Our Favorite iPhone Apps: The best communication apps

We continue to roll out our favorite App Store selections from the past year, focusing this time on four applications that help you stay in touch when you’re out and about.

Forum Review: Guitar Rock Tour for the iPhone

Guitar Rock Tour Forum Review by msbaylor. (Visit the thread for video and more pics. For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum!

In the game you play a “guitar” or a “drum set” along with songs. There are a total of 17 different songs, some of which are fairly recent, but also include songs such as “Smoke on the Water.” Each song can be played within three different difficulties and of course on each instrument.

Game/ Layout & Controls:

When loading the game, it takes about 20 seconds (as all gameloft games do.) Also it takes about 15 seconds to load after selecting a song. To reply the song there is little or no wait time. After the song though, in returning to the menus, you’ll have to do a bit of waiting.

In the game there are two modes – Quick Play & Tour. In quick play you choose your difficulty, instrument and a song to play. You can only play songs that have been unlocked in Tour mode. When beginning for the first time, the first three songs are already unlocked.

In Tour mode, you create a profile (up to 3,) you select an avatar and an instrument. Then you select a place on the world map to play at. You have to play 3-5 songs to continue to the next location. As you progress across the map, you will have to replay some of the songs that you have already beat, but from what I could tell, it seemed that the note pattern was different and a little more difficult, which in the end made it better instead of repetitive.

Whether you are playing in Tour or Quick mode, the guitar and drum layouts are the same. Firstly the guitar – the screen shot above shows the guitar layout. At the bottom, you have four fret-tap-areas, so as the correlating notes come to the bottom you tap them, usually in rhythm of the song or the strumming of the guitar in the song. If a colored note has a “wavy-line” coming out of it, it means you will have to “hold-the-note,” otherwise, it’s just a simple tap.

On the left –hand side of the screen, you have, as I like to call, your death-meter – the more notes you miss the lower the meter drops, if it drops to far, then you fail the song. In the top left-hand corner, you have the “star-multiplier.” The more notes you get in a combination without messing-up, the higher the combo and thus higher your multiplier. To the right of the multiplier is your score.

On the right-hand side of the screen is you have your “pyro power” meter, through each multiplier you get, you increase your pyro power meter. It’s like the “star power” in another related game, you “flip” the switch and your current multiplier can double up to 8x. Above this meter, you have a “home” icon, this take you to the pause menu.

As for the Drum set layout:

You have four tap areas as well, but usually the cymbals (yellow notes) are normally played together. The blue notes are for the left drum and the purple notes are for the right drum. Everything else on the screen is the same, however, in order to get the pyro power, certain notes will “be on fire” and if you hit these notes, you get a “full pyro meter” to use. When using pyro power, all the notes will turn orange-yellow.

Issues in Game & Layout:

Most of the issues I had in the game had to do with this section. As you can see by the screenshots, the game is played with the iPhone held vertically. It would’ve been nice to have a horizontal mode as it is hard to hold the iPhone, but you will get used it, however, if you play with the Hard difficulty – good luck, I had trouble holding the iPhone while my fingers flew across the screen.

When you hold the iPhone, I hold mine so that I play with my thumbs, my pinkies support the bottom, my pointer finger hold the top and my other fingers cradle the under-side of the iPhone. In doing this I found it was the best way to keep from covering up the speaker. I suppose if you use headphones, this isn’t really an issue. Gameloft also added a feature that allows you to flip the iPhone 180 degrees so that the speaker is at the top. The main problem I found was that the accelerometer that is used to rotate the screen was too fickle in the optional rotation. It’s somewhat hard to explain, but basically, it just doesn’t work.

In the guitar playing area, you have to flip the switch for pyro power; however, it is extremely hard to flip it while play on any difficulty, thus messing up your multiplier. I don’t see why gameloft couldn’t have the user shake the iPhone for this or something. Another side-affect I encountered was in attempting to flip the switch; I’ve also accidentally hit the men/pause button. Coming out of pause, can be difficult as it begins without warning exactly where you left off.

The death-meter with both instrument, I thought, fell to fast when missing notes and made my overall experience when playing the drums extremely frustrating. So there is really no way to practice the song even on easy.

