I really like iOS4 – It gives me a lot features I use every single day (Every hour to be quite honest).
But there’s one major downside to iOS 4: It’s batterylife.

The iPhone’s battery life never really was very good – Therefore I bought a Morphie Juice Pack Air last year, but with iOS4 on the iPhone 3GS the battery drain is significantly more than iPhone OS 3.1.2. Eventhough Johan already posted a nice post with a few tips how to keep your battery drain at a low level, I thought it would be good to share this tip as well.

I think the battery drain mainly is because of the new multitasking feature in iOS 4. Multitasking lets you quickly switch from one app to another, and return to the first app and go on where you left with the first application. But with heavy applications like Navigon or TomTom (which use a lot of battery anyway) it’s sometimes not good to have them running in the background all the time. With these applications, when I reach my destination I’d like to completely close the application and start it whenever I need it again.

Walk-through

Now there’s a solution to that – and the solution is directly in iOS4, but a lot of people don’t know about it.
When double-clicking the home-tab you’ll get a list of all ‘open’ applications. This list can become very long.

Now tab-and-hold with your finger on an application in the multitasking list.

You’ll get to see a close button on every single application. Pushing the close-button closes the application and removes it from the multitasking list. This can be done with every application in the list. In the example above I closed NAVIGON, becasue It took to many resources and I didn’t need to get directions anymore. So after pushing the close-button on the Navigon tab – all the other applications move to the left and the blank spot is filled with an other open application (In this case WunderRadio)

Update from comment Johan: When scrolling your finger to the left, You’ll get to see the next 4 ‘open’ applications. In this way you can more specifically select which application you want to close.

By repeating this on all the other open applications it is possible to completely get the list Empty so that no application is open anymore (And therefore doesn’t take any system resources)

Return to the default home-screen just like you’re used to do by pushing the Home-button once.

Concluding Thoughts

In my opinion this is the best way to get more out of the battery-life during the day on the iPhone (3GS). By closing an application in stead of just hitting the Home-button I honestly can say that the battery drain of my iPhone 3GS is significantly less than just leave the app ‘open’ in the background.
If you think your iPhone’s battery drains more after the iOS 4 update, I’d recommend this procedure and hope your battery drain problem is solved as well.

Today Apple Announced the new iteration of it’s iPhone OS.  iPhone OS 4.0 gets over 100 new features. 7 of them were demoed by Steve Jobs, Scott Forstall and Phil Schiller on stage in Cupertino. Besides that the new iPhone OS 4.0 delivers over 1500 new APIs for developers. Developers now have the possibility to enhance their application with functions like access calendar, In-app SMS, Photo Library Access, Quick Look, Spell Check and many more new features.

I’ll go through the 7 features which were demoed today.

Multitasking

The first feature demoed was multitasking. To be quite direct: Multitasking is only going to be available for iPhone 3GS and iPad users, Multitasking isn’t going to be a functionality for current iPhone 3G users or users with an original iPhone. Of course it’s sad for current iPhone 3G users that their device doesn’t get multitasking, but in my opinion Apple just couldn’t keep the speed they wanted with this multitasking in the iPhone 3G. Since speed is 90% of a satisfying user experience, I think it’s legit for Apple to disable the multitasking feature in the iPhone 3G.

Multitasking can be enabled for a numerous of functionalities. These include:

• Background Audio (For applications like Pandora and Spotify)
• VOIP (For applications like Skype)
• Background location (For applications like TomTom or other Navigation Apps)
• Task Completion (Upload A Photo to Flickr in the background)

Picture used with permission of Ryan Block and Peter Rojas, gdgt

I think there’s only 1 functionality missing here and that’s an open connection to, for example, a twitter application. But all these background functionalities are very powerfull to enhance the way you use the iPhone. I think this can be a real big-deal and I like it!

Apple has had great succes with Push Notifications and therefore it introduces “Local Notifications”. Local Notifications are like Push Notifications but without the need of a server. The local notifications are directly from your iPhone.

An extra feature wich comes with multitasking is Fast App Switching. Fast App Switching is the feature which is the easiest to implement by developers. It saves the state of the application and it let’s you return to the application where you left it. So if you’re in a game and Fast Switch to an other application, the game continues when you return back to the game. The state is implemented in a way that it doesn’t take any system resources.

Folders

With OS 3.x it is possible to see 180 apps on your Homescreen. iPhone OS 4.0 offers folders, so that you can expand the number of available applications on your Homescreen to 2160! Now I think I’ve got a lot of apps on my iPhone (around 200) but I don’t think that I’ll ever reach the limit of 2160 applications on my Homescreen.

Picture used with permission of Ryan Block and Peter Rojas, gdgt

Apple has managed this to “stack” applications into folders. Drag an application onto another application to create a folder. The name of the folder is automatically set, but you can change it easily. This way you are able to create folders like “Games”, “Tasks”, “Social Networking” Etc. Because I always have too less space on my Homescreen I like this feature a Lot!

An other feature is that with iPhone OS 4.0 you can set a different wallpaper for your lock-screen and a wallpaper for your homescreen.

Unified Inbox

The Unified Inbox feature (again) is a feature I’m personally very happy with. At the moment I have 4 e-mail accounts set on my iPhone and they all have a different inbox. It would be great if I had just 1 inbox and that all my mail would arrive in just 1 inbox. This is exactly what happens with the new Unified Inbox feature. It is possible to select “All Inboxes” and see all the mails in all the inboxes from all the e-mail accounts. It’s like an aggregation of all inboxes in one view.

Picture used with permission of Ryan Block and Peter Rojas, gdgt

Other additions in the email application are for organize by thread and Open attachments in Apps.

iBooks

Of course we saw iBooks on the iPad first and Apple made a version for the iPhone as well. It’s just like the iBooks app for the iPad, but smaller. I don’t  know if I’ll ever read an entire book on the iPhone, but the iBooks application could definitively help me to read more books!

Enterprise Features

Additional Enterprise Features are not really the most spectacular features for the average user, but Apple thought well about what Enterprises would like to see as feature enhancements.

The real killer-feature is that it now is possible to sync with multiple exchange accounts. Personally I think this it the best feature of iPhone OS 4.0. Having multiple exchange accounts available is a real big feature for me and I like it very much that they’ve made this feature available.

Other enterprise features (which you’ll probably never ever hear from again) are Mobile Device Management, Wireless App Distribution and SSL VPN support.

Game Center

Apple adds a social gaming network. With this social gaming network it is possible to Invite Friends, Matchmaking, view Leaderboards and Achievements.
I guess game developers can hook their application into this Game Center and give users the possibilities to use the Game Center functionalities in their Games.

Actually the Game Center can be very much compared to the Plus+ network.

iAd – Mobile Advertising

Apple would like to help developers with making money by using the iAd mobile advertising features in their free Apps. The Ads would show up around every 3 minutes while using the App. I think this is a lot – and I think I’d rather pay for an application than see an ad every 3 minutes.

iAd isn’t really a feature enhancement for users, but more for developers of free Apps. One good thing is that Apple challenges to make creative ads. This can be a game, a video (with HTML 5) or anything else.

Concluding thoughts & Wrap-up

Overall I think that iPhone OS 4.0 is a really nice upgrade of the iPhone OS. A lot of features are added and some of them are more than welcome!

I think the iPhone OS comes to a stage where there are less and less like-to-haves for the iPhone OS, because we got (almost) everything we wished for. When we have multitasking, multiple exchange, better inbox integration; what keeps left to wish for; Please tell me your wishes for the iPhone OS which STILL isn’t included in the iPhone OS 4.0 in the comments of this thread.

Finally I would like to thank some people. First of all Ryan Block from gdgt (http://www.gdgt.com) for letting me use his pictures and the excellent liveblog. Vincent Nguyen from Slashgear (http://www.slashgear.com) and Joshua Topolsky from Engadget (http://www.engadget.com) for their great Live blogs; You guys Rock and many many thanks for keeping us up to date so damn quickly. An other thank goes out to all the guys from OneMoreThing.nl and a very special thanks to Gonny & Jean-Paul from iPhoneclub.nl for their live stream directly from Amsterdam.

The HTC HD2, which features a massive 4.3″ capacitive screen, has been reviewed a few months ago in the article:  “HTC HD2 review – A new era in Windows Phones’ history“.

