iPhone - page 411

We absolutely loved that fantastic chart we posted yesterday showing off the litigious melee amongst smartphone companies as they all try to figure out which of their thousands of patents are enforceable and which are nonsense… but, infographically, it was a bit ugly, like a particularly inelegant illustration of magnetic repulsion found in a 70s-era high school physics book.

The updated chart by George Kokkinidis above conveys the same information more attractively, with clean geometric precision, sexy fonts and color coded arcs.

We approve. Maybe the Guardian should hire this guy instead of doing all of their infographics in Powerpoint ’97.

The promise of a free iPhone should always be subject to the skeptical arching of an eyebrow, but Facebook users should be extra cautious over the coming days, as new malware promising free iPhones to those who click on a link is taking the social network by storm.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeDTJZtFfI0

Sharp has just matched the iPhone 4’s touchscreen pixel for pixel with their new IS03 Phone, but that’s not going to stop Apple from crowing about the Retina Display in their latest ad, highlighting the fact that the world’s “highest-resolution phone screen ever” will make “every freckle, every wrinkle” (and presumably every wart, every melanoma, and every port wine stain) look clearer and more beautiful than ever before.

For extra points, check out those impossibly beautiful Twitter friends the iPhone 4 hand model has. Compared to that, my Twitter friends are a sad collection of hobos.

Well, it took nearly a year, gut Google finally put Goggles into its mobile search app for the iPhone, according to a blog post Tuesday.

A feature Android users have enjoyed since last December, Goggles allows a Google mobile Search user to tap on the camera button to search using Goggles. The blog post said “Goggles will analyze the image and highlight the objects it recognizes — just click on them to find out more.”

The feature remains a Google Labs project and thus should evolve and improve with time. It works reasonably well, according to Google, for things such as landmarks, logos, and products, but not so well yet for animals or food.

Via [TechCrunch] [iTunes app link]

Tony Curtis was a wonderfully idiosyncratic man. His roles included a cross-dressing jazz musician, a medieval Briton with a Brooklyn accent and a Lawrence Olivier’s slave boy toy. He once cheated on his blonde bombshell wife, Janet Leigh, to have an affair with another blonde bombshell, Marilyn Monroe… and afterwards almost came to blows with her husband, playwright Arthur Miller.

Now, after his death, add one more charming idiosyncrasy to the list: he was buried with his iPhone.

Apparently, when Tony Curtis was buried on Monday, he was interred with his favorite possessions. Not only did he go into the ground still clutching his iPhone, but the 85-year old Oscar-nominated actor was also buried with a Stetson hat, an Armani scarf, driving gloves and a copy of his favorite novel, Anthony Adverse.

Let’s all hope Mr. Curtis thought ahead of a good charging solution when he’s down there. I’m not sure HyperMac sells a battery big enough.

RIP Mr. Curtis, you wonderfully weird man. You’ll be missed.

[via Gizmodo]

An iPhone bug gave users in Australia an early wake up call — or not one at all — as they adjusted to daylight savings time over the weekend.

The good news: the bug appears to affect only “recurring” alarms.

The bad news: because it appears to affect all of Apple’s products running iOS — as daylight savings goes into effect around the world, you may get it too.

Remember this video from a week or so ago? It was made by the people at London’s BERG studio for people at advertising agency Dentsu, as part of a wider project called “Making Future Magic”.

BERG hit on the idea of breaking words and pictures into slices which are displayed on an iPad screen one at a time. If you capture this display with a long exposure on your camera, you get 3D words and images extruded into thin air.

And now the rest of us can join in the fun, with a $1 app for iPhone and iPad, called Holo-Paint.

Panasonic today proffered up what sorta looks like an iPodaphone-powered mini home theater for the bedside table, complete with Lilliputian hi-res 9-inch screen and audio whiz-bangery.

The MW-20 can display a digital clock/calendar, photos or play movies on its adjustable-angle screen from an iDevice resting in an attached cradle. Stereo sound is enhanced via a 5.6mm “super slim” semi-dome speaker that incorporates a digital-signal processor which optimizes sound for the small speaker, and hopefully makes the MW-20 sound as tantalizingly good as it looks.

No bedside table? The unit is also wall-mountable, includes a SD-card slot and generous 2-gig internal memory, and will automatically adjust the brightness of the screen to match the ambient lighting. The MW-20 hits stores in late November, priced at $250.

Here’s a bit of fun for any would-be street magicians among you. Card2Phone lets you do tricks with playing cards and common American, British, European and Australian coins.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOnUmO7oLgA

ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection is a new ZX Spectrum gamer for the iPhone that’s made its way in to the App Store today. The application features 6 full games, each with game-specific controls, and it’s only $0.99!