In the drum layout when the pyro power is on, obviously all the notes turn orange, well whether the cymbals come up together of the two drums at the same time is impossible to determine due to their color.

I found the drum set very hard to play in Easy and soon failed the song miserably

Animations:

The animations follow closely like similar games. I really like he notes and the frets that they pass over – easily identifiable. I noticed that when you taped and note or when you had to hold down a note, that the path (or I guess you could say the “string”) vibrated as if it had been strummed. You’ll notice that when playing a guitar, you’re actually playing on the neck and the body of a guitar this adds a nice touch (sorry I am a bit ignorant of guitar vocab.) The animations that play in the background a very good and I‘ve noticed that the animations, that is the avatars, move to the beat on the song. Although sometimes the drummer animation got off a bit. If you are playing on tour (and depending on what song your playing in quick mode) the background scene will change (On top of a bus in London, Concert Hall, pool party, etc). The band does stay in constant motion while you are playing and if playing in Tour mode, the avatar you have selected, is also in the animation as well. Now as for the crowd, they are just black silhouettes moving about. When you tap on a note, the note literally explodes into flames. I thought this was nice at first, but I think it is a little overdone. Overall the animations are very well done. This is a major load-bearing app.

You MUST restart your iPhone in order to play this game. I also highly recommend that you turn Airplane mode on as when my iPhone would check for e-mail, the app would lag, and I would end up failing the song…very annoying to say the least.

Sound:

Other than the song playing, you’ll have the crown cheering when you begin 50-note streaks or more and on the other hand you’ll hear boo-ing if you start to mess up. Also when playing, if you do miss a note/beat, the drum or guitar will drop out of the song also, you will hear a miss-strum or drum-hit. I found this to be a very nice touch and greatly added to the realistic nature of the game.

Overall:

The game is pretty cool. My main complaints basically had to do the way the game is laid out and how awkward it is to hold the iPhone vertically rather than playing it horizontally. The replay-ability is very high as it has 3 levels of difficulty, with each layout being different per difficulty. Having airplane mode on is nearly a requirement in this game. I however found that turning on Wifi, sometimes helped. Not sure why…maybe faster data connection? I think the little things that make this application annoying (at time) could be easily fixed. I knew I could not goive this game a 5 stars, not even 4, because I knew the main thing keeping me from playing this game was that I could not turn my phone on Airplane for extended periods during the day and also playing on the harder levels, in finding the iPhone hard to hold, made me just give up on the game. So as much as I want this game to have a higher ranking, I am giving it a 3.5/5

Pros:

• Realistic playing – miss notes/beats, correlating instrument is not heard in song.
• Good, even great animations at times
• Backgrounds change
• Avatars ‘rock’ with music
• Replay-ability is very high
• Very east to “get into the game”

Cons:

• Notes hard to detect in drum pyro mode
• Smooth-playing only in Airplane mode
• Pyro-power is really hard to turn on and can end up screwing up your score.
• Death meter falls to quickly in my opinion – no practicing the song
• Airplane mode a requirement

Forum Review Rating

[Guitar Rock Tour is available from the iTunes App Store]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Forum Review: Guitar Rock Tour for the iPhone

iPhone Nano Concept Photo?

It seems the "iPhone Nano" is the rumor that is going take the spotlight ahead of this year's Macworld, and while MacRumors is publishing these photos and rumors, we have some serious doubts about the likelihood of such a device. These doubts are ba...

Review: Units for iPhone

The free Units app helps you convert measurements using a plain but useful interface.

iPhone apps round-up: Printing from the iPhone

Print, from EuroSmartz, lets users print any Web page, contact, or photo from an iPhone or iPod touch.

Free AccuWeather.com app released for iPhone

AccuWeather.com has released a free application that lets you get weather forecast information on your iPhone or iPod touch.

HP enables photo printing from the iPhone

Hewlett-Packard's HP iPrint Photo lets iPhone users prints photos wireless to some HP printers.

iPhone Nano Rumors: Case Manufacturer has Now added References to iPhone Nano on its Website

iPhone Dev-Team Unlock Video

Ok, in case you have been missing all of the iPhone 3G unlock talk lately, the Dev-Team yesterday previewed their unlock software for all of us to see.

It will be available to anyone who wants it (and is still running the original base band!) on New Years Eve. Until then let the video above fill your craving! Enjoy!

[Via Blog.iPhone-Dev.org]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone Dev-Team Unlock Video

A musical scratchpad on your iPhone

Filed under: Audio, Software, iPhone

I've built a recording studio on my iPhone ... kind of. It doesn't output production-quality mixes -- or anything close -- but it makes a great scratchpad for recording and developing musical ideas. It didn't take any special effort, just a few apps which I've found really handy, especially when working with acoustic instruments.

Tuning up

First, I've been using GuitarToolkit ($9.99US in the App Store) for tuning, general metronome needs and finding chord phrasings. There are dozens of apps available with similar features, and I haven't tried enough of them to fairly judge merits (if you know of an outstanding app, let's hear about it in the comments!). I grabbed GuitarToolkit when it was a little narrower of a field, and it's been a sturdy, steadily-improving app which has never given me reason to look around.

Read on for the rest of the "mobile studio" ...

Continue reading A musical scratchpad on your iPhone

A musical scratchpad on your iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 22 Dec 2008 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

A musical scratchpad on your iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 22 Dec 2008 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Our Favorite iPhone Apps: The best games of 2008

We kick off a week of highlighting our favorite iPhone apps by focusing on 10 great games that will help you decompress in style.

Round Robin: TiPb vs. BlackBerry Bold Final Review

[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!]

Black and white. Night and day. Left and right. BlackBerry Bold and iPhone 3G. For the penultimate Round Robin, I set aside my multi-touch no Qwerty for Kevin’s touch-less Cadillac of Querty’s.

And…? I loved it and hated it. How utterly appropriate. Not to tale too two-city’d about it, but it was both the best of the Round Robin devices for me and the worst. Google’s Android G1 tried to do everything but beta’d all of it (give them time though!). The HTC Fuze tried to shellack over Windows Mobile to make it more like the iPhone and — in terms of usability — tripped and fell all over itself in the attempt. The Palm Treo Pro, while unabashedly Windows Mobile, was still a touch screen, allowing for some level of direct comparison, and proving just how far behind Windows Mobile’s interface has fallen.

But the BlackBerry Bold is a different beast entirely. Direct comparison is impossible. A pager vs. a music player, all grown up and bedecked in smartphone tech. Both devices can do similar things, but their strengths are almost polar opposites, as are the approaches they take in delivering them.

Kevin’s already writter 7500 words on that, however, leaving few if any left for me. So rather than rehash, or duplicate what the previous Round Robin editors have said better before me, I’m going to change it up a bit (yes, again) and look at things from a different perspective. And I’ll do it after the break!

Hardware

The BlackBerry Bold is the nicest hardware I’ve yet experienced in the Round Robin. The other devices were a little too plastic, a little too creaky. I think battery doors contribute to that since structural elements can no longer be braced to the back, not to mention hingers for the sliders With the Bold, I expected something as good as the iPhone’s singular slab of glass and metal and high-density backing.

I didn’t quite get that, however. The Bold is lighter than I anticipated, and some of that lightness just made it feel a tad below the iPhone in build quality to me. That slight aside aside, the whole device speaks — nay, screams — luxury. The faux leather, the glossy back trimmed in sliver (yeah, RIM totally ripped the look off, but they did it because it works). It really is the executive smartphone.

And yeah, it’s positively covered in buttons. Full Qwerty keyboard (though it misses some of the dedicated keys other devices had, like period, search, etc.), left and right (or plain and studded) convenience keys, green and red phone keys, BlackBerry (menu) and back (yes!) key, volume rocker and mute button. It’s even got left and right fake buttons (okay, yeah, their actually contact points, but they look like buttons which is a slight design failure).

For my tastes, there are actually too many buttons, and I found it too easy to hit them and thus, to easy to do things by accident. One of the convenience buttons defaults to voice control, and so I kept getting a very helpful lady asking to help me do what I didn’t want to do, when I didn’t want to do it. Thanks for that!