The new era in Windows Mobile history is reflected in the use of capacitive screen technology and the resulting absense of a stylus which has dominated the mobile market for many years. Those among us who worked with the Palm III, Palm V, Compaq iPAQ 3650 or any later Windows Mobile PocketPC do exactly know what I’m talking about !

Since the launch of the first generation iPhone back in 2007 (which also featured a capacitive screen), the complete mobile market is trending towards this “touch control” with you fingers.

However …. on the DAGi website you can read the following announcement, which includes a lot of recent smartphones:

“Dagi Corporation Ltd. announced the first patent protected transparent capacitive touch panel stylus for Apple all generation iPhone 3GS / 3G / 2G, iPod Touch, HTC Magic, HTC Hero, HTC Google Phone G1 G2, HTC HD2, HTC Droid Eris, RIM Blackberry Storm 1 / Storm2, Android Phones, LG KM900 Arena, LG GC900 Viewty Smart, LG GD900 Crystal, Motorola Droid Verizon, Nokia X6, Samsung i7500 Galaxy, etc.”

Handwritten notes and sketches – A practical engineering example

In order to illustrate why there is still a market for a stylus, despite that the majority of the market seems to be heading towards touch control, I will give you a practical personal example.

You probably know the proverd “A picture is worth a thousand words“, and I personally think that this applies to engineers. With a mechanical engineering background I always use (and used) sketches or models to explain a certain technical problem, and I would suggest that construction drawings are a kind of language for mechanical engineers.

A Windows Mobile PocketPC of Windows Phone can be a powerful tool for that use, especially when you are -for example- working on a construction site for trouble shooting. The massive 4.3″ capacitive screen of the HTC HD2, combined with the DAGI capacitive stylus is perfectly suited for this kind of mobile use on location.

Furthermore it is great to capture ideas, and have them with you in a central place. As you can see in the screenshots above I use Phatware PhatPad 4.7 for a few reasons.

At first Phatware PhatPad provides six different penmodes, and a lot of options to create and edit notes (different pen colors, etc.), which are not present in the standard notes application on the HTC HD2. In other words it is a more complete and specialized solution, where you can even run text recognition, or structure notes over different pages.

Second Phatware PhatPad is feels far more accurate than the standard notes application, both when I write with my finger and with th DAGi capcitive stylus. The main point is that the fine locomotion for handwriting is far more accurate with the DAGi capacitive stylus (remark the red dot). Especially at the points where lines connect, for example in case of the capital A or the sketch of the house. When you try to write or sketch it with your finger, the lines don’t connect but are offset which makes the notes less usable.

Concluding thoughts and wrap-up

While Devicewire reported this week to have the official HTC HD2 capacitive stylus in stock, the DAGi capacitive stylus looks identical. I personally think they even come from the same factory, especially if the capacitive stylus is patent protect as you could read in the introductary announcement.

On the DAGi website you can furthermore see there are a few different  models available. In the review I used the P001-Black model/type of the DAGi capacitive stylus. The clip on the back makes it easy to carry in the front pocket of your blouse (if you like).

In practice there are still a lot of situations in practice where the stylus is a helpful tool. In addition to my personal example outlined above, you can see screenshots of people playing a minesweeper or chess game on their smartphone with help of the “more accurate” DAGi capacitive stylus.

If you want to learn more about capacitive screen technology, I want to recommend the article “Resistive vs Capacitive: the invisible tech war in which both opponents can win?” of Steve Litchfield, Editor on All About Symbian.com, and the article “How do touch-screen monitors know where you’re touching?” on the How Stuff Works website.

To wrap-up I hope that the practical example above gives you an idea of a realistic scenario where the DAGi capacitive stylus is really helpful. I’m using this stylus for a few weeks now, it has earned a default place in my Crumpler BeanCounter L bag, and I must admit I use it frequently.

Are you a curious HTC HD2 owner, please head over to Brando Workshop and order you DAGi Capacitive Stylus !!

Flightcontrol is without doubt one of the most addictive games for the iPhone. Besides that it is also very popular.
I’ve been playing it quite a bit lately and think I have some do’s and dont’s if you want to improve your topscore.

