The Gadgets Page

The fact that I can’t replace the battery on my iPhone has never been a problem for me. I’ve had pretty good luck with it, but I miss having the backup of an extra battery that I had with my old Treo. It’s one of those things that kind of sit in the back of my mind nagging me a bit.

Now, the Mophie Juice Pack can alleviate that nagging worry, but only if I’m willing to pay a hundred bucks.

The Mophie adds quite a bit of bulk to your iPhone, but for those of us used to dealing with the Treo, it feels like old times.

When I used to be a real estate agent, I was on my phone all day long. There is no way the iPhone would have lasted me. I would have had to keep it plugged into my car the entire time I drove from listing to listing. Is that people are doing now?

If you’re willing to bulk up your phone a bit (it was never a problem for me because I keep my phone in my purse), then the serenity of have twice the battery time is worth the extra money.

Ms. Jen over at Black Phoebe has a fantastic review comparing her bluetooth headset to her new Nokia H-43 Headset:

• Bluetooth vs. Wired: The Nokia Headset Wars – Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen

Here are her reasons for loving the Nokia wired headset far more than her bluetooth:

1. Wires. Good old fashioned copper covered in plastic & cloth makes for a better sonic / audio experience.
2. Stereo. Hey, novelty! I can hear sound, be it music or spoken voice, in both ears!
3. No need to remember charge the wired headset.
4. Friends and family can hear me speak during a phone call much clearer with the wired headset, even when I am walking along the beach in a stiff breeze. Hello, Seal Way, the killer of all phone calls, you don’t kill my calls now.
5. Oooh, baby baby… the best feature of the HS-43 wired stereo headset is the one that seems most bizarre when you first pull it out. It does not look or act like your usual wired headset, as the back/top is not a headband but a 1/4 inch wide black fabric that is about 6 inches long that have two lanyard style clamp/unclamp at each end. Thus, when the danged thing gets all tangled up into a wad of wired hell, you just pull the two clamps apart and YAY the tangles are gone. If you by accident attempt to pull it out of your purse too fast or out from under the dog and you think, “Oh Crap! I have just broke the headset!”, oh no you have not, the clamps release and you can pull it out nicely and reclamp it.

I feel EXACTLY the same way about my V-Moda Vibe Duo Headset for the iPhone. When I’m having trouble hearing, they are BETTER than just talking on the phone because I hear the other person in both ears and the earbuds block out some of the ambient noise. They can hide in a tiny case in my purse forever until I need them and I never have to worry about charging them.

In fact, I’ve never owned a bluetooth headset BECAUSE of the charging issue. When I was a real estate agent and I was on the phone enough to warrant a bluetooth headset, the battery would have conked out halfway through the day. After I stopped being on the phone enough to use a headset, I stopped REALLY needing one. When I’m driving, I prefer to not talk on the phone at all and letting the call go to voice mail. I use my V-Moda headset to listen to music far more often than talking on the phone. In fact, I use it for phone calls when I’m in a noisy environment and I can’t hear the other person on the line. Those earbuds are amazing for blocking out noise.

In the end, bluetooth headsets seem like a transitional technology to me. For now, I agree with Ms. Jen. I’d MUCH rather be wired.

There are a couple of iPhone apps that looked really cool for when we travel, but I never downloaded them. Even though they were free, I couldn’t see us using them, so I didn’t download them.

Then I saw this iPhone binder clip stand and I immediately downloaded both of the apps.

• Instructables: iPhone Binder Clip Stand Ver 2.0

It only took me two minutes to follow richsipe’s instructions and I had my own iPhone stand. I actually made two and packed one in my travel bag because it’s so small and compact. Now I can keep my iPhone by my bed, charging, playing music while I fall asleep and telling me the time.

This is how it looks with the Night Stand app from SpoonJuice, which is free on iTunes.

iTunes Link to Night Stand

This is how it looks with The Time app from OctoDax, which is also free on iTunes.

iTunes Link to The Time

Personally, I like The Time better because the numbers are crisper and the display shows the day and date, but both are excellent for turning your $300 iPhone into a $10 alarm clock.

Via: Daily Tech: Wired Celebrates 40 Years of Mighty Mice | Daily Tech, mouse | geeksugar – Technology, Gadgets, & How Tos.