The six games included in the first release are:

• Turbo Esprit #3 on top 100 best games, voted for by visitors to World of Spectrum
• Saboteur #10 on top 100 best games
• Chuckie Egg the classic, developed by Nigel Alderton
• Harrier Attack inspired by the conflict in the South Atlantic
• Frank Bruno’s Boxing the UK #1 Best-Seller
• Buggy Boy the arcade original driving game

Each game is 100% original, and is accompanied by authentic Spectrum sounds. There are extensive playing instructions for each game built-in, and you can play in both portrait and landscape modes.

Elite Systems, the developer of ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection, has explained in the description of its app that volume one is still a little rough around the edges, and that any issues you may experienced will be ironed out in future updates. Some of its plans for future updates include a further six games with volume 2, which will be released within a month, and then an in-app shop to purchase more games with volume 3. And Elite’s plans don’t stop there:

Commercial agreements have already been reached with two more publishers (including one of the 80s biggest) taking to more than 200 the number of games available for inclusion in the forthcoming updates or volumes of ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection. (This will keep us busy through to Vol. #6 and beyond). Also, we’re in discussion with the owners of 100s more, including some of the most well known, with the aim of bringing them to you too.

Check out the video at the top of this post to see ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection in action.

This week’s top iOS games features EA Sports’ latest addition to the Fifa series in Fifa 11, which delivers console quality gaming to your iPhone. Offering an outstanding visual experience on the Retina display, and improved controls that make for fluid gameplay, Fifa 11 gives other soccer games in the App Store some great competition for 2011.

BIT.TRIP BEAT HD is an arcade game from Namco that fuses Pong with interactive beats in a colorful, pixelated environment. Listen to the different beat progressions and try to survive the onslaught of spectacular retro visuals as you bounce back beats from where they came. BIT.TRIP BEAT also features an intense multiplayer mode that allows you team up with your friends.

The incredibly addictive 0.03 Seconds Pro tests your reaction time using various different puzzles over 24 challenging stages, and then rates your score out of 5 stars. The puzzles seem simple, but you’ll be tearing your hair out as you try to beat the reaction time for each level and grab a 5-star score.

We also have an awesome augmented reality game that’s probably the best yet for iOS, and a chance to win one of the games featured in this week’s post.

This week’s must-have iOS apps features a new application that allows you to have free, high quality video calls over both Wi-Fi and 3G. Tango Video Calls is free a application to download, and works on other smartphones as well as the iPhone.

PDF Expert for iPad is Readdle’s latest application that delivers the ultimate solution for all your PDF needs on your iPad. It lets you read and annotate PDF documents, highlight text and make notes. You can also edit the documents you have stored on your Dropbox, iDisk, and Google Docs accounts.

PlainText is a free text editor compatible with all of your iOS devices that uses your Dropbox account to save your work. It has a paper-like interface that provides a nice, simple feel, and it’s a great substitute to iOS’s built-in Notes app.

One of the reasons owners of the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS have been waiting for a jailbreak for iOS 4.1 is to enable the iPhone 4’s impressive HDR functionality on their older handsets… a hack which is already available for jailbroken 3G and 3GS users on the iOS 4.1 beta through a Cydia app.

It looks pretty likely, though, that these users won’t need to jailbreak their devices to enable HDR functionality… Apple seemingly intends to add HDR in a software update coming down the line.

Look-Up is an augmented reality shoot-em-up for iPhone (not iPad or iPod) in a Space Invaders style. And it’s fun.

Swarms of 1950s-style flying saucers fly down at you from the sky – you point your phone back at them and hit the fire button. Zappity zap zap. I tried it this morning in my office in flooding-with-rain Wiltshire, but I suspect it would be more exciting to play when you’re outdoors in the sun, like the guys in this demo video:

OK, you’ve used your iPhone to control robots. Now you can turn it into one, if you have the same techno wizard chops as Kazu Terasaki, the guy who’s done just that.

Here’s the video:

Perhaps “walking” isn’t quite the right word here. They’re sort of “sliding” their way across the table. But hey, all robots have to start somewhere, right?

(Via Gizmodo, and about half of Twitter this morning)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANpzCJHcvU

Augmented reality has been buzzed about, spun and just generally been hyped to death. Problem is, the technology has so far been used more for flash than actual function, with features like Yelp’s cool-but-useless “monocle” view a typical application.

But that’s about to change. Spearheading new possibilities — at least as far as the iPhone is concerned — is German-based augmented-reality expert Metaio, who yesterday flexed its muscles at its own AR conference in Germany.

Beijing’s flagship Apple store closed at noon after opening at 7am Wednesday, after massive crowds and store personnel began pushing and shoving as some customers bought 20 and 30 iPhone 4 units at a time, with the clear intention of turning around and selling them on the street, according to a report at the China-based blog MICgadget.

Perhaps the idea of removing the two-phone purchase limit and allowing Chinese iPhone 4 fans to by them in unlimited quantities was not such a great one.

