Apple has confirmed on its UK site that iOS 4.1 will be released next Wednesday (8th September). It will be interesting to see if the proximity sensor is fixed in this update, desperate for that one to start working, and to check out the HDR Photography option. Don’t forget that Game Center and HD video uploading will also arrive with this update.

Experience social gaming on your iPhone. Find friends or use auto-match to play against new opponents. Track achievements, compare high scores and more.

Take advantage of new social discovery features in iTunes. Keep up with your friends’ music and follow your favourite artists.

Upload HD video to YouTube and MobileMe from your iPhone 4.

Take great photos that capture a wider range of light intensity using the new high dynamic range (HDR) setting on iPhone 4, which automatically combines multiple exposures into a single HDR image.

Have you tried Ping yet and what are your thoughts? I have tried it and must say that it looks OK, but I am not convinced it is flexible enough to be more than an add-on to iTunes.

The amount of spam already on the service is incredible- every single item I can see in my list has a spam reply.

Mobile phones are supposed to be carried by their owner and most of us keep them close by for the majority of each day. They can be kept in a pocket, on a desk or in a bag and so it is important to keep them protected if possible. I am one of those people who will overdo the protective element of mobile ownership and do everything I can to keep it as good as new and the resell value as high as possible. This has always worked for me in the past and the expense of a screen protector and case are minimal compared to the longer life and higher resell value they produce. My BlackBerry smartphones have had neither a case or screen protector and every one was still in perfect condition when it came to moving on. And then I bought an iPhone 4.

It has a case and a screen protector and multiple surface scratches on the back casing and the screen. I treat it like a baby, but to no avail; the damage keeps on coming. The emphasis on style is immense and it is without doubt a beautiful phone, but I would argue that the materials used and the shape mean that it is much more likely to get damaged than other smartphones. It’s not just me, a colleague at work has exactly the same problem and it is frustrating.

Apple does not have a good track record when it comes to making portable devices capable of keeping their looks in the face of ‘normal’ use. The silver backing on the early iPods and iPod Touch is plainly ridiculous. If you so much as look at one of them they will scratch, and the iPhone 3G and 3GS backings were only marginally better.

Design is vitally important in any smartphone, but it sadly appears that looks are more important than making a device that will look like new for the long term. What is the point of making a phone that looks great if it cannot keep those looks for more than a few weeks? Few people seem to moan about this, but I believe it to be a fundamental flaw in the iPhone 4 design.

In a move that cleverly protects the company from Apple’s recent development of Game Center, OpenFient will be offering cross-platform multi-player gaming on iPhone and Android handsets.

From slide to Play- “In a move designed to tilt the balance of power in the mobile gaming wars, OpenFeint has announced they will be bringing their social gaming platform to Google’s Android phones later this summer.

Launch partners for the cross-platform shift include Glu, Digital Chocolate, and Hudson Entertainment, who already have several games available on the Android Market. Indie developers like RocketCat Games, makers of Hook Champ and Super QuickHook, have also pledged their support. On the business side of things, OpenFeint announced they recently received a capital investment from Chinese online gaming company The9.”

DataViz has announced that there will be no version of Docs To Go for webOS. Here’s the full statement- “We regret to announce that we have made the difficult decision to not produce a Web OS version of Documents To Go. We understand that our delay in this area has caused much disappointment to our current and very loyal user base. We would like to explain in more detail the reasoning behind our decisions thus far.