There’s no arguing that the iPhone camera lens is wimpy. The camera itself has more pixels than my first digital camera, but the lens is smaller than a dime. This iPhone case from SNY, however has a detachable telescopic lens.

• SNY iPhone 3G Camera Telescope Lens with Crystal Clear Case at Amazon.com

I tested something like this at CES last year, but their design glued a magnetic circle to the iPhone instead of incorporating the lens holder into a case. Here are some other photos:

If you have been wishing that you could get 6X zoom with your little iPhone camera, this is a pretty lightweight accessory to add.

I have been looking for a simple dock to charge and sync my iPhone ever since my old dock stopped working. The Pottery Barn Simple Dock looks like it could replace my iLive ghetto blaster and do just that.

I have some questions about it before I’m willing to plunk down the eighty bucks, though:

• Does it work with the iPhone 3G? The problem with buying electronics accessories from a furniture store is that they don’t give me any specifics. I even looked it up on their website (Simple Dock | Pottery Barn) and their product info tab was woefully incomplete. Since the iPhone 3G has a different charging system than the old iPods and old iPhone, a lot of the docks don’t work anymore. THAT’S what happened to my old charging dock. I’m not willing to spend $79 without some guarantee that it will WORK.

• Does it sync? Again, the product info is slim on this and I can’t even tell if this dock has a USB cable that will allow me to connect it to my computer to sync. If it doesn’t, there’s no point in me buying it. I don’t want to just charge my iPhone. I need to sync it as well. Did the designers at Pottery Barn think of that? Who can tell. It’s obvious that the WEB designers on their site didn’t think to include that information.

The cool thing about this little dock is that it can play music from the iPhone AND charge. That would make it a tasteful addition to your bedroom by your bed, near your computer or even in the living room. Even though it’s highly unlikely that the speakers are audiophile quality, they are good enough for me to listen to tunes before I go to sleep or while I type away at my computer. Without the essential technical information, however, I’m not willing to pay eighty dollars to find out whether they will work with my iPhone or not.

Via: Pottery Barn’s New Simple Dock Is Just That | iPod dock, pottery barn, shopping | geeksugar – Technology, Gadgets, & How Tos.

I owned a VW Beetle for six years. During that time, I owned THREE smartphones. I had always longed for something to easily hold my phone at dashboard level and I never ONCE even considered using my bud vase.

What the heck was the matter with me?!!

Nathan Barry, on Flickr, has created this AWESOME iPhone holder using the budvase on his Beetle:

Works perfectly, and the iPhone picked one of my all favourite tunes for the test run! It holds the iPhone securely and safely in easy view from the driving position, pops on and off very easily, and it’s close enough for the speakerphone mode to negate the need for any handsfree kit.

You can see all the photos here:

• iTrip cable slotted in… on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
• VW Bug vase hack on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
• Vase iPhone holder in action on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

Very cool! It makes me almost wish I had my VW Beetle back, until I remember the never-ending struggle with the Check Engine light. Maybe I can hack something like this for my Prius…

Long ago, Palm devices were able to share data. You could beam over your business card, other contact information, or appointments from one Palm device to another using the IR ports. It’s a feature that Mike and I used quite regularly. I would set an appointment on my Treo and I’d immediately beam it over to Mike’s Treo so we would both remember the event. We also used it for contacts, but not nearly as often as for appointments.

It was something I REALLY missed when we upgraded to the iPhone.

Now, Skorpiostech has brought some of that capability back. With Handshake, I can share a photo or contact information with another iPhone. Here is a video explaining how it works:

You have a choice between the free and premium versions. The free version has an advertisement at the top and the premium version has no advertising for a one-time fee of three bucks. Here are the iTunes links to each of them.

• Handshake: Free Cost is free, but advertising at the top of the screen every time you use it.
• Handshake Premium: Cost is $2.99 with no advertising.

Now all they have to do is add a feature to share appointments and I will have one more feature in my iPhone that I missed when I switched from my Treo.

Via: First Look: Handshake for iPhone – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

With the last iPhone update, a great thing happened. My battery life went WAY up. Instead of having to charge the phone every two days or so, I could go an entire week without a charge. I had heard rumors of increased battery life, but I was REALLY impressed with this update.

There was a side effect, however. My email icon stopped working. When I turned on my phone, it wouldn’t automatically know how many emails I had. The number on the icon was almost always WRