iphone

My predictions for today’s Apple event

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Invite to Apple's 10th September event

Today Apple is announcing something, at around 6pm BST. It’s probably the seventh iteration of the iPhone, and the rumours suggest that this is the case, but until Tim Cook steps up on stage this evening we won’t know for sure.

I’ve got a few predictions, mostly based on the rumours that I’ve been reading over the past few weeks. I don’t actively seek out rumours but they do appear on sites like The Unofficial Apple Weblog and Twitter from time to time. So here’s what I expect:

Two new iPhone models, including a budget model

There are credible rumours that Apple will release two new models of the iPhone today – a new iPhone 5S, and a cheaper iPhone 5C. The 5S will probably have the same form factor as the existing iPhone 5 but have some extra hardware features and a beefed-up processor – possibly the A6X as used in the fourth-generation iPad but maybe a new A7 processor. I also believe the rumours of a fingerprint scanner on the home button.

The iPhone 5C will be a cheaper and more plasticy model that will be particularly aimed at emerging markets like China, but I think it will also do well in western markets. I know there are people out there who want to buy an iPhone but can’t justify the cost, and don’t want an old model.

The iPhone 4, 4S and iPad 2 will be retired

The three year old iPhone 4 is sure to be retired but I expect the 4S to go, and the iPad 2. This will mean that all of Apple’s mobile products will use the Lightning connector, rather than the 30-pin Dock connector, and all of its phones will have the same screen size.

The iPod Classic will be retired

It’s been 4 years since the last update to the iPod Classic, which is the only remaining iPod model to include a hard disk (as opposed to flash memory). Wired thinks it’ll be dropped and I agree. I hope that a new 128 GB iPod Touch will be released, so that Apple can still cater for those who want to be able to play their entire large music collection on the go.

Neither of the new iPhones will have NFC

NFC, or near-field communication, is becoming standard on many Android and Windows phones. But I can’t see Apple adopting it. They’ll go for Bluetooth SMART instead. Because the iPhone already has Bluetooth, this shouldn’t require any new hardware, and should be better for battery life too.

According to this AppleInsider article, this will be branded as iBeacons in iOS 7, and will be available not only in Apple’s new handsets, but the existing iPhone 4S and 5 as well.

Third-party apps for the Apple TV

Okay, this is less a prediction and more of a hope. Apple has been steadily increasing the number of platform partners for the Apple TV but it’s still very US-centric. The only UK channel available at present is Sky News.

I hope that Apple opens an App Store for the Apple TV, opening the door to apps such as BBC iPlayer, 4oD, Demand 5, ITV Player, Now TV and the like. This will make the device significantly more useful.

We will find out in just over eight hours’ time what comes to pass.

Comparing the iPhone 5 with the Nokia 100

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Nokia 100 and Apple iPhone 5

At the moment, I’m one of those annoying people who has two mobile phones. There’s my own Apple iPhone 5, and I also have use of a brand new Nokia 100.

Clearly the iPhone 5 is the better phone – or is it? There are actually several ways that the Nokia 100 is better than the iPhone:

  1. Battery life. All smartphones have pretty poor battery life, with their high resolution colour screens, GPS, Bluetooth, Wifi, 3G support all putting strain on the battery. The iPhone 5 claims up to 225 hours – just over 9 days – standby, although most users will find they’ll need to charge it at least every other night. The Nokia 100, on the other hand, can last for over a month on standby from one charge – 35 days is claimed. That being said, the iPhone 5 claims 8 hours of talk time as opposed to the Nokia’s 6.7 hours.
  2. Smaller size. The Nokia 100 is shorter and narrower than the iPhone 5, although it is significantly thicker.
  3. User-replaceable battery. If the battery in your iPhone dies, then you’ll need to get it replaced by a professional. The Nokia 100, on the other hand, allows you to change the battery with ease, and you can even keep a spare charged battery to swap in.
  4. FM Radio. A data connection will let you listen to radio stations on your iPhone, but the Nokia 100 keeps it simple with a built-in FM radio.
  5. Torch. I’m sure there are apps out there that will allow you to use the flash LED on the back of your iPhone as a torch, however, the Nokia 100 includes a small LED in the top that can be used as a reasonably effective flashlight.
  6. Cheap. You can get a Nokia 100 on a pay-as-you-go tariff for only £10.

Of course, that’s about it. In every other way, the iPhone 5 is a better phone – it’s easier to use, with more features and better build quality.

iBought a new iPhone

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iPhone 4, meet iPhone 5

So my new iPhone 5 has finally come. It’s not quite the model I was intending – I had ordered a black 16 GB model, but an order mix-up with 3 meant that I didn’t receive it as planned on Friday and after talking with a very nice person at customer services I ended up with a white 64 GB model, at no extra cost. I’d have preferred a black one, but I can’t argue with getting four times the space for the same price. I’ve saved in the region of £150 as a result.

Because I backed up my iPhone 4 to iCloud, when it came to setting up my iPhone 5 I just needed to connect to wi-fi, give it my iCloud login and tell it to restore from the cloud backup. This meant that all of my settings and apps would be automatically installed, just as they were on the old handset, which saved a huge amount of time getting the phone set up. It wasn’t totally smooth – stored passwords didn’t seem to copy, for example, and some apps like Pocket needed re-installing – but much better than starting from scratch. In particular, my progress on games such as Angry Birds was carried over, to my relief. Many of the apps I use regularly, like the aforementioned Tweetbot and Pocket, have been updated for the new larger display, but older apps do work okay. Apple did a good job of implementing the letterbox mode for these.

Physically the new phone is much nicer to hold – it’s noticeably lighter and thinner, and the edges don’t feel as sharp as they do on the iPhone 4. You can still use it easily with one hand too, unlike the wider screens on some Android phones which require you to change hands to reach far off corners of the display. The new Lightning connector is nice, although I’m a little less happy at the prospect of forking out £15 for an extra cable; plus, with 2 iPods and an iPhone 4 in our household we’ve no shortage of the old cables. I’ll also need to look into buying a case for the iPhone 5, as Apple haven’t released any bumpers for this model like they did for the 4 and 4S, nor do they sell any third party cases in Apple Stores, as Dave found out.

The new phone is much more responsive than my old one – apps work faster, especially Foursquare and Tweetbot. Support for HSPA+ also makes web pages download more quickly, and provides a small speed jump ahead of 3 rolling out 4G LTE services next year.

I’ve also had a play with Siri – I’m quite impressed that it understands almost everything I say (I have a northern accent) although it can’t always find data. I asked it about a local rugby league team, Bradford Bulls, and it interpreted it as the Chicago Bulls. For information about local places it uses Yelp, which is rather rubbish in the UK – searching for a nearby Nando’s found one in Leeds but not the two in Bradford which were much closer to me at the time.

All in all, I’m really impressed. Whilst it’s definitely an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary device, it’s a clear improvement over the iPhone 4.

Distracted by a Pictionary clone

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A screenshot of the game Draw Something. The drawing is a crude depiction of a king on a throne and the word is 'throne'.

So I would have blogged more this week, but I’ve been spending my time playing Draw Something. I’m sure the novelty will wear off, and I sort-of agree with TechCrunch’s analysis – i.e. it sucks – but right now it’s rather addictive. The use of push notifications is a stroke of genius.

We probably all know by now that the game’s creators, OMGPOP, have just been bought out by Zynga, creators of FarmVille, for millions of dollars. Which would have probably been unthinkable merely a few weeks ago, when the game was only playable online and maybe only had a few thousand players. Then it launched on iPhone and Android, and suddenly millions of people have downloaded it. It’s currently the biggest-selling paid-for app on Apple’s App Store, especially now that it’s available for 99 cents (69p) for a limited time.

Neil and Christine’s Geocaching Adventure

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Geocache

This weekend Christine and I went Geocaching for the first time. It’s something I’d considered doing ever since I got my iPhone, almost a year ago (seriously, it does not feel like a year already…), but I never got around to it. Anyhow, a colleague at work had mentioned some of her friends had got into it, and several of my blogger friends like Andy and Firda do it, so I looked for caches near where we live and found 5 within a one mile radius.

With it being a bank holiday yesterday, it meant we both had the afternoon free, so I bought the iPhone app (which I’ll review tomorrow) and we set off. The first one we found is shown above – it’s a ‘micro’ cache which is the second-smallest size of cache, and is about the size of a matchbox. Inside every geocache is a piece of paper to write your name and the date to log your visit. Finding the cache took a little longer than expected, although the hint for the cache was spot on when we finally worked it out. This was also perhaps our punishment for choosing the nearest cache rather than going a little bit further to one recommended for newbies.

We continued on to find three further caches – the next two being the fiendish ‘nano’ caches which are the smallest, and usually magnetic. In fact, when I first found it I thought it was the magnet to hold the cache onto something, not the cache itself – it wasn’t until I twisted it that it opened to reveal the log inside. The last one for the day, alongside the canal, was inside a 35mm film canister, and required a little scrambling down a bank to get to.

So, four caches down. There are obviously many more to find – after all, if there are four in a small town like ours, then the must be thousands in the UK alone, nevermind overseas. Of course, we’ll now have to go a bit further to look for them but it’s possible to do a spot of geocaching whilst doing other activities. There’s two on campus at work to find during a lunch break and I might have a look for some in Huddersfield as I’m there on Thursday. Still, we may go out specifically to find geocaches – after all, we’ll probably be walking between them so it’s good exercise.

I’m under the impression that smartphones are making geocaching more accessible; in the past, if you wanted to find a geocache you would have needed to buy a GPS receiver, which for those not interested in outdoor pursuits isn’t so useful when not geocaching. Smartphones have brought GPS to the masses, and phones with always-on internet bring dynamic maps and access to the Geocaching community whilst on the go, so there’s no need to plan geocaching trips ahead of time. The Geocaching web site could do with some improvements – it’s a bit cluttered and the design feels rather dated.

Tomorrow, I’ll do an App of the Week review of the Geocaching iPhone app. I may blog again about my Geocaching exploits later on, as and when I find more.

Foursquare Thursday – August madness

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It’s been a while since I last posted about Foursquare, and a lot has happened. Foursquare has been busy rolling out new features, so I’m going to summarise what’s new. Most of these have cropped up in the past month.

Lists

You can now make lists of venues, such as your favourite museums, pub crawl routes, best places to go for a good burger, that kind of thing. Foursquare starts you off with three lists – venues you’ve added to your to-do list, tips you’ve ‘done’ and tips you’ve added yourself – but you can add more. It’ll even suggest some based on your checkin habits – it’s suggested food places in Leeds and Bradford for me.

Lists are public and show on your profile. You can also check out lists from Foursquare’s various partner brands like MTV (music video locations) and Time Out (the best burgers in New York).

Check-in to events

Foursquare now pulls data from external sources so that you can not only check into a venue, but check into an event at that venue. In the screenshot on the right is my local cinema, and Foursquare knows which two films are being shown there today. When you select ‘Check In Here’, it’ll ask you which film you want to check into – or whether you just want to check in to venue itself. Events listings appear in the iPhone app and on the web site, but haven’t yet been rolled out to the other mobile clients on Android, Blackberry and so on.

New mobile clients

Speaking of which… the iPhone client got a bit of an update recently. It’s now more blue with several screens re-designed, and it now looks a lot more professional than it did before. Another major change is that photos attached to checkins now show in the timeline on the friends page.

Android also received some attention to make it feel more like a native Android app and not a quickly-ported iPhone app, but it lags behind the iPhone app in terms of features. Similarly the Blackberry app now integrates with Blackberry Messenger and has been finally updated to version 3.0, with the Explore feature.

More brand pages

Foursquare has launched new brand pages, so it’s now much easier to create a brand presence on Foursquare. Pages are free to set up, but I gather there are still costs involved if you want a custom badge for your brand.

More badges

Speaking of badges… as usual, Foursquare has added more badges including a new ‘core’ badge – Baker’s Dozen, for 13 checkins at bakeries. You may want to head to Gregg’s for a sausage roll or 12! New partner badges have been introduced from ESPN, MTV and Pepsi, plus the badge for the upcoming film 30 Minutes or Less is now available globally and not just in the US.