Also, while I’m no BlackBerry ninja, I couldn’t find a way to quickly lock the device the in the manner of the iPhone sleep/wake button. I could hold down the red phone button, but that seemed to actually turn the services off. Otherwise, the screen would turn off, but if I bumped the wrong button, it would wake up and start to do things as I was pocketing it (again, most often that helpful lady, this time from the rather intrusive confines of my pockets!)

Oh — and it has a nice screen. Expecting me to gush? I would but after 4 other editors, what’s left to say? The iPhone is 160dpi, the Bold is 217dpi or so.

A closer comparison, though, would be the Bold and the iPod “fatty” Nano of the previous generation which had a similar horizontal screen above the control area (substitute scroll wheel for Qwerty). Inarguably it’s a gorgeous display with nary a jaggy in sight, however… it’s too small for my tastes. I like the iPhone screen size. It’s the 52″ HD LCD to the Bold’s 37″. Unless you’re in a cramped sliver of a condo, most people would prefer the physically bigger screen, and I find the same holds true on the mobile. Now, give me that 217dpi on a 3.5 in screen and we’d be talking (Touch HD, specifically).

The BlackBerry Life

I’m not reviewing the OS. It’s a Java Micro Edition pseudo-OS and despite some limp signs of life in the last (and curiously first) BlackBerry developers conference, both its limitations and the API shenanigans engaged in by RIM (which makes Apple’s SDK seem positively straightforward) make it exactly where Dieter pegged it to be: at its zenith much as Garnet was for the Palm Treo 650. It does what it can do, and as a platform I’m not sure it’s capable of much more. RIM should be applauded, and should desperately be working on a next generation OS of their own deep beneath Waterloo way.

What I am reviewing is the BlackBerry lifestyle, which is what is required to use this device. It’s not called push because it alerts you the moment data has been sent in your general direction, it’s called push because it will shove you both in how you must work to make use of that data, and the hold that data begins to take on you.

I’ve joked about this before, but it really is preemptive and interruptive. PING! You’ve got mail. PING! You’ve got BlackBerry messenger. PING! You’ve got SMS/MMS (yup, it has MMS!). PING! You’ve got… on and on and on… If you have any heft to your contact list, and size to your mail pipe, that little blinking red light is going to start to pwn you. Kevin says it’s compelling. It’s the crack. It makes you not want to put it down, and if you have, to pick it back up again often and always.

And I’m not sure that’s a Good Thing.

But back to that in a moment. More than just pushing you data, the BlackBerry records and pushes state on that data. If you’re messaging, for example, not only are you alerted to it being sent, but to it being delivered, being read, and even when the other person is typing a response to it.

Some call this accountability. Your boss, your partner, your fellow communicator knows what you’ve seen and when you’ve seen it. And itt scares the privacy out of me. Sure, it’s not dissimilar to IM status in many applications, but then I heavily restrict my IM usage as well. It’s like having that boss, partner, or fellow communicator staring over your shoulder 24/7. Frankly, it’s creepy. Don’t just get off my lawn, get out from over my shoulder!

Back to Ping Death. I have no attention span. Give me a distraction and I’ll take it and ask for another. I need to focus in a world that does everything it can to split my focus. See, it’s not that I don’t understand the crack in Crackberry Kevin’s metaphor. I understand it too well. And the last thing an addictive personality needs is another addiction.

Slice it this way: demanding attention is different than on-demand. In my day job, we have a term called “data explosion” where so much information comes at you so fast it becomes paralytic. The BlackBerry is a little like that. Kevin has said the BlackBerry is an on-the-go device and the iPhone is a stop-and-use device. I had the exact opposite experience.

With the iPhone, I listen to podcasts or audio books as I commute. I occasionally read the email previews when at traffic lights or when walking downtown. I glance at the SMS previews likewise. (I wish I could do likewise with iChats, but more on that next week). I can surf the web or play some casual game while I’m waiting in line. It fits into the broad or broken moments of my day.

