Tag Archives: Handhelds

I (think I) Saw the iPhone 5

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Device in question is against the wall on the left, dark restaurant with an iPhone 4 camera.

Last week I saw a guy using a touch-screen phone that was super thin with a big bright screen and almost zero bezel.

It immediately caught my attention and I asked my friend Kayla, who was facing the table, to let me know if the guy picked it up and used it. It had been, until then, left to sit on the table unused.

The guy this friend was talking to said something that made the guy pull out his phone and pull up the notepad. This was when Kayla and I realized, this super thin phone was an iPhone. Sure enough, the home screen came back up and it was iOS.

It appeared that the screen took up most of the device, it was super thin, and shorter than the current iPhone. The phone was wrapped in matte black, almost like gaffers tape. It is thinner than I was able to convey in this mockup, almost as thin as a Motorola Razor screen.

I’m no good at making mockups but I did my best to illustrate what we saw.

iPhone 5 vs iPhone 4 mockup

These guys were talking about a new cloud service that was similar to “AWS” but had “no net loss.” AWS, for those who don’t know, means “Amazon Web Services” which provide a plethora of syncing and data hosting services, as well as Amazon’s new cloud music system.

We did our best to listen to their conversation as they drank beers but didn’t pull too much from it. Watching the WWDC live right now I now understand more of what they were talking about, which leads credence to the theory that this phone was indeed an iPhone 5.

All this said, I’m pretty sure that some blog like The Unofficial Apple Weblog will see this, post it and turn out that I’m totally high and these two dude work for IBM and everything is totally coincidental. However, I’m hoping that isn’t the case. 🙂

UPDATE: So after being mentioned on the TWiT Network and WWDC coming to pass, a post by Joshua Topolsky came to my attention about the design of the iPhone 5 via another blog post on some other tech site (too many to remember).

Joshua (or his people) made their own mockup and it is scary similar to the design I saw (and tried to mockup myself).

 

This is My Next iPhone 5 Mockup

This is My Next iPhone 5 Mockup

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White iPhone 4 Unicorn Arrives with Sense of Humor

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Finally. The White iPhone 4 is Here

I find it pretty awesome that Apple actually is making fun of themselves on the front page of their website right now. Yeah, it might be nearly a year late but the “magical” Apple unicorn is finally available to buy. Hats off to you Apple for keeping your sense of humor, you know, the one we never thought you had.

And you know the whole reason I waited from June 24th until September to get my iPhone 4 strictly because I wanted the white version. I eventually gave up and honestly don’t care. For the first time ever I own a black iPhone and my world didn’t turn upside down.

But back on topic. The white iPhone is here, it’s a tiny bit thicker than the black iPhone 4 and we can stop reading rumor posts on it. Thank G-d. Now let’s get those iPhone 5 rumors ramped up. Oiy… Continue reading →

Chase Jarvis & The Best Camera Trifecta

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Chase Jarvis has been one of my favorite commercial photographers for years now.  It’s been sort of dream of mine to someday become a successful professional photographer like Jarvis, Joey L or Annie Leibovitz, despite the fact that I shoot primarily fine-art style photography.

Back in September Jarvis released a sort of trio of unsuspecting photography tools based on his famously popular iPhone photos.  You can view many of his iPhone snaps on his TwitPic stream.  His photos get thousands of views by other Twitter users, more often than not bringing up the question, “how did you do that?”

The answer came out in the form of The Best Camera iPhone app, a social photo site The Best Camera.com and a fantastic book full of inspiration, illustration and annotation.  He says it best, check out the video below.

The idea behind the project is simple, the best camera is the one you have with you, something Jarvis has proven this to be true time and time again.  From photos of sewer grates to open fields to elevator steps to the decontextualized, his photos rarely fail to capture a certain photographic spirit.

The Best Camera iPhone app is a solid photo manipulator.  It’s not meant to fix problems with photos but by stacking various filters allowing the photographer to create something truly unique.  You can easily share your photos with your Twitter followers and Facebook friends as well as the applications aforementioned social site..

Jarvis’s book is essential the printed version of his TwitPic and Best Camera photo streams.

The photos are well printed and laid out in a way that somehow seems to work.  With such a comprehensive and yet random subject matter, making something cohesive must have been difficult..  Most photography books I’ve picked up have been about one particular subject.  This book is different.  It captures everything, a sort of stream of consciousness.

EverythingEntrace Exit
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Some of the cropping and effects used in his iPhone app seem to be a bit overdone, I subscribe to a sort of less-is-more faculty when it comes to these sorts of things.

Cropping down so many of the photos to fit the square book along with the exaggeration in color had me questioning the power of the photos themselves.  Would they have been as interesting on their own or do they rely on the effects in the program?

Perhaps in the end these sorts of questions don’t matter.  If the photos come out beautifully, carry a narrative or simply peek interest, perhaps they’ve done their job.

For under $15, this book is a steal.  It’s really a blast to browse through the photos, to see how the limitations of a camera can become a tool.  When I switched to a 50mm prime lens from a 18-135 zoom, I found myself taking much better photos.  The same seems to happen with the iPhone.  This book serves as a sort of illustration and guide to what is possible, though ultimately the limits are endless.

You can get the book at several resellers including, my favorite, Amazon.com.  Click here to check it out.

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These Are Not the Droid (effects) You’re Looking For

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Over the last few weeks, Verizon has subjected anyone in front of a television with some pretty interesting commercials.  Kind of… Clovererfield/Transformers-esque.

I’ll go ahead and post one here for your enjoyment.

And then of course, the original advertisement.  Anti-Apple much?  I’m definitely an Apple Fanboy at this point and you might expect that I would be pissed that Verizon would put out such a commercial.  Not really though because it seems to me that it’s about time Apple’s iPhone got some real competition and if that’s the Droid, then bring on the ads.

So there you go, Verizon + Motorola + Google Android = DROID = iPhone Killer.  Fantastic. Competition is good! Apple will again begin pushing the limits on what a phone can do.  Maybe go after those attacks about no flash, only 2mp camera, etc etc.  Meanwhile, since the DROID phone is so closely tied to  Verizon and the iPhone to AT&T, maybe we’ll see some benefits there too right?

AT&T has horrendous 3G coverage around the nation, especially when compared to Verizon.  That’s an obvious first step on AT&T’s part.  How about cost?  I pay my iPhone bill every month and every month I think… wow that’s a lot of money.  I bet with the DROID phone, Verizon will go after AT&T’s bottom line.  Make their DROID plans significantly cheaper than the iPhone.  Any amount over $10 is a dramatic difference, if they were $30 a month cheaper I might even be tempted to switch!  Better 3G coverage and cheaper monthly plans?!

Well, unfortunately, Ronald Reagan was wrong.  Competition doesn’t fuel the benefits he and other “Reaganomics” economists promised.  For the most part, the DROID cost of ownership is exactly the same as the iPhone with only one plan cheaper.  By how much? By a massive $0.01!

Chart created by Nicole Lee from CNet.com

Wow that’s disappointing.  When you break down the differences in price which is only in the text message options, it becomes a total wash.  The DROID is cheaper for the small text message plan (250 vs 200 messages) but for the high end the iPhone is better (5000 vs unlimited).  Guess I’ll stick to my iPhone.

UPDATE: Turns out Verizon plans to charge $15/month for access to Exchange on the DROID, something A&T doesn’t charge for on the iPhone. So if you, like me, use Exchange on your phone, turns out the iPhone is $180 a year cheaper, $360 for the length of the contract which is around or more than than the price of getting out of your contract with either carrier!

Let’s get a bit political.  The Republicans are saying that natural competition between insurance companies will decrease the price of premiums and increase the availability of coverage.  Well, not so true as seen here.  When companies are in collusion with each other to keep prices at a certain point, they have no real reason to undercut the competition.  Ugh.

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iPhone 3G – It’s Mine

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After waiting a day to get the iPhone and avoid the massive lines and over night stays required to get one on the first day, Ryan and I packed up early and headed to San Antonio where we waited in a short line (we were number 22) for the new iPhone.

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They told us they had 36 on hand in the store, 5 black 16gb, 10 white 16gb, and the rest black 8gb iPhones.  Of course I wanted a 16gb and of course I wanted it in black.

Unfortunately, or so I thought, the last black 16gb iPhone was sold to the guy in front of me.  However, the white one is’nt so bad after all.  In fact, I like the look o the white one more than the black one so I guess in a way, I lucked out.

We got the phone no problem, I got the black inscipio case and the really nice screen protectors and pulled out my laptop to finish the setup.  We figured we might as well get it all activated before leaving the store, should there be any problems.

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I used my Verizon Wireless wifi card to get on the Internet and in no time at all my phone was activated and syncing up my music and applications.

I didn’t have any of the troubles other people were having in the day before and the entire deal went over just perfectly, despite was Chris Pirillo has been incessently blogging.  Direct fulfillment was your own mistake Chris…

Anyways, I digress.  The AT&T people did the best they could and everything went so perfectly and smoothly, not a single hiccup.

So far the new iPhone 3G is everything I was promised.  Great service, great speeds, great built quality and the battery life is working out just fine for me.

No complaints from me so far but if I get anything, I’ll be sure to let you know.

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iPhone 2.0 Gives Wrong Location

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Whenever I use iPhone 2.0 on my 1st generation iPhone to find my location, it says I’m in Florida.  Every time.  I have restarted, reformatted, driven 30 miles away from my home base right now… Still I’m in Florida and at the same address.

I’m in Texas.  Just ask BrightKite.

iPhone 2.0 Gives Wrong Location

Anyone else having these problems?

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