This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Best of Smartphone Experts, 18 Oct 2009

Dark Horse Comics, purveyors of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8, Angel, Hellboy, among other licensed and creator-owned fare have teamed up with Gelaskins to produce a series of comic and pop-art inspired protective coatings for your iPhone, iPod touch, and laptop.

They were kind enough to send TiPb a sample of the Buffy and Hellboy iPhone 3GS skins, and the art was bold and beautiful, and the product every bit as good as I’ve come to expect from Gelaskins (I’ve been using them for a long time, as those who’ve seen my iPhone 3G with Dragon skin in our videos can attest.)

They won’t protect your iPhone from severe impact, but they’ll keep scrapes and abrasions at bay, (and if an imaginary vampire attacks, maybe, just maybe, Buffy or Faith will jump out and dust them for you).

Each skin has a matching wallpaper available for download. iPhone and iPod touch skins are $14.95 and available via the above link.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Quick Look: Dark Horse and Gelaskins Brings Buffy-grade Protection to Your iPhone

Every week a few of us from team TiPb, bloggers and forum crew alike, will bring you our current favorite, funnest, most useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone (or iPod touch) related, they’re fair game.

So who’s on deck this week and what are our picks? Find out after the break!

Chad’s Pick: Bento

This week I am picking the Bento app from FileMaker. There are several apps out there that can keep track of passwords and other data. What is nice about Bento is that you can make these databases yourself! You can edit fields, make lists and choose data types. If you own Bento for Mac, you can sync the data between apps! For $4.99, Bento is a great value for simple database creation. [$4.99 - iTunes link]

Chris’ Pick: Bed Bugs

Bed Bugs is a fun, quick paced pseudo-shooting game (for some reason it reminds me of Space Invaders). In the game, you try to keep your sleeper asleep by shooting the various monsters that try to wake him up. Different monsters have different weaknesses (when you can “shoot” them, for example). Succeed and your sleeper gets a good night sleep. [$1.99 - iTunes link]

Jeremy’s Pick: The North Face Snow Report

Snowboard/Ski season is fast approaching so my pick is the Snow Report. It’s free and you get a slick user interface, detailed information on any resort you select, trail maps, built in Twitter support, etc… Nifty little app that anyone interested in skiing or snowboarding should pick up.[$Free - iTunes link]

Matt’s Pick: RedLaser

RedLaser is created by Occipital, which has that nifty barcode scanning technology (used in foodscanner as well.) The application scans barcodes with ease and has recently come to my aid in purchasing books. After it scans, it pulls up results from Amazon, Google and other locations, letting you know where the cheapest place to purchase is. If you’re one of those people that like to compare prices while at the store, this might just be the perfect app for you! [$1.99 - iTunes link]

Rene’s Pick: Canabalt

Canabalt is a highly simplified, highly stylized — indeed pixelized — game where you race across rooftops, jump over obstacles, leap between buildings, crash through windows, avoid bombs and collapsing construction, and otherwise do everything you can just to keep running. If you hit something you slow down, if you don’t, you speed up, and if you mistime a jump, you fall, crash or get vaporized and the game is over. How far can you run? [$1.99 - iTunes link]

Your Pick?

You’re part of team TiPb too, so what’s your pick? What app was your absolute fav last week? Let us — and everyone — know in the comments!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Bento, Bed Bugs, The North Face Snow Report, RedLaser, Canabalt – TiPb Picks of the Week

UPDATE: TiPb asked a few non-geek friends and most of them didn’t even realize Verizon was targeting the iPhone in these ads (some thought the commercial was saying whatever device they were talking about didn’t do the things listed). Is that an ad-failure, or was it deliberately targeting geeks?

Secondly, Sacha Seagan over at Gearlog brings up the now apparently dual, and now opposite meaning behind “open application” buzzwords – a device totally controlled by Verizon.

Thirdly, does the push for the Droid explain why Verizon seemingly buried the BlackBerry Storm2 announcement?

Original post after the break!

