On my 2nd wedding anniversary Apple decided to give this fanboy a nice gift: the next iPhone hardware announcement. Unfortunately I was at work, so I could only get the little bits from the live blog, but I have since downloaded and watched the keynote. Here is an overview of the noteworthy things I liked:

New Look

I love the sleek new look of the iPhone. The fact that they made it slimmer is amazing and hard to believe, but it’s true, 24% thinner than the previous generation. I still see this thing being easily scratchable, but adding a case or the Apple “bumper” cases should do the trick, although it hides the coolness of the device. Being flat is a nice design evolution. I like the two button volume control rather than the rocker which I often find I hit the wrong direction while the phone is in the case.

I do worry that the Marware case that I have will no longer fit this phone. It’s very loose now with my 3G due to the wear, that means I’ll have to find a replacement. I also purchased the charging doc for my 3G, and it looks like the new form factor will make that device obsolete. I guess it gets passed down to my wife’s 3Gs.

From the pictures the changes are drastic yet similar (depending on the viewing angle) and I’m pretty impressed. Apple loves to change the design to make the old product look old.

New Hardware

Inside Apple has added their new A4 chip that powers the iPad. Not a surprise here. It will be a welcome update for me given that I have the 3G which I find very slow compared to the 3Gs. 802.11N for the new wireless standard was an obvious update too. I was really excited to hear bigger battery. I can get my phone down pretty far without doing a ton of work on it. Now with the new battery you can get up to 10 hours of video, that is like 4 movies! 300 hours of stand by time and 6 hours of browser time is awesome too.

Adding the gyroscope to allow better movement tracking is very “Wii-esque” and should open up some interesting games and map navigation apps.

New Display

It was hard to tell on the downloaded keynote sometimes, but you could see the much more richer display. It’s incredible with the same screen size they were able to get the resolution they did (960 x 480) which has over 70% of the pixels the much larger iPad has. All the icons and pictures taken with the iPhone did look way better. I’m sure this helps too with the new OS feature to have wall paper on the home screen, should make it easier to see the icons and text. I was a bit disappointed because I was thinking iPad since it came out, now it seems likely if I wait a year I’ll get a better display (and maybe a camera!).

New Camera(s)

It’s been long rumoured that Apple would catch up to other phones and add a front facing camera. While I don’t know for sure what pixel quality is on the front, it is exciting that video conference calls through Skype are now possible, although won’t be available at launch. The video that Apple showed of a Dad keeping in touch with his family through the new FaceTime feature is exactly how I picture this feature working. You can quickly hit a button and it will switch to using the rear camera, a neat way to show somebody on a call something really quick. Unfortunately it’s Wi-Fi only which I think will change once the carriers allow it, and the other limitation is that you will have to have an iPhone 4 to make it work. So that means no other iPhone or the iPad can take advantage of it. I would hope that the iMac and Macbooks could through the iSight, but that would likely only mean through something like Skype.

The beefed up 5 megapixel camera on the back with an LED flash is great. My iPhone is pretty much useless in low light situations and offers grainy photos (the 3GS seems much better) but having this kind of quality at your finger tips is amazing. Add a digital zoom and you have everything you need to capture moments when your DSLR is not at hand.

iOS4

At first I groaned at this, but when you see the demos that Steve Jobs did it actually made the idea of an ad being entertaining and informative a reality. Everything goes through Apple, so the iAd program will likely demand a level of quality to them. Apparently there are tons of ads ready to go and the product hasn’t even shipped, so that has to be great news.

Multi-tasking is something I can’t wait to try. I won’t be able to use it on my 3G, but for sure I will on the 3GS. I think Skype is a cool prospect to now be able to receive calls and keep chat windows (I think?) and calls active while I switched in and out of apps. It works as you expect and appears very fluid, but I would like to understand the limits to how many apps you can have open. We will have to wait to see people fully take advantage of the new background API’s, watch out for location based services and apps that update where you are at all times!

Adding folders will be nice so that I can keep most of my frequently used apps on the home page rather than swiping through or using Spotlight all the time. What I think is missing is add contacts to the home screen.

I love that you can add wallpaper to the home screen, but I need to see if they conflict with the icons and text.

A feature I will use all the time is the unified inbox. I have a lot of IMAP email accounts and having one single inbox to check them all will be crucial to saving me time.

