iPhone - page 456

Before you rush out and buy that brand new iPhone 3G S, consider the suggestions here. For some iPhone 3G owners, the 3G S may be unnecessary. For those who simply cannot wait read on, because there are ways to minimize the overall cost of the upgrade. In fact, you may even turn a profit.

The iPhone 3G S will be subsidized by AT&T for qualified customers ($199 for the 16 GB model and $299 for the 32 GB model). Unfortunately, if you currently own an iPhone 3G you are not a qualified customer because you entered into a two-year contract with AT&T last year. Unsubsidized, the iPhone 3G S is priced at an exorbitant $599 and $699 (plus the $18 setup fee).

AT&T is probably not going to alter its stance on the matter because, like it or not, offering subsidized phones only to new customers is standard industry practice. If you are an existing iPhone 3G owner, and do not have money to burn, consider all your options after the jump.

Language app iLingua is keeping down prices for summer, one dictionary/phrase book will set you back $1.99 on iTunes.

The Spanish language demo looks promising: words or phrases have images to make connecting the dots easy. The woman speaks very slowly, which is good for learning, thought it may sound a little silly if you cow out and just play a phrase like, “Hey this room is way too small” to a native speaker.

Background music on a loop is distracting and makes the sounds harder to hear, not clear whether you can turn that off or it’s just a demo thing.

Available in Russian, German, Chinese (Mandarin) and Japanese — would’ve loved to have this for last year’s trip to Shanghai, where trying to get a restaurant reservation from the concierge (in what seemed slow, careful English) elicited nervous laughter and frustration all around…
We’ve written about using language/dictionary iPhone apps on the job —  have you used one traveling?

If you haven’t seen the latest Star Trek movie yet, or if you’re interested in rocking a genuine Trek look on your iPhone or iPod Touch anyhow, you will seriously want to consider picking up Talkndog’s super-cool 99¢ Star Radio Communicator (App Store link) app.

Its trillium mesh cover flips out and animates open with a flick of the wrist, exposing the communicator interface. The opening action is accompanied by the familiar “chirping” sound known to old-school Trekkies the world over. Under the mesh antenna “cover” you get a hypnotic spinning black-and-white spiral, with three blinking colored lights and two metal buttons below. One button actually loads a working retro-modern iPhone dialer, complete with sounds that will make you think you’re punching in a star date.

[iPhoneSavior]

T-Mobile.nl has posted specs for the iPhone 3GS that indicate Apple’s new 16GB and 32GB mobile devices will sport 600 MHz processors and carry 256MB of RAM when they hit the market later this month.

Current iPhones operate with a 412 MHz chip and have but 128 MB of RAM, so it would appear the new models will be equipped to fulfill the promises of a much faster, snappier UI that Apple made in introducing the phones Monday at WWDC in San Francisco.

The company has given developers at WWDC few details about the guts of the new models, but they are believed to run a new PowerVR SGX graphics processing unit which provides support for OpenGL ES 2.0., which is good news for users, though it could cause headaches for developers who want their apps to be backward compatible with original iPhones and 3G models introduced in 2008.

Stay tuned for the inevitable iFixit teardown shortly after the phones are released to find out what’s really underneath that oil-resistant glass.

Trust Apple to deliver scintillating graphic evidence of just how revolutionary and amazing its impact is at events such as the Worldwide Developers Conference taking place this week at San Francisco’s Moscone Center West.

The company is drawing raves for the massive ‘hyperwall’ it has erected in the conference hall, made from twenty 30″ Cinema Displays showcasing the icons of 20,000 of the most popular applications on the iTunes App Store. The icons pulse and send a light wave rippling outward every time an app is downloaded from the store, creating a stunning visual depiction of just how in-demand are the services of developers attending the show.

Apple has said 3.000 apps are downloaded every minute and is giving conference attendees quite an eyeful of what that can look like this week.

As a child of 1980s gaming, I’m used to injury from videogames. In my younger days, I got arm pain from too many hours parked in front of the Atari and C64, and even recent years have seen pain caused by ‘too much Space Invaders Extreme DS’ syndrome.

