iPhone - page 319

There’s an old and very accurate adage that says the second you drive a car, it begins losing value the second you drive it out of the showroom. It also immediately becomes an ongoing expense. The biggest sign of that expense is the number of trips to the gas station. Most of us tend to tend to just pay for the gas, regular maintenance, and monthly payments and not think about whether we’re getting the best gas mileage possible.

Tracking fuel economy and other car expense data can ultimately save you a fair amount of money. Tracking gas mileage and common maintenance tasks can help you optimize when to have your oil changed for maximum oil life and fuel economy, encourage you to check your tire pressure, and even plan more fuel-efficient routes for your daily commute and other regular trips. All of that can add up to real savings over the long-term.

Unlimited data plans are becoming scarce options for smartphone and tablet users. Sprint remains the only carrier to offer an unlimited data plans. Most Verizon and AT&T customers, however, need to make do with tiered data plans. Tiered data plans get more cash from customers and deter customers from overloading mobile networks with excessive data use.

As a result, a lot of us try to avoid excessive data use by limiting the types and amount of content that we access when using a device’s 3G or LTE connection. That, in turn, blocks many content companies from capturing ad or subscription revenue from mobile users. That reality is leading major content companies to complain to the carriers and which AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson recently said may lead to “toll free” data plans.

Kicking off this week’s must-have apps roundup is a beautifully simple timer app for the iPhone that could mean you never need to set timers manually again. There’s also a terrific app for beaming your photographs to almost any display — without additional hardware or software. Plus lots more.

Summer time is travel time for a lot of folks here in the US and abroad. In the US, at least, it’s a time for families with kids home from school to head out into the great wide world and see places, people, and resorts across the country.

Traveling with an iPhone is inevitable. If you’re heading abroad or staying in your own country, there are tips, tricks, and potential pitfalls when using your calling and data plans. There are lots of apps, cases, and extra power solutions out there, as well. We’ve spent a little time figuring some of this out so you don’t have to. Keep reading for some great tips on using your iPhone when you’re traveling. As always, let us know what you think in the comments, as well – we love a good conversation.

Opening this week’s must-have games roundup is a stunning first-person shooter that has you protecting planet Earth from invasion from the “Xenos,” who are on a mission to infect every civilian that gets in their way. We also have a crazy dual-stick shooter that has made the leap from Xbox LIVE to your pocket, an update to Angry Birds Space, and lots more.

A decade ago, your mobile phone number may not have meant much. In the days before number porting, mobile phone numbers were transient. If you switched carriers or moved, you got a new number.

Things are a bit different today. You can take your number with you from one mobile carrier to another, you can port it VOIP services like Vonage, or forwarding services like Google Voice, and you can even port it to a landline phone. Your phone number, much like your personal email address or Twitter account, belongs to you for as long as you want to keep it.

That can create a problem for companies implementing BYOD programs. If an employees bring their own phones, they also bring their own numbers. For many employees, particularly those that are mobile professionals, their mobile number is the go-to number to reach them. When such an employee leaves that company, what happens to his or her phone number?

When traveling, keeping your iPhone safe, charged, and accessible is pretty much a constant battle. What kinds of accessories you need to do so will depend on your destination, your transportation, and (obviously) your budget. Here are a few suggestions for stuff that you might find helpful when travelling with an iPhone.

Apple is expected to unveil iOS 6, the next major iteration of its software platform for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, at WWDC in two weeks. Not much is known about iOS 6, other than the new Maps app and the possibility of a more metallic look. Many have been speculating about what Apple could introduce, and we at Cult of Mac have a few ideas we’d like to see come to fruition.

The iOS jailbreak community has been innovating at a quicker pace than Apple for years. Jailbreakers had multitasking first, tethering first, iTunes WiFi sync first, and so on. There are many jailbreak concepts currently available for iOS 5 that we’d love to see Apple implement in iOS 6. That’s not to say that Apple will adopt all of these concepts, but we expect at least a few to show up in a way that only Apple can make happen.

The concept of shared data plans has been floating around in the U.S. mobile industry for a while.  So far, however, only Verizon has announced plans to offer them. This idea of shared data plans is based on the various family and business plans available from almost all major carriers in which multiple lines and corresponding devices are bundled as a single plan on a single account. That allows all the devices share the same pool of minutes.

While it seems like shared data would function in a similar manner, the issue isn’t quite so clear-cut from the perspective of mobile carriers. In fact, according to AT&T CFO John Stephens, carriers still aren’t sure how to configure shared data options or how much money they would make or lose by implementing them.

Cricket Wireless became the first prepaid carrier to offer the iPhone yesterday, but it’s unlikely it’ll be the last. One source claims that both the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S will also be arriving on Boost Mobile later this year.

Apple’s meticulous focus on design and usability is one of the hallmarks of its products. That attention to detail is evident in almost every Apple product, but iOS devices epitomize Apple minimalist approach and its goal of removing any barrier between the user and a great user experience. Unfortunately, not all iOS developers or mobile web developers get to that same level of minimal and effortless design.

There are probably hundreds of small ways that developers can miss the mark when designing iOS apps or creating content designed for mobile devices, but Gartner research director Johan Jacobs notes that most mobile app/experience design failures boil down to ten common mistakes.