Verizon has now aired their first new Android 2.0-centric, anti-iPhone (technically “iDon’t iDevice”) attack ad and placed a new website online to go with them. Surprise, surprise — like that leaked BlackBerry Storm2 vs. iPhone 3G(!) chart Verizon put together, the ads contain blatant inaccuracies (even if typeset in Apple’s typical Myriad Pro):

• iDon’t have a real keyboard: Er, it does. Not to get all Spock, but nothing unreal exists, the iPhone’s keyboard exists, therefore it’s real. Sure, it’s soft/virtual (like the Verizon BlackBerry Storm2’s) rather than hard, but it’s certainly not imaginary.
• iDon’t run simultaneous apps: Again, it does. The iPhone can run iPod, Email, Phone, Messages, App Store/iTunes downloads, Quicktime streams, and other functions in the background with full multitasking. Apple restricts two or more 3rd party apps from running at the same time, but that’s obviously too subtle a difference for Verizon.
• iDon’t take night shots: Well, we guess they mean the camera’s ISO doesn’t produce good results in low light. Fair point. Arguably nothing short of a really good DSLR sensor does, tiny LED flash included. Though 5 megapixels is still nice.
• iDon’t allow open development. Really, Verizon, with your history, you want to play that card? Android is an about face for you, not a two-face. We’ll wait and see on this one.
• iDon’t customize. Okay, fair point. One out of how many so far? UPDATE: Shawn Roberts points out it remains to be seen how customizable the Droid is. If it’s just re-arranging icons, the iPhone can do that too.
• iDon’t run widgets. What’s a widget? Arguably iPhone Stocks and Weather are widgets not far removed from Mac OS X’s Dashboard counter-parts. We’re guessing they mean little, persistent on-screen information snippets. We’ll give them a second point for that.
• iDon’t have a removable battery. Third point. Apple’s driven away from that entire concept towards longer life, built-in batteries and external charging packs. If that’s something you can’t stand, fair enough.

Wrap all that up in an Adobe Flash-only site for Verizon’s upcoming Android powered Droid phone, and we’re thinking Verizon better hope that the handset ends up a lot better than the marketing thus far. And, that’s the key point here, as Daring Fireball points out:

"Droid" is going to be a Verizon-owned brand. It's purportedly a Motorola-manufactured phone, but Verizon is the licensee of the "Droid" trademark. (Which name, by the way, strikes me as the perfect name for an Android OS phone — sort of implicitly establishes it as the Android phone.) That's the big thing. Verizon doesn't see itself as a mere carrier for other companies' phones. It sees itself as being bigger than the phones. It's Verizon-vs.-Apple in this spot, not Verizon-vs.-AT&T.

It’s exactly the opposite approach, with Apple leading the carriers with iPhone (hopefully hastening them into their “dumb-pipe” future), now Verizon wants to turn back the clock by owning an OS like Android. They want to put carriers at the front again. Is that something that tempts you to switch?

[Video via Engadget]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

UPDATED: Verizon Attack Ads — Claim iPhone iDoesn’t do What Android 2.0 Droid Does

(iGo My Way 2009 – North America For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!)

iGo My Way [$79.99 - iTunes link] is the fourth turn-by-turn app I have reviewed. As with the other three, I have used the app around town as well as planning for a long trip (the same trip I have taken with the others). It generally suggested very reasonable routes, it had the vast majority of POI's that I was looking for (in fact, I don't recall a single instance where I couldn't find something). So how did it compare in the long distance travel?

In the interest of full disclosure, I received a promo code for this app.

Let me start off by saying that I found the interface a little difficult at time. When you start, there is a screen with three main buttons and a map. Tapping the map at the top brings you to your current route and directions. The other three buttons are destination (to program a route), my route (for details on your current route), and settings. Maybe it is just me, but at times I found the layout a little less that intuitive. If I wanted to alter my route, for example, I kept going into "destination" instead of "my route". While I am sure I would have eventually learned the different buttons, it didn't strike me as the most obvious layout.

To program a route, you can go into desintation. From there you can select an address, a point of interest, a location on a map, of a list of favorites. In addition, you have your route history at the bottom of the screen. Unfortunately, there was no contact integration. I did find the interface for choosing a destination based on address to be very straightforward – you choose the state, city, street, etc. At any point you can go back and change any of the options. The POI database was very complete (as complete as any of the other apps I have seen), and choosing a point of interest was another straightforward process.

Once your route is calculated (based on preferences), you can make changes like selecting various route alternative. It includes shortest, economical, easiest, and fastest. One really nice feature is that it shows you the distance and the driving time for each of these, and you can select back and forth to see how they look on the map. I wish the display map had more details instead of just a red line showing your route – city names, highway names, or things like that would be appreciated. One nitpick – I had a default "shortest route" option selected. But when I compared with other routes, sometimes the fastest route was listed as many as 10 miles shorter than the shortest route (see the image below). Ummm…need to work on those routing programs!!

You can also choose to look at places around the destination, where it will give you a list of POI near your planned destination. Lastly, you can change any of your route settings (such as vehicle from car to taxi, bicycle, bus, etc). You can choose different preferences (avoid toll roads, avoid ferries) at this point as well. At any time, you can come back to the "my route" screen to get these options again.

Unfortunately, there were limited options to preview or browse your route. You couldn't do anything aside from viewing a simple over view map – no listed directions, no detailed summary, nothing like that. There was an option to preview the trip, but it would simply plan an animation of your route – not something you had a lot of control over. You didn't have any option of travelling "via" a specific road, highway, or city, so you couldn't plan a multiple itinerary trip.

The settings button allows you to change default settings – sounds and warnings, regional settings, etc. Many of these are things that you only need to access once, but the settings also included the default routing options (route type, avoid/use highways, avoid tolls, etc).

When actually driving, I found the iGo app very good. The maps that are displayed are very detailed, to the point of telling you at times when you may need to switch lanes for an upcoming turn. The app (in general) avoids giving you specific distance estimates, instead telling you that you have "more than 50 miles to go" or "turn in more than 1 mile". I found this to be beneficial sometimes (like when I am just starting a new leg) but at times I wish they gave me more detailed distance (like when I have five miles or less until a turn). Because there is no way to preview the direction in advance, you also can't look ahead to see what you will do after the specific leg of the trip. You had limited option for data to display on the map – you could choose from distance left, time left, or ETA (or all three). There was supposed to be an option for an audible speeding warning, but I never heard anything so it was not very effective.

My biggest complaint with the app was starting it up. Multiple times, at least 70% of the time, the app seemed to "freeze" when starting. If I rebooted my iPhone and went right into iGo, I had no problems. But if I ran another app, ANY other app first (voice memo, iPod, anything), the app would freeze and not load about 70% of the time. I don't know if this is a problem with my iPhone (it is jailbroken) or with the app itself. Right now I don't seem to be having that issue – but it happened enough times, on multiple days to make it a major concern. I did get around this by installing backgrounder and having the app run in the background. Then, when I wanted to go back into the app, it was already running so I had no problems.

The app also seemed to lose the GPS signal more than any other GPS app I have. It usually found it again within a minute or so, but that didn't happen to any other GPS app I have tested. The ETA's seemed to be off for longer distances – at one point it said I had about 70 miles left, and the trip would take about 2.5 hours. Unlike some of the other apps, the screen blank was disabled, meaning the app stayed on even without me doing anything (which I think is good). And like some others, this app could be viewed in landscape mode (a big plus!).

Conclusion

All in all, while I felt the user interface was a little less polished than some others, the quality of the maps, the good POI database, and the options for trip planning were nice pluses for this app. However, the problems with the app starting up prevent me from giving it a high rating. This may be due to my iPhone, and thus may not be an issue everyone else is going to experience, so take that into consideration. But if I can't even get into an app to run it, pluses (like good maps, nice options) and minuses (no contact integration, shortest route isn't always the shortest) take a back seat. At $79.99, this is a pricey app, so caution should be used before purchasing (check others to see if they had the same startup issues). As it is, I give it three out of five stars – if I didn't have the startup problems, I would probably give it three and a half or four stars out of five. (I welcome and will post any comments from the app programmers in response to this review)

Pros

• Very detailed maps
• Great side by side comparison of routing options
• Good POI database

Cons

• No "travel via" option
• Some problems with starting the app
• Route options aren't logical
• Limited trip overview options

TiPb Review Rating

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

App Review: iGo My Way 2009 – North America