Category: iphone

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iPhone Pain


I am getting more and more annoyed with my iPhone 3GS. I keep losing signal, it crashes way too often when making phone calls and O2’s 3G coverage seems more patchy than usual.

It’s saying something when you find that you don’t want to use your phone for making phone calls. Apart from finding on a regular basis that the phone loses signal, if you are making a phone call and this happens, the phone crashes and reboots. This is very annoying and when it happens it seems to take an age for the phone to reset so you can reconnect and call back the person who you jsut cut off. I ought to keep a log of when it happens, but it does seem to be correlated with a weak signal.

Though I have no scientific evidence to back it up, I am also finding it much more difficult to find a stable 3G signal when travelling. That seems to be getting worse. I often notice my phone losing the 3G signal and then finding it again. As a result streaming or even just pain web browsing becomes less reliable.

I have not yet upgraded the 3GS to iOS 5 as I was awaiting the verdict of the community if I should or not. I do remember when iOS 4 came out and ruined the iPhone 3G experience.

So do you have problems with your iPhone 3GS or is it just me?

If you do have a 3GS have you upgraded to iOS 5 and how is that working for you?

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BBC iPlayer for iPhone Arrives…


Though you have been able to access BBC iPlayer on your iPhone for a while now, the launch of the dedicated iPhone BBC iPlayer App means you can now stream live TV and radio on your iPhone (as you can with the iPad app).

So is the content different from what you get on the web on the iPhone?

So can you download content for offline viewing? Like when you are on a train? Something you can do on your computer. Well no, you have to have a decent internet connection to watch BBC iPlayer. Also you can’t use the service on 3G, you do need to be on wifi. Correction: I made an incorrect assumption you can access BBC iPlayer streams on your iPhone via 3G on both the App and the Web service. Of course be aware that streaming over 3G uses a lot of your bandwidth, so if you have a cap or are charged per GB be careful.

The main difference is that the app allows you to watch live BBC TV which is probably the main reason for getting the app, though remember you will need a TV licence to watch the live streams!

In the end I can’t see what the app adds that viewing on the iPlayer on Safari doesn’t have already, apart from “favourites”. What’s the point of that as most content disappears in under seven days anyway… I’ve not use that feature on the iPad and I doubt I will use it on the iPhone.

The app doesn’t have Airplay, though the web interface does, so a limitation there rather than an advantage.

Correction: The app does have support for AirPlay but it’s not intuitive. AirPlay is initiated outside the app by double clicking the home button and swiping right and pressing the AirPlay button; the streaming video will then be displayed through your AirPlay device (i.e. your Apple TV).

At the end of the day I am not sure what this brings to the iPhone, though from experience I have found the iPad app experience to be slightly better than the iPad web experience, but only slightly better.

Update: Of course the app and the streaming are only available in the UK.

Get the BBC iPlayer iPhone App in the iTunes Store.

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Kabaam – Comic Strip App

Kabaam is an app for creating comic strips using your photographs, either ones you take or from your photo library.

Though I think I prefer the other comic apps I have, this one is currently free, so nothing to lose in downloading the app.

Of course you could use another app to comicfy your images before using them in Kabaam.

It’s a great little app for quickly creating photo stories.

Via Tony Vincent

Get Kabaam in the iTunes App Store.

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Fantastic Contraption for iPhone – Game Choice #01

If you like using your iPhone for games (in the main casual gaming) then you may be interested in the following games that I have enjoyed playing on my iPhone over the last few years.

Fantastic Contraption – £1.49

If my memory serves me correctly I was introduced to this game by that Dave Foord. However the first time I played it was on my computer, as it was a Flash game. So when it came out for iPhone I did go out and buy it.

In Fantastic Contraption you build a machine from simple parts to move objects to a goal. There’s physics involved but don’t worry, just press “Start” and watch what happens! The simple controls and step-by-step tutorial will have you building fantastic contraptions in no time!

The concept is simple move stuff from one place to another using the bits, wheels and parts available.

What I like about the game is that there is a learning element, not just in the fact that there is physics involved, but that in order to pass a level you need to use trial and error and learn from your mistakes. Unlike some other games there isn’t a single solution either, so you don’t have to follow the path that the games designer usually makes for these kinds of games, you can create your own path entirely. One feature of the game is when you have completed a level you can see the solutions that others came up with.

As with a lot of games on the iPhone this one is nice in that you don’t need to spend a huge amount of time playing the game to have fun. You can spend five minutes fancompleting a level and then put the phone away (and catch that train or start watching that film).

For those that finish all the levels, there is now Fantastic Contraption 2.