Our intention had been to replace the Palm Viewers, which were based on the Documents To Go technology, with a full editing, aftermarket version of Documents To Go. In order to do this in a way that we felt would be most intuitive to users, we wanted to have the full version seamlessly replace the built in viewers. To do this, we needed some technical help from Palm. Because Palm was focusing on other areas at the time (including their very survival), and there was no official information available allowing developers to help ourselves, i.e., an SDK, there was a delay in getting us this information. Rather than do a substantially larger project that would result in a “sub-optimal” user experience, we decided to wait. This wait was much longer than anyone at DataViz expected. During this wait, we focused our efforts on other smartphone platforms, not because we were not loyal to Palm, but because it made “business sense” to do so. We have now come to the realization that it is not in DataViz’ nor our users’ best interests to continue the wait and produce the full version. We understand that another developer has chosen to create an editing Office product for webOS and we wish them the best. Again, we apologize to our users for taking this long to reach, what is for DataViz and many of our users, a disappointing conclusion.”

This is indeed sad news for webOS users, but CrackBerry appears to have uncovered the likely reason for this move- “More interesting than this news from DataViz though is the news they didn’t announce….. they were bought by RIM!! Though neither company has publicly announced it (yet), multiple sources have confirmed to us that RIM recently acquired DataViz for a reported $50 million cash (not material to RIM, so they didn’t have to disclose it publicly as they have done with other acquisitions like the QNX one). Jump on to LinkedIn and you can also quickly find that lots of former DataViz employees have recently switched up their profiles to Research In Motion as their current employer.”

I wonder if other versions of DocumentsToGo will now be discontinued?

Some serious research done by Mobile Entertainment regarding mobile app numbers in the following slide deck. Sit back, relax and enjoy the numbers…

Great news for all of you Android users out there- Angry Birds is now available as a beta in the Android Market. It should work on all 2nd generation Android handsets and above and if you need help, check out our Angry Birds post which is currently running at more than 250 comments.

Here’s the full announcement from Rovio- “This week, we were planning to run a closed beta test of Angry Birds Lite for Android. Due to the massive response and demand from the Android community, we have decided to make Angry Birds Lite Beta available for everybody through the Android Market this Friday.

Please note that this will be the beta version of the application which is still undergoing final testing before official release. Angry Birds Lite Beta is presented on an “as is” basis, and we cannot guarantee its functionality on every Android device.

Angry Birds Lite Beta will run on second generation Android devices and upwards.

We have tested the game on a number of Android devices, and we would love to hear your feedback on how the game is performing on your personal device. Should you have any problems running Angry Birds Lite Beta, you can simply click the report a bug button in the main menu of the game to provide us with direct feedback.

We want to ensure that we will publish the best game ever released on Android, and we hope that this beta version will prove to our Android fans that Angry Birds has been worth the wait!

More information on Friday when we have the game available on Android Market.”

I have asked this question before, but want to know if I am the only one. When you add a calendar entry, contact or anything else that others do not see, do you still use proper capitals and punctuation? I do all of the time no matter what I am typing.

If you run a Wordpress powered site it can be tricky using a mobile to publish rich content that looks like the rest of your desktop published content. After many months of searching I have finally found a way to do so on my iPhone. Here are the tools I have been using-

BlogPress

There are a few options for updating blogs on the iPhone including the official WordPress app which doesn’t allow formatting at this stage and as such is only really suited to simply home blogs that do not require links or any formatting. BlogBooster boasts a WYSIWYG feature which is unique on the iPhone and many other features that mean it should be the leader in this field, but in my experience it is highly unreliable and I have found that 2 out of 3 posts created on it struggle to even make it to PDA-247. The multi-tasking is very poor and flipping between apps, which you need to do to create a blog post simply does not work most of the time with the text disappearing for no apparent reason. Multi-tasking is also very slow because the app continually tries to synchronise the site.

BlogPress has worked 100% of the time for me so far; multi-tasking is fluid and leaves your work in the exact state you left it and the html inserts are cleverly implemented. It isn’t WYSIWYG, but it doesn’t need to be because anyone can work with it. Simply highlight some text and choose your insert. Images are a bit tricky because a left aligned images drops the text one line and a centre aligned image truly is centred. There is no option for no justification. Besides that I can make most posts look the same as they do from a desktop.

