When Steve Jobs said that their iPhone is years ahead of competition, I never thought that this would turn out to be a genuine statement. It so sad to see how Palm had to hired tons of Apple engineers, spend so much money and years only to come 'close' and to 'resemble' a device that Apple created back in 2007. Why can't other big competitors coup up with Apple, even when everything is laid out to them, I will never understand. I hate Apple and rest of the world for this. I bought Palm PRE. $325 and $70/m. How do I get out of this!
iPhone of year 2007 vs Palm PRE of year 2009
posted on: Sunday 7th June 2009
| Tagged: Apple iPhone Palm Palm PRE | 2 comment(s) |
Yet another Palm PRE first impression.
posted on: Sunday 7th June 2009
So I woke up late on June 6th. It's about 11am. I was feeling something I ought to do... Oh yea, buy Palm PRE. The Sprint store is very near by, so I just walked up there around 12pm. There is one person front of me in the line. I was assured that Palm PRE is in stock. Great, I guess... So after $325 dollars and a 2-year contract later, I have PRE in my hand.
I am a both Palm and iPhone developer. I developed for Palm back in 2003-2004. All of my apps were purchased by Iambic Inc later 2004. Then 2008 I started developing for iPhone. I really didn't need another phone, but I needed Palm PRE device for development and testing purpose.
I am a both Palm and iPhone developer. I developed for Palm back in 2003-2004. All of my apps were purchased by Iambic Inc later 2004. Then 2008 I started developing for iPhone. I really didn't need another phone, but I needed Palm PRE device for development and testing purpose.
|
|
Impression |
Overall rate (out of 5) |
|
Overal look & feel |
Build quality is very cheap compared to iPhone. When you hold it, it feels good for the size of the device, but you will be disappointed how sliding compartments are unsteady. It feels cheap and too plasticy. |
2 |
|
Screen |
Smaller in size then iPhone, but has same resolution which means it can pack same pixel as iPhone in a smaller screen. This is good and bad. Good that you have high resolution in smaller screen, and bad, well its a smaller screen. The colors are very yellowish when you compare with original iPhone. You will only notice this when you compare side by side with the iPhone. But for most people this is no issue. |
4 |
|
Keyboard |
It has physical keyboard all right. But keys are crammed. This is not too bad. But the main complain is the sliding part. You will notice how cheap it feels when you slide in and out. Keyboard is also not spaced down enough from the top screen slide part. So when you are typing the top row of the keys such as QWERTYUIOP, your thumb doesn't get enough space. Even though iPhone has only on screen keyboard, but iPhone's keyboard gives you much more real estate to type then PRE's. |
2.5 |
|
Phone app |
I was surprised to see how much the phone app in PRE resemble the iPhone's app. No visual voice mail. Feels wired to call in to listen to voicemail after using iPhone for few years. |
3 |
|
Multi tasking |
Yea, this is pretty unique. And flipping through all running tasks is a breakthrough in mobile device. Although Windows Mobile has multitasking, but it's not as easy to browse through running apps and closing them. Depending on what apps you are running, device responses may feel sluggish after 5 active apps. However, I am willing to take performance hit over not being able to keep my web browser open while composing an email, and chatting with friends. |
5 |
|
OS and App UI |
Not as polished as iPhone. It feels something is missing... Only unique cool factor of the OS is, how the running applications (Cards as they say) is browsed. Other then that, everything is what iPhone did back in 2007, but only bit less polished and bit more sluggish. Seriously, If you are using iPhone, you will be really disappointed how much it copied iPhone, yet couldn't make it better. |
3 |
|
Built-in apps |
Ya, it has all the usual suspects as you would aspect. Apple was critisized in 2007 because their calculator app was too basic. Well iPhone changed that in 2008, and Palm PRE decided to stay with most basic calculator here in 2009. |
3 |
|
Notification |
Yes, this is unique and very well done. Love how every alerts stacks up in the bottom. You can do something about those alerts right away or deal with them later. |
5 |
|
App Store & Third party apps |
Palm PRE will lose the battle with iPhone if they don't find away to get at least half of iPhone developers, and do it very soon. There are maybe less then 50 apps right now, at least this is how it feels like. Most of them are crap anyway. |
2.5 |
|
Games |
There is no way PRE can match or even come close to iPhone when it comes to gaming. This is because PRE does not have strong OS foundation like iPhone and it does not have native graphic library like OpenGL. iPhone is not battling with smart phones when it comes to gaming, it's battling with real gaming device like Nintendo DS and PSP. |
1.5 |
| Tagged: Palm PRE photo unboxing review | Add comment |
Representing HTML Elements in php object PART 1 (php5)
posted on: Thursday 28th May 2009
In this article, we will create a HTML element wrapper class in php 5, that can represent any HTML tag such as '<p>', '<A>', '<div>'.
