Monthly Archives: October 2010

MailOnline for iPhone and iPad released: shudder!

Posted on October 31, 2010 by Shaun

MailOnline has been released for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch and goes by the following marketing bluff. I have added my bits in brackets-

“This app is different to any app you may have used (it’s exactly the same as The Guardian app) before and it is a simple way to access great (nasty vile racist bigoted) content on the move!”

Our app has been optimised for Apple’s latest mobile devices and offers various features that will allow you to stay up to date with the latest news, gossip, sport, pictures and more from mailonline.co.uk, the No.1 UK newspaper site.

This version 1.0 has:
- An offline mode
The MailOnline app pre-loads content to give you words and pictures instantly, even if you are offline, on a plane, train, Tube or merely without reception.

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50,000 words in 30 days on my iPad. Can I do it?

Posted on October 31, 2010 by Shaun

Well, that’s the challenge I’m setting myself. Monday sees the start of this year’s Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month), during which thousands of crazy people in the US and around the world will be attempting to write a 50,000 word novel in just 30 days. This is the third time I have attempted the feat, and this time I’m determined to succeed.

And almost all of it is going to happen on my iPad.

For me, writing on the iPad is so much more personal and intimate than working on a laptop or desktop computer. As I said in my initial review, the overall experience is immersive; there is very little UI clutter to get in your way, no trackpad or physical keyboard between you and your words; and the screen is physically closer to you, too. Put simply , this makes it easier to focus on what I am writing, similar to writing in a paper notebook.

Moreover, for a non-touch typist like myself, there is less physical strain involved, no shifting of the head back and forth between the keyboard and the screen, and no straining of the neck and eyes to take in the full width of a laptop or desktop screen. And the keyboard is big, wide and comfortable, which, combined with autocorrect, does a magnificent job of turning my somewhat awkward six-fingered typing-style into perfectly readable prose.

I use Apple’s own iPad case for propping the device up at the correct angle for typing. It works pretty well when the I am sitting on the sofa with the iPad on my lap, but it is just superb when I sit down at a desk or table in order to crank out some serious wordage. I’ll be turning to Apple’s Bluetooth keyboard some of the time, though, particularly for scenes which are heavy on dialog. (Accessing double quotes on the iPad itself is a little awkward, unfortunately.)

I’ve jotted down some preliminary scenes and character notes in an app called Index Cards, which allows me to to drag my ideas around until I have a rough outline of the story I want to tell. I can also toggle between the card and an outline view for a different perspective on the story as it develops.

At some point, however, the bulk of the writing will be done in a rather elegant writing app called PlainText. The beauty of this app, apart from the gorgeous UI, is that it automatically syncs all changes to the cloud via Dropbox, and from there the files are immediately accessible on my iPhone and desktop computer. In fact, PlainText is a “universal” iOS app, so I can pick up on my iPhone exactly where I left off on my iPad. (Let’s face it, if I’m going to make that 50,000 word target, I’ll need to be able to add a few hundred words from my iPhone whenever I get the opportunity.)

The final link in the chain is a Mac OS app called Scrivener which will pull all of the files created on my iPad together into a complete manuscript. Fortunately, both Index Cards and PlainText sync directly to Scrivener, so tweaking and reorganizing my story should be a breeze. (Scrivener is itself a powerful writing tool, but, as I have already stated, I prefer writing on my iPad.)

Anyway, I thought it might be interesting for people to see how I’ll  be using my iPad over the next month, and to explain why you won’t hear much from me in the comments.

Wish me luck. I’m going to need it. Trevor.

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News round-up: Vodafone protests, broken iPads, webOS on the HTC Hero

Posted on October 30, 2010 by Shaun

Several Vodafone shops in London have had to shut following protests claiming that the company has avoided a £6 billion tax bill. The government says that the true figure is £1.25 billion, but I guess it gives the protesters something to do on the weekend.

I spotted the iPad below in a local store today with a strange fault. There was a thick black line down the centre where the screen failed to display anything. It still worked, but was obviously not usable. Even stranger, the one next to it had exactly the same fault…

A new thread at XDA Developers details a plan to port webOS to the HTC Hero. I’m not sure how feasible it is, but the idea of a webOS on decent hardware (at last) would be interesting to try. In this case, it is completely illegal to do this, but is still intriguing.