Therefore, although it came as something of a surprise that I’ve now been injured by iPhone gaming, it probably should have been expected. Two days ago, I had rather serious pain at the end of my index finger. Closer inspection showed that the finger surface wasn’t returning to normal when prodded. And the middle finger was also showing symptoms.

Puzzled and in quite a bit of pain, it dawned on me that Flight Control was to blame. Too many hours landing tiny planes on tiny airports caused finger damage reminiscent of my guitaring days. Unfortunately, since I’m British and therefore only have the ability to complain about things in a vaguely sarcastic and satirical fashion, rather than unleash laywers on Apple, Firemint and any current manufactureres of aircraft and videogames (no matter how related), I’ll have to content myself with the fact that Flight Control’s recent update is rather spiffy, rather than rolling around in my underpants on a $100,000,000 out-of-court settlement.

The latest developer build of Snow Leopard and the iPhone 3.0 OS software (which aqllows tethering) are available on the Bittorrent file-sharing network.

Programmers at WWDC got the latest version of Snow Leopard on a DVD, but now the same build (10a380) is available on Bittorrent. The build is 5.84GB and will require a dual layer DVD burner to install. Apple said on Monday the developer build of Snow Leopard is “near complete,” but will likely see extensive changes between now and September, when it will be officially released.

Likewise, the final version of the iPhone 3.0 OS — which will be available officially next week on June 17 — can be downloaded from the file-sharing networks. And for some inexplicable reason, the software supports tethering.

The 3.0 software can be easily installed via iTunes onto an iPhone or iPod touch. However, users have to download the correct version of the software for their device. That is, the firmware for the original iPhone will not work on the iPhone 3G. The 9to5 website says the software may make it harder to unlock the phone’s SIM. In the comments, the site’s readers report no major problems installing or running the software.

“It works fine,” said one commenter. “You can upgrade your current 2.0 firmware in iTunes and not lose any data – all my apps still work perfectly and the phone has been running fine all day (installed last night), snappier than before even. seem to be losing the cool ‘fade’ action you get when quitting an app a lot of the time though.”

Previous developer builds of the 3.0 software have been available on Bittorrent for some time, but installing it required registering the device’s ID through a developer’s account. The latest OS build however does not require device registration, and is said to the same software that will be officially available next week.

NOTE: Only a desperate freak installs dodgy software off the internet onto their cell phone just a week before getting it officially, and for free. Proceed at your own risk.

One day after Apple’s triumphant WWDC, angry iPhone users are burning up Twitter with invective aimed at AT&T.

Twitter users are complaining in their thousands about the ways AT&T has dropped the ball: no iPhone 3G S subsidy for current iPhone customers; and no support for important new features like MMS and tethering when the new iPhone launches on June 19.

The #attfail hashtag is attracting many of the complaints about missing features and upgrades, as is the #iphone3gs hashtag, and AT&T’s official corporate account. Hundreds of complaints are being sent directly to the account, and there appears to be no messages at all defending the company.

Meanwile, a pair of Twitter petitions, or “twititions,” are hoping to pressure AT&T and 02, the UK iPhone carrier, to offer “reasonable upgrade prices” for current iPhone 3G customers.

The O2 twitition has attracted about 2,500 signatures by Tuesday afternoon (PST), and the AT&T twitition about 1,500. The AT&T twitition was started later in the day, but both are spreading fast through retweets.

No matter how great an Apple Keynote goes, there are always disappointments. Changes not made, rumors left unrealized. For this year’s WWDC, Apple actually managed to avoid most of these (other than anything that has to do with the strength of AT&T’s network or upgrade pricing for existing customers). We got a more powerful iPhone, meaningful upgrades to the unibody MacBook Pro line, and release announcements for both iPhone OS 3.0 and OS X Snow Leopard. Other than a few pipe dreams (Steve Jobs riding in on a white tiger, cold fusion-powered tabler), Apple did a great job by hitting a whole bunch of base hits. No home runs, but no strike-outs, either.