Sometimes this is necessary, especially when are working with MVC design pattern. This gives Controller class access to View elements for manipulating before that HTML tag/element is rendered.
Here are list of the benefits of wrapping HTML tags in PHP class object:
Things will start to get more interesting when we extend the HtmlElement and start building customized controls and views. We will look into that in the next part of this series. Now lets get started with the code.
class HtmlElement
{
protected
$_attributes = array(), // holds html tag attributes
$_tag = null, // name of the tag
$_content = ''; // contents of the tag
/**
* constructing the tag element
* we enforce to specify the tag name when creating to make things logically accurate.
*/
public function __construct($tag, $content = '', $attributes = null)
{
$this->_tag = $tag;
$this->_content = $content;
$this->_attributes = $attributes;
}
/**
* we add given string after current content
*/
public function append($str)
{
$this->_content .= $str;
}
/**
* will add given string before the content
*/
public function prepend($str)
{
$this->_content = $str . $this->_content;
}
// ... rest of the code here
}
class HtmlElement
{
// ... previous codes
/**
* render the html tag and returns html string
*/
public function render()
{
$output = $this->_renderStartTag();
$output .= $this->_renderInnerHtml();
$output .= $this->_renderEndTag();
return $output;
}
protected function _renderStartTag()
{
$attributes = $this->attributeString();
if(attributes) {
return "<{$this->_tag} {$attributes}>";
} else {
return "<{$this->_tag}>";
}
}
protected function _renderInnerHtml()
{
return $this->_content;
}
protected function _renderEndTag()
{
return "</{$this->_tag}>";
}
public function __toString()
{
return $this->render();
}
}
Sometimes this is necessary, especially when are working with MVC design pattern. This gives Controller class access to View elements for manipulating before that HTML tag/element is rendered.
Here are list of the benefits of wrapping HTML tags in PHP class object:
- Various parts of application can access View elements
- Work with HTML code as you would for php objects.
- Customize and reuse HTML tags
- Easier and useful to work with nested and complex tags such as lists (<ul>,<ol>, <dl>), forms (<form>)
- Create compound HTML elements, such as a input control with a label. This requires two different tags, but using php object we can encapsulate them into one object.
How to use HTML element object in php
Lets first look at how we will use the HTML element objects. Then we will explore how to write the class file. We will name our class 'HtmlElement'.In the real world, you may not want use this technique to render all of your HTML tags. However lets say you want plugins or other parts of application to be able to modify and customize the $content element. In such case you can simply pass the $content variable among various parts of your application. When they are all done, you can then simply render the $content variable.<?php
// create the paragraph tag
$p = new HtmlElement('p');
$p->align = "center"; // adding html tag attribute
$p->append('This is a paragraph.'); // add the inner text of the tag
// create a div section
$content = new HtmlElement('div');
$content->style = 'padding:4px';
$content->id = 'main_section';
$content->append($p); // add the p tag previously created.
// finally outputting
print $content;
// this will output
// <div style="padding:4px;" id="main_section"><p align="center">This is a paragraph</p></div>
?>
Things will start to get more interesting when we extend the HtmlElement and start building customized controls and views. We will look into that in the next part of this series. Now lets get started with the code.
Coding HtmlElement
HtmlElement will be our base class for rendering all HTML tags. All compound HTML objects will inherit from this. There are three part in the implementation of the HtmlElement- HTML tag name
- attributes for that HTML tag
- finally rendering
Let's get started.
class HtmlElement
{
protected
$_attributes = array(), // holds html tag attributes
$_tag = null, // name of the tag
$_content = ''; // contents of the tag
/**
* constructing the tag element
* we enforce to specify the tag name when creating to make things logically accurate.
