iPhone thread

[VR46]

Sounds like this one, there is a free demo version on the App Store (am guessing you can change the cloth colour)

http://appstory.com/reviews/virtual_pool

If not do a search on somewhere like www.appstory.com or www.apptism.com and see what comes up.

[nonny]

Anyone been using the orb media hub app? I got it yesterday and it's amazing. Can stream any format video, audio, photos and even tv if your pc has a tuner card.

Tried it on my home wifi and it was good but it even works on 3G so I could access my pc whilst having a picnic in the park & watch the end of the rugby.

Pretty nifty stuff.

[Len]

Sounds like this one, there is a free demo version on the App Store (am guessing you can change the cloth colour)

http://appstory.com/reviews/virtual_pool

If not do a search on somewhere like www.appstory.com or www.apptism.com and see what comes up.

That's exactly the one!

Thx a lot...

[Nu-Eclipse]

Can anybody recommend a good program to download for converting video files (WMV, MPEG, etc.) to the iPhone/iPod video formats (MP4 & h.264)?

Thanks.

[CMcK]

http://handbrake.fr/

Handbrake is pretty good, free and is available for Mac, Linux and Windows.

[icarus0]

Slightly odd question perhaps but since carrying out an update a few weeks ago all the distances on the maps app are in kilometres where they used to be in miles. Its such a minor thing but annoys me far more than perhaps it should.

Is there any way to change it back to miles as I've looked everywhere in the menus with absolutely no luck?

[mmmonkey]

Righto, I've tried to find out about battery life on the 3g iphone, but there's too much info for me to wade through.

It's nearly upgrade time, and I can't decide between an iphone 3g, or tmobile g1. I've been reading comparison reviews of the two models and keep reading differing things about battery life.

I have an old HTC Touch which I currently use for emails, a bit of surfing (but not much as it's 2g only) and occasionally phoning people! With whichever phone I get, I'll probably use it for surfing a bit more, and whilst the novelty still lasts I'll use some apps that use 3g I expect.

What kind of battery life can I expect on apples iphone for that kind of usage?

ta
Pete

[Persocom]

A charge every two-days methinks

the speaker seems to kill the iphone quickly. I honestly have no problem with the battery life anyway.

Had an htc diamond before this, a viewty before that, k800 and a w900i before those. I don't reckon I charge my iphone any more than I did those, and I hardly used those for squat, bar calling, texting. I use my iphone for EVERYTHING.

Seriously. Everything about the phone just works (when jailbroken. MAKE SURE YOU DO IT.) I can send and recieve mms's fine using swirlymms, can save downloaded youtube videos using mxtube, have a great camcorder (cycorder), have modded it so safari instead tells websites I'm running firefox, so they don't shrink down to mobile format (bebo annoyed me) so don't let anyone talk you out of getting one.

I'd avoid the g1. Its a bit experimental, and the iphone will run android os as soon as its linux project is finished and released.

I've never had such a complete, PERFECT phone ever. It's an utter joy to have, and I normally am not a fan of apple products, but lately... well :P I do see why people pay the apple tax.

[wakka]

What kind of battery life can I expect on apples iphone for that kind of usage?

The battery life is okay. I charge mine every day. It's much worse than the Blackberry Curve I had before this, which I infrequently charged and never switched off - by contrast, iPhone seems to be constantly bitching that I've got 20% battery life left, then 10%. This is normally towards the end of the day, but it's still a bit of a pain.

I haven't jailbroken my iPhone, I'm not really interested in doing any of the things that Persocom mentions. Perhaps you are, I don't know. I have quite a lot of Apple products, and always use a Mac, but was slightly disappointed with the iPhone when I finally got one a couple of months ago. It's grown on me somewhat since then, and I like it, but there are definitely areas where it needs work. It's definitely not a 'complete, PERFECT' phone in my opinion - I get my email pushed from two accounts (MobileMe and and an Exchange server), and the email app just isn't particularly well designed. I have to faff about to change between accounts, there's no option to aggregate them into one big folder, and when I have a new email and open the app, it doesn't even go straight to the email, it just goes to where I last left it. Even more importantly, it doesn't even have a search feature. I mean for christ's sake. Seriously, seriously inferior to Blackberry in these regards. Still, it does work, and I do get alerted with each new pushed email. Interestingly, it actually receives email slightly faster than my BB used to.

EDIT: You also can't attach whatever you want to emails. You can only attach something by going into the Photos app, selecting a picture you want to send, then choosing 'send email'. I mean what the hell.

It's also not particularly great as a phone. It seems to take ages to get to actually making a call, especially if you unlock the phone and you're already in an app like iPod, so you have to quit out of that, open the Phone application, then select the 'Keypad' option at the bottom, then you can finally start typing a number in. It's kind of annoying when you just want to quickly make a call.

I'm playing devil's advocate here a little bit, as I think the iPhone is a solid, but heavily imperfect device. The most important things to me in a phone are not the ability to record videos or whatever, but connectivity, and the iPhone falls down a bit here. Particularly in the case of instant messaging - forget about it. I was very disappointed to find that you might as well give up on the notion you can get any IMing done on the iPhone, since it logs you out and closes all your conversations in whatever app you use as soon as you answer a text, the phone, or just press 'home' to switch to another application. This seriously needs to be fixed by Apple, and soon.

Having said that, the iPhone nails some things - mobile Safari is great for browsing, and parses websites really quickly, meaning you can actually casually browse normal websites without waiting forever for stuff to load. The SMS app is good too, it organizes messages neatly into conversations in a way that is quite unique. Maps with GPS is also useful, though don't bother thinking about using it for turn by turn, it's quite basic - handy for finding stuff around you when walking around though, I use it quite frequently in London.

It's really down to what you're looking for in a phone - iPhone is probably great if you want to mess about with lots of different applications and features and games and stuff. As an actual smartphone for getting stuff done, it leaves quite a lot to be desired I think.

Still, it looks cool and matches all my other Apple **** :\/

[Alastair]

re-conditioned iphone? yes or no? Still get full 12 months warranty.

[CMcK]

Where from? I've had several refurb Macs from Apple and they have all been like new. If they do the same with iPhone I'd say go for it.

[Brad]

What kind of battery life can I expect on apples iphone for that kind of usage?

Once mine had worn in (takes a few days) I find that i spend about an hour a day checking email, facebook, twitters and web browsing using a combination of 3g and wifi. I have location services (gps) and bluetooth turned off most of the time. I need to charge my phone once every couple of days.

Whilst I was away i turned everything off except the main phone (2g only) and basically never used the phone. The battery meter remained on full for the entire week! So, as a basic phone the battery life is impressive but once you turn all the fancy stuff on it makes quite an impact.

[Alastair]

Where from? I've had several refurb Macs from Apple and they have all been like new. If they do the same with iPhone I'd say go for it.

It was direct from O2. It's time for my upgrade you see and I was seeing what I could get. ?99 for a black 16gb model. Decided not to in the end as I have a few too many other expenses to budget for at the mo

[NekoFever]

No bump for the iPhone OS 3.0 preview event?

In short, the major new features that were announced:

• Push notifications
• Copy and paste
• MMS (iPhone 3G only) along with expanded messaging app
• Peer-to-peer connectivity for gaming and data transfer
• Turn-by-turn GPS navigation
• Voice memos
• System-wide Spotlight search app
• Apps now allowed to interface with third-party accessories

There's a more comprehensive roundup here. Coming in June, with a developer beta available now.

[ChrisF]

Has been mentioned over in the Mobile Phone thread.

I think the entire world is trying to download it off the development site now as the server is under some strain.