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The global handset market in the third quarter of 2010

Posted on October 30, 2010 by Shaun

The results are in showing the make up of the global handset market in quarter 3 of 2010. Nokia is down from last year, but retains first place, Samsung is looking healthy in third place with LG slightly down in fourth place. Apple has now overtaken RIM to take fifth place.

Looking at just smartphones Nokia is still first, but dropping quite quickly. Apple is third and RIM is fourth.

IDC said the worldwide mobile phone market grew 14.6 percent in the third quarter of 2010, which the firm said was the fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, driven in part by the fast-growing converged mobile device category. According to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors shipped 340.5 million units in 3Q10 compared with 297.1 million units in the third quarter of 2009. Strategy Analytics said annual growth came in at 13 percent compared with a rate of 16 percent during the first six months of 2010.

Research firm ABI said the growth has created a number of factors:

  • Component manufacturers have never had it so good. Nokia in particular reported a hardware crunch, especially with displays (e.g. AMOLED) and semiconductor components for low-cost handsets. Nokia’s leading market-share in this segment has increased Nokia’s exposure to the component crunch.
  • Vendors that have strong portfolios in smartphones (RIM, Apple, HTC and Motorola) have seen their growth in market-share outperform the market.
  • Unless Nokia can resolve its component resourcing challenges, it is likely to be supply-constrained again in the fourth quarter.
  • Handset vendors with greater in-house ability to source their own components (e.g. Samsung and LG) will be able to take advantage of the market opportunity to expand volumes.
  • Typically a handset boom period is followed by a market softening as customers wait for the next “must have” handset feature innovation to make its way to the market. However, ABI said there is still considerable room for innovation in the smartphone sector, not just “feature innovation” but also “cost reduction innovation,” which should keep customers keen.
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All S4BB BlackBerry apps are 99c this weekend only. Up to 98% off select titles!

Posted on October 30, 2010 by Shaun

If you visit the PDA-247 BlackBerry software store this weekend you can grab some serious bargains from S4BB Limited, and we mean serious bargains.

S4BB Limited is offering a large selection of apps for just 99c which include ActionPad (normally $9.99), SmartWifi (normally $9.99) and NextAction! which is normally, wait for it, $49.99! The full list is here and this is NOT a sale to miss.

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QOTD: PIM services?

Posted on October 30, 2010 by Shaun

What service(s) do you use to retrieve emails and manage your calendar? I am using MS Exchange for my emails and MobileMe for my calendars.

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COTD: All the rest is just busywork

Posted on October 30, 2010 by Shaun

Comment of the day comes from lazyboy on the subject of devices that require lots of effort to use- “I want something that works well and works simply. All the rest is just busywork.”

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HEXETERA – A New Triangle Puzzle Game for iPhone and iPod touch

Posted on October 30, 2010 by Shaun

HEXETERA is new and well suited to the iPhone platform. First impressions are pretty good from my side.


Sydney, Australia – iKontacts is excited to introduce today its first ever game, HEXETERA (TM) – Triangle Puzzle Game, an instantly-playable and likable puzzle game for iPhone and iPod touch users. This release marks the very first version of HEXETERA on any device or platform.

In HEXETERA, your objective is to move, explode, rotate, color, destroy and drop PRIMARIES, pieces made of one or more triangles, in a triangular grid, to form single color Hexagon (HEXA) and Diagonal (DIA) formations.

Formations explode on creation, causing PRIMARIES above them to fall. The game is further intensified by SECONDARIES and Reward Buttons. SECONDARIES are falling pieces that help or hinder you. Power up with Reward Buttons when you make various formations and charge through your levels. DIA formations are the most challenging to make and have the most points. Levels get faster and targets get harder.

“We feel we have brought something different to the regular block-based action puzzle games with HEXETERA. All shapes, movements, grid, speeds, targets and levels have been decided by a lot of play time and feel for the game,” says Jameel Akhtab, co-founder of iKontacts. “And this is just the beginning, as HEXETERA has strong game mechanics to build upon.”

