely remain the same, or at least the same resolution as all the App’s for iPhone and iPod Touch are programmed to a certain size so it’s unlikely they change the screen size.
  • Improved battery life, this will be a great impovement, hopefully the new iPhone software has some tweaks to keep usage down and maybe a better battery in the new device.
  • A better camera is almost certain seeing as Apple want to compete with other phones on the market and the fact they orderes 3.2 and 5 megapixel sensors.
  • More RAM, so that we can have App’s running without crashing.
  • Faster CPU, the iPod Touch 2G has a faster processor than the iPhone so it’s time for an upgrade for it to run games and App’s more smoothly and quickly. However, this will mean that hacking the device will take longer as it did for the iPod Touch due to the new processor.
  • Video Recording has been rumoured with screenshots and is technically possible as shown by Cycorder, the jailbroken video recording App.
  • Bigger Capacity, 8GB will probably be dropped and 16GB and 32GB brought in.
  • Zoom on the camera, due to the fact if they have a bigger sensor the image won’t look as bad.

All of these are just based on rumour or idea of what the new iPhone will have. Now we just have to wait till June time for more info on the possibility of the next iPhone.

Developers Continue to Fight Piracy!

As I have said in preview posts, I believe that we should as users get to try before you buy on Apps from Apple’s App Store, so as a result I do use the cracked method to try out Apps; however I test them for a few days and if I like them and think they work well, then I will purchase them. As a student I don’t have much money to be spending on loads of Apps such as the amount as I do now so I buy what I like and delete what I don’t.

However as I wrote before Beejive IM began to stop pirates using there App, but today I tried the Camera Zoom App from KendiTech and got a trial expired screen:

Camera Zoom Trial Screen

As you can see the developer has now implemented a system so that it can tell if the App has been pirated.
Now I agree that developers should do this seeing as this App is very cheap to buy from the store and obviously it’s supporting these hard working developers. But it brings an interesting note, developers should allow full versions with trial periods of say a week or a few days so that the user’s can get a taste of the App before spending there money and leaving bad reviews.

How To Use iPhone OS 3.0 Beta Without Activation

iphone30For some people they are too eager to try the new iPhone OS to wait, you may have read of the problems that many of them run into but here’s a way round it.

The way we stop the verification is not disconnecting from the internet each time but stopping iTunes contacting the verification server.

Note: this is a Windows tutorial not Mac.

First of all open Notepad.

Click on File > Open and ensure that your viewing All files and not just .txt files.

Now go to   C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc

Now find the file ‘hosts’ and open it.

Go to the bottom of the file and paste the following:

127.0.0.1    albert.apple.com

Now save the file making sure iTunes isn’t open.

Note: this will just stop the verification, you can still use the iTunes store.

iPhone Twitter Push Notification Mockups

This is a mockup I’ve just came up with, that would be good for Twitter App’s. However if your one of those people who follow 100’s of people then this wouldn’t be very good, unless maybe for direct messages on Twitter.

Twitter iPhone Mockup

The font isn’t perfect as I didn’t use Photoshop so no shadows were placed on the text but as you can see it would be a good way for Twitter App’s to push tweets or direct replies/messages.

Update: Here’s a second mockup which would appear if you get multiple tweets.

Twitter iPhone Mockup 2