The Bold breaks my day. If I have 3 people hitting me on BlackBerry Messenger all at once, I can’t handle that exchange “on-the-go”. I have to stop, parse each message, make sure I’m in the right place for each one, and respond appropriately. And the little red blinker makes certain I really want to jump in and engage with those 3 people post-haste — even if I’m supposed to be finishing this review. The more important the person is to me, the more demanding. RIM really nailed the social aspect harder than even MySpace or Facebook, and perhaps rivaled only by always-on Twitter. Once you get a bunch of people all on BBM, it’s like being at a really good party and the push notifications are like shots. You don’t want to leave — but eventually you’ll collapse.

With the iPhone, I’ve turned on push but turned off notification. Everything is there and instantly available — but on my terms, in my time. I am master of the machine, not slave to it.

On the BlackBerry I could do the same, but then I feel like I don’t really have (or need) a BlackBerry any more. Oh, sure I can edit office docs, but I could do that on Windows Mobile (and too be honest, I bought a Windows Mobile device a couple years ago for that very reason and found it crippled and frustrating enough never to bother.)

So, take this as my stand against the culture of interuption, for which the BlackBerry could most easily be the poster child. This is why I mentioned at the beginning that the Blackberry is the non-iPhone I both loved and hated the most in the Round Robin. It’s not just that I think the age of physical keyboards is over (the Storm — which I’ll get to in a follow up — gives a keyboard-less BlackBerry option), it demands an entire shift in lifestyle. It just works, in all the triple-entendre’d terror that implies.

Conclusion

I won’t lie. I’m going to miss the Bold, and the BBM, and the instant connection to all my friends and contacts. But at the same time I’m going to enjoy getting my life back. A good friend of mine who works in a super-critical position in a huge company is a BlackBerry user and as much as he loves it, he hates it with a breathing passion because he knows every call could be his boss asking why he hasn’t done something about what the boss already knows he’s seen, read, or otherwise been pushed. He’s highly placed in this company, with exponentially more people beneath him than above, but we all know it’s the bosses (or girl/boyfriend/spouses) call that comes most often, and with the biggest impact. I can understand why people are so passionate about the BlackBerry, but I can also understand why people sue for overtime when their companies “give” them BlackBerry’s to use. Crackberry is a very apt nickname.

Apendix: Sleeping with the Frenemy

A few people I know duel-wield the iPhone and the BlackBerry. To get a sense of their “best of both worlds” approach, I spent a few days Bold-only as the Round Robin demands, and the weekend slinging one on each hip.

To first address something we get a lot of in the forums, the iPod touch/BlackBerry nirvana is an urban myth. Absent 3G and GPS you’ll be missing out on one of the most exciting aspects of the iPhone: ubiquitous location-based services. The Bold has the same guts, but it’s user experience for this technology just doesn’t compare, while the iPod touch’s WiFi restriction makes it unusable for large stretches. I had an iPod touch originally. It took me all of a week to give it away and get an iPhone.

Back to iPhone+Bold. It’s an interesting approach but one I ultimately found would be too cumbersome and expensive. Since I won’t switch SIMs every 2 minutes, I’d need 2 plans, one with BIS (which I won’t rant on now, but which deserves it for being both powerful and punishing to consumers — you shouldn’t need anything other than a standard data plan to run a smartphone in 2008! Work that out RIM!). I’m also a Mac user, and while RIM is improving Mac support (and aren’t anywhere near as negligent as Windows Mobile) it’s nowhere near there yet. Since many Mac users are also CrackBerry addicts, and proven price-insensitives and brand-loyalists, ignoring them (us) is just bad business.

Bottom line, I don’t have a handy bat-buckled utility belt, nor do I want to be perpetually clad in vests-of-many-pockets, so convergence devices are important to me. I would only ever carry one phone. In this world, it’s the iPhone. In another world (where my lifespan would not doubt be shorter and my stress level way higher), it might just have been the Bold.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Round Robin: TiPb vs. BlackBerry Bold Final Review

Little apps I like for the iPhone

Filed under: Odds and ends, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

The iPhone can certainly make life easier on a number of levels, and that has greatly increased with the advent of the App Store. There are thousands of selections for every taste, even bad taste. In 2007 Steve Jobs told us web based apps would do the trick, but he finally relented and we all benefited from the tremendous success and variety of the App Store.

So, without further ado, here are some little apps you may have missed that have made my i-life better.

• Backgrounds [App Store link] A nice little app that points you to large collections of wallpaper for your iPhone or iPod touch. You can select a category such as Movies or Nature, and browse away till you find something you like. When you are happy, download the image and it will show up in your camera roll. Do the usual tap, and select it as wallpaper and you are ready to go. The pictures are generally of very high quality, and are sourced from Flickr. The developers claim about 50,000 images are there for the downloading. The app is free, although some unobtrusive ads do show up on the margins of the images. There are a lot of other ways to find iPhone wallpaper, but this is quick and easy. I like it.
• Open Table [App Store link] Using your GPS (if your iPhone has one), or simply by giving your location, find the nearest restaurants that have, you guessed it, open tables. Then click on the time you want, and you have a reservation. It doesn't get any easier than that. It works in many U.S. cities, and in London, Toronto and Vancouver B.C. I gave it a go here in Southern Arizona, and found many restaurants with tables available You can set up an account at the Open Table website, but it is not required. Without an account you can select the restaurant, the time you want, and give your name, email, and phone number. Then click on 'confirm' and you are good to go. If you do sign up for a free account with Open Table, you can collect 'Dining Reward Points' when you book a meal at a member restaurant. Collect enough points and you can get some hefty discounts off your next dinner. Open Table also works on the iPod touch. Things that should be added are search by type of cuisine, and I think there should be a direct link to restaurant websites.
  
• Distant Suns [App Store link] I love to star gaze, and here in Arizona we get about 300 clear nights a year. There are several nice star map programs for the iPhone, but I am very partial to Distant Suns written by Mike Smithwick. This program goes way back to a PC version in 1985, and there have been Mac ports for OS9 and now there is an OS X version. The iPhone/ iPod touch version is scaled down from the big computer versions, but has excellent graphics, location awareness, and does the math to tell you what is visible at the moment and what is not. It is an impressive way to explore the universe above you. Distant Suns is $5.99 and well worth it.

Little apps I like for the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 22 Dec 2008 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Little apps I like for the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 22 Dec 2008 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Taiwan iPhone 3G is reportedly unlocked

It looks like those in Taiwan who went out and picked up the iPhone 3G this weekend after the launch Saturday will be able to use just about any SIM they wish. Initial reports said that Chunghwa Telecom would be selling the iPhone 3G SIM-locked to their network. Many users have ...

Walmart creates iPhone web app for quick browsing but not purchases

It appears that much of the online world is accepting and adapting to Apple’s iPhone. Walmart is the latest to adapt their online store specifically for the iPhone. Just navigate to Walmart.com and you will be directed to an iPhone specific portal. The site is very much like the regular HTML ...

Limited Edition iPhone’s Christmas Contest

Its that time of year again! We have some great prizes to give away for this Christmas Contest. This year’s Christmas Contest is sponsored by iRealSMS, DoApp, MagicTap, RipDev, and More. iRealSMS has provided 10 licenses for a replacement SMS application that lets you type in landscape mode and offers many ...

Case manufacturer XSKN spilling the beans on iPhone nano?

Filed under: Macworld, Rumors, iPhone

Rumors of a smaller "iPhone nano" have been flying around the blogosphere since mid-summer. Earlier this month, a TUAW post detailed how a Chinese manufacturer was allegedly starting production of a case for a diminutive iPhone.

Now a source that has accurately leaked information about the iPhone 3G and 4G iPod nano has jumped into the fray. XSKN began selling iPhone 3G cases in mid-May of 2008, almost 2 months prior to the release of the 3G. In early September, XSKN was showing off new 4th Generation iPod nano cases.

The XSKN site is currently showing a heading for the iPhone nano (see screenshot at right), although there are no actual cases displayed. Given the track record of this manufacturer for inadvertently or deliberately spilling the beans, this might be pointing towards an announcement of the iPhone nano during the Philnote at Macworld Expo 2009.