Except for one thing: the all-new iPhone 3G S looks exactly like a previous-generation iPhone, to the point that there is no way at all to tell the new 16 GB model from the model it replaces — even in the fine print on the back. This was a shock to many folks, myself included, who were expecting Apple to change things up with a new black frame to replace the familiar chrome and a rubberized matte case to provide a more durable experience.

Why? What could Apple possibly gain from letting its industrial design team copy and paste? Don’t they want us all lost in lust?

Of course they do — which is why Apple has been putting design resources into product lines that are either brand new or waning. The iPhone sells itself today. A specification bump alone is enough to set off an Internet frenzy about AT&T’s unjust policies (check Twitter if you don’t believe me), and there will be longer lines outside Apple Stores on June 19 to get what is ultimately an incremental upgrade to the iPhone than there were this weekend to launch the much-hyped Palm Pre. That’s with the case staying exactly the same — what could Apple possibly gain by throwing a ton of work into a redesign that can’t even alter the screen or home button?

Look at the current line of unibody laptops. A year ago, Apple’s notebook line-up was a complete shambles. MacBook Pros still looked like late-generation PowerBooks. The black and white MacBooks were under-powered and over-heavy. And Apple offered nothing to someone who wanted a small form factor and significant power. Apple Design first launched the MacBook Air in January and then rolled out its signature design elements into every single product in the family. That kind of design focus has made the unibody MacBook Pros some of the best computers Apple has ever made, in addition to being the best-selling in company history. The design team’s abilities transformed Apple’s line-up from long in the tooth to desirable in a few months.

So what’s Apple got the industrial team cooking up now? I can’t say with certainty, but people better-connected than me claim that the long-requested iTablet is real and on its way — exactly the kind of new to the world product that demands serious design attention from Jonathan Ive and team. The scenarios of use are different. A bigger exposed screen raises serious questions about protection. And, quite honestly, I don’t know if anyone outside of Silicon Valley will quite know what to make of it unless Apple designs it perfectly and makes it very clear how to use it and why you would want to. It needs attention to thrive.

Eleven days from now, when I pull my iPhone 3G S out of its box, I will be a little sorry that its back is glossy and fingerprint-laden. But I’ll be happier to know that Apple’s design team is working on something new, interesting and complex — exactly the kind of problem they’re brilliant at solving.

Stood in line last year to buy an iPhone 3G, and count yourself a loyal Apple customer? Well, we’re all idiots, because Apple and AT&T just fucked us royally.

The iPhone 3G S is not going to be subsidized for current iPhone 3G customers. If you bought an iPhone 3G last year, the new iPhone is going to cost you $499 for the entry-level 8GB model, $599 for the 16GB version, and $699  for the 32GB.

Don’t believe me? Here it is in black and white on Apple’s website, literally buried in the fine print:

“For non-qualified customers, including existing AT&T customers who want to upgrade from another phone or replace an iPhone 3G, the price with a new two-year agreement is $499 (8GB), $599 (16GB), or $699 (32GB).”

Whether this applies to iPhone 3G customers after July 11, 2009 — the one year anniversary of the iPhone 3G launch — is unclear. Last year when the iPhone 3G went on sale, Apple and AT&T offered subsidized pricing to owners of the original iPhone (and had owned it for a year).

The prices advertised during today’s WWDC keynote — $199 (16GB) and $299 (32GB) — applies to “new and qualifying customers,” which apparently doesn’t include current iPhone 3G customers. I’ve put in a call to AT&T for an explanation.

UPDATE: AppleInsider suggests that AT&T will offer subsidized pricing for iPhone 3G customer after a year of ownership — I think. It is not 100% clear to me that this is what AT&T is saying.

UPDATE 2: I just checked Apple’s online eligibility tool, and it says I must currently pay the full retail price, but on July 30, I “may qualify for a standard iPhone upgrade.” What this means is also unclear. Is it the full $200 subsidy? I bought my iPhone 3G in late July, a couple of weeks after its debut. See the screenshot below.

