Articles by Dieter Bohn
[This is an official Smartphone Experts Round Robin post! Every day you reply here, you're automatically entered for a chance to win an iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset! Full contest rules here!]
Join us for the first of two special Smartphone Round Robin Roundtables! This week, Casey, Kevin, Rene, Jennifer, and Dieter all come together to discuss three of the Smartphone Round Robin devices: The iPhone 3G, the Treo Pro, and the BlackBerry Bold!
On other mobile platforms (hi Windows Mobile!) we often spend quite a bit of time comparing the processors of different models, seeing which one is faster and seeing what happens when you set the clock speed of a given phone to a higher number. It’s “fun,” see, because not only can clock speed be radically different from phone to phone, but so can performance even on devices with similar clock speeds.
The nice thing about the iPhone: not doing that. Well, until now. MacRumors reports that the 2nd gen iPod Touch, though it sports the same processor as its siblings, actually has a clock speed of 532MHz compared to the rest at 412MHz. The result is that certain apps like TouchSports Tennis run much better on the iPod Touch 2nd Gen. Which ultimately meant that the developer had to optimize their app for the iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPod Touch 1st Gen. All three actually perform differently with the game, with the original iPod touch falling furthest behind.
It’s a bummer, because as apps become more powerful and get closer to testing the limits of the platform, developers will discover that the ’single target’ advantage of the iPhone/iPod Touch platform may go away. We’re not talking about having to code for as many devices as you do with Windows Mobile or BlackBerry, of course, but it’s still worth noting.
Why not clock up the iPhone 3G. In a couple of words: “battery life.” In a lot of words, well, battery life plus when you have WiFi, bluetooth, Quad-band edge and Tri-band WDCMA (that’s GSM 3G to you) all packed together, they have to be finely tuned. Just changing the clock speed could be enough to ruin a whole raft of things beyond battery life. With smartphones, we live in a world where the choice of paint can radically alter signal strength, so it’s no stretch to say the changes in heat, radiation, etc. associated with a faster clock speed could potentially cause problems. Plus, again, battery life people.
It probably wouldn’t completely screw with everything if Apple upped the clock speed — people change clock speeds all the time on WinMo — but it can happen and it’s a bigger deal as they get packed more tightly together. These radios are packed pretty tightly in the iPhone 3G.
This week: we can’t stop talking about the App Store and what it means for developers. We recorded before 2.2 came out, but expect it to be the topic du jour next week for iPhone Live!
Now that 2.2 is upon us, you can get your TiPb fix in yet another way: grab our Podcast over the air!
It’s simple. Just turn on WiFi (necessary because all of our podcasts are over 10 megs), head into iTunes on your iPhone, and search for “Phone different.” It’ll pop up right quick (and includes the feed for our iPhone Live! Podcast to boot!). Then head in, tap download, and away you go!
(Speaking of the Phone Different Podcast, we have this week’s in the bin. It should be edited up and ready for you to grab tomorrow)
I love me some crossword puzzles. You can keep your silly Sudoku, I played enough logic games getting my philosophy major from a department that didn’t go for them crazy postmodern language games (seriously, the folks at St. Thomas love them some logic). I love having crosswords on my smartphone because it’s the perfect ‘quick game’ app: you can spend two minutes or twenty on them, there’s many new and free ones available every day, and they fend off cognitive decline in old age (Seriously, speaking of Catholics, look into the “nun study“).
Anyway, point is I want my crossword puzzle app to be awesome. So this week’s App vs. App is crosswords. Today’s contestants: 2 Across (1.2.2) by Eliza Block and Crosswords (1.13) by Stand Alone, Inc. Which one will better serve your word-puzzle fetish? Read on!
(Instead of giving you a roundup of last week’s news, today I’m excited to give you a glimpse into the news you’re going to see at our Smartphone Experts sites over the next two months! — Dieter)
We are pleased to announce the Smartphone Round Robin!. Each year the editors of the Smartphone Experts family of sites literally trade their phones to see what life is like on the “other side.” What you’re going to see over the course of the next two months is each of our five SPE Community Editors reviewing smartphones that they’re not used to using. Each editor has a checklist of “Must-Dos” that ensure they’re getting the full experience with each smartphone. It’s quite a ride.
Read on for more on the Smartphone Round Robin and for details on how you can win one of five Smartphone Prize Packs!
When AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega dropped word that they have official iPhone tethering for data access in our future, we only had one question: how much?
Well, MacBlogz [via Giz] brings word that they expect it will be $30 a month. This certainly seems reasonable (the rumor, not necessarily the rate) as Giz notes that it matches the current tethering plan made available for BlackBerrys. It looks as though iTunes will further recede from being ‘just a music player’ as it will also handle your tethering setup.
As you might expect, it will be capped at 5gigs a month, which seems pretty anemic for $30 bucks to us. On the bright side, PdaNet has sent in word that they’re still hard at work on their excellent tethering application — we suspect that translates into “make it even tougher for carriers to detect that you’re tethering.”
So basically: AT&T wants to charge you $30 per month for a plan that can only be used for occasional tethering. It’s what we expected, sure, but it’s not what we’d hoped.
This week’s Around SPE is sponsored by the the TiPb iPhone Accessory Store, which has long been your best source for iPhone accessories. A lot of iPhone 3G upgraders were left out in the cold when their car chargers turned out to not be compatible, but they’ve got plenty that are, not to mention plenty of headphones that are a step up compared to the standard white buds
Last week both CrackBerry.com and WMExperts found themselves on the cusp of major releases — the BlackBerry Storm, BlackBerry Bold on AT&T, the HTC Fuze on AT&T, not to mention a few others on the Windows Mobile side. So while everybody has been anticipating new devices, all of the editors at SPE are anticipating something else that will be starting on November 17th. The hint is right up there in the picture!
Read on for the full skinny on what’s been happening around SPE!
This week: Google Earth, Contest updates, iPhone developer noodling, and your emails. Listen in!
(Update: If you’re hearing weird things happen at about halfway through, your Podcast downloader is especially aggressive and caught an upload that somehow managed to get 2 of our SPE podcasts mixed wrongly. GarageBand FAIL. We’ve uploaded the proper version — delete the podcast from iTunes (or whatever podcatcher your use) and re-subscribe to get it.)
We hear from MobileCrunch [via] that official iPhone tethering will be coming soon to AT&T. How soon is “soon” we don’t know, whether data will be capped or unlimited is a mystery, and exactly what sort of plan will be involved is also up in the air.
It’s a safe bet to say that AT&T will not be including tethering in the standard iPhone plan. Tethering costs in the US generally run a minimum of an extra 20 bucks a month, depending on carrier, business, and the phase of the moon. In other words, you may still want to think about jailbreaking and tethering on the sly with PdaNet – just don’t tell ‘em we told you.
How much would you be willing to pay for laptop tethering?