Since TUAW readers are the smartest and best-looking Apple fans on the planet, I thought I'd ask your opinion on whether or not the iPhone nano is going to become reality soon. Take our iPhone nano poll and give us your thoughts on the mini-me of the iPhone world.

[via MacRumours]

Case manufacturer XSKN spilling the beans on iPhone nano? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 22 Dec 2008 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Case manufacturer XSKN spilling the beans on iPhone nano? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 22 Dec 2008 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yet More iPhone Nano Rumors

A week ago we linked to a story that brought fresh iPhone Nano rumors to the foreground. Today those rumors are picking up a tiny bit of speed. Seems the folks who brought us leaked iPhone 3G and 4th gen iPod Nano cases are listing an iPhone Nano case.

Of course, an iPhone Nano presents certain problems. Would Apple just stuff a standard 320×480 iPhone screen into a tighter package, like the iPod Nano? (Or BlackBerry Bold for that matter). They’d need to do something to avoid fracturing the mobile WiFi platform they’ve taken so much trouble to establish. And capacitive touch screens, for all their responsiveness, require beefy enough targets to hit with a finger. Would certain features be cut that just couldn’t scale down effectively? Or would this truly be phone-and-iPod only (see mock up, above), leaving the “breakthrough internet device” space for the full featured, full sized model?

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Could just be the lack of Macworld hype making the intertubes all crazy. Macrumors, for their part, says:

To add more uncertainty into the mix, we’ve heard that some of Apple’s initial plans for Macworld may have been delayed. So, even if an iPhone Nano was originally in the works, we’re not sure when we’d actually see one.

At a special event, on Apple’s schedule, on Apple’s terms, with Steve Jobs on a stage maybe?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Yet More iPhone Nano Rumors

Review: Radioshift Touch for iPhone

Rogue Amoeba’s Radioshift Touch offers greater stability but far fewer streams than the competition.

Review: Pinger, the Social Dialer for iPhone

It’s been awhile since we’ve heard anything from Pinger, creators of a service that allows you to trade voicemails like they were emails. Their previous offering was interesting but not ultimately useful for most people. Their new offering, a clever iPhone application (iTunes link) that combines a social media aggregator, a dialer, and an IM client is interesting and likely useful for most people. For me, it addresses my #1 gripe about the iPhone. It’s also free.

Read on for a review!

What is Pinger?

Pinger essentially combines three functions and has a little bit of an identity crisis when it comes to making one of them primary. They do give you a clue at how to think of the app when it first launches by showing you a demo of yanking your phone app from the dock and putting Pinger in its place. That’s a pretty bold statement, but for me it was the exact right thing to do.

Ok, so what are we looking at here?

• A dialer app
• A social media status aggregator
• An IM Client

Pinger takes the above functions and spreads them around the app fairly effectively in 5 tabs: “Friend News,” “Contacts,” “Favorites”, “IM,” and “Keypad.”

Dialer

Since Pinger prompts you to replace the phone app’s place in your precious dock, it had better be darn good at getting a hold of your contacts. Fortunately, it is. Pinger was sure to include a simple dial pad (above) for people who just want a number pad, damnit. They’ve also included a ‘Favorites’ tab that, you guessed it, allows you to list favorites (it doesn’t match the favorites you’ve set in the default phone app).

However, the above is ho-hum, just in Pinger so that it’s able to compete feature-for-feature with the iPhone’s default. Where the real dialing action happens is on the Contacts tab. It’s here where Pinger blows the default dialer away and become my go-to app for getting in touch with people.

Reason #1 I love the contact list: it makes no bones about how you’re supposed to find your contacts. A keyboard pops up the moment you open it and although you can scroll through contacts, it’s clear that’s a secondary searching option. Because of this, you can immediately start typing a name instead of scrolling up to the search bar at the top of the regular contacts listing. As you type, the letter’s your typing appear just above the keyboard.

That, friends, is how it should be.

Just as nice as the above, the contact listing in Pinger is also much more useful than a standard list. Underneath each name are pressable buttons to immediately use that method of communication — i.e. call mobile, SMS, email, etc. Of course, you can also drill into a full contact page to get more control over the contact.

