When I wiped my iPhone and upgrade to 2.0 software while away from my desktop computer I realized I had no remote access to any of my contacts, tasks, or calendar appointments. They were just trapped on my home PC and awaiting the iTunes fairy to cast its magical sync spell. But now that I’m more grown up (or I guess my iPhone is more grown up – it’s already 2.0!) I didn’t really want to rely on the idea of magical wired synchronization and I started looking for a different solution.
One of the many noticeable weak areas so far in the iPhone 2.0 software is a certain amount of lag / slowness in various places. For me, the Contacts application, and in particular the Search portion of it, is one area where this is definitely felt.
So I was very glad to come across a quick but super useful tip from everythingiCafe forum member i Robot - in this thread - which points out that the new (and free) Google Search app does a great job at searching contacts.
And it sure does. It feels considerably faster to me than the built-in app, and lets you tap to go directly to a selected contact just as you can in the built-in applet. A little embarassing for Apple that Google’s app can out-do theirs, but good for us to know about
Another quick iPhone 2.0 tip, but one that is a great new feature in the latest iPhone software - how to save an image from a web page in the Safari browser.
I was very happy when I heard this feature would be coming to the 2.0 software, and it’s nice to see it made it, works well, and already proves useful to me quite often.
And it’s dead easy - all you need to do is tap and hold on an image on a Safari page, and wait for the popup shown in the above screencap to appear. Then just tap ‘Save Image’ - and that’s it, the image file will be added to your Camera Roll.
Have you got any cool tips and tricks for the new 2.0 software? We’d love to hear your favorites - share ‘em in the comments …
Lots of people have been complaining about battery life with the new iPhone - and not without reason. Many people, myself included, have experienced “turbo battery drain” - leaving them with seriously discharged batteries much earlier than expected based on 2G iPhone experience. I have begun a “reasonably scientific” study of the battery life and have some basic, preliminary findings and tips to share.
Here’s another very small iPhone tip, but one that may hopefully prove useful for some who are finding iPhone syncing under the new 2.0 software to be unbearably slow.
A big part of how slow the syncs are under 2.0 - at least in my experience so far - is the ‘Backup’ section of things. I believe one of the reasons for this is that when applications are backed up, it is not only the install files, it is all data associated with every app. In any case, the backups are taking an awful long time.
So if you want to skip the backup portion of the sync - and greatly reduce the overall length of the whole sync - just hit the little ‘x’ to the right of the top Progress Bar at the top of the iTunes window - next to where it is saying ‘Backing up iPhoneName’ - as shown in the screenshot above. This will only cancel backup; the rest of the sync will carry on.
Of course it’s not a great idea to cancel out of the backup every time (that’ll come back to bite you for sure), but if you know you’ve already got a recent one (or more) done and are in a hurry, this is a useful quick kill for the backup process.
The built in ability to take a screenshot is available and working nicely on the iPhone 2.0 software. We’ve known this feature was seen in the code for iPhone 2.0 for quite some time, but it’s good to see it made the final released version.
Using it is dead simple too. To take a screen capture, just hold down the Home button and press the Power button. You can press the Power button just very, very quickly and it will still work just fine. You’ll see the screen flash white just after you release the Power button - and then your screen captures will appear in the Camera Roll.
It’s been a long day (mostly because of a long night getting rid of an iTunes 7.7 beta so that I could get the real deal, installing the real 7.7, ditching my 2.0 beta, installing the genuine 2.0, and so on) - so I chose my demo screencap with great care. Just what I could use right now - and icy cold draught lager (not too worried whether it’s Carling or not).
If you could do with a dose of on-screen lagerific refreshment, check out the Carling iPint app in the App Store - a simple game where you can apparently win a ‘virtual beer’ from a friend. I really haven’t tried out the game element of it much as yet - just like seeing the beer poor and slosh around courtesy of the accelerometer
If you’ve got problems with Safari not remembering your username and password on sites like Google and Facebook (forcing you to log in repeatedly), there are a number of different ways you can fix the issue. Some require doing manual terminal work on the device, others guide you through the process using SSH. Here’s one I stumbled upon through iPhoneFreakz that fixed my cookies not being saved on-device. Just add the installer source: http://repo.ispazio.net. Then look for iRemember in Installer. After that start to enjoy surfing again without entering your bloody login every single time you turn your phone on :)
As if I wasn’t a bit too dependant on Jott already now they have gone and added a superb new feature- Jott Feeds.
While visiting Jott’s site this morning I stumbled across their newest offering- Jott Feeds- and decided to try it.
Jott Feeds is the next logical step in the evolution of RSS feeds and it pretty much turns the Jott experience upside down.
Instead of speaking to Jott and having its voice recognition service transcribe your words for you or someone else to read, Jott Feeds takes the written word and speaks it back to you on demand.
On one level it is similar to PimpMyNews (which Patrick blogged about a few months back) but with two huge differences.
This is a very quick and simple tip, but one that we get asked an awful lot, so it seemed worth covering.
Topic Description: Sources are web-based repositories for iPhone applications, used by the leading application installer program for the iPhone, Installer.app (or just Installer). Some iPhone application developers choose to have their apps distributed via one of the existing well-known sources (e.g. BigBoss, MMi), and others choose to host their own repository.
In order to install some of the latest apps for the iPhone, you’ll often find you need to add a source so that the desired application shows up in Installer for you.
The market for jailbreak apps is ONLY in countries where there is no App Store. Hackers and non-mainstream apps will move over to Android… — Craig Hockenberry, IconFactory (makers of Twitterific)
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(3 votes, average: 9 out of 10)
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When I wiped my iPhone and upgrade to 2.0 software while away from my desktop computer I realized I had no remote access to any of my contacts, tasks, or calendar appointments. They were just trapped on my home PC and awaiting the iTunes fairy to cast its magical sync spell. But now that I’m more grown up (or I guess my iPhone is more grown up – it’s already 2.0!) I didn’t really want to rely on the idea of magical wired synchronization and I started looking for a different solution.
(2 votes, average: 9.5 out of 10)