Game features:
* 2 Game modes, Jupiter and Infinity
* Jupiter mode has 16 challenge levels that keep your fingers dancing
* Infinity mode gives you endless play till your battery runs out
* Random play on every play. Falling pieces, PRIMARIES or SECONDARIES, are completely random, each time you play
* Colorful level graphics, pieces, explosions, transitions and animations
* Intuitive movements for players of all ages
* All-original sound tracks and sound effects
* Play your iPod music option
* In Jupiter mode, the quicker you reach level targets or make a formation, the higher your scores
* In-game Leader boards included. (Global leader boards coming soon)
* Post scores on Facebook
* Post scores on Twitter
* Share scores via email

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Samsung Galaxy Tab (Sprint) review by PCMag

Posted on October 30, 2010 by Shaun

PCMag has reviewed the Samsung Galaxy Tab and they seem undecided on it so far. Some good, some bad, but they seem to think that it is all potential so far. Time will tell… Thanks to Trevor.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab is all potential. The first viable competitor to the Apple iPad, it’s a well-built Android tablet that’s comfortable and easy to use. But for now, it lacks the software experiences to make it worth its high price.

I’m not bashing the Tab, but I’m also not recommending it—yet. The Tab is a blank slate. It’s an overgrown smartphone without the ability to make voice calls. The Tab can do all the things Galaxy S phones do, just bigger. Samsung has done some amazing work to make the Android Market’s thousands of apps work well on the Tab’s 7-inch 1,024-by-600-pixel touch-screen display—almost everything I downloaded from Android Market worked well. But they’re just large versions of smartphone apps. Unlike with the iPad, developers haven’t created rich, unique tablet-specific experiences for the Galaxy Tab yet.

Samsung is aware of this issue and has been cultivating third-party developers, Samsung’s Director of Product Planning, Nick DeCarlo told me. High-profile apps are coming, he said, although he refused to name names. Some great apps could really change the game here.

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Samsung sells 71.4 million handsets in 12 weeks

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Shaun

In an industry full of big numbers, Samsung has just announced its quarterly financials and the figures are astonishing.

71.4 million handsets sold. The Galaxy S is expected to sell 10 million units by the end of the year. The Samsung Wave has surpassed 2 million units. The average sales price of Samsung phones was also up by 14% which is slightly unusual in the wider market.

The telecommunication businesses – including Mobile Communications and Telecommunication Networks – posted an operating profit of 1.13 trillion won on revenue of 11.12 trillion won. The operating profit margin was 10.2 percent.

In the Mobile Communications Business, Samsung sold 71.4 million handsets during the third quarter, an increase of 19 percent year-on-year, outperforming the industry. Average sales price also increased 14 percent quarter-on-quarter. The rollout of Samsung’s flagship smartphones, Galaxy S and Wave, were the primary drivers of continued sales growth amid a global demand recovery.

Since its introduction in June, Galaxy S has been launched in 90 countries and has been selected by 210 carriers worldwide. Samsung projects sales of 10 million units by the end of 2010. The Samsung Wave, which operates on Samsung’s open smartphone platform, bada, has also shipped more than two million units in 80 countries.

The quarter was also marked by the launch of Samsung’s Android-powered Galaxy Tab, which will be available on 140 carriers globally including all four major service providers in the United States.

In the fourth quarter, Samsung aims to increase its market share and maintain double-digit operating profit by meeting seasonal demand with an enhanced product mix of mass market smartphones, full-touch phones and the Galaxy Tab.

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XPERIA Android 2.1 update coming Sunday

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Shaun

Got an Xperia X10, X10 mini or X10 mini pro? If so, Sunday will bring you the official Android 2.1 update from Sony Ericsson. Enjoy…

Today I can confirm that we will start the roll-out of the Android 2.1 based updates for Xperia X10, X10 mini and X10 mini pro now this coming Sunday. The roll out will start in the evening European time.

So far I have received confirmation that the generic kits for the Nordic countries will be the very first ones out on Sunday evening and then there will be more kits coming already during Monday and then the roll-out will continue throughout the month of November.

As said earlier these updates will give you some features introduced by Android 2.1 and the Xperia X10 will also get HD-video recording in 720p with continuous auto focus.
The changes in user experience after the update is a mix of things added or changed going from Android 1.6 to Android 2.1 and things changed or improved by us directly.