Dolphin is widely regarding as one of the best third-party web browsers for the iPad, and it’s a particular favorite of mine, firmly stuck to the first page of my home screen on all of my iOS devices. With version 5.0 for the iPad, Dolphin gets even better, with the ability to save passwords; autocomplete browsing history, bookmarks, and searches; share URLs via email, and more.

May is Mobile Management Month at Cult of Mac, where we will be profiling a different mobile management company every weekday. You can find all previous entries here  and read our Mobile Management manifesto here.

SOTI provides an interesting mix of mobile device and PC management solutions. On the desktop, it offers Windows PC management as well as remote access and screen sharing tools useful to many help desks. From a mobile perspective, it provides a range features including device and app management. Its on-device software and SDK support a range of useful features for iOS devices including two-way chat with users and remote access options. MobiControl SDK also includes a file sync solution for managing content and internal enterprise app data on iPhones and iPads.

Well what do we have here. With rumors saying that the next iPhone will feature a taller, 4-inch display, a video has surfaced from Japanese site Macotakara detailing the new screen dimensions on video. After getting its hands on what appears to be the parts that have been floating around in the wild for the last few days, Macotakara’s video shows off a 4.07-inch front panel that could easily house the larger display everyone has been talking about.

The hardest part of vacationing, for me, isn’t the crowds or the time in airports, or long lines at travel destinations. That’s what I have an iPhone for, anyway, right? Killing time? What’s most difficult in my world is the deal searching. Getting the best hotel, car, airfare deals is tricky and time consuming, and I just wish I could hand it all off to an assistant and be done with it.

Fortunately, there is an app to help with this sort of thing.

DC Copy is a new app that does one thing. It lets you copy your photos and videos to your iPhone’s camera roll via iTunes? "What?!" I hear you shout. "We can do that already!"

Well, yes, you kinda can, but it’s a testament to the true horror of using iTunes that this app exists at all, and that — furthermore — you’ll probably be downloading it by the end of this short post.

In a recent article over at The Wall Street Journal, Nokia’s challenges trying to make a dent in the iPhone 4S with the Lumia 900 are highlighted by some pretty grim numbers: Nokia makes more than $200 less on each Nokia Lumia 900 sold compared to Apple’s profit on an iPhone 4S.

Netflix announced an updated version of its iOS app on Thursday for customers in the U.S. and Canada. The update is centered around improving the overall user experience while streaming movies and TV shows to an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. One important improvement beyond that, however, is the ability to control mobile data use and avoid expensive overage fees.

Face it. Your Apple TV is boring. It looks just like every other Apple TV, everywhere in the world. Sure, you might say it doesn’t matter, that the whole point of the little puck is to get out of the way and let you watch TV shows and movies, but that shows a lack of imagination. What you need, my friend, is a set of decals. And not just any old decals. You need decals that make your Apple TV look like a NES console.

Healthcare has been a natural fit for the iPad and, to a slightly smaller extent, the iPhone. iOS devices can provide interaction with electronic records and other patient information as well as offer access to reference guides, medical images like X-rays, and even remote diagnoses via FaceTime.

A new program being tested in California’s Marin County aims to bring some of those abilities to paramedics in the field. The program, which equips paramedic teams with iPhones via a specialized QR reader app, is a joint venture with Silicon Valley startup Lifesquare. Its aim is to allow paramedics instant access to patient information using QR codes stickers.

Today Leap Wireless, parent company to Cricket, announced that it has partnered with Apple to bring the iPhone to the U.S. prepaid market for the first time. Starting June 22nd, customers will be able to buy iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S models from Cricket on a prepaid wireless plan. The iPhones have been substantially subsidized by Cricket, indicating that the carrier is taking a financial hit to hop on the Apple bandwagon.

A pair of new job listings on Apple’s website confirm that the company is seeking two engineers to overhaul the existing 30-pin dock connector currently employed by its iOS devices. The listings strengthen rumors Apple will introduce a new dock connector with its sixth-generation iPhone later this year, that will be significantly smaller than its predecessor.

If William Blake was alive today, and was pitching an iPhone case on Kickstarter, he might have called it The Trygger. Alas, he dies in 1827, long before either the iPhone or Kickstarter were invented, leaving the fate of the Trygger in the hands of Scott Phillips and Joel Kamerman.

The Trygger is a bumper-style case with a very clever sliding back which houses a polarizing filter. And if you have a nagging feeling that polarizers are the new fisheyes in the world of iPhone accessories, you’d be right — we covered a clip-on polarizer just last week.

Angry Birds Space is continuing to make its $0.99 price tag look like an absolute bargain with yet another update that brings a brand new, food-themed planet with ten brand new levels to iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

One of the challenges that the BYOD and consumerization trends are creating for IT departments is employee use of public and/or personal cloud services. We’ve covered some of the big challenges this presents in terms of data security and ownership as well as the potential business continuity problems stemming from multiple versions of documents stored across different cloud services by multiple employees.

IT concerns may be more common and well-known, but there are cloud-related issues that employees need to consider as well – particularly if they use a work email address to register for a service, access a service from work, or use a service to store or transfer work-related files.