It was the alliance with Android that put Motorola out of the woods. Like every partnership, it’s been a series of peaks and dips but every now and then the relationship between Motorola and Android goes beyond a mere marriage of convenience and well into a simmering love affair. They did it with the MILESTONEs and the DROID X, the BACKFLIP and the DEFY. With the ATRIX 4G, Moto says it has no plans to live in the shadows of other big makers. The Motorola ATRIX 4G is the first dual-core smartphone in the Motorola line-up. It’s also the first to flaunt a qHD touchscreen. That’s as solid as credentials get. Add the fact it’s the first handset for Motorola to support the fast HSDPA+ network (hence the 4G moniker) and you’ve got yourself a Droid that’s not afraid of what comes next. Dual core is certainly the next big thing in mobile phones and the Motorola ATRIX deserves credit for being among the first – our bad really, this review isn’t exactly on time. But there are other bold decisions that Motorola had to make. The HD and laptop docks for one – though the concept is not exactly original, Motorola is trying to make it mainstream. The added fingerprint scanner is not new either but well forgotten old does just as well. Plus, it will satisfy the privacy freak in all of us. Anyway, the standard package is what we’re interested in and this is what our review will focus on. The optional extras can wait. The ATRIX is more important to us a phone (a dual-core smartphone, to be precise) than a wannabe laptop or a potential entertainment dock. Let’s waste no more time and take a glimpse of the ATRIX 4G’s key features. The ATRIX 4G is certainly the most powerful phone Motorola has made so far. With a 1GHz dual-core processor, 1GB worth of RAM and the ultra low power GeForce GPU under its hood, the ATRIX 4G is set to win the hearts and minds of power users. Garnish all this premium hardware with a 5MP camera with dual LED flash and a 4-inch capacitive touchscreen of qHD resolution of 540x960 pixels, and the ATRIX 4G is more than ready to play with the other dual-core kids.
Motorola ATRIX 4G official photosKey features
Main disadvantages
Motorola ATRIX 4G live photos
This post is sponsored by:
Dr Mobiles Limited
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, North Shore 0622
Tel: (09) 551-5344 and Mob: (021) 264-0000
Web - Map - Email - Posterous - Twitter - Blogger - Flickr
Friday, June 3, 2011
Cell Phone Review 2011: Motorola Atrix 4G review (www.drmobiles.co.nz)
Google Trend: Mobile phone usage report 2011 (www.drmobiles.co.nz)
Did you ever wonder what kind of phone usage is normal? We seem to have a pretty good idea. Are cell phones still mostly used for making calls or has web browsing already taken over? The answer is right here. In some places, more people use their phone as a wakeup alarm than they do to make calls. More people use music recognition in North America than in any other place on Earth. You told us what features are used daily and what are only needed once in a while. We also know which are the most wanted but, for various reasons, still not widely used. Before we go on though, we’d like to thank you for taking part in our survey so actively. More than 15,000 people responded, 10,000 of which clocked in the first 24 hours alone. As you could imagine, the results should be representative enough given the number of respondents representing various age groups, both genders and different continents. And while the results can most probably apply to mobile phone enthusiasts all over the world they are hardly accurate as far as the whole world population is concerned. The thing is you, our faithful audience, are not exactly the average phone users. Being so informed and passionate about cell phones (why would you else be here reading all those long reviews) you tend to spend more time with your phone and use most of the features. Here are some numbers that prove this further: 96% of all respondents browse the web on their mobile phone and more than 88% have a Wi-Fi enabled handset. You won’t be able to bring those numbers to the next class reunion, but you might just learn what your fellow commenters do on their handsets. One final note before we begin: about 30% of the voters chose not to provide personal information but we still have plenty of feedback to be able to tell how the results vary across the different gender/age/location groups.
Most used daily
We start with the most important features, i.e. the ones that are used most frequently by most users. And the winner here… couldn’t have been more obvious… is voice calls.
What came as a slight surprise however is the actual percentage – we expected results more in 95%+ range, so much so that we even considered leaving it out of the poll. Glad we didn’t, because we now see that not everyone use their phone as a phone. And in some user groups, the voice calls are even less popular – less than 65% of the teenagers talk daily on their phones.
In fact, voice calls only rank sixth in popularity in that group and it also loses its top spot among users aged 18 to 24 (though the feature retains a respectable 83% of daily usage there).
In terms of location, voice calls are most popular in Africa (89.5%) and least popular in Oceania (5th place at 77.6%).