*/
public function __construct($tag, $content = '', $attributes = null)
{
$this->_tag = $tag;
$this->_content = $content;
$this->_attributes = $attributes;
}
/**
* we add given string after current content
*/
public function append($str)
{
$this->_content .= $str;
}
/**
* will add given string before the content
*/
public function prepend($str)
{
$this->_content = $str . $this->_content;
}
// ... rest of the code here
}
Construction is self explanatory. First argument is the tag name which is required. Second and third arguments are optional. They are for content of the tag and it's attributes respectively. We also added two additional methods to add to the content (inner html/text of the tag). As name implies, append adds string end of the current text and prepend adds in the begining.
So lets started with attributes. Attributes are implemented using php's magic __get and __set methods and fairly easy to do so.
class HtmlElement
{
// ... previous codes
/**
* sets an attribute
*/
public function __set($key, $value)
{
$this->_attributes[$key] = $value;
}
/**
* get attribute value
*/
public function __get($key)
{
if(isset($this->_attributes[$key])) return $this->_attributes[$key];
return null;
}
/**
* returns all attributes as key=value string
*/
public function attributeString()
{
if(empty($this->_attributes)) return;
$str = '';
foreach($this->_attributes as $key => $value) {
$str .= "{$key}=\"{$value}\" ";
}
return trim($str);
}
... // rest of the code
}
So lets started with attributes. Attributes are implemented using php's magic __get and __set methods and fairly easy to do so.
class HtmlElement
{
// ... previous codes
/**
* sets an attribute
*/
public function __set($key, $value)
{
$this->_attributes[$key] = $value;
}
/**
* get attribute value
*/
public function __get($key)
{
if(isset($this->_attributes[$key])) return $this->_attributes[$key];
return null;
}
/**
* returns all attributes as key=value string
*/
public function attributeString()
{
if(empty($this->_attributes)) return;
$str = '';
foreach($this->_attributes as $key => $value) {
$str .= "{$key}=\"{$value}\" ";
}
return trim($str);
}
... // rest of the code
}
As you can see, in addition to magic function, we created a special method called attributeString(). This method will return all attributes in key=value text format which is used for HTML tags. When we render the tag to output HTML, we need this method. So, let's get started with rendering!
Rendering HTML output
class HtmlElement
{
// ... previous codes
/**
* render the html tag and returns html string
*/
public function render()
{
$output = $this->_renderStartTag();
$output .= $this->_renderInnerHtml();
$output .= $this->_renderEndTag();
return $output;
}
protected function _renderStartTag()
{
$attributes = $this->attributeString();
if(attributes) {
return "<{$this->_tag} {$attributes}>";
} else {
return "<{$this->_tag}>";
}
}
protected function _renderInnerHtml()
{
return $this->_content;
}
protected function _renderEndTag()
{
return "</{$this->_tag}>";
}
public function __toString()
{
return $this->render();
}
}
Ok, lets see what's going on here. We have divided rendering into four different methods. First one is render(), which is public, and the rest three are protected methods responsibles for rendering start of the tag, tag content and end of the tag. You can think of these protected methods as internal events. When subclassing, these events comes very handly. This will be discussed in next part of this article.
Finally we implemented another php magic function called __toString(). This method simply calls render method. By implementing this method, we are able to output and treat this object as a string.
Finally we implemented another php magic function called __toString(). This method simply calls render method. By implementing this method, we are able to output and treat this object as a string.
There are lots of room for improvement, but to keep things simple and to focus on the concept, this implementation will be sufficient. Remember this HtmlElement class will be base class for all further UI elements.
| Tagged: php html programming | Add comment |
Some iPhone app sales data.
posted on: Thursday 28th May 2009
Here are some interesting statistics about iPhone app sales you might like to know.
Business Applications on Top Paid apps:
Productivity Applications:
Utilities Appliation
Business Applications on Top Paid apps:
- Ranked top 10-15 paid app will sale about 70 a day
- Top 25-40 ~ about 35-50 a day.
- Top 40-55 ~ about 15-20 a day.
- Top 60-75 ~ about 4-10 a day.
Productivity Applications:
- Top 30-40 ~ 40-60 a day
Utilities Appliation
- Top 40 - 50 ~ 70-100 a day
| Tagged: iPhone money developers | Add comment |
Task PRO v1.1 for iPhone - features & video
posted on: Friday 22nd May 2009
Task PRO is truly an amazing task management application for the iPhone. Task PRO supports sub-tasking, a powerful mechanism to hierarchically organize task/information. Task PRO also has a very clean & elegant design, and is extremely flexible in nature. Since version 1.0, there has been tons of emails with positive comments/feedbacks that lifted our spirits. However, there were many feature requests also.
So, after little over a month of initial release, Task PRO v1.1 was released on first week of May. Almost 70% of the user requested features were implemented. Lets see whats included and then we can see what left out and when to expect them.
Clearly this was a huge update.
Here is a quick video of Task PRO v1.1
We are currently working on version 1.2 to wrap up rest of the requested features. Some of the notable features will be:
Version 1.2 is expected to be released by early July.
So, after little over a month of initial release, Task PRO v1.1 was released on first week of May. Almost 70% of the user requested features were implemented. Lets see whats included and then we can see what left out and when to expect them.
v1.1 features:
- Allows to manually sort task lists. This option is found under sort/group menu.
- Application icon badge with due/overdue count.
- Lists show hierarchy levels.
- Lists by priority - "high", "normal" or "low".
- Now you can add due time along with date. This will help track daily tasks.
- Ability to delete completed tasks
- Swipe-to-delete feature.
- As may requested, we also added additional symbols/icons for the tag.
- Emailing tasks will also include sub tasks in nice formatted text (HTML formatting used)
- Application setting allows to change some of the default behaviors.
Clearly this was a huge update.
Here is a quick video of Task PRO v1.1
We are currently working on version 1.2 to wrap up rest of the requested features. Some of the notable features will be:
- Repeat/duplicate feature. (One of the most requested).
- Desktop application to quickly view/add/edit tasks. This should work with both Mac and Windows.
- Backup/restore database.
- Full Toodledo syncing with supporting more fields.
Version 1.2 is expected to be released by early July.
| Tagged: iPhone iPhone apps Task PRO | Add comment |
Windows 7 RC shows Microsoft finally understands Apple
posted on: Wednesday 13th May 2009
So far Microsoft didn't get Apple. It simply tried to copy some of the
key features that makes Apple unique. But implemented in "Microsoft
way", that is unattractive, and boring.
Finally it seems like Microsoft's engineers got what Apple is about. They got the trick. Windows 7 completely reflects that. I simply can't point my finger on it, but there is something about Windows 7 that makes it feel right, elegant and beautiful. Something that only Apple was able to do. This is not simply copying Apple, but also understanding what makes Apple different and appealing to users.
source: microsoft.com
Microsoft engineers has done excellent job focusing on task bar. Yes, task bar reflects Apple's dock and "steals" lots of great ideas. However Microsoft's little twists some how makes it bit better. Microsoft paid attention to even smaller details such as showing downloading progress bar, thumbnail image of running application when hovering... things that traditionally only Apple would do, and does.
What really made me believe that Microsoft is unto something is when I saw the library of built-in background images provided with Windows 7. In one word - astonishing
If you still haven't tried yet, go ahead download (http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/Windows-7/download.aspx ) and install Windows 7 RC. It is available for download until July. And rumor has it, it will be released in late this year.
Finally it seems like Microsoft's engineers got what Apple is about. They got the trick. Windows 7 completely reflects that. I simply can't point my finger on it, but there is something about Windows 7 that makes it feel right, elegant and beautiful. Something that only Apple was able to do. This is not simply copying Apple, but also understanding what makes Apple different and appealing to users.
source: microsoft.com
Microsoft engineers has done excellent job focusing on task bar. Yes, task bar reflects Apple's dock and "steals" lots of great ideas. However Microsoft's little twists some how makes it bit better. Microsoft paid attention to even smaller details such as showing downloading progress bar, thumbnail image of running application when hovering... things that traditionally only Apple would do, and does.
