A while back Dieter asked for a fast way to toggle Airplane Mode on the iPhone — a triple click of the home button, perhaps. Yesterday he and I were talking about all the new Bluetooth functionality in iPhone 3.0 and the same point came up — right now, to turn Bluetooth on or off you have to:
Wake the iPhone, Slide to Unlock, (type a Passcode perhaps), (return Home perhaps), tap Settings, tap General, tap Bluetooth, and then toggle the ON/OFF switch.
That’s a lot of overhead, in terms of mental “work” and physical interactions.
With Bluetooth headsets, Stereo Bluetooth speakers, Bluetooth connectivity for accessories, Bluetooth connectivity of tethering, P2P gameplay and P2P app exchange, etc. a much faster way to flip the Bluetooth switch would be really appreciated.
Triple-click may not work in terms of usability, but surely there must be some other way? Maybe surface the ON/OFF toggle on the main Settings page, just before the drill down arrow? Jeremy thinks letting users add Settings shortcuts as icons on the Home Screen (like we can currently do with Safari bookmarks) would work. Anyone have any other ideas?
BGR is claiming some inside info from AT&T on the next hardware revision of the iPhone. The announcement is apparently slated for June (actual release unknown) and the new features line up with some of what we’ve been hearing. Top of the list is speed, with likely support for the higher-speed abilities of HSDPA on AT&T — up to 7.2MBps — which may also play into those multi-core rumors too. There’s also apparently going to be some sort of “U-Verse” app that will work with your home entertainment system (If there’s an IR port on this thing, I’ll eat my hat). The word “unified” gets tossed around a bit, but beyond it having something to do with Apple playing nice with AT&T’s services, it’s a little unclear.
Oh, and since it’s the hip thing to do, there’s a bit of netbook chatter tossed in at the end, but we’re not getting an Apple vibe off that. We’ll leave the netbook bits aside and ask: what feature do you most want? Video and Megapixels with a side of video publishing? OLED Display? iPhone HD? Free puppy with every purchase?
Thanks to Jeff for the tip!
We hear via Crave and confirmed via a quick check at the Apple Store that Apple is discontinuing their Apple-branded Bluetooth headset. It had a nice run, we suppose, but aside from a clever dual-charging iPhone accessory, the headset was actually pretty bare-bones compared with other options (My own personal favorite is the BlueAnt Z9i headset).
It’s probably a safe bet that Apple is going to replace it with a set of Stereo Bluetooth headphones in the fairly near future, given that their A2DP implementation on iPhone 3.0 is pretty nice (check out the images in our walkthrough — much easier to toggle it on the iPhone than it is on most other devices). Another safe bet may be that Apple’s ‘phones, as with their current headphones and also this now-discontinued Bluetooth headset, will be decent enough but not as good as what you can find from other manufacturers. I’m fond of the Motorola S9-HD, if you’re curious, but the Voyager 855 is my day-to-day, as it’s sorta-kinda safer while riding my bike as I can leave my left ear open to listen for cars.
[Thanks to all of you who sent this in!]
Our updated iPhone 3.0 Walkthrough (release version) is now online. Please re-direct yourselves there.
(We’ll keep this up for historical interest, however)
Just like January 2007 when Steve Jobs held up the first iPhone at Macworld and showed the world full screen multi-touch, and March 2008 when Jobs, along with Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall stood up at the Apple Town Hall and unveiled iPhone 2.0 and the App Store, this week Forstall and Greg Joswiack dropped iPhone 3.0 and… what exactly?
Let’s take a walk through the first beta release of the software and find out together. Of course, this being a beta, come this “summer” when the final release version is made available to consumers (free for iPhone users, US$9.95 for iPod touch users), things could be a tad different. This is the way things are now, with the first beautiful, buggy beta into for developers to test Last year there were 8 betas between the first and the final release. Who knows how many there will be this time, and what may change between now and then. So don’t take this as full feature review, just a preview.
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Every week I will be bringing you what I think are the week’s biggest stories and articles. Let’s get started, after the break! Read the rest of this entry »
Following hot on the heels of last Tuesday’s monster iPhone OS 3.0 announcement, Apple wants developers to know that there’s never been a better time to develop for the iPhone:
With a rich set of over 1,000 new APIs, iPhone SDK for iPhone OS 3.0 beta provides you with an amazing range of technologies to enhance the functionality of your iPhone and iPod touch applications. New APIs also provide support for applications to communicate with hardware accessories attached to iPhone or iPod touch.
Any devs previously sitting on the fence finally decide 3.0 is finally enough to push you over?
Tuesday was a big big day at Smartphone Experts. Not only did we have comprehensive coverage of the new iPhone 3.0 software announcement (and more keeps coming here) at The iPhone Blog, over at CrackBerry.com we had one of the very first hands-on with the BlackBerry “Niagara” 9630. If you add in late developments like some additional Windows Mobile 6.5 features sneaking out at WMExperts and anticipation that the Nokia E71 will finally hit AT&T at Nokia Experts, you make for a fairly exciting week in the smartphone world.
Read on for the Best of SPE!
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Now that the dust has settled and we now know what to expect “this summer” from iPhone 3.0, it’s only natural to include some more iPhone 3.0 madness in the forums.
Our first thread comes to us from Casper TFG, now that landscape in all apps has been announced will you actually use it? I have tried using the landscape keyboard with email and SMS and I’ve gotten so used to portrait mode that it will take some time, for me personally, to get used to landscape. It’s almost easier to simply use portrait at this point. Nonetheless, it’s a nice feature that many of you will enjoy.
Next up we have a thread that was started by yours truly and it is pretty straight forward, what is your favorite iPhone 3.0 feature? With over a 100 new features added, some more obvious than others, you can only choose one, so choose wisely. MMS? Cut/Copy/Paste perhaps? Let us know what you think!
This next thread was started by Rene and shockingly it is not 3.0 related! You all have a chance to win 1 of 2 free promo codes for a great piece of software, Beejive IM. If you want your chance to grab one, simply reply in the thread. Tomorrow, Monday March 23rd, we’ll pick two lucky winners randomly! Good luck!
Finally, I’d like to mention our iPhone Developer Forum. This is a great place for anyone developing for the iPhone or running iPhone 3.0 software. Come in and compare notes, share interesting features you may or may not have found, share the bugs you have come across, etc… This is not the place to ask for activation codes or for the actual firmware file so please don’t ask.
If you want to get in on the conversation be sure to register first. It’s a quick and painless process so what are you waiting for!?
See you on the forums!
Last Tuesday’s iPhone 3.0 Software Sneak Peak Event [iTunes link] is now available for download from the Apple Keynote feed. If you subscribe to that feed, it should already be served up, piping hot, in grand, glorious H.264 format for you scrutinize pixel by pixel enjoy.
If not, you can head on over to the Apple Keynotes page [iTunes link] and hit the download button. Also in the feed are last year’s WWDC iPhone 3G debut from June, iPhone SDK Roadmap Event and 2.0 Sneak Peak from March, and the both WWDC 2007 with iPhone WebApps and Macworld 2007’s iPhone unveiling.
[Thanks Danny for the tip!]
Meditate Now 2 Forum Review by msbaylor. (Visit the thread for video and more pics. For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum!
Meditate Now 2 is an application that contains a series of audio clips that capable of helping you alleviate stress and allow you to relax. The audio is narrated by Stin Hansen, whom is an extremely experienced speaker and an award wining meditation expert. Her voice is absolutely perfect for this type of application. Most of audios range from about nine minutes long to about 15 minutes long (with two exceptions being at three & five minutes)
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