UPDATE 3: iPhone 3G customers are eligible for the full upgrade price after about 18 months, reports Ars Technica, which spoke to an AT&T spokesman. Depends on the account. For those of us who bought the iPhone 3G in July, we likely won’t qualify for the full discount until December. Arse. It’s actually cheaper to cancel your current plan, pay the ~$175 penalty, and sign up as a brand new customer. That’s not how to treat early adopters. Where’s the nearest Sprint store?

As well as faster hardware and a better camera, the new iPhone 3GS has a surprise feature that totally sells it for me: an oleophobic coating that makes the screen resistant to face oil and fingerprints.

“The display also features an oil-resistant coating that keeps the iPhone screen clean,” says Apple on a new iPhone 3GS technology webpage.

Oleophobic coatings are used in some sunglasses, making them resistant to greasy fingers, oily faces and dust.

A Japanese iPhone accessory maker, New Sharp Image, offers an oil-reistant screen protector for the iPhone and other devices.

With or without Steve Jobs, Apple has the best lineup of hardware and software it has ever offered.

All in all, the WWDC keynote showed that Apple is paying attention to all the right things. It’s got a great line-up of affordable hardware that’s fast, feature-packed and environmentally friendly. The software loaded on top is designed for user-freindliness and ease of use. And Apple is no longer alone: it has thousands of partners in software and hardware who will push Apple’s platforms in new directions.

And while Apple is making a stealth enterprise play by supporting Micorosft Exchange, it’s not devoting features or resources to taking on Microsoft head on. Instead, Apple is concentrating on its core market: home users. And it’s got a killer lineup for consumers, especially in software.

* The new iPhone 3GS is a killer device. The speed bump, better camera and digital compass (which will enable a raft of amazing location-based services) will tempt iPhone users to upgrade in droves. The iPhone is becoming finally a true mobile computer, and no one has anything that comes close.

* The $99 iPhone is the Palm Pre killer. Who now will pay $199 for an iPhone-imitator on Sprint, when the original costs less than half the price?

* The new MacBook Pro laptops running Snow Leopard are the best laptops on the market, bar none. Even if other laptops have good hardware, Microsoft’s Vista is their Achilles heel. With a great built-in battery, memory-card slots and the return of firewire, MacBooks will sell like hotcakes. Netbooks be damned. The real computing market — and most of the money — is in laptops, and Apple’s got the best available.

* Snow Leopard looks like a great upgrade, despite the lack of whizbang new features. Instead, it will offer upgrades in all the right areas: Web browsing, better multimedia, easy of use and speed. Snow Leopard has tons of little touches that will add up to an extremely polished, consumer-oriented operating system that focuses on the things consumers do — browse the Web, watch videos, and communicate with friends. That’s why things that seem small and minor — like today’s WWDC demonstration of easy video editing and uploading in QuickTime — really counts. Apple is focused, as usual, on improving the user experience. And unlike Vista, Snow Leopard delivers.

* Green. The new MacBooks are rated EPEAT Gold — the highest standard of energy efficiency, green production and recyclability.The importance of being green can’t be understated. There’s a huge shift in consumer attitudes, especially among Apple’s educated, upscale demographic, who are demanding environmentally-friendly products. Being green is a huge selling point, and Apple now offers some of the greenest hardware.

It may not be everything many people were hoping for, but Apple announced a new iPhone Monday at WWDC, the iPhone 3GS.

“The S stands for speed,” said Phil Schiller, Apple CIO, telling the keynote crowd, “It’s the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet. What’s inside is entirely new. It’s a REALLY fast iPhone. Everything you do will have incredible speedups.”

The new hardware looks very similar to the current 3G model, but sports a 3 megapixel autofocus camera with video capability.

The new camera is not forward-facing as many hoped it might be, but its autofocus features a cool tap-to-focus functionality. Tap on the part of the photo you want to focus on, and it automatically focuses to that point of the image. It also automatically handles exposure and white balance. It’s got better low-light sensitivity and an auto-macro feature, with the ability to focus on things as close as 10cm away.

The phone’s camera application has a switch that swaps between still photo and video mode, supporting 30FPS, VGA with audio, auto-focus, auto-white balance and auto-exposure.

Other performance upgrades include:

• voice control: “Call Scott Forstall” — if there is more than one entry, it will ask which one you want (i.e. home, office, etc) — or for the iPod function: “play The Killers”
• digital compass: the compass app shows your orientation, has integration with Maps — if you double click, the map will reorientate itself
• new accessibility options — VoiceOver for content and controls, zooming, color inversion, mono audio, etc.
• instant remote wipe
• encrypted iTunes backups
• business friendly data encryption
• promised improved battery life. The iPhone will now get up to 9 hours of internet surfing, 10 hours of video, 30 hours of audio, 12 hours of 2g talk-time, 5 hours of 3g talk-time, which, if true, is a major upgrade.

The iPhone 3GS will be available June 19th in two models: $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB. The existing 8GB 3G model will remain available and sell for $99 beginning today.

Apple’s Scott Forstall just showed off the previously-rumored Find My iPhone feature in the iPhone 3.0 OS.

Find My iPhone is a MobileMe service that helps you find your lost iPhone, or wipe it remotely.

The service allows you to send the iPhone an alert sound that will play even if the phone is in silent mode — good for finding it in the back of the couch. It will also display a message on the home screen, such as another phone number, in case a stranger found it and the screen is locked. Clever.

If you think the phone has been permanently lost or stolen, you can also wipe all the data remotely. And if it shows up again, you can restore from a backup.

No company does product release hype and tease like Apple.

First Scott Forstall, Apple’s iPhone VP ran through the numbers: 1,000,000 SDK downloads, 50,000 Apps on the App Store, 40M iPhones/iPod Touches sold, 1B+ apps downloaded.

Cue to the inspirational video of iPhone developers telling their stories. Not a dry eye in the house. Finish with quick cuts of customers naming their favorite apps…

All of setting the stage for announcement of the update to iPhone’s operating system, 3.0. It’s got 100 new features including the long-awaited cut, copy and paste functionality, which works across applications, landscape mode for Mail, Notes and Messages, and shake to undo.

Another much anticipated feature, MMS, will be supported in 76 countries by 29 cellular service providers at launch, though iPhone’s US carrier, AT&T won’t be quite ready for it until ‘the end of summer.’ It’s a really sad thing how US technology behemoths can’t seem to get in step, isn’t it?

Further adding to AT&T’s impression as an albatross around Apple’s neck, Forstall had to admit the US carrier is not among the 22 worldwide that will support tethering in iPhone 3.0, which will allow users to share a network connection with Macs and PCs, wired over USB, or wireless with Bluetooth. It’s a seamless experience, with no need to run any software once it’s turned on. And it won’t be available to customers in Apple’s largest market.

Sprint and the Palm Pre got all the ink and media attention, but a far more dazzling technological breakthrough also made its debut this past Saturday: the world’s first ‘Digital Superbike,’ the MotoCzysz E1pc.

Among the astonishing things about Michael Czysz’s invention — it’s a zero emissions racing bike with no gas, no oil, no clutch, no need to even warm up the engine (there is none) — it uses an Apple iPhone for its in-dash instrumentation.

MotoCzysz has made public no details exactly how the iPhone operates with the bike, but it is set to race in the world’s oldest motorcycle race, the Isle of Man TT, on June 12, after which we’ll hopefully learn more about it.

For now, we can just gaze in wonder at this American-made beauty and simply guess at the reasons why it doesn’t sport a Blackberry Storm or an Android G1.

[Via Engadget]

The line for this morning’s Schillernote at WWDC was already several blocks long before the first light of dawn. See the pictures on Flickr and reports on Twitter. Compare to this unintentionally hilarious collection of pre-dawn Palm Pre lineup photos.

Talking of Twitter, there’s been several tweets saying Steve Jobs has been spotted at WWDC.