Mobile Safari

Any browser will do for this task and Mobile Safari includes the only two options you need; saving images and copying the full URL you are viewing. Copying text is also a snap and works perfectly for this task.

Adobe Photoshop Express

Copying images from a web page is OK, but rarely will the image be the size you need. Crucially Adobe Photoshop Express allows you to select a part of an image and save that separately. It doesn’t do scaling and I am still looking for an app that does that, but it just about does what will be needed for most bloggers. Out of interest it also does borders and effects which could be useful for some sites.

My Writing Nook

I am using this more and more to create content and it has proved invaluable for not losing data. I am also using it to write a book at the moment and its simplicity is what makes it work so well.

These are the only tools I need to manage 247 on the go and I am 90% successful in posting what I need to. BlogPress needs a small amount of work on image handling and Adobe needs some more options, but it is great to finally be able to manage the site when away from home. Total cost: £3.58.

This is a quick reminder that you can donate to PDA-247 if you enjoy the content every day. Details are on the about page and there are some perks for any donation of $5 and above. It is very difficult to come up with iPhone or Android related perks due to the way the software is sold, but I continue to hunt out deals for you if I can.

There are a few adverts on 247 and the goal of any site is to use income to cover the costs and turn a profit, but if I am honest it is not always easy to do that. The site will continue no matter what, but any help would be appreciated. Thanks for listening:)

StopMail for the BlackBerry platform could save you from being crushed under the weight of emails coming into your inbox. It’s cheap and I am amazed no one has thought of it before now. Available here.

Allows you to disable an email account without having to actually remove the account from the device (Helpful for work accounts).
Keeps emails from playing catch-up when the account is re-enabled.
Allows you to schedule a blocking period for each account.
Keeps the block settings across device reboots as long as it is enabled.
Saves the last 20 emails deleted by the app, since last reboot, so they can be restored.
In app help menu.

I so wish that Nokia would stop closing services that people are relying on. The latest to face the chop is Ovi Files which is predicted to close on 1st October by Nokia Experts.

As much as I love Nokia devices and services, I also get extremely frustrated with them from time-to-time. A couple of years ago it seemed like they were buying up as many services as they could with the hope that a global Ovi services offering would provide you with all you need. We have seen several of these services come and go (N-Gage, Mosh, Nokia Backup, etc.) to the point where I am now very leery of jumping onto any service they launch. I hope Ovi Maps never goes away, but you never know. Today we here that Ovi Files is shutting down on 1 October 2010.

AndroidCentral has posted a hands-on video with the Samsung Galaxy Tab, which you can view below. It looks a lot better than I expected. More details here.

This is off-topic, but very clever indeed. Tipp-Ex has produced a YouTube video the like of which you will not have seen before. Click this link to check it out and to make your own short films by typing a single word.

Skyfire is submitting its mobile browser for approval by Apple and the big news is that it will bring Flash capability with it. Will be fascinating to see where this one goes over the next few weeks. Thanks to Claire.

Skyfire’s Cloud Technology May End Public Standoff Over Flash on “iDevices”

Mountain View, CA – August 31, 2010– Skyfire is submitting a mobile browser to Apple’s App Store capable of playing Flash video while adhering to all Apple’s guidelines regarding HTML5 open-video standards on Apple devices.
Skyfire 2.0 for iPhone follows on the heels of Skyfire’s recent launch on Android, which has now become one of the most popular third-party browsers on Google’s mobile platform, with nearly a million downloads in its first three months.

“We’re excited to submit a mobile browser for iPhone and iPod Touch that addresses Apple’s concerns regarding Flash deployment on mobile devices,” explains Jeff Glueck, CEO of Skyfire. “Rather than enabling Flash, Skyfire will translate videos into Apple standards. Skyfire supports HTML5 but at the same time, we recognize that the transition to HTML5 for 100 million Flash publishers will take years. We hope to bridge that gap and solve a problem for consumers who want access to millions of previously-unavailable videos on their iPhones.”