I’m interested in iBooks, the e-book store that Apple has created. I’ve heard that it is very limited for the Canadian market but I assume that will change over time. I don’t know if I would use my iPhone for reading very much, I picture the iBook store being best for me like it was intended: on the iPad. I do like that if I had an iPad and ready a few chapters, that (I guess through my Apple ID) my progress would sync to my iPhone and I could pick up where I left off.  Also, if I bought a book on either device I have access to it on both.

Price and Availability

In Canada we have to wait until July before we even have a shot at this phone. All the big carriers are getting the phones. No details yet on upgrade pricing or how someone like me, who has had a 3G for 18 months or so can get an iPhone 4. One interesting way would be from Apple themselves. They announced in Canada that they are selling unlocked iPhones. That is an interesting option given the advantages of having an unlocked phone: no contract, can switch from carrier to carrier, etc. I’ll wait to find out what the pricing is, and if it’s possible to get a micro SIM from Rogers to pop into the iPhone 4.

I suspect the unlocked phone price to be upwards of $700 and the subsidized version similar to the US prices. I’ll wait and see what Rogers has to say in July!

Leave a comment with your thoughts on the next iPhone, would love to read them!

This post originally appeared on DavidRStorms.com on June 17, 2010.

Apple announced this afternoon the release of iPhone OS 3.0.1, Available for: iPhone OS 1.0 through iPhone OS 3.0

As quoted from their website

Description: A memory corruption issue exists in the decoding of SMS messages. Receiving a maliciously crafted SMS message may lead to an unexpected service interruption or arbitrary code execution. This update addresses the issue through improved error handling. Credit to Charlie Miller of Independent Security Evaluators, and Collin Mulliner of Fraunhofer SIT for reporting this issue.

Meaning that an update on our post from yesterday was dead on (kudos to the BBC and Computer World), this patch should be available via iTunes.

Update 7/31/2009 1431hrs ET

According to an article posted by Computer World Apple will provide a patch to the SMS vulnerability/Virus by this Saturday August 1st. Apple has currently not released any kind of public statement providing confirmation about this report from the BBC.

Yesterday, news broke about a serious security flaw that could allow a remote attacker to take control of the victim’s iPhone by sending a specially constructed SMS message. Today, the man who discovered it [Charlie Miller] will release the world’s first iPhone virus. He discovered an SMS hack 6 weeks ago and reported it to Apple, but they have yet to release a patch. Miller and his fellow cybersecurity researcher Collin Mulliner will both explain and reveal their iPhone SMS exploit some time today at the Blackhat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas.

The security hole can breach your iPhone which can then be used to send messages, make calls, steal data and do anything else that is desired. The attack is enabled by a serious memory corruption bug in the way the iPhone handles SMS messages. The hackers or rather the demonstrators of this hacking attack informed Apple about this shortcoming, six weeks back — yet we’re not sure of an update to tackle the iPhone virus.

It’s worth mentioning that A [similar] vulnerability in Android was found, but then promptly fixed by Google, while another vulnerability in HTC’s code (company that makes Android and Windows Mobile-based phones) can render the phone useless, but it doesn’t allow the attacker to take control of it. iPhone’s security flaw, enabled by a memory corruption bug in the way it handles SMS messages, is by far the most serious.

How can you recognize and avoid the iPhone virus?
If you get a strange text message containing any square box, even if it’s from a recognized number you may be the victim of the iPhone virus.

You have two choices:

1. Put your iPhone in Airplane mode: Go to Settings -> Airplane Mode and slide the button to Off.
2. Hold down the power button, and slide to turn your iPhone off.

Don’t most of us that have iPhones feel this way (or some variation of it) about them? I know that if I’m away from mine for too long I start to get ancy and don’t “feel right.” I almost feel naked, literally naked and as if I’m cut off from the world (even though it’s not my primary phone, in fact it’s one of three I carry).

Last year’s global mobile phone sales of Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s Blackberry devices only accounted for 3% of all of mobile phone sales (actually unit sales), but according to the Wall Street Journal they’re raking in 35% of all mobile phone profits. Which by any measure is enormous considering how little of the overall sales market they impact. Forecasts for this year according to the Deutsche Bank are expected to be 5% sales, and 58% of mobile phone profits. This is of course contributed to the price of these devices, brand name, and obviously availability.

