By Rik Myslewski in San Francisco (via reghardware.co.uk)
Review Yes, the iPhone incarnation of TomTom’s GPS navigation system is a bit on the pricey side. But if you’re a fan, you’re used to paying a pretty penny for flashy tech. And this TomTom actually gets the job done.
The TomTom car kit for iPhone mounts firmly and easily to your car’s windshield – or windscreen
TomTom released a major upgrade to its iPhone app last week, so we installed all 1.3GB of it onto our iPhone 3GS, hooked it up to the market-leading GPS maker’s brand new iPhone car kit, and took it for test drive around San Francisco.
We were impressed. The car kit for iPhone provides what the company refers to as “enhanced GPS performance”. It’s based on a SiRF Star III GPS chip – the de facto standard for standalone satnav gadgets – which helped the iPhone flawlessly find its way around downtown San Francisco, dense with signal-limiting high-rise buildings. Read the rest of this entry »
iPhone App Review Yes, the iPhone has its Notes app, but with its notepad-lookalike graphics and mock handwriting font – which you can’t easily change – it was always more a showcase for the Apple graphic design team’s talents than a tool you’d want to use.
It has one advantage, though: it’s just about text. It’s not concerned with presentation or formatting, tables of contents or making sure your boss doesn’t realise you can’t spell – it’s just for jotting.
WriteRoom: simple text editing with no distracting UI
WriteRoom attempts to right Apple’s note-writing wrongs by giving writers a more utilitarian user interface that allows you to focus entirely on what you’re writing not what it’s being written on, or how.
Tap a document’s name to open it, or hit the + button to create a new file, and you get a plain page ready for writing. No lines, no double-ruled margin, no artful torn-out-page-stubs graphic. Use the iPhone’s ‘part two fingers’ gesture and even what little UI there is vanishes to leave you with a literally blank page. Read the rest of this entry »
iPhone App Review Apple bundles a decent Dictionary application with Mac OS X, so it’s surprising that it doesn’t do the same with the iPhone. You may only need to consult a dictionary once in a while, but it’s nice to have one handy. Putting it on a smartphone means you can always have it with you. Apple should have included one
Advanced English Dictionary: encyclopaedia elements
It didn’t, and so a number of third-party developers have attempted to fill the gap. Some are derived from well-known dictionary publishers: Oxford, Collins, Chambers and so on. Others come from unbranded sources. As the Advanced English Dictionary (AED) app shows, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re inferior to their famous-name rivals.
They’re certainly cheaper. AED is currently available for a mere 59p, though publisher jDictionary Mobile says this is a special “90 per cent off” promotional price. Even at £5.90 it’s good value given that you can pay up to £20 for a branded alternative. Read the rest of this entry »
iPhone App Review Apple added a true GPS pick-up to the iPhone more than a year ago, but it’s taken that long for TomTom to release an application to make use of it. Even now, it’s not a complete offering. The software is there, but the car kit – once the sort of add-on bundled with applications, but now sold separately – isn’t available and its release has just been put back to October.
We were going to hold back on our review of TomTom’s iPhone application until the mount was ready for testing. But we’ve been using the app anyway, and have managed fairly well without the Peripheral.
TomTom’s TomTom for iPhone: does the basics well
Credit for that has to go to the GPS chippery within the iPhone 3GS we used to test TomTom’s software. Mounts are handy for two reasons: to put the screen within easy reach of fingers and eyeballs, and to ensure the GPS receiver can get the best signal.
We were forced to put the iPhone in a cupholder between the gear lever and the car’s ciggie lighter. Even down here, with only a sliver of windscreen above it roof level, the 3GS was able to feed TomTom the location information the app needs to keep us on the right track. Read the rest of this entry »
iPhone App Review Pocket Universe is the creation of one John T. Kennedy who was inspired by lack of opportunities to view the night sky with any clarity or frequency in his native Dublin. The app is basically a star map, which takes advantage of the new iPhone 3GS compass to provide a Virtual Sky, which follows your movements, enabling you to identify any object in the firmament.
The startup screen (left) is the portal to all other features
The app needs to know the time and also requires that location services are active. The startup screen offers you three main options, with all functions accessible from the Planetarium, which is where all the action is. Once Virtual Sky is turned from within the Information page, you are ready to gaze and your movements are tracked. Read the rest of this entry »