At press time MICgadget is reporting that sanity has been restored: “All four Apple retail stores in China now require customer to show his/her identity card while purchasing the iPhone 4. Every customer could only purchase one iPhone 4. Apple employees will unbox the iPhone 4 for customers and activate the phone right away. So, the iPhone 4 scalpers could not resell the iPhone 4 as “brand new” and buy in large quantities.”

Last time we heard about the iControlPad, the long-delayed physical gamepad for the iPhone and iPod Touch had finally completed its two-and-a-half year journey from the brainpan of its makers to their hands as the very first model dropped off the production lines… now boasting a modular design that would allow the iControlPad to be easily updated to support future iOS handhelds. Since the official site was about to start taking preorders for the first 3,000 units, we imagined that the iControlPad was pretty much done.

Apparently not, though. As fallout to Cupertino’s recent decision to sue Sanho for using repurposed MagSafe adapters and iPod Dock Connectors in their line of HyperMac batteries, the iControlPad team has apparently gotten nervous about connecting the gamepad through the iPhone’s dock connector. Instead, they are looking to switch over to Bluetooth support.

Just a friendly reminder: if you fancy a free case or bumper for your iPhone 4, today is your last day that Uncle Steve is going to make it easy for you to get one.

Yup. Today, September 30th, is the day that Apple’s free iPhone 4 case program comes to a close, making getting a bumper to wrap around your attenuation-prone iPhone 4 antenna as easy as downloading an app and waiting (quite) a few weeks delivery.

With it’s sleek minimalism of line, pearly white hue and surrounding belt of pale wood, Studio Conran’s latest iPhone and iPod dock could be either the speaker dock your Danish-design living room has been waiting for… or the far louder doppleganger of your Brookstone humidifier.

Designed (or at least branded) by famous English designer, retailer and writer Sir Terence Conran, his eponymous speaker dock boasts two fifteen watt stereo speakers, a large volume knob on the side and a streamlined niche to dock its sexy remote.

Recent reports coming out of China that Intel might not have much more time as the exclusive supplier of 3G chipsets for the iPhone and iPad wouldn’t be reason to start expecting a new iPhone coming to a Verizon outlet near you by themselves, but when those reports also peg Qualcomm as Intel’s baseband successor and the possibility of a CDMA iPhone (and iPad!) starts looking a lot more plausible.

Taking a break from the Smartphone Wars to fight a growing threat, Apple and RIM are speaking with one voice when it comes to a common scourge afflicting their App Stores:  No More Fart Apps!

According to Alan Panezic, RIM’s Vice President of Platform Product Management:

For us, apps are all about adding real value to the end-user’s life and creating revenue for developer. We don’t need 200 fart apps in App World. Those are apps you’ll use three or four times then never open again. [recombu]

This mirrors the sentiment expressed by Apple three weeks ago with the release of their App Store Development Guidelines:

We have over 250,000 apps in the App Store. We don’t need any more Fart apps. If your app doesn’t do something useful or provide some form of lasting entertainment, it may not be accepted. [Apple]

You know the scourge must be serious when Apple is forced to take this stance even though their own Director of Applications Technology (and Influencer of App Store Approvals), Phillip Shoemaker, previously developed fart apps for the iPhone.

This was probably inevitable.  I suspect we’ll survive.  But Cartman is furious.

[via SlashDot]

Sega have been working hard throughout 2010 to bring Sonic 4 to the iPhone, which they confirmed back in May would be coming to the iOS. Today they have announced an official release date of October 7th!

Sega have ported two of their Sonic the Hedgehog games to iOS to date, and these have received mixed reviews. Some people love them for bringing their favorite childhood hedgehog to their palms, while others are disappointed with them for providing slow, jumpy gameplay, and a poor control system.

I’m very much looking forward to Sonic 4, and I’m hoping these issues will be ironed out in Sega’s latest port. Touch Arcade have been lucky enough to get their hands on a nearly complete build of the game at E3 in June, and they were blown away by it.

Interestingly, the release date of Sonic 4 for iOS means that the game will be available in the App Store before it arrives on any console; it won’t arrive on the Wii until October 11th, the PlayStation 3 until October 12th, and the Xbox a day later on the 13th.

Halloween’s coming up, and I know what you’re thinking: “What costume can I wear that will also accommodate me pocket room enough to carry around my iPhone with me without delving into the more odious choice of nature’s pocket to store my cherished handset?”

Don’t sweat it: we’ve got you covered. Just go as Batman this year and pick yourself up this TDK Batman Utility Pouch, complete with a functional iPhone holster.

Made from cowhide leather, the belt comes with a bronze metal finish, chrome studs and adjustable buckle; only 750 will be made, with each one costing $149. Don’t expect veracity for your money, though. Shamefully, the smartphone Batman uses in the Dark Knight is indisputably a Nokia, not an iPhone.

[via Chipchick]