iPhone App Blog

About a month ago the folks at ColorWare added iPhones to the ranks of Apple products that they will colorize. Using a process similar to that of painting cars, ColorWare will give your iPhone a customized paint job with lots of colors and chrome and metallic goodness. You can send in your iPhone or buy one already pimped out from the company.

The process is a bit pricey, though. Painting an iPhone costs around $150 and takes about three weeks to finish. If you want to buy a pre-painted iPhone direct from ColorWare just add $150 to the purchase price raising a 4GB iPhone to $649 and the 8GB model to $749. If you can afford it (and can bear to be without your iPhone for three weeks) the process makes your iPhone look totally cool.

There are 30 color choices to customize the back, bottom panel, home button, earbuds, logo, and docking station which makes…a lot of possible combinations. So many color combinations that my meager math abilities cannot calculate them all. But trust me…it’s a lot.

Dr. Macenstein recently got his very own colorized phone back from the company so take a trip over to his blog to see a bunch of pictures of a finished phone. He seems pretty happy with it and I think it looks super cool. Even if you don’t want to have your iPhone colorized it’s worth it to check out ColorWare’s site to play with the design studio. Check out my iPhone App Blog colorized phone!

There’s been a bit of a scuttlebutt lately about issues with iPhone’s touch screen. Reports of unresponsive areas or “dead spots” on iPhone’s revolutionary screen are all over sites like Techmeme today. Described as a half inch strip on the top or bottom of the vertical display the unresponsive areas prevent afflicted iPhone’s from performing necessary tasks like unlocking the phone and answering calls.

According to Apple 2.0 there have been at least 22 separate incidents reported on various Apple forums. Many relevant threads on Apple’s official forum have subsequently been removed. The problem doesn’t seem to be helped by resetting or reformatting the device and installing Update 1.0.1 has no effect.

Thankfully Apple seems to be quietly handling the problem; even going so far as to contact some forum posters before they could register a complaint. Others have reported that they have required direct replacements from Apple. At Apple stores employees have routinely recommended that the defective units be sent away for a 3 day repair period.During this time a temporary phone may be rented for $29, but some iPhone owners have been able to sweet talk Apple’s Geniuses into letting them have a loaner phone for free.

The cause of the touchscreen failure is being debated. MarketWatch (UK) has reported on a note by Nomura International analyst Richard Windsor saying, in part:

Windsor explained that the screen of the iPhone uses a chemical deposition to provide touch sensitivity based on heat. The international property rights for this technology, he said, were purchased from a bankrupt Finnish company that was trying to make a similar device. But that company encountered the problem that with extensive use, the film would begin to degrade and the screen would lose its sensitivity.

The article goes on to say that Apple should have been aware of the issue and repaired it before the iPhone’s release. However, many comments have been made in regard to the fact that iPhone’s touchscreen does not rely on heat. The iPhone’s screen uses charge capacitance (see How Stuff Works’ iPhone article) to register touch.

As of now it is unknown how many iPhones are or could be affected by these dead spots. Apple seems to be handling it well, albeit quietly. Only time will tell if this will become a serious problem for Apple, Apple’s stock, and iPhone users.

Well, it looks like iPhone hackers are finally doing something useful with their time. “Have they unlocked the iPhone?” you ask. Goodness no; they’ve created an iPhone NES emulator. Now you can play your favorite NES classics right on your (hacked) iPhone.

The first stage of this app was floating around a few days ago. Created by stepwhite, the first gen iPhone NES emulator was way too slow to be played properly and there were some control issues. As stepwhite noted on Google Code, “using an image of an actual controller, while cute, sucks.”

Fortunately, hackers extraordinaire NerveGas and Nightwatch have created an optimized version of the original NES emulator. According to The Unofficial Apple Weblog the new version is “blazing fast” and has multi-touch support. So now the controller is cute and functional? Awesome.

Some of the games included in the emulator are Super Mario Bros 1 and 3, Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, Punch Out, Mega Man 2, and lots more. The good thing about NES emulators is that you get to play some of the best console games without paying for the actual cartridges (some which cost quite a lot) or dealing with the often-finicky 20 year old NES console.

Of course you can only get this super fun and time wasting app if you’ve hacked your iPhone. The current version has no sound, but at least it’s fast enough to actually play. I don’t know if there’s any save feature, but then again most original NES games didn’t either. If it doesn’t, longer games like Final Fantasy will be a little long to play all in one go.

So if you’ve already hacked your iPhone or aren’t afraid of voiding your warranty for the sake of classic gaming this hack is for you.

There’s a new IM iPhone app in town. Indian company Geodesic Information Systems has announced a new member of its popular Mundu mobile products line; Mundu IM: iPhone Edition. This IM app allows you to access you AIM, MSN, Yahoo, or GoogleTalk accounts simultaneously on your iPhone.

You can see all your buddy lists and carry on conversations in a single chat window.  Use the available IM services separately or all at once (this may get confusing, though.) You can even access and receive offline messages through Mundu IM: iPhone Edition.

Mundu IM: iPhone Edition is still in its Beta stages and the company is very open to feedback and suggestions. If you’ve used their service and want to make a comment, suggestion, or an idea to improve Mundu IM: iPhone Edition just send them an e-mail with “iPhone” as the subject line.

This is a pretty neat little IM app. It’s easy to use and keeps the feel of native iPhone apps. Mundu IM: iPhone Edition could very well become the only instant messenger you need.

For more information check out Geodesic’s press release on Moneycontrol India.

Last week the popular mobile widget site Plusmo announced that it will be extending its widget service to the iPhone. Plusmo is home to more than 20,000 mobile widgets that run the gamut from traffic reports to games to live sport updates. Most of these widgets have been user created and it’s easy to customize your own widgets.

This free service offers a customizable app portal for iPhone users. You can also create your own widgets out of useful websites,  XML/RSS based sources including news feeds as well as professional media, and user generated content such as blogs, photos and videos, and other Web 2.0 content.

You can add widgets and customize the portal from your iPhone or from your desktop. Everything uploads in real time so you don’t have to wait for your phone to update your new widgets. The service even recommends widgets based on your location (which it automatically knows…it kinda freaked me out).

Plusmo has gotten lots of accolades for being awesome. And it really is if you need instant access to RSS feeds and apps. There are so many widgets available and more coming all the time that it’s possible that Plusmo could provide all your widget needs. It provides feeds in an easy to read iPhone interface and even the icons look like they were designed by Apple.

Any way you slice it, Plusmo’s mobile widget service (which works with most Java phones including Symbian devices) is pretty neat-o.

Travel site lastminute.com and mobile software company Cool Gorilla have teamed up to bring a new translator app to the iPhone. With the success of Cool Gorilla’s six foreign phrasebooks released for Nokia and Sony Ericsson last May it was inevitable that an iPhone version would be developed.

The translator offers five languages: French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish with a Greek version in development. iPhone’s translator is organized like a phrase book with sections like essentials, food & drink, socializing, and emergencies. Some of the categories (like socializing and food & drink) have subcategories so you can find just what you need to say.

Not only does the translator offer text versions of the English and translations, but voice overs from native speakers. This ensures that you’re pronouncing everything correctly. Or you could just point the iPhone at a native and let the translator speak for you. Whatever, its your phone.

The translator itself is very intuitive and it’s pretty easy to find what phrase you’re looking for. Its a bit easier to use than an actual phrasebook because you’re not flipping through pages trying to find a translation. So if you’re traveling abroad or just need a quick translation so you can hit on that cute foreign exchange student just point your iPhone’s browser to www.coolgorilla.com/iphone.

UK company Synchronica has released a free 60 day trial of their Mobile 3.0 which provides mobile synchronization between Microsoft Exchange and the iPhone’s ail service. This service requires no software to download and no connectors or redirectors need to be installed on the corporate network.

Until now, most users of the iPhone weren’t able to access their corporate e-mail. This is because iPhone’s e-mail client only connects to Microsoft Exchange via direct IMAP/SMTP connections which is often blocked by corporate firewalls. Synchronica’s mobile system creates a secure gateway that utilizes Microsoft’s Outlook Mobile Web Access to retrieve e-mail from the Exchange server.

The gateway works closely with Exchange allowing iPhone users to send and recieve corporate e-mail on the go. When they return to the office their sent and received e-mail is automatically updated so there is no need for a “copy to self” workaround.

The iPhone is the latest smartphone to be added to Synchronica’s Mobile 3.0 system. With the addition of this mail gateway, iPhone is taking strides in becoming a corporate smartphone. For more information about Synchronica and their Microsoft Exchange gateway check out Synchronica’s press release or website.

Late last night while I was walking my dog Apple released several patches for Mac OS as well as the first update for the iPhone. The six patches released fixed several security bugs and other flaws in Mac OS (including the server versions) and the iPhone. Apple has also released Safari ver. 3.0.3 for Mac and Windows.

The update downloads via iTunes while you sync your iPhone. The most obvious reason for this update is the huge security gap that the guys over at Independent Security Evaluatorsdiscovered. The update addresses the issue by ”performing additional validation of JavaScript regular expressions.” This comes just days before ISE was to announce the vulnerability at the annual Black Hat security conference.

In a rather classy move, Apple gave credit to the hackers at ISE that discovered the security issue that could allow someone to completely take over an iPhone. Charlie Miller and Jake Honoroff of ISE are named right in the update notes. Which I think is rather nice.

Of course the update does more than just block this security hole. Users who have downloaded update 1.0.1 are reporting less crashing while browsing and playing music, a noticeable improvement in volume level, and the ability to drag content from iTunes to the iPhone. For more information on the features of the update visit this PC World article. 

A quick note for those who have hacked their iPhones: the update hates you. If you’ve hacked your iPhone and try to install the update your phone will probably crash, restore, and finish the download. This also means that you’ll lose most, if not all, of your settings. For more info about the update and what it does to hacked iPhones check out this article from Gizmodo.