Notifications

Back in July Foursquare introduced a notification ‘tray’ on its Android client and web site, which came to the iPhone a few weeks later (rare example of Foursquare offering something to Android users first!). There’s now an icon to the right of the Foursquare logo, which when clicked will inform you of new friend requests, when you’ve been ousted as a mayor, when a friend does one of your tips or comments on your checkins or when a venue you’ve previously checked into starts offering a special deal. It’s a bit like Facebook notifications. You can also control whether these do a push notification in the mobile apps.

Presidential Foursquaring

Barack Obama is touring the country, so you can now follow The White House on Foursquare. Of course, this probably has nothing to do with him running for re-election next year…

New categories

Foursquare has added a handful of new categories – Tennis stadiums, Military Bases, Car Rental counters for airports, apartments and neighbourhoods. A few existing categories, mainly related to food, now have new icons as well.

US Merge-a-thon

Foursquare used their computers to identify a whole host of potential duplicate venues, which were queued up for SU2s and SU3s to process – over 100,000 of them. As it happens, quite a few were not duplicates but hopefully it will result in a net improvement in the quality of Foursquare’s listings. All of the venues were in the US this time.

So, as you can see, a lot has happened on Foursquare over the past few weeks. Foursquare is still owned and run by its founders and hasn’t been absorbed as a subsidiary of a larger company, so it’s agile enough to be able to make major changes like this very quickly. And hopefully there will be more to come!

How to: Restart frozen iOS apps

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Skaters

OS devices, such as my iPhone 4, are pretty good at handling apps that crash – the app is closed and you’re returned to the home screen (the app may detect that it crashed when you relaunch it and ask for a bug report to be sent). But sometimes apps just freeze, or stop working correctly. They’re still running, but perhaps stuck in an infinite loop. Sadly, this has happened to me recently with apps like the official Twitter and Facebook apps.

With the advent of multitasking on the iPhone 3GS, 4 and 4-and-a-bit (the Verizon iPhone), apps don’t always close when you exit them – often they stay running in the background. So simply closing the app and then opening it again may not be enough to fix the problem.

Previously I’ve taken this further, and simply turned the whole phone on and off again. It works, but it’s a bit like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut – so I set about finding a more elegant solution. And tcgeeks has one.

If an app misbehaves, double-click the Home button. This will bring the multi-tasking bar up along the bottom of your screen. Swipe left or right until you find the naughty app. Touch and hold your finger on it, until all of the app icons start bouncing around. Each icon will now gain a red minus sign – click the minus sign, and iOS will kill the app. Press the Home screen once you’re done. You’ll then be able to launch the app fresh.

This trick can also be used to kill apps that you don’t want to run in the background – a bit like the multitude of ‘Task Killer’ apps that exist on Android. You don’t want to kill them all, as some will need to be running for push notifications for example, but any that are seldom used can probably be safely killed to free up some RAM, and potentially improve your handset’s battery life.

iBought an iPhone

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Wonder if I can buy an iPhone from here

On Wednesday I finally got myself an iPhone. (No, I didn’t buy it from the shop pictured above)

I’ve been holding out on buying one for a while, partly because I didn’t have enough job security to justify a long contract, and partly because I couldn’t afford it. Those two issues no longer apply, however over the past few weeks I’ve been waiting for my current network, Tesco Mobile, to have any in stock. As well as it being less faff changing networks, Tesco also had probably the best deal; a 12 month contract only costing £20/month, but with a £349 upfront charge for the handset. Anyhow, Tesco haven’t had any iPhone 4s in stock for weeks at my local store, so I gave up and went with Three.

Three’s deal isn’t quite so good – £30/month for 24 months, but the upfront fee for the handset was only £99. Over two years, it only works out a little more expensive (after 12 months on Tesco I’d have probably gone on a £15/month rolling monthly contract). But it’s still not bad and cheaper than other networks. Plus, my local Three Store in Bradford had them in stock.

I’ve had some chance to play with it, and installed a few apps, but I’m still waiting for my mobile number to be transferred to my new contract which won’t happen until later today, so I have to use my present handset (a Samsung ‘dumbphone’, i.e. not a smartphone) as well until that happens.