The second most used feature worldwide was a bit of a surprise to us – with 83% it is alarm clock that snatches the silver. The feature even tops the chart for several user groups – women (81.3%), ages 18-24 years (83.5%) and South Americans (86.5%). It loses some ground with the users older than 41, but its popularity is consistently above 60%.
Sending texts might be in decline, but it still retains third position in daily usage. Its overall share is 78.7% and it even gets the number one place in Oceania with 87.7%.
SMS is also enjoying higher than average popularity with Asians (83.8%), where it’s just a tenth of a percent behind alarm clock usage. Surprisingly, only 75.8% of teenagers send SMS daily, which is less than average. Which is not to say that teenagers are no longer responsible for most of the SMS traffic. One possible answer here is that some teens are already switching to instant messaging – our data shows that one third of them are already using this feature daily.
Web browsing only loses a place on the podium by a whisker, which actually tells us how popular handheld browsing is (a mobile version of our site is in the works). 78.6% of the users open their mobile browsers daily. The champions in mobile web browsing category are Oceania (83.3%) and North America (80.9%) with browsing the second most used feature there.
This feature is less often used by women (70%) and users over 50 (63%).
Essential features
The chart we’re about to look at shows the features that are used by the largest number of people. Although not necessarily needed daily, they are the most likely must-haves for users shopping for their next handset.
The obvious leader again is voice calls: 99.5% of you make calls at least ones every few weeks. In Oceania the feature which gave cell phones a reason to exist scores a perfect 100%, while the US gets pretty close with 99.9%.
In terms of overall use, SMS moves up to second place with 99.2%. And it’s another perfect score here from Oceania.
Taking photos is every bit as important as we expected – it grabs the third spot here with 98.5%. It means that less than one in 66 users never use the camera at the back of their cell phone. And half of those have answered that they would use that feature if they could, which suggests that their handsets don’t have a (decent) camera at all.
The two features that only just failed to make in to the medals are calculator (98.4%) and alarm clock (97.8%), while web browsing to sixth with the very respectable 96.2%.
At the other end of the spectrum is video calling, which is only used by 26.6% of all users. Only 2.3% of you make video-calls on a daily basis.
Audio books (33.5% total and 3.8% daily) and podcasts (33.8% and 3.7% daily) are not too popular either but they are still head and neck above video-calls. Streaming content over DLNA or TV-out only just avoided relegation with 34.1% users doing it at all and only 3.9% needing it daily.
This post is sponsored by:
Dr Mobiles Limited
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, North Shore 0622
Tel: (09) 551-5344 and Mob: (021) 264-0000
Web - Map - Email - Posterous - Twitter - Blogger - Flickr
2011 Tech News Update: Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo Review (www.drmobiles.co.nz)
It’s a sequel. Same cast and the same story but with a new lead and a new director. Shot in HD. The Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo is to settle some unfinished business at the box office. A year stands between the Vivaz and the Neo and Android does make all the difference.
Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo official photos
The XPERIA Neo is part of Sony Ericsson’s new droid lineup and takes advantage of all the new features – the LED-backlit Reality display with Sony Mobile BRAVIA Engine, an 8 megapixel Exmor R camera sensor, 720p video with continuous autofocus and the latest Android – 2.3 Gingerbread.
Key features
- Quad-band GSM /GPRS/EDGE support
- 3G with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
- 3.7" 16M-color capacitive LED-backlit LCD touchscreen of FWVGA resolution (480 x 854 pixels) on Sony Mobile BRAVIA engine
- Android OS v2.3 Gingerbread
- 1 GHz Scorpion CPU, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 chipset
- 512 MB RAM
- 8 MP autofocus camera, LED flash, geotagging
- 720p video @ 30fps, continuous autofocus
- Front facing VGA camera, video calls
- Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA
- GPS with A-GPS
- microSD slot (32GB supported, 8GB card included)
- Accelerometer and proximity sensor
- Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
- Stereo FM radio with RDS
- microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
- Voice dialing
- Adobe Flash 10.2 support
- microHDMI port
Main disadvantages
- Display has poor viewing angles
- The competition has dual-core CPUs, 1080p video
- No smart dialing
- Loudspeaker has below average performance
- No DivX/XviD support
- Memory card slot under the battery cover
The Neo benefits from new technology but it does well to focus on the important stuff: imaging. It’s not the 3.7 touchscreen that makes this phone, nor is it the 1 GHz CPU or the latest Android Gingerbread. And hey, these are all fine features to have. But in the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo the HD-enabled cameraphone comes before the all-round droid smartphone.
Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo at ours
The short list of downsides gives away a well-focused device. The XPERIA Neo is spared the predicament of a flagship too. While the Arc might be unsettled by the new dual-core beasts – the Neo doesn’t need top specs to be good at its main job. The previous generation hardware is less of a disadvantage.
Having met the Neo, this review doesn’t look as such a tough challenge. All it needs to do is cement the good impression it already made. Such kind of safety can be deceptive though. Let’s hope the Neo didn’t let its muscles soften.
This post is sponsored by:Dr Mobiles Limited
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, North Shore 0622
Tel: (09) 551-5344 and Mob: (021) 264-0000
Web - Map - Email - Posterous - Twitter - Blogger - Flickr
Untitled
The HTC ChaCha is now available for purchase through the Phones 4U dealer in the UK. The Facebook-centric messenger can be yours for free on a two year 20 quid a month Vodafone contract or a whopping 300 pounds if you'd prefer to go pay-as-you-go. Update: It seems that Carphone Wearhouse is also listing the HTC ChaCha as available in the UK. Prices are similar to those of Phones 4U, save for the sim-free price of 230 pounds. The controversial ChaCha is a 2.6-inch HVGA (320x480) full-QWERTY messenger phone with a dedicated Facebook button and Gingerbread 2.4 on board. The HTC Sense on it is also socially integrated to make your day-to-day life more involved with your online peers.
This post is sponsored by:Dr Mobiles Limited
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, North Shore 0622
Tel: (09) 551-5344 and Mob: (021) 264-0000
Web - Map - Email - Posterous - Twitter - Blogger - Flickr
Untitled
You might describe iOS 4 as a long-term investment. While the initial version brought us the much-demanded multitasking, subsequent updates haven’t been restricted to mere bug fixes. Instead, we’ve gotten a slew of noticeable, if not major, improvements: AirPlay, AirPrint, Game Center, and so on. The newly released iOS 4.3 is no exception, bringing not only a couple of significant enhancements in the form of the Personal Hotspot feature and Home Sharing, but also some smaller niceties as well.
As with iOS 4.0, the 4.3 update plays well with only certain models—and on top of iOS 4.0’s limitations, 4.3 narrows the field even further. You’ll need an iPhone 4 (the GSM version only—sorry, Verizon iPhone owners) or iPhone 3GS, an iPad or iPad 2, or a third- or fourth-generation iPod touch to take advantage of the update.
X marks the hotspot
We got our first taste of the Personal Hotspot capability with the release of the Verizon iPhone 4 in February—now that feature has made its way to GSM-powered iPhone 4s as well. Personal Hotspot lets you share your iPhone’s 3G data connection with other devices via your choice of Wi-Fi, USB, or Bluetooth. (Note that iPhone 3GS users can only share network connections via Bluetooth and USB, and not Wi-Fi—essentially the same limits placed on iPhone 3G owners with tethering.)
For iPhone 4 users, the feature replaces the tethering functionality that debuted in iOS 3.0, but wasn’t supported by AT&T until a year later—and nobody’s shedding a tear over that. The tethering functionality was limited—it only worked over Bluetooth or USB and just supported a single connected device—and expensive—it cost $20 extra per month, required users to drop their unlimited data plans, and provided no extra data usage.
By contrast, the Personal Hotspot feature is more attractive. While it still requires that users clinging to their unlimited data plans make the switch to the carrier’s 2GB Data Pro plan (which, admittedly, is $5 per month cheaper), AT&T has sweetened the pot by adding an additional 2GB of data exclusively for tethering. And if that amount is exceeded, you can dip into the 2GB from your smartphone’s data plan before you start incurring overage charges.
iOS 4.3 adds the Personal Hotspot capability to the GSM iPhone 4, but you'll have to pay an extra monthly fee to enable it for AT&T.
The Personal Hotspot feature is also simple to setup: once you’ve changed your data plan over, which you can do right from an AT&T app on your iPhone, you simply enable the hotspot feature under Settings -> General -> Network, and a new Personal Hotspot sub-menu appears in the top level of Settings. From there you can turn the feature on or off and set a Wi-Fi password. Clients can then connect via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, or you can plug your iPhone into your Mac via USB. A blue bar will appear at the top of the screen to let you know how many connections your iPhone currently has, even if you switch to other apps.
In terms of performance, USB actually appeared to provide the best throughput in my tests, which were conducted on a MacBook hooked up to an iPhone 4. The directed wired connection showed the highest download and upload speeds (Wi-Fi had lower latency, however). Bluetooth was by far the worst—no surprise, given that Bluetooth’s transfer speed is in most cases slower than the phone’s 3G connection. Wi-Fi held a firm middle ground in terms of speed, but it has the convenience factor of being wireless.
Unlike the Verizon iPhone 4, which supports up to five clients via Wi-Fi, the GSM iPhone supports a maximum of five clients spread through the various connection methods. For example, you can only have a maximum of three devices connected via Wi-Fi, but to that you can add other clients via Bluetooth or USB. And, of course, the more clients you add, the slower the connection will get as the devices jockey for bandwidth.
To make it easy to locate Personal Hotspot networks, iOS provides you with a little chainlink icon.
Surprisingly enough, if you’ve got an iPad in addition to your iPhone, you can connect it to the hotspot via either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. (USB is out of the question, however, even if you’re try using the iPad Camera Connection Kit.)
So, is the Personal Hotspot worth the cost? Giving up the unlimited data plan for my iPhone was a big move, but I went forward with it after running the numbers: over the last year and a half, I’ve rarely used more than 700MB a month on my iPhone’s data plan, according to my AT&T bill. And after a year of having my iPad, I’d used just about 2GB of bandwidth on its 3G connection, according to the Usage section of Settings. Between the $5 per month I’d save with the 2GB data plan, and the $30 per month I could save by also dropping my iPad’s unlimited 3G plan, I’d still come out ahead by $15 every month. Plus, I have the option of getting my MacBook online any place I can get a 3G signal. Your mileage may vary, of course, but it’s worth looking into.
Share and share alike
Introduced in iTunes 9, Home Sharing allows you to—among other things—play media from one computer on your local network on a different computer. In iOS 4.3, that feature gets extended to iOS devices as well. Once you’ve set up Home Sharing on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you’ll be able to toggle back and forth between playing media from your local device and from Home Sharing-enabled computers on your network.
To enable Home Sharing, you'll need to enter your Apple ID and password in Settings -> iPod.
Setup is easy, if a bit obscure. First, you’ll need to enter your Apple ID in Settings -> iPod; after that, you can access shared media via some combination of the iPod, Music, and Videos apps, depending on which iOS device you’re using. Accessing your shared libraries isn’t always obvious, though. On the iPhone, you tap the More button in the iPod app’s toolbar and then select the new Shared option. You’ll see all the shared iTunes libraries on your network (as well as your iPhone itself). Once you’ve tapped the shared library, all of the media you see in the iPod app refers to the shared library, illustrated by a titlebar at the top that bears the name of the computer to which you’re connected.
To access shared libraries on the iPad, tap the Library header in the iPod app.
On the iPad, on the other hand, you’ll need to tap the Library header in the top left of the iPod app to access the shared libraries. In the iPad’s Videos app, a new Shared toolbar option appears at the top of the app which lets you browse shared libraries on your local network. The disparate interfaces unfortunately make accessing shared libraries very confusing. (For more on setting up Home Sharing on iOS devices, check out our how-to article on the subject).
Performance in streaming is very good: music and short videos start playing almost immediately. Longer videos (or HD ones) can take some time to buffer before they start playing back. Quality is very good in all cases, with music nearly indistinguishable in quality from that on the local device and the video clear and easily watchable. Playback was smooth, even with multiple devices streaming from the same library, and I was able to scrub around in HD videos without having to wait for lengthy rebuffering times. Among the few drawbacks, the Genius feature isn’t available when you’re accessing shared libraries and, since Home Sharing only supports content in your iTunes library, you can’t stream photos stored on your computer.
One missing feature, however, is the ability to stream content from an iOS device to either another iOS device or a Mac or PC. At the moment, iOS devices are limited to being Home Sharing clients, not servers; adding that server functionality would be handy for cases where you want to share music or videos from your iPhone or iPad with friends.
That said, if you have an Apple TV or AirPort Express, there is another option: AirPlay.
The AirPlay’s the thing
AirPlay debuted in iOS 4.2 and iTunes 10—like Home Sharing, it’s a blanket term for several technologies, one of which is replacing the old AirTunes feature that let you stream music from your Mac or PC’s iTunes library to Apple TVs and AirPort Express devices. AirPlay extended that, however, by letting you stream audio to those aforementioned devices directly from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, and even in some cases adding video-streaming support.
In iOS 4.3, AirPlay gets further beefed up with the ability to stream video from compatible Websites, third-party applications, and the Photos app. So if you want to show off that HD movie you just shot on your iPhone 4, you can stream it to your Apple TV with the tap of a button. Plus you can take advantage of all the slideshow transitions on the Apple TV; in order to do that, you’ll need to hit the AirPlay button while viewing a photo and then hit the Play button to choose your slideshow transition from the Apple TV’s list.
Also new in iOS 4.3 is the ability to AirPlay video from the Web to your Apple TV.
However, it doesn’t all work right out of the box. Third-party apps will need to add support for AirPlay video, so expect a slew of updates over the next few weeks and months. And for Websites, not only will the video need to be in a format that iOS devices can play (read: H.264-encoded MPEG4 videos), but the video providers will have to explicitly define their videos as AirPlay compatible.
There is a workaround, however, if you install this clever JavaScript bookmarklet, which lets you flip on AirPlay support for video on any page. (It worked in my limited testing, though the quality of the video was not always good.)
For those third-party apps that have implemented support (the only app I own that had updated as of this writing was Air Video), it works the same as with Apple’s own built-in apps. When you start playing a video or a song, just tap the AirPlay control and select your Apple TV from the list. After a few seconds, the media should start playing there, but you’ll be able to control it from your iOS device.
But because implementing AirPlay support is an opt-in choice, don’t expect all of your video-based apps to flip the switch. Some, such as Netflix, have already said they don’t plan to add that feature (the company cited redundancy, since the Apple TV already streams Netflix); others, such as Hulu, have shown in the past their reluctance to have their media available on a big screen.
In a strange inconsistency, while you can AirPlay videos in your iPhone's Photos app, you can't do the same if you access them via the Camera app.
I ran into a few glitches and inconsistencies while trying out AirPlay support. For example, while you can AirPlay videos from the Photos app, you cannot do so if you access your photos and videos via the Camera app; that’s especially irritating, as the Camera app conveniently lets you filter just your photos or just your videos, a feature not available in the Photos app. Also, though Air Video’s AirPlay support worked fine on my iPhone 4, it didn’t work at all on my iPad (toggling between the iPad and Apple TV changed nothing); that may be a problem for the developer to fix, however. Finally, you can AirPlay content being played from a shared library via Home Sharing (see above), but it only appears to work with audio at present.
It’s also worth noting that the CDMA iPhone (i.e. the Verizon iPhone in the U.S.) is not currently compatible with AirPlay.
Ping if you like this
The iPod and Music apps now feature integration with Ping directly from the Now Playing screen.
Apple’s forays into social networking perhaps haven’t caught on as intensely as Cupertino would like, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be consigned to the dust heaps of history just yet. Despite the lackluster response to Ping, the iTunes-based social network that lets you see what music your friends are listening to and buying, Apple has already added support into your iOS device’s iTunes app—now, the company has gone a step further and baked integration with Ping right into your music player.
If you’ve got a Ping account (and like it or not, if you have an iTunes account, you probably have a Ping account unless you’ve gone out of your way to disable it) then when you fire up the iPod app or Music app on your iOS device and start playing a track, the Now Playing screen now features both a thumbs up button that lets you “like” a song and a word bubble button that allows you to post your thoughts on the currently playing track to Ping.
Should you not be a fan of Ping, but don’t want to turn off your account entirely, I did stumble upon one way to hide those icons: go to Settings -> General -> Restrictions and flip the slider for Ping to Off. Voilà, the icons will vanish from the bar as if they had never been there.
Switch and abate
In the past, iOS updates haven’t often sparked a lot of contention, but a howl arose from some quarterswhen iOS 4.2 changed the behavior of the iPad’s hardware switch. Now, in an equally rare move, Apple has walked back its decision and given users a choice.
Originally, the switch next to the iPad’s volume controls could be used to lock the iPad’s screen orientation in either portrait or landscape—great if you were, say, reading in bed.
In 4.2, under the rubric of consistency across iOS devices, Apple changed the switch so that it instead muted the device’s sound. (Well, in some cases.) Instead, you could only lock the screen by double-clicking the Home button, swiping right to bring up the new control panel, and tapping the new software orientation lock control. While it was serviceable for those who knew where to find it, actually discovering the control was difficult (one colleague of mine, lamenting the demise of the hardware lock, didn’t even know the software control existed until I showed him).
As of iOS 4.3, users can choose whether they want the iPad's hardware switch to control orientation lock or muting.
But now, in 4.3, Apple has given users the option to use the switcheither to lock the orientation or to mute the sound. Navigate to Settings -> General on your iPad and scroll down until you find the “Use Side Switch to” preference. Don’t worry: whichever option you don’t pick will still be accessible via the multitasking shelf’s control panel. And remember, you can still hold the Volume Down control for a couple seconds to quickly mute the iPad.
Bits and bobs
Safari performance: As we’ve seen in my colleague Jason Snell’s review of the iPad 2 and elsewhere, iOS 4.3 significantly boosts the speed of Safari’s JavaScript performance, thanks to the incorporation of the Nitro engine used in the Mac OS X version of Apple’s Web browser. In the SunSpider test, both the iPhone 4 and the original iPad showed marked improvements, performing more than twice as quickly as the same devices under iOS 4.2.1.
Fine-grained parental restrictions on Location Services are now available in iOS 4.3.
New restrictions: Parents of children with iOS devices now have more fine-grained controls over what their kids can and can’t do, especially in regards to location. While Location Services could previously be disabled for the entire device or for specific applications (a feature which is still present, but has now been moved to the top leve of Settings), you can now also adjust and lock those under Settings -> General -> Restrictions -> Location. It’s ideal for when you don’t necessarily want your child broadcasting their location on Google Latitude, but do want to be able to find the location of the phone with Find My iPhone in case they misplace it.
In addition, parents can now choose to disable iTunes’s Ping social network—an added boon for those who just really don’t like Ping. Apple has also clarified the controls for the Accounts restriction, which now lets parents decide if they want to allow their kids to change account information or not. And Apple has also changed its App Store settings so that additional in-app purchases require a password, even if other content has been bought within the past 15 minutes. It’s a change which should assuage many parents who found themselves with high bills due to their kids buying items through games and other apps.
Transitions: Slideshow transition options used to appear under Settings -> Photos, but they’ve now been moved to Photos and Camera: when you tap Play, a screen slides up letting you pick a transition and music from your iPod library.
Noteworthy: The Chalkboard font face that briefly appeared inn iOS 4.2 as an option for Apple’s built-in Notes app has been replaced in 4.3 with a new handwriting-esque face called Noteworthy. You can pick your preferred font from Settings -> Notes.
Text messages: Instead of just having an On/Off switch that lets you choose whether or not your phone will repeat text message alerts if you don’t acknowledge them, you can now decide how many times it will repeat the alert: once, twice, three times, five times, or 10 times. No matter what you choose, the alarms repeat at 2 minute intervals. And some of the new text message tones introduced in iOS 4.2 have been shortened, making them friendlier for text messages.
Zoom: Apple’s finally fixed one of the iOS inconsistencies that’s been bugging me for a few versions. Previously, you could choose to enable an accessibility option by triple-clicking the Home button: the options, under Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Triple-click Home were to toggle the white-on-black interface, toggle VoiceOver, or to ask which feature to enable. In the last case, it would bring up a menu, which would let you pick from the first two options and a third: zoom. But you couldn’t assign a triple-click directly to the zoom function until now.
The ability to add a 'wait' to contact phone numbers is handy for places where you might need to enter a PIN or other number.
Other things I’ve found in my poking around:
- New region formats for U.S. Minor Outlying Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and America Samoa, so if you live in any of those places, rejoice.
- Settings -> Phone -> AT&T Services now includes a View My Data and Msg option, which will send you a text message with your current data and text message usage for the current billing cycle.
- Settings -> Safari -> Databases, which let you see which sites were storing data on your iPhone, is now gone.
- When adding a contact’s phone number, you can now insert a wait instead of a pause. This means that once you dial that number, you’ll get a button which lets you dial the string of numbers after the wait, great for dialing into conference calls. (Pause, on the other hand, dials the numbers automatically after 2 seconds.)
- Settings -> Sounds -> Ringtone now includes a Buy More Tones button at the top, which, when tapped, takes you to the Ringtones section of the iTunes Store.
That’s the extent of my 4.3 foray. All in all, it’s a solid update, and far more than I’d expect from a point release. While it’s not going to fulfill all our hopes and dreams, it at least makes the iOS devices more capable, and that’s about all anyone can ask for.
This post is sponsored by:Dr Mobiles Limited
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, North Shore 0622
Tel: (09) 551-5344 and Mob: (021) 264-0000
Web - Map - Email - Posterous - Twitter - Blogger - Flickr