Apple and RIM have managed to coin and pretty much take ownership of the smartphone market crunching out these kinds of numbers. Given Apple’s time on the smart phone scene I believe that this is a much larger achievement for them versus RIM. Why? Well consider this, BlackBerry has devices on every major mobile (US) carrier, where as Apple has the iPhone locked to one (well technically two for all of the jailbroken/unlocked iPhone users), Apple has been out since 2007 with their device….the BlackBerry has had a five year jump on Apple and had has a huge following especially among working professionals. However Apple does have over a million applications available for their device and has sold 21.17 million phones in what, two years time?

In conclusion, it’s clear that with Smartphone sales accounting for 13.5% of all mobile device sales in the first quarter of 2009 (compared with 11% in the first quarter of 2008) companies like Nokia and Samsung are really going to need to take notice and begin to counter this threat. Based on theses numbers by RIM and Apple, it clearly shows that services and applications are now instrumental to smartphones’ overall success in this new market.

CardStar is your personal card manager for the iPhone. In this video we show what CardStar is an how it works. With CardStar you can leave all of your plastic rewards cards at home becasuer they are now stored on your iPhone.

Via Mobile Tech Moment

If you’re looking for a powerful Twitter iPhone/iPod Touch client, then you should look no further than Twittelator Pro.

Twittelator Pro Gradient theme

If you compare this app to others such as Twitterfon and Tweetie, you’ll probably notice that it isn’t as quick to load when you first start it up. But the tradeoff is a slew of features that you won’t get in the others.

Twittelator has the ability to update automatically in regular intervals that you set in the Settings from within the app. When the app refreshes, if the sound is on, you’ll hear a notification sound to alert you of new tweets. This notification sound will even work if the screen blanks out from being inactive. The auto-updating is pretty reliable and offers something that Tweetie doesn’t (you have to manually refresh).

When there are new tweets that arrive, a number badge will show up in the tab at the bottom. If there are a lot of new tweets, going to that section will mark the on-screen new tweets as read. The number badge won’t go away until you scroll down or up a bit and make sure that you read all tweets. Or if you can’t read them all, a simple quick flick up and down will get rid of the badge. The number badge is great for making sure you don’t miss a thing (or choose to, if you wish) and actually get caught up on all of your missed tweets. This is a necessary thing for any twitter app; unfortunate that even Tweetie doesn’t have this feature.

View a person’s profile simply by tapping their avatar. You’ll see following/followers, location, bio and can view their tweets. It also shows options for DM’ing them, @’ing them, unfollow/follow, and bookmarking them (bookmarks being located in the More section, read on to find out more). When you tap on the username of a person, a menu featuring the selected tweet will pop up and give you options of replying, DMing, RT’ing, emailing the tweet to someone else, copy tweet/link, or marking it as a favorite.

When writing a new tweet, there’s several features that you will see. There will be an icon that has a pin like ones in the Google Maps app. This will allow you to send out a tweet with your GPS location. I suppose this would be good for emergencies, or if you want to have an impromptu tweetup? This has very limited use, I think, but is a nifty little feature to have readily available.

Next is the camera button, which allows you to take a picture or use a library photo. This picture will then be compressed and you’ll get a link with your selected photo service (yfrog, pikchur, twitpic, or moby). Then you can then add some text to your tweet to go with the photo, then send it out to all your followers.

Twittelator also has the ability to copy a tweet or copy the link to a tweet. You’ll be able to do this by tapping the name of the person that you want to copy the tweet or link of tweet. Tap the option, then go to compose a new tweet. Click the icon with the highlighter like icon and then the entire tweet or link to tweet will be pasted into the text entry field.

The last icon is below the 140 character count, and this is where you can browse for ‘twitterkeys’ — little icons that are displayable regardless of what a person is using to view them (unlike emoji, which aren’t compatible on all OS’s or apps) and are browser friendly! A great feature missing from other apps that adds a little spice to your tweets and can be sure that everyone can see them.

The last feature that you’ll see when composing a new tweet is that ‘@friends’ button in the top right corner. Tap it, and you’ll be

New tweet screen with the scrolling menu of most used terms

presented with a list of your friends (people that you follow) that you can scroll through and add one at a time by hitting the + button to the side. It may not be practical if you have a rather large list of people you follow due to scrolling through a large list, but it may be of more use to people that follow less people. Though it seems to keep everyone that you have followed in the past as well. I notice scrolling through that the usernames of people I’ve unfollowed still remain in this list. So it’s something nice, but not exactly practical.

Another major feature of Twittelator is that you can view previews of tweets with pictures (from services like twitpic). It’s very nice to see small previews of photos because sometimes you’ll click to see a photo and maybe you won’t be amused or whatever it may be. With this feature, you can now see pictures that you would want to see instead of being forced to click it, wait for it to load, only to be disappointed.

To view the picture in full size, simply tap it and it will take you to the twitpic page, or whatever other photo hosting service, where you can zoom in/out with pinch gestures. You also get several options when viewing a twitpic page. You can open it in Safari, Email the link, Copy the link, open any link (manually input the URL), or go back/cancel. The way Twittelator Pro handles picture tweets is amazing and much better than other Twitter apps.

In the Settings section, you’ll find a plethora of things to tweak to your liking. How many tweets to load on launch, themes (three themes for now), various options for reading and writing tweets, even Retweet options. Choose from five different link shortening services and get some options for your GPS and Location settings. Photo uploading services? You’re covered with four different services! You can even have high resolution photos (on/off) and clear the image cache. Want more constant refreshes or slower refreshes to avoid hitting the rate limit? You can choose to have auto-refresh on and set the time interval to your liking. And if you don’t like the sound, you can turn that off too. Even settings for subgroups, warnings, Instapaper, and even a Safari bookmarklet.

The last tab is the ‘More’ section, and there are tons of additional stuff for the power-Twitterer here.

Yes, you can manage multiple accounts with Twittelator Pro.You can search for a topic that interests you, look at your own updates, view the DMs that you have sent to others and create various subgroups for better tweet organization. Grouping seems to have become quite popular amongst Twitter users, especially those that want to keep track of their friends in a more organized way. Trends is a necessity in all twitter apps, and Twittelator doesn’t disappoint. If you care at all about the public timeline, you can view that as well. Care about the falling stock market? You can add and keep track of stocks too. View recent tweets from friends, bookmarks (instructions provided in app), favorites, log of Twittelator’s activity, Misc (random tweets? Can’t quite figure it out myself), and Saved (instructions provided in app).

This is an extremely powerful Twitter app for the iPhone. It has enough power to match that of a full-on desktop client, at least I believe it does. If you want an app that has more to offer than just the basics or are just a power-user, then Twittelator Pro is for you. The only thing that prevents it from being perfect is the speed and some lag, but the pros outweigh these minor cons.

Available in the iTunes App Store for $4.99.

4.5/5

iPhone OS 3.0 beta 4 is now available to developers. Apple released build 7A300g as well as an iTunes 8.2 pre-release which they say is required in order to activate the new beta. Engadget has already posted some quick first impressions of the new firmware. According to Engadget, the previously empty “Store” pane in the settings app is no longer empty. It now allows you to sign in and out of your iTunes account and features an Account Info button that sends you to a webpage where you can view and edit your credit card information, among other things. Curious that they should require a pre-release version of iTunes to activate the new beta. Perhaps this means they’ve made some significant changes behind the scenes in the latest beta. Stay tuned for any additional information that may surface on the new firmware.

(via Engadget)

IGN has an exclusive preview of the upcoming iPhone version of Assassin’s Creed.

Via IGN:

As the master assassin Altair you must explore the bustling metropolises of the Holy Land to uncover “The Chalice,” a sacred artifact held by the Templars. According to your superiors at The Order of the Assassins, stealing the Chalice has the potential to end the Crusades. (How the Chalice fits into the entire story about the Crusades is not going to be spoiled here — but it’s a story well worth exploring, especially if you played through the final scenes of Assassin’s Creed on the Xbox 360, PS3, or PC.)

The screenshots that have been released certainly look impressive. I imagine this will be a game worth picking up when it’s released. IGN claims that it is set to be released within the next few weeks at a price point somewhere between $5.99 and $9.99.

(Via IGN)

Do you have a dog? Do you have an iPhone? If you answered yes to both of those questions, do yourself a favor and go download Dog Whistler. This simple app mimics the sound of a dog whistle as you press the whistle picture on your screen. You can adjust the sound range from 800HZ to 2200HZ, and even set four different presets. I am sure each dog will respond to different ranges, but my Pugs would immediately turn their heads at about 3100HZ and my border collie only perked up for 3400HZ. I don’t use a real dog whistle so I cannot speak to how well it really works in practice, but its a heck of a lot of fun to “blow” the whistle and watch my dogs freak out. Its also pretty interesting for humans too. I found my fiance could hear a lot farther up the HZ range than I could. The app looks great and the sound it emits is very clear and loud. Dog Whistler is a free app in the App Store and can be found with this iTunes link. Give it a shot and sound off in the comments if you had success using it “for real”.