However, it looks like a false rumor that’s spreading fast. Most of the Twitter sightings seem to be a retweet of a tweet by Michael Fey, known as MrRooni, who said: “Holy damn I just saw Steve Jobs walk through Moscone! #wwdc.”

‘I’m guessing, but MrRooni’s tweet looks like a joke to me. But now the joke is spreading, and others are treating it as real.

Spatial View, the company that launched the Wazabee 3Dee shell, a cool protective case with removable lens for viewing 3D content on Apple’s iPhone, has announced the release of an SDK and interlacing software to enable third party developers to create and view applications for Apple’s mobile devices in vivid 3D.

The Wazabee 3DeeInterlacing SDK contains tools for developers to create 3D content for the iPhone, including a runtime component that allows games and applications to run in 3D when using the 3DeeShell. The 3DeeInterlacer enables content creators, licensees and production houses to interlace existing content and distribute it for display on 3DeeShell-enabled iPhones. Both run on Mac OS X and are available to download for free at the Wazabee site.

Many are predicting that 3D, long a source of curiosity but plagued by the need for special glasses to view it, will be the next big thing in multimedia. With more and more applications and hardware being developed to support 3D viewing, it should be interesting to see the mobile games and content developers will produce with the Spatial View SDK.

[IntoMobile]

Taking Steve Jobs at his original word – that web apps would make the best use of iPhone and iPod Touch capabilities – iPorn launched Monday a new web app developed using Apple’s iPhone specifications and applying its unique accelerometer and touch navigation.

As Apple prepares to open the doors on WWDC in San Francisco on Monday and possibly announce a new video-capable iPhone, few may be as excited about the possibilities to come as the adult entertainment industry.

The iPorn app is loaded with social networking features such as high-res video streaming, the ability to post and share photos and videos, create member profiles, exchange private messages and more. Registered users can personally interact with amateur and professional adult performers via live video webcams, chat and mobile texting. Members can send adult videos from the website to their iPhone or iPod Touch-equipped friends. Versions optimized for other mobile phones, such as the Blackberry, Android and Palm Pre, are expected to follow later this summer.

To help celebrate iPhone 3.0 firmware and the possibility of video-capable mobile devices from Apple, iPorn is sending the iPorn Bikini Girls to Moscone Center in a high-tech iPorn-equipped vehicle for free photo ops with conference attendees. Later in the evening the company will host an (unofficial) 9-hour launch party at San Francisco’s famed Gold Club, just a block away from the conference site at Moscone Center West.

The party, which will go from 5:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m., is open to WWDC attendees, investors, and media.

It’s no secret the adult entertainment industry has often been at the forefront of technology, producing some of the Internet’s most sophisticated websites and multimedia-rich user user experiences well ahead of many more mainstream and socially acceptable industries.

It’s therefore no surprise the porn industry will among the first fully equipped to let users get the most out of Apple’s innovations in mobile device technology.

By Peter Yan, a graphic designer from Melbourne, Australia.

File image

Smartphone users are spending more time using native applications on their mobile devices to the detriment of other technology and media, but the mere availability of applications is not the primary driver of buying decisions, according to a report by Gravity Tank.

The Chicago-based consulting firm surveyed more than 1,000 iPhone and Android G1 users during April and May and found those users had downloaded an average of nearly 24 apps to their mobile devices, among which they use an average of almost 7 per day.

Nearly half (48 percent) of phone owners report shopping for apps more than once a week, while slightly more (49 percent) report using apps on their phone for more than 30 minutes a day.

Other technologies and media, such as gaming devices, GPS devices, newspapers and TV, all suffer in the light of app-enabled smartphones, as people reported the ability to consolidate multiple devices into one as one of the top two reasons they decided to buy a smartphone in the first place.

Leading the pack of reasons people buy a smartphone is the ability to check email and calendars (74 percent cited this). The availability of new games and applications figured into the buying decision for 67 percent of the survey respondents.

The survey results cast an interesting take on all the pre-launch hoopla and positive reviews garnered for the Palm Pre, which will be available to the public starting tomorrow.