First of al to make something clear: No I’m not one of those guys who have a topscore of around4,3823,075 landings. My current topscore at the moment of writing the article is 638 landings, which brings me to the top 4% of players and being a “Test Pilot”

My latest stats can be found here: Flight Control Profile for PaulWillen

1) ALWAYS give a plane a landing route:

Because you want to land the planes as quickly as possible it is good to give all the planes – every time you change it’s direction – a landing route. If a plane has a landing route the color changes to white. The more planes on the screen, the harder the game gets, so landing those planes quickly is really important.

2) Helicopters cannot crash each other.

When a helicopter enters the screen, directly point it to it’s landing platform. From now don’t change the helicopters route anymore, unless REALLY necessary. Helicopters cannot crash each other when they are directly routed towards the landing platform. Your only concern on helicopters is that other planes don’t crash into.

3) If possible don’t cross the landing routes.

Crossing a landing route means a potential crash. Try avoiding this as much as possible. In the above picture you see I gave the small yellow plane (above the helicopter platfrom) an alternative route, because it is very likely to hit one of the helicopters.

4) Learn which plane-type enters the screen on what position.

There are 16 positions where planes enter the screen. (4 on each side); Learn which plane-type enters the screen on what place. Knowing which plane-type enters the screen gives a lot of advantage, since you can give it a landing route directly!

5) Use the runway as a flightroute.

Mainly the large jumbo-jets entering the screen from the right can use the runway as a flight route. Actually the runways are a relative large part of the screen, which can and should be used as a flight route. Try avoiding the landing places of the runways as a flightroute, since those areas are danger zones for a potential crash.

6) Faster planes should land first.

The Jumbo-Jets are faster planes and are therefore more likely to crash. So if you have the possibility to land the Jumbo-jet before the other pink planes, do it.

7) Leave enough space on several routes.

This is mainly for the long, slow helicopters entering the screen from the left. Since you’re able to route jumbo jets from the right directly over the runway, make sure you have enough place for the jumbo jet’s right wing. Give these helicopters a very slightly curved route towards the landing platform.

8 ) Avoid the edges

Before a plane enters the screen a red exclamation mark is shown on the place where the plane enters the screen. Planes enter the screen from the edges. When another plane is near the edge where the plane enters the screen you don’t have a lot of time to change it’s direction.

9) Redirect only one plane if two planes almost crash.

It makes no sense to redirect both planes when they are almost crashing. If possible make sure the one which is nearest to the landing place doesn’t get redirected. In that case you make sure the other plane (which you aren’t redirecting) lands and gives the other plane more space to land. In the above sceen I redirected the top yellow plane, so that it lands between the other two planes.

10) Don’t keep your hand over the screen.

Make sure you have a clean view of the screen all the time. A lot of my crashes are from the Jumbo-jets crashing into a yellow plane on the bottom right of the screen. Because the jumbo-jet’s move fast you only have a few seconds to give them a good route. If you hold your right hand slightly over the screen, you’ll easily overlook the planes on the right side of the screen. Lefties must watch out not keeping their left had over the screen.

Final thoughts

I hope these tips are usefull and will help you to improve your top-score. If you have any other tips or tricks please post them in the comments.
Also if this article helped you improving your top score please let me know

Two of my international friends Nghia Nguyen Dai and Jerome Tranie, the people behind the largest Windows Mobile website in France – Mobifrance-, have recently launched an online shop with cool accessories. The shop is called MaxiMobileShop and you certainly should have a look at the nice and sleek design of the website.

However MaxiMobileShop has some very cool accessories in the assortment, and in this article iClooly Alumi Stand for iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS will be reviewed. If you have an iPhone and you are looking for a well designed and cool looking deskstand, you certainly need to read the article below.

Background information

You might wonder why I start with a little background information before jumping into the design of the iClooly Alumi Stand. The reason is simple: The background information provides some thoughts which the designers had in mind, during the process of designing the iClooly Alumi Stand.

On the front of the box you can read the text: “Like iMac” and on the right side of the box: “Make your iPhone 3G look like iMac” The main goal of the iClooly Alumi Stand is to provide iPhone 3G & iPhone 3GS users a iMac-like user experience. Let us have a look at the functional design and investigate to what extend the quote is true !

The iClooly Alumi Stand (functional) design

The used materials matte brushed aluminium cmbined with the black plastic give the iClooly Alumi Stand a nice and high end finish. It expresses quality and well thought design. Despite the use of Aluminium there is no way you could damage your iPhone 3G(S) simply because of the great workman ship.

Let’s start with looking a the picture below, where the iClooly Alumi Stand is frontfacing to us in “landscape mode”. The foot is of full aluminium with a hole in it to save weight and optical reasons I guess. The part of the foot which is on the table surface is covered with a kind of rubber anti-slip material, providing a good grip of the iClooly stand.

The outer countour of the iPhone shape is also made from Aluminium, while the rest of the iClooly stand is made of black plastic material. While the top-side of the contour (look at the picture below) is clean and has no buttons, the bottom-side of the contour has some clever detail. Two black plastic buttons are embedded to operate the volume buttons, when the iPhone 3G(S) is docked into the iClooly Alumi Stand. During a test with a docked iPhone 3G I must admit that these buttons are very acurate positioned and function really well.

Another interesting detail on the inside of the iPhone “holder” in the picture above is a small edge on the horizontal interior part of the iClooly Alumi Stand. The designers have included this to fit and lock the iPhone really well into the iClooly Stand without damaging the device.

If you look at the right side of the iClooly Alumi Stand you see a large opening, which has two functions: (1) plugging the connector cable ito your iPhone to charge or sync with your notebook, (2) it is the place where the speakers of the iPhone are positioned, in other words the large opening gives a clear output of sound without dampening it. Again the sound quality is tested by playing the NOS Journaal on the iPhone 3G. Also connecting the iPhone sync- and charging cable is no problem, the milled hole is large enough to easily fit the connector.

If you look at the left side of the iClooly stand you notice two product details. First a milled hole for connecting the headphones or a cable to connect the iPhone with your receiver or audio installation. Second a black plastic button is embedded to power on/off your iPhone, while it is docked in the iClooly stand. Similar with the positioning of the volume buttons, the accurate positioning of the power control button is a compliment for the designers.

With the side-views at the iClooly Alumi Stand in the pictures above, I would like to describe an additional design detail. The “foot” and the “iphone holder” are connected via a spring-mechanism, which makes it possible to adjust the viewing angle when you operate the docked iPhone 3G(S).

Furthermore in addition to the spring-mechnism, you can see a “circle-shape” on the backside of the iClooly Alumi Stand, where the foot connects with the holder. It is a rotating mechnism to turn the docked iPhone 3G(S) from portrait mode into landscape mode and vica versa.

Finally you also see a black button between the rotating mechanism and the button-less top-side of the iClooly Alumi Stand. The function is very simple, it’s a mechanism to eject your iPhone 3G(S).

Thoughts and conclusions

Let me first start with congratulating Nghia Nguyen Dai and Jerome Tranie with the launch of the clean designed MaxiMobileShop website. A small remark, mainly caused the Mobifrance-background and French-speaking countries as a first market, is about the language of the product descriptions. However I know the team is working hard to translate these into other languages as well !!

With for example a 4 usb-port international travel charger and the iClooly Alumi Stand for iPhone 3G(S) MaxiMobileShop has certainly interesting and cool accessories. And perhaps cool is the best keyword to describe the iClooly Alumi Stand as well.

While you sometimes think of cheap and low quality hearing the word desk stand, this is certainly not the case for the iClooly Alumni Stand for iPhone 3G(S). I’m very impressed with the use of good quality materials and a well thought-out functional design. Therefore my compliments for the designers of this stand.

There are certainly situations where a stand like the iClooly Alumi Stand is very helpfull. Think about using the iPhone as a mediaplayer, which is connected to your audio installation, or when you are on holidays and watch movies or stream television. Actually it raised a different question to me: “Where is a bluetooth hardware keyboard for the iPhone 3G(S), which I can use in combination with the iClooly stand ?”

This gives the iClooly Alumi Stand a wide range of possible usability options as well, combined with a great functional design and use of quality materials make it an investment which is worthwhile to do. The pricepoint of E31,95 is very reasonable for the quality and functional product you get.

As excited and impressed with the design, the looks and the functionality as I am? Don’t wait any longer and order your iClooly Alumi Stand for iPhone 3G(S) over here @ MaxiMobileShop !!