Also visible in the contact listing: IM presence. You can see right here in the contact listing whether a given person is available, away, etc on AIM, Yahoo, MSN, and Google Talk.

I’ll be recommending Pinger to folks simply because its dialer is superior to the iPhone’s default phone app. Pinger also has those other two features, however, and though neither is especially powerful, both benefit from being integrated into a single app.

IM

The Pinger IM client offers a fairly standard suite of features: ability to work with AIM, Yahoo, MSN, and Google Talk. Its best feature is the fact that it adds the little red and green presence icons to your contact listing.

On the friends list from the IM app, you’ll find that your IM groups are maintained and that you can clear tell which friend is on which service. You’ll likely have to spend some time ‘linking’ your buddy list to your contacts (more on that below), but otherwise it’s pretty nice.

The other IM feature that I’m fond of is SMS notification. When you exit the app but leave yourself online in IM, Pinger takes note of this and sends you an SMS when you receive an IM. It’s a bit nicer for me that BeeJive’s MobileMe/Exchange ‘out of IM’ solution, because I pay more attention to SMS than I do email. The SMS you received contains a link that launches Safari, which in turn launches Pinger, which is a little odd. Either way, you can turn the feature off.

Pinger decided to only make IM work in landscape mode. While I appreciate the landscape keyboard, I’d have liked the option of working in portrait. Why Pinger doesn’t allow this is beyond me. I also suspect they just couldn’t get the graphics for portrait mode done in time — even in landscape there are some inconsistencies with the bubbles.

Nevertheless you have a decent IM client with SMS background notification and integration with a dialer app. Not bad, not bad. We’re not quite done yet, though.

Social Media Status Aggregator

“Social Media Status Aggregator” is a mouthful, but I can’t really think of a clearer explanation of the ‘Friend News’ tab. Once you’ve set up Pinger to have access to your Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter accounts, this tab will show you each your friends’ most recent statuses. It does this properly, only showing the most recent status for each friend so your listing doesn’t consist of that one guy (you know who) who twitters every 30 seconds.

Additionally, each contact has a button the righthand side that pops up a window with buttons to the various bits of contact methods you have for that person as below:

Occasionally, you’ll find that a given contact here isn’t linked properly to your local contacts — this also happens in IM. In that case you can ‘link’ to that person’s contact to help make this pop-up bubble useful. Pinger inserts a custom email address into the contact to make the link.

Note that while you have a nice, integrated feed aggregator for social network status, what you don’t have is a great client for social networks. Yes, you can drill into a contact’s profile page in an embedded browser, but it’s not as full featured as the separate Facebook app. You can directly message somebody on Twitter, but you can’t ‘just Tweet’ or send @ messages.

Still, for me, status is a good 40% of what I’m looking for about most of my friends on social networks anyway, so the feed aggregator is pretty good.

Conclusion

Pinger has a smorgasbord of social functions here so it’s pretty difficult to wrap up in nice, pithy conclusion. The contact tab is a great improvement over the default phone app and has become my default dialer.

The IM client is sub-par because it’s medium-light on features and requires you to go into landscape mode, but I’m using it as my main client anyway because it reports status to the dialer and provides SMS notifications when I’m not in the app.

The Friend News tab is a nice alternative to browsing through my twitter feed because it includes statuses from Facebook and MySpace, but otherwise it’s not all that useful. Then again, just because it isn’t useful doesn’t mean I don’t use it.

In all, Pinger came very close to creating an integrated dialing/media app that is insanely great. Some bugs, some portions of the app that seem slightly unfinished, some crashes (just a couple), and that annoying landscape IM thing hold it back though. I have to admit, however, that I’ve followed their advice, it’s replaced the phone app on my dock — primarily because searching through the contacts app is just so much quicker and seeing IM presence in that same app is the ‘way it should be.’

Pros

• Fast Dialer
• SMS IM notification
• Presense

Cons

• IM only works in landscape
• I’ve had a couple crashes
• Contacts need to be linked in Pinger too often

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Review: Pinger, the Social Dialer for iPhone