Fantastic Contraption 2 is the sequel to the original Flash hit Fantastic Contraption! Developed in response to fan requests, Fantastic Contraption 2 contains the anticipated features of magnets, moving platforms, and a new integrated badge system. Users will also be able to conquer more than 60 new levels, master linking chains, and build creative contraptions of their own using the new Level Editor!

Get Fantastic Contraption in the iTunes App Store. – No longer available.

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Compare iPhone 4S with iPhone 4

Useful video comparing speed of iPhone 4S with the iPhone 4.

I remember when I had a work 3G and I went out and got a home 3GS the speed difference was certainly very noticeable.

I am at this time tempted to upgrade my home 3GS to the 4S, mainly because of the camera, but the speed it appealing too.


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Instagram Updated

I have always liked Instagram, the photo creation, editing and sharing app for the iPhone. I reviewed  it last year on my e-Learning Stuff blog and said:

As a free app it is certainly a really useful photo app. As a social network, well it is certainly no Flickr and not a Twitter either. The social network can only be accessed from the phone and that limits it in my opinion. As a photo app it’s great, as a social networking tool, less so.

Since then I have posted nearly 500 photographs to the service, which is more than one a day! I know that this is no Photoshop and nor is it something that professionals would use. But as a fun social app that creates interesting effects it’s great. I really like the images that the people I follow come up with and likewise I find it useful on what images I am taking people like. I find it an easy to add images to flickr that I can then add to my blog posts and I have been doing that for a while now.

Today we see an update to Instagram to version 2.0. They have completely revamped the camera experience.

It has live filters and live tilt-shift. There are four new filters.

I quite like that you can now turn the borders on and off. You can also rotate the photograph if you need to. Finally filtered photos save in high-resolution to photo library.

As for the update it seems to work and just as easy to use as the previous version.

Get Instagram in the App Store.

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Paper Camera

Sometimes I am find an app for the iPhone and I go yay, excellent. Paper Camera is one of those apps, the other one that I found recently that had a similar impact was ToonPAINT.

What Paper Camera does, through a clever interface, is convert the live camera footage into a sketch or pencil drawing image in real time. You can then press the shutter to capture the image through the live filter.

Now though this is very clever and useful, when I saw this app a few months back, I realised that what I wanted to do, was apply the filter to images in my photo library too. Well a recent update has added that function, so I can now apply the excellent filters to images I have taken before. This means I can do stuff at home or on the road, rather than always having to take the images live.

Some images work better than others, so you may not always get the image that you hope for.

I do like the range of filters and the three slider bars for adjustment do make it possible to create some really nice sketch effects.

Paper Camera costs just 69 pence and is well worth the money for the clever images you can create using it.

St David's Hotel, Cardiff

Get Paper Camera in the App Store.

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Camera+ with Captions

I have mentioned Camera+ before as one of my favourite camera apps for the iPhone.

It is a very powerful photography app and it allows you to use the iPhone camera in ways which the standard camera app doesn’t even come close.

Plenty of ways to share the images too.

They’ve just upgraded the app to version 2.3 which allows you to add captions when you add a border to your image.

Quite a nice subtle feature, though the caption “fits” with the border you choose, you can’t change the font or colour of the caption.

At the offer price of 69p it’s currently very affordable and good value for money.

Check out Camera+ in the iOS App Store.

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QR Code Vino




So are QR Codes going mainstream?

A few weeks back I mentioned how I had seen one for the first time on mainstream television. Now as I was opening a bottle of red wine (present from a friend) I noticed the QR Code on the back of the bottle.

I have found in the past that the iPhone is not the best phone for reading QR Codes and in the end I found that the best QR Code application was Optiscan.

Optiscan lets you create, scan and share QR codes straight from your device.

Having tried a few free apps, I found that if you have an iPhone 3GS then this app works the best. As the camera in the iPhone 4 is better, you can have more success with some of the free apps, however (as I have it already) I use Optiscan on my iPhone 4. I like how fast it is, how it can capture virtually all QR Codes I aim it at and the subsquent actions I can then take. For example it is very easy to e-mail my history of scans so I can use them on a desktop computer.

So though I have had very few issues with Optiscan with other QR Codes, I did find scanning the QR Code on the bottle quite a challenge. It took a fair few attempts to get it captured, but once I did it bought up a URL which then opened in the mobile browser.

Impressed it was a mobile version of the website and in French!

However one click and I was in the English version.

Now there wasn’t much on the site, no more than was on the bottle really.

However at least if I wanted to buy the wine myself I now had a record of it on my phone. Much easier with a QR Code than typing in an URL on the phone (which to be honest is the point of QR Codes really).

So that’s a TV programme on cooking, a bottle of red wine, wondering where my next encounter with a QR Code will be!