What really made me believe that Microsoft is unto something is when I saw the library of built-in background images provided with Windows 7. In one word - astonishing
If you still haven't tried yet, go ahead download (http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/Windows-7/download.aspx ) and install Windows 7 RC. It is available for download until July. And rumor has it, it will be released in late this year.
| Tagged: Microsoft Apple Windows 7 | Add comment |
Signed up for Microsoft Market place for Windows Mobile
posted on: Wednesday 13th May 2009
Following Apple's footstep (tell me something new) Microsoft has created Windows Mobile Marketplace for developers. Offers similar business model such as $100/year, 70/30 sales cut as well as similar application development and distribution policies.
I just signed up. Payed $100. Gave my company (Alifsoft) and banking information. Now it turns out, I need to purchase Windows Visual Studio to develop app. Visual Studio Express (free) edition will not work. Hmm.
| Tagged: Microsoft Windows Mobile | Add comment |
CSS based table - table without TABLE
posted on: Thursday 24th July 2008
Why CSS and not TABLE.
Honestly, I have no good answer or explanation for you. In fact I don't think any one does. There are equal weight of advantage and disadvantage on both approaches. Many people have tried to be strict and only show CSS benefit, and others did exactly same vice verse.
Honestly, I have no good answer or explanation for you. In fact I don't think any one does. There are equal weight of advantage and disadvantage on both approaches. Many people have tried to be strict and only show CSS benefit, and others did exactly same vice verse.
In this new "Web 2.0" era, CSS is becoming primary tool for designing and
shaping web pages. This is a good thing. CSS is really the best thing
that happened to web designing. Now designers can separate "data" from
"presentation". CSS also gives designers much more flexibilities and
controls. In terms of web standards and future, CSS certainly looks
brighter. So any attempt to migrate your any part of your web site to
CSS, is a step toward right direction. But if you taking your time then
you can feel comfort knowing that tech giant like Google still uses TABLEs all
over the place. There is no sign of TABLE being deprecated from HTML, at
least not any time soon.
Migrating HTML TABLE to CSS-P
Traditionally, you would use TABLE tag as follows:
output:
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<td>Header Column 1</td>
<td>Header Column 2</td>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Body column 1</td>
<td>body column 2</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
| Header Column 1 | Header Column 2 |
| Body Column 1 | Body Column 2 |
My goal is to bring the same structure and coding layout using CSS. To be precise, here is an example:
<div class="table">Looks good right? But we are far from being done. Let's look at the output first:
<div class="row header">
<div class="cell">Header Column 1</div>
<div class="cell">Header Column 2</div>
</div>
<div class="row body">
<div class="cell">Body Column 1</div>
<div class="cell">Body Column 2</div>
</div>
</div>
output:
Header Column 1
Header Column 2
Body Column 1
Body Column 2
As you can see, It is not at all what we expected. Everything is showing in a single column in separate rows. This needs to be fixed in CSS section.
CSS, time to play
If you noted, you know that we have used several classes inside our "div", for example -'table', 'row', 'cell'. Our next step is to define those classes in css. In "perfect world" (which basically means geniuses at Redmond complying with W3C web standard), creating table using CSS is extremely easy. We can be done with the following lines of CSS codes:
.table {
display: table; }
.table .row {
display: table-row; }
.table row .cell {
display: table-cell; }
that's it. Simple right? Unfortunately, above styles are not supported by most browsers including Internet Explorer 6 and 7. So it's basically useless for now.
CROSS BROWSER APPROACH:
alternative approach is to use 'inline-block' to define 'cell'. In this case we additionally need to specify width of every cell in HTML code. It is tedious depending on your table size and structure. However, this is the only "good" solution we have. Here is how:
Your CSS code is simple. All we have to do is declare cell to be 'inline-block'. This allows you to re-size your cell to any width/height you want.
.table { }
.table .row { }
.table .row .cell { display: inline-block; }
now in HTML add additional style to specify width of each column.
<div class="table">
<div class="row header">
<span class="cell" style='width:50px;'>Header Column 1</span>
<span class="cell" style='width:50px;'>Header Column 2</span>
</div>
<div class="row body">
<span class="cell" style='width:50px;'>Body Column 1</span>
<span class="cell" style='width:50px;'>Body Column 2</span>
</div>
</div>
This approach works for most browsers. For IE 6 to work, you have to use "span" instead of "div" for the columns. Don't ask me why. This breaks W3C regulation since you are making "span" as a block element.
ANOTHER APPROACH:
Another approach is to use 'float'ing columns.
.table { }
.table .row { clear: left; }
.table .row .column { float: left; }
We still have to specify width of every cell. In additional, we have to
clear the the floating after the last row. For example:<div class="table">This approach is most widely compatible among browsers. Your best bet is to chose between 'floating' cell or 'inline-block' cell.
<div class="row header">
<span class="cell" style='width:50px;'>Header Column 1</span>
<span class="cell" style='width:50px;'>Header Column 2</span>
</div>
<div class="row body">
<span class="cell" style='width:50px;'>Body Column 1</span>
<span class="cell" style='width:50px;'>Body Column 2</span>
</div>
<div style='clear:left;'></div>
</div>
FORMATTING TABLE
power of CSS comes when it's time to format - "presentation". For example, we can format our headers and table in following css properties:
.header {
font-size:18px;
font-weight:bold; }
.header .cell {
line-height:24px; }
.table {
border:2px solid #ccc; }
.table .row .cell {
padding:3px;
margin:2px; }
EXTENDING TABLE USING MULTIPLE CSS CLASSES:
another power of css is the ability to have multiple classes for an element. We have already done this on row '<div class='row header'> so 'row' is one class and 'header' is another class. Browser will join these two classes (append their properties) to render the element.
This technique comes in handy when using different types of tables, such as - table for creating form, table for listing items and so on. For example:
<div class='table form'>
<div class='row'>
<div class='cell label'>Enter your name:</div>
<div class='cell input'><input type='text' /></div>
</div>
</div>
and css codes
.form {
width:500px; }
.form .row .label {
width:150px;
font-weight:bold;
text-align:right; }
As you can see we have added 'form' class with table and additional 'lable'
and 'input' classes with cells. You can imagine the possibilities when
you start working with may different kinds of tables.Mapping some of table's attributes to CSS properties:
|
cellpadding=2 |
.cell { padding:2px } |
|
|
cellspacing=4 |
.cell { margin:4px; } |
|
|
border=1 |
.table { border:1px solid red} |
css allows you to define three dimension of border - color, style and
size |
|
width=100% |
.table {width:100%} |
can be applied to table, row or cell |
|
align=center |
.cell { text-align:center; } |
if you want to center the table, then you have to use different
approach. just wrap the table with another div and set it's text-align
to center. |
|
valign=middle |
.cell {vertical-align:middle; } |
different browser produce different result |
|
bgcolor='#000000' |
.cell {background-color:#000000;} |
|
|
|
|
|
| Tagged: css html | Add comment |
10 hot and useful tips to maximize iPhone's battery life
posted on: Monday 7th July 2008
Apple Inc. claims that iPhone has 8 hours talk time, 250 hours of standby, 6
hours of Internet, 7 hours of video playback and 24 hours of audio playback!!
These are very impressive numbers, except that claims has lots of strings
attached which no one actually reads it.
Although, you may not get even close to these numbers, but I will attempt to provide all tweaks and settings to get as close as possible. I have collected most of these tips from Apple's fine prints and some from support page of an iPod. Don't worry, I am not going to ask you to turn of Wi-Fi or other features that would simply cripple your iPhone.
Although, you may not get even close to these numbers, but I will attempt to provide all tweaks and settings to get as close as possible. I have collected most of these tips from Apple's fine prints and some from support page of an iPod. Don't worry, I am not going to ask you to turn of Wi-Fi or other features that would simply cripple your iPhone.
-
Brightness setting: this alone
can do the trick of getting most out your iPhone's (or any device for that
matter) battery life. Even though iPhone has bright and gorgeous
screen, you may want to turn it down to get that screen playable little
longer!
How-to: "Settings" -> "Brightness" -> slide it to about one seventh -
Auto brightness: iPhone has built-in
sensor that checks the lighting condition where ever you are and adjust the
brightness accordingly. This is sweet feature, but the sensor eats up
battery life.
How-to: "Settings" -> "Brightness" -> turn the "Auto-Brightness" switch "OFF" -
Auto-Lock: turn that display off as
frequently as possible. Make sure it is set to 1 Minute
How-to: "Settings" -> "General" -> "Auto-Lock" -> "1 Minute" -
Auto detect Wi-Fi: iPhone has feature
to
How-to: "Settings" -> "Wi-Fi" -> "Ask to Join Networks" -> turn "OFF" -
Email Check frequency: this may not be
suitable for lots of business or frequent email users, but it does save
battery life. You can set iPhone to check email every 15, 30, 60
minutes or do manual check. Of course, ideal setting for saving
battery would be "Manual", but you can also set to "Every hour"
How-to: "Settings" -> "Mail" -> "Auto-Check" -> select "Manual" or "Every hour" -
Turn of some sounds: iPhone makes
noise for about everything you do on it. You can turn off some of
these sound effects such as keyboard click noise and Lock Sound noise.
These two are really unnecessary for the most part.
How-to: "Settings" -> "Sounds" -> "Lock Sounds" turn "OFF" and "Keyboard Clicks" turn OFF -
Turn of that Equalizer: yes, according
to Apple, turning of Equalizer will save little battery time!
How-to: "Settings" -> "iPod" -> "EQ" -> "Off" -
Turn of Sound Check: iPhone provides
Sound Check feature to adjust music volume to keep consistent range for all
songs. Most of the time it does not work (at least for my
songs). So you can turn it off to save some juice.
How-to: "Settings" -> "iPod -> "Sound Check" turn "OFF" -
Audio encoding: compress size of your
music file for better cache purpose and encode using MP3 or AAC encoding.
AIFF and some other formats are not good and eats up CPU cycles
-
Room Temperature: Keep iPhone in room
temperature and do not charge your iPhone while it is in carrying case or
cover. This keeps battery in ideal temperature even when charging.
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iPhone. Ahs and Ohs
posted on: Saturday 30th June 2007
iPhone. Ahs and Ohs
My first instant impression: "wow." when I first looked at it. "damn it feels
heavy", when I first took it in my hand.
This is interesting, because it really felt heavy to me at first. Then i
quickly checked the specs and compared with Blackjack (this is my prior
phone). iPhone weights 4.8 ounces and Blackjack was 3.7 ounces. So yea,
iPhone is heavy but not close to AT&T 8525 (or similar HTC phones)
which weights 6.21 ounces.
Everything else after that was just amazing. Steve job really weren't
drugged every time he bragged about it.
Pros:
Well, there is no point of listing all the features of the iPhone.
Chances are you know them already. I am just listing the ones that
really raised the bar!
- Superb display. I haven't seen any phone's (or any LCD for that matter) that reflects so well under direct sun light. It looks just like as if you are looking at bright colorful printed paper!
- Operating System. Of course this is one of the biggest strength of iPhone, but the way they implemented on this small device is just phenomenal. Every application runs smooth and has cool animation/effects.
- Multi-touch screen part of this phone is of course what makes it so cool and different. It's very intuitive. Flicking, pinching is very natural and works well.
- Visual Voice Mail is, to me, the major revolution in cellphones industry. By few years, most phones and companies will offer this feature, I am sure.
- Software upgradable. When you look at the bottom empty row in the home screen, you know there are room for four additional applications. OR unlimited number of applications... Three additional Apps and one more button to move to "next page".
Cons:
As Apple stated that they will update and add more features through software
upgrades. So lots of complains should be resolved soon. Well,
until then...
- Missing lots of basic text editing features such as selecting texts and undo. These two features already gave me hard time in several cases. Moving through cursor in text also very painful. Most of the time it doesn't work as expected.
- Multi-touch screen also needed to be pressure sensitive. some times unwanted finger touches (very light onces) makes the whole thing every unpleasant. You start jumping to pages when you didn't intend to. If it was pressure sensitive, the iPhone would've been able to detect soft touches from hard and intended ounces.
- Missing to-do (task) from Calendar application. Honestly, why is this feature omitted?
- Call quality isn't the best.
- Missing very basic apps/features: chatting, getting additional ring tones. The built-in calculator is a joke. It doesn't even have % function! come on now!
- Contact List only shows and sort by - First and Last name. It doesn't display Company name in the list. That's a big shame for business users as well as consumers
- It doesn't show any wifi icon to indicate whether or not you are using wifi or edge. I understand iPhone does the "right" thing, but it is satisfying to know what's happening. Because sometimes when i know I should be in Wifi, some basic pages loaded slow... so one can only wonder.
- Battery is NOT that juicy as promised.
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