iPhone 4

I queued for a few hours last Thursday to buy an iPhone 4. It was worth the wait The “Retina” display is mind-blowingly sharp and bright, and works really well (despite almost all third-party apps not upscaling graphics – yet). For me, the most amazing feature is the HD Video Recording – I’ve found it really useful over the past week, at Lytham Club Day for example, and the improvements in the camera are really stunning compared with my old iPhone 3G.

However, that’s not without its problems. I am one of those with an iPhone suffering the left-hand antenna problem, but I invested in a bumper (daylight robbery!) to alleviate it. Though I am more concerned about the yellow marks on the screen, which haven’t quite faded away yet – despite what some people have reported on Mac forums online. Will be heading back to the O2 store for a swap when I think they’ll have more in stock.

Overall though, I’m really pleased. Multitasking is pretty good and the battery life seems rather long. All in all though, the real potential of iPhone 4 and iOS 4 will come with developers updating their apps to take advantage of the new features.

National Rail Enquiries iPhone App

You may remember the popular MyRail Lite app which was released onto the iTunes App Store a while ago and then quickly withdrawn. Those who managed to grab the application before it was removed could still use it, although very recently a notification was displayed telling the users that National Rail Enquiries, the service which provides the data, had refused to renew their license with Kizoom, the parent company of MyRail. This effectively meant that from 31st March 2009 you would not be able to get the train information. Then it started getting awkward:

Very recently, National Rail Enquiries released their own iPhone App which does practically the same as MyRail Lite, however it is priced at £4.99 and there is no other alternative if you want to get the train times on your iPhone. How can this be fair – they prevent any other company using their data and then have full control of their pricing. I’m pretty sure that in any real world scenario – for example the recent BAA airports break-up – the Competition Commission would intervene. After all, information which is effectively promoting National Rail’s services should be free? Isn’t it public knowledge?

Any suggestions about what can be done? Is it worth starting a government petition or writing to the Office of Fair Trading? I’d appreciate your thoughts on this.

Mobile Fotos

After having a great experience with Twittelator Pro for my iPhone, I decided to buy another paid app from the App Store. In particular, I was looking for a good Flickr application, and it didn’t take me long to find Mobile Fotos.

The application is quick and easy to use. You can view almost everything – sets/tags/groups/favourites/contacts – and it caches photos when you view them, which is a useful feature. You can save pictures to your iPhone, and assign them as a contact’s picture really simply.

Uploading is a snap, and despite some users’ complaints about images being uploaded upside-down, my test upload (a picture of @ruby_gem’s ferret) uploaded fine. There’s a wealth of options you can fill in when you upload too, such as privacy and picture type (photo, illustration, etc).

There’s also the option to view nearby photos and “explore” interesting and recent photos. Finally, there’s the ability to search for photos too. Something I would like to see added would be the ability to view collections, currently it’s not possible to do this via the app.

Mobile Fotos is a feature-plenty Flickr app for iPhone, and I definately recommend it for any Flickr enthusiast. The price tag is rather cheap (I think it was about £3), and it is really helpful. Well done!

I’ve uploaded a few pics of my usage of the app: