iPhone4idiots

Screens, Edovia Inc. $19.99, is a great VNC client for your iPhone, iPod or iPad. For some reason it hasn’t gotten great reviews and is nowhere near as popular as LogMeIn Ignition. However, it was so simple to setup for me and works so well for my needs that I’m not even bothering with looking at any other VNC app. I’m using this app more and more. Watch the video to see what it’s like and how to setup. Even if you choose another VNC client, setup is basically the same. Get your ip address from your router and forward a certain port number to the ip address of your computer. Any questions just ask.

I’ve reviewed apps before that give you quick access to your camera. The majority of iPhone users have been a few seconds late at capturing a funny, meaningful or cute moment on the camera in either photo or video. This is such a lacking feature that even Apple is adding it shortly in iOS 5. FlashCam from BigBoss repo is a nice little tweak that adds a camera and flashlight button to your lock screen. Simple yet smart as like the camera, the flashlight is another feature of your iPhone for which you generally want to have immediate and fast access. Better yet, it sits right on top of your other lock screen tweaks like LockInfo. See the picture. Yes, it’s not the most attractive feature, but it’s effective. Tap the yellow flashlight button and your camera’s led light turns on. Tap the camera button and it launches. FlashCam installs into your Settings where you can choose to have the camera launch to photo or video and position the buttons at the top or bottom of your lock screen. If you can handle making your lock screen slightly less attractive I recommend you give it a try. FYI, if it doesn’t appear after installing just go into the Settings, select FlashCam and turn it off and then back on. You might also need to reboot once, but that’s it.

Leaks for the iPhone 4s, or new cheaper iPhone 4, or the iPhone 5 or whatever it is, are mounting up fast. MacRumors stumbled on another leak of what they believe to be “iPhone 4s” bodies.

The bodies are nearly identical to the iPhone 4 bodies, but both sides of the frame have slightly different antennas than the iPhone 4. The only breaks in the frame appear to be at the bottom of the phone. The Verizon iPhone 4 breaks occur at the top, and the AT&T iPhone 4 breaks occur at the lower and upper left. The other major difference appears to be the frame’s lack of a home button. An empty square hole resides where the home button mechanism should be. What this means is unclear. Could Apple be changing the position of the home button? Making it touch only instead of physical? Or possibly introducing some redesign we haven’t speculated about yet?

MacRumors claims the movement of the antenna is to accommodate the differing frequencies between mobile technologies. This, accompanied with the obvious slot for a sim card, suggests whatever model of the iPhone the frame is from, could support both GSM and CDMA carriers.

With each bit of information leaked, more questions than answers about the next generation of iPhones appear to be popping up.

Tired of manually maximizing your little iPhone screen with two fingers to read texts better? Tired of your friends crowding around you to see that crazy video from last night? Or are you sick of having to watch Netflix movies on your iPod touch? Well, Apple has a solution to this irritation, as they show various iDevices with built-in pico projectors in their new patent.

Apples patent shows a few iDevices projecting video, images and text on walls. This is really nothing shocking new to tech lovers such as myself as many phones (mostly Asian brands) have already installed projectors into their mobile devices.  What separates Apple from the rest is their idea of including gestures which will allow you to interact with your projection and also communicate between two different iDevices. That explains the title of their patent “Project Display Shared Works.”

The gestures can be detected via touch screen or the devices camera, similar to the way the xbox kinect works. Knowing Apple and their reputation with display, this does look very promising. However, the pico projectors are known battery drainers and it’s projection isn’t very bright nor high in resolution. I wouldn’t count on this to be included in the  iPhone 5, which is coming this fall!

I’m sure you heard by now Steve Jobs has stepped down as CEO of Apple. He will take over as Chairman of the Board and remain and employee for the time being. I wasn’t gonna post on this as contrary to what some have written this isn’t shocking but expected. His cancer and failing health are well documented and the only thing surprising to me is that he’s continued on as long as he has. Sure the stock will drop tomorrow, but Apple will be fine. The iPhone 5 is still coming within 60 days and a high resolution iPad 3 and LTE iPhone 6 are both coming in 2012. Tim Cook, the new CEO, takes over a company steamrolling the competition and that will continue for at least the next 18 months. I fully anticipate Apple to continue to make beautiful products with the occasional fail (Apple TV and Ping come to mind). Jobs has to be given credit more than any other person for the iPhone and iPad. Two products that continue to change the world. For that he will live on forever and I for one am thankful.