As a re-cap – The key changes for the different products are the following:

Xperia X10:
• HD video recording with continuous auto-focus for high quality videos
• Upgrade of the Android platform to Android 2.1
• New back up and restore application, with extended content back up
• 5 homescreens for apps, widgets, shortcuts and folders
• Social phonebook which automatically syncs contact pictures from Facebook and shows when your friends are online

Xperia X10 mini and X10 mini pro:
• Improved Bluetooth functionality with support for sending and receiving pictures, contacts and more
• New backup and restore application with extended content back up
• Automatic synchronization of your contact pictures between Facebook and your phone book
• Improved ways of handling pictures, audio, text and numbers in your messages
• Upgrade of the Android platform to Android platform 2.1

In most markets, your phone will automatically let you know with a notification when the update is ready for your specific software version and then you will be guided to how to perform the update using the PC Companion software. In that process, because of this being a big update, you will also be guided through some steps to be able to backup personal data before the update and then restore it when the update is finished. Find out more at www.sonyericsson.com/update

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QOTD: Losing and finding phones?

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Shaun

Have you ever lost your smartphone and if so, did you use a remote service to get it back? I can’t see a time when I will lose mine because it is one of few items that I know the whereabouts at all times. My children are the other two…

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Too much Touch

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Shaun

The news that the orientation button will be lost on the iPad in the iOS 4.2 update was a bit of a shock to me. It is a device that constantly requires locking the orientation and I found this button incredibly handy when I owned one. You will still be able to lock the orientation via the multi-tasking popup bar, but that’s not the point. For a company that prides itself on user experience I would expect to be able to define how I want to use that button- mute or orientation lock. I would also expect to be able to do so on my iPhone 4, but this button is also assigned to muting and nothing else.

I understand the requirement to bring consistency between the iPhone and iPad, but I don’t understand the lack of choice offered. The fact that the double click of the home button for the camera in iOS 4 was lost is another annoyance and I am now consigned to using touch to open it, often missing the moment which I never used to do.

None of this is a huge problem, but it is annoying that flexibility is not offered to the customer. Many argue that Apple knows what is best for us and I reluctantly admit that on many occasions it has proved that its ideas work in the real world, but removing the orientation button on the iPad requires little thought to realise that it is a stupid move. It works well and Apple proved that a mute button was not needed on the iPad because you can simply hold the volume down key to get to silent in a second, so why the need for a mute button on top of that?

It’s not just Apple. On most of the smartphones I have reviewed recently, the focus is on touch as the way to drive the device with extra focus on including as few hardware buttons as possible. I see many phones with no dedicated camera button anymore which is crazy when some of these phones are packing cameras that feature high up in the marketing literature. Touch is great and on some smartphones (Galaxy S, iPhone 4) it works extremely well, but the addition of a couple of small buttons around the edges is not going to ruin the design in any way. Sometimes touch is too much.

6 Comments

Soulver for iPad: mini review

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Shaun

I mentioned an iPad app called Soulver the other day which I described as “a plain text editor combined with a spreadsheet/calculator”. I realize now that this didn’t properly convey what this app is all about. Probably the best way to demonstrate what it does is to show you, so here are a few screenshots which should be self explanatory.

It’s a beautifully designed app which is just fantastic for quick calculations, worksheets, quotes, and sketching out budgets and estimates. Simply type out lists of items, figures and sums – just as if you were jotting them down on a piece of paper – and Soulver pulls out all the numbers and does the calculations.

Projects can be saved and filed for future reference, reuse or editing – if you’re a contractor or service provider of any kind, I can’t think of a quicker way of sketching out some figures with a client and then emailing them instantly.

For those of you with iPhones, there’s an iPhone version as well. Both are great, but it’s the iPad version that really rocks.

Simply brilliant. Trevor.

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The next two weeks: which phone are you most interested in?

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Shaun

The next two weeks are an important time in the smartphone world, and one that offers the chance for sites like this to review some of the latest devices and to hopefully help you decide if one is worth purchasing.

Which of the following devices are you most interested in seeing a review of on PDA-247? I will use your answers when I contact Clove later to tap them up for yet another review unit.

Samsung Galaxy Tab- £552.25 (launch date: 1st November)

Nokia N8- £399.50 (expected 2nd week of November)

Motorola DEFY- £299.63 (expected 1st week of November)

HTC Desire Z- £428.88 (expected early November)

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