Palm’s highly regarded smartphone entry is coming to market with a decided dearth of 3rd party apps available for it and Palm executives have been somewhat cagey regarding the timeline for development of apps for the Pre.

With Apple gearing up its own hype machine for plenty of noise beginning Monday at WWDC it may be some time before Palm is likely to catch up to iPhone’s lead in both the smartphone device and applications markets.

[New York Times]

Edge, a way-cool game for iPhone and iPod Touch by Mobigame, has been removed from the iTunes App Store pending resolution of a trademark dispute being pressed by a guy named Tim Langdell, who claims to own worldwide rights to the use of the word ‘edge,’ at least in the realm of video gaming.

Langdell, whose company Edge Games last developed a video game in 1994, has a reputation in the gaming community as a ‘trademark troll’ and has gained the enmity of a number of gaming aficionados with his latest ploy against Mobigame.

The popular Edge title won the prestigious Milthon Award for Best Mobile Game in 2008 and is designated a Gold level game by Pocket Gamer.

The dispute, and Apple’s apparent policy of removing titles from the App Store at the whiff of legal action, make for a sad commentary on the revenue generated by app developers and what some are willing to do to exercise control over it.

[Daring Fireball]

By Jonathan Zschau

Apple released the iPhone 3G on July 11th, 2008, which gives you early adopters just a few weeks before your one-year warranty runs out.

What does this mean? It means you should give your iPhone a good hard look to determine if it’s in your best interest to take your iPhone to your local Apple Store to try to obtain a replacement.

There are at least 18 well-known defects with the iPhone, all of which oblige Apple to replace the handset for free. All are detailed are over the next few pages, including ways to test your iPhone to make sure everything is functioning properly.

Issues that Apple considers grounds for replacement include hairline cracks, discolored screens, dead pixels, flakey WiFi, dodgy GPS and crackly speakers.

If your precious iPhone is suffering from any of these problems, read on to make sure you’re properly prepared before you head down to your local Apple store and get a replacement. Hurry, before it’s too late.

What it is: Kind of a ‘Sims lite’, set on a primitive island. Canned animations and environment changes can be triggered by touch-screen and motion gestures.

Why it’s good: To be honest, the first time Pocket God ended up on my iPhone, I didn’t think I’d play it much. It had charm, but after ten minutes I was done. However, the Bolt Creative team has now provided a staggering 17 updates to the toy, from new animations to fun minigames. Given that the game is only a buck and updates are free, it’s so far cost just over five cents per revision, and it’s safe to say that many of the updates have provided more than a buck’s worth of entertainment, let alone a nickle’s worth.

Where to get it: Pocket God costs $0.99 on App Store. If you decide to download, don’t read the instructions—just explore and find out what you can do with the island and its inhabitants. The game’s much more fun as a voyage of discovery than something to rush through in a few idle moments.

The first round of Palm Pre reviews are in — and they are generally very positive. The iPhone has a real contender, especially if the Pre comes to Verizon in a few months — a good smartphone on a good network.

The big three gadget reviewers — Walt Mossberg, David Pogue and Ed Baig — all give the Pre very positive reviews, with a few reservations.

Pogue is the most excited. “One of the world’s best phones,” Pogue says in his enthusiastic New York Times review. Pogue is very positive about the Pre, saying it’s a worthy iPhone contender, despite noting drawbacks like the lack of apps and poor battery life.

Ed Baig of USA Today also gives the Pre a thumbs up, but also notes the lack of apps and battery life. Nonetheless, he says the Pre “stacks up well against Apple’s blockbuster device, and in some ways even surpasses it… Palm has delivered a device that will keep it in the game and give it a chance to star in it.”

The big granddady of reviewers, the Wall Street Journal‘s Walt Mossberg, is the most measured, giving a positive review but saying Palm has some catching up to do, especially if the gen-3 iPhone is announced next week.

“The Pre is a smart, sophisticated product that will have particular appeal for those who want a physical keyboard,” says Mossberg. “It is thoughtfully designed, works well and could give the iPhone and BlackBerry strong competition — but only if it fixes its app store and can attract third-party developers.”