Quick 2.1 notes
Firmware 2.1 is out. Some observations so far:
(1) The phone is snapper, definitely, especially in Contacts searching.
(2) 3G reception seems the same, i.e. poor.
(3) The status icons for cellular connectivity have changed again. This previously happened with the 2.0 firmware. I now occasionally get an empty circle that tells me… nothing. See:
At the time of writing, the relevant Apple Support document does not mention this. What could it mean?
(4) All SMS now get repeat alerts. A second or third alert may sound. That’s fine if you like that sort of thing, but I don’t, and there is no way of turning it off. See this Apple Discussion for more. Decreased the phone’s usability? Check.
I’ll take any improvements Apple offer, as long as they explain them and allow users to control them.
More when I’ve had a closer look.
2.1 to end ‘killer’ apps?
Do you have any killer apps on your iPhone? I’m not referring to Vicinity, Wikipanion or Twitterific, all three of which I consider to be essential applications for any iPhone. No, I’m referring a handful of iPhone apps that quite literally kill your iPhone.
Here’s how it goes. You install your new app, it freezes causing you to force quit the iPhone. Next time you boot up you’re either presented with the Silver Apple Logo of Death or none of your 3rd party apps will launch! The only solution is to completely restore your iPhone back to factory settings using iTunes, a lengthy and hugely frustrating experience, especially if even a restore leaves the iPhone completely unstable.
‘Let’s Rock’!
On the 9th September at 10am Pacific Time Apple are to host the ‘Let’s Rock’ event. It’s seems that new iPods are a certainty, but it looks increasingly likely that iPhone users may get something new too.
Firmware update 2.1 would be nice, especially if it put an end to the almost endless application crashing woes that I and many others have been experiencing (more on that later). But what if there was more? Could there be more to the ‘Let’s Rock’ theme than first meets the eye? I’m not usually given to wild speculation, but I’ll have a go this time.
How about Guitar Hero, or Rock Band for iPhone?
Just a thought. Any other guesses?
The lure of the iPhone explained
Apologies for not posting this at the time (two weeks ago) but I’ve been a little distracted, as has Matt, with family matters! In this feature, hosted at All About Symbian, I’ve written about my experiences showing off the iPhone/iPod Touch platform to some ‘normobs’. What did they make of Apple’s interface and hardware and, perhaps more importantly, why did they react as they did? Find out in the full article (written from the point of view of an experienced, hard-nosed Nokia/Symbian viewpoint, note!)
Battery life tip for iPhone gamers
It’s certainly encouraging to see Apple providing ‘Bug Fix’ firmware updates every few weeks. For me at least 2.0.2 does indeed seem to iron out a few of the strange crashes and laggy keyboard issues. However, one huge ‘bug’ is the rather depressing battery life. There are numerous ways to squeeze every minute of life from the iPhone battery, but by far the best that I have discovered is Airplane Mode.
If you are about to dive in for an hour’s worth of gaming on Galcon, or looking to channel water droplet during train ride home in Enigmo, then Airplane Mode will greatly increase your chances of coming out of the experience having only lost 15-25% of your battery life.
Sure you’ll be out of contact for duration, but your extra focus might just help you on your way to that ever elusive score of 6,000,000 on Pinball RC!
Well that’s my top tip for gamers, what’s yours?
BBC iPlayer goes one better
A while ago I wrote about the BBC launching iPlayer for the iPhone. Well, they’ve now gone one better. The whole iPlayer site has been redesigned, as detailed in this BBC Internet Blog post. But when you log onto it from an iPhone, you now get an iPhone-optimised site.
As with many other successful iPhone-optimised sites (such as Facebook), it uses a tabbed interface and really focuses on the essentials.
It’s much more navigable – no more pinching and zooming – and a great improvement, as you can see from the screenshots.
Schmap makes existing sites iPhone-friendly
Schmap are releasing a public beta of a new service today to enable your website for the iPhone. Add Schmap’s javascript snippet to your website, and it will additionally display contact and address information formatted in a very iPhone-friendly way. Here’s how it looks on their featured site, Pure Food And Wine.
Touching any of the fields will launch the relevant iPhone application e.g. touch the phone number to call the number. Turning the phone on its side will keep the contact details visible and also show a map.
MMS sending coming to your O2 iPhone
I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this before. A little while ago, Ross McKillop developed O2 MMS, which enabled you to read multimedia messages on your iPhone, without going through O2’s torturous non-iPhone friendly website. It’s a donation-supported service with no jailbreak required, and is listed on Apple’s Web Apps directory.
MobileSafari also auto-completes .com
Here’s a little tip I haven’t seen anywhere else. MobileSafari auto-completes URLs with .com if you don’t specify a domain. For example, type in “yahoo” into the address bar, and hit Go. MobileSafari will add the leading “http://”, and then the trailing “.com”.
Adding the leading http:// reference is well-known, but I haven’t seen (or found during a search) anyone detailing the .com being added. This may be a firmware 2.0+ addition, but I don’t think so.
Note: This tip is guaranteed to save you milliseconds during your day.
A provocation and a benchmark
Articles by Marek Pawlowski of MEX are always interesting, and the latest one is no different. In “Moving from mobile capabilities to mobile compulsion“, he looks at what the impact of the iPhone and the App Store really is, and who’s best placed to suceed though understanding user experience.
There is some great insight in the article, but this struck me in particular:
You could transplant the iPhone UI and App Store into an equivalent Nokia or Samsung handset and it wouldn’t succeed without the myriad other elements which comprise Apple’s overall experience.