So those of you that pay attention to our Facebook page should have noticed Saturday that buying an HP Touchpad for $99 was a no brainer. I was in Atlanta on vacation and couldn’t try and run to the retail stores to grab one. Thus, I kept refreshing twitter and websites like Amazon, Best Buy, Staples and HP. Finally Sunday some were available on Amazon. I quickly ordered one, then three, then four and two more to make a nice round number of ten. I immediately got an email from Amazon confirming my order. Monday morning I check my bank account and saw a charge from Amazon for $339.55. This was for my order of three. I found it strange that I was charged for my second order but not the first, third or fourth. Oh well, I felt lucky to get any and assumed the other orders would not be filled. Yesterday, the charge was still showing on my bank account, but the items had not shipped. I was getting nervous. Sadly, today I got an email saying the order has been canceled. I see twitter is filling with people saying they’ve gotten the same email. The main culprit is some pathetic company based in Chicago called onSale that sold who knows how many Touchpads that they didn’t have in stock. A big middle finger to onSale and its President, Robert Rich, who posted the lame excuse on their Facebook Page. I wonder how a retailer like Amazon can partner with such a crappy company. I mean it’s been 72 hours since my order was confirmed and my credit card charged and I’m just now finding out they screwed up. What kind of inventory management system is noSale, I mean onSale, using?? Judging from Twitter I think the number of people with a similar story number at least in the thousands if not tens of thousands. Amazon should really pick it’s partners more carefully.

The past week the iPhone game that has been wasting most of my time . . . I mean filling the lonely boring moments of my day is Flick Kick Football, Prodigy Design Limited $0.99. If you aren’t familar with the wide variety of flick games you should be. Fishing, golf, football, soccer, field goals, bowling, basketball, darts and baseball all have their own filck app games. Flick (aka swiping) is more natural for some sports games than others. IMO, bowling, golf and soccer are the best. I guess I should have mentioned by football, this app is soccer. To play you swipe your finger and flick the soccer ball into the goal. There are various modes of play like skillshots or shooting at bullseyes. In arcade mode you shoot at the goal with increasingly difficult angles and more defenders blocking the goal. Shooting into the top corners earns extra points. The game offers mutiplayer mode through Game Center or simple pass and play. There is a free version of the game with ads as well which is what I’d recommend. If you are a soccer nut like me definitely give this a try. If not, I still think you should check out any of the flick games for some laid back casual gaming fun.

Ever been listening to a song on your iPhone or iPod and wondered what the lyrics were to that last line? Happens to me a lot. While very poetic and talented Kurt Cobain or Eddie Vedder aren’t always the easiest to understand. Remember that hilarious Adam Sandler skit on Saturday Night Live where he sang Evenflow? What made it so funny was his jibberish sounded exactly like the song! Anyway, there have been apps before that would display lyrics, but most either didn’t have a large database of songs or were not polished enough to be simple to use. That has changed with the release of free app called musiXmatch. The app has lyrics for more than 5.4 million songs and its own built in music player that will display the words while the song plays (see the photo). The large database of songs and how easily and quickly it installs, no computer required, really makes this a killer app! Continue Reading…

Thinking of buying a new iPhone? You might want to wait as it’s extremely likely the iPhone 5 will finally be put on sale in the next 60 days. Apple hasn’t said anything officially, but all the signs are there. China Times reported Apple was testing 400,000 units, rumors abound that ATT and Apple are prepping employees and every analyst that follows Apple is saying either September or October. It’s about time. It’s been well over a year since the iPhone 4, the greatest length of time between iPhone releases ever. Even if you decide you don’t want an iPhone 5 you still might want to wait as the price of the iPhone 4 will drop $100-$150 with the release of the iPhone 5.  So what’s going to be new in the iPhone 5? Continue Reading…

Hey, anyone interested in writing some articles for iPhone4idiots? I’m getting a little tired cranking out two or three posts per week and am looking for a guest blogger. You can write about anything tech that interests you. iPhones, iPads, social networks, apps, games, game consoles or iOS. I’m only looking for one or two posts per week. What do you get for your time? Well, you can link back to your own website/blog or post a YouTube video to get extra views as long as it fits within the article you post. Also, you don’t have to worry about the grammar police. If you’ve read my stuff you know why. I can’t be a hypocrite, I just want something comparable. So if you are interested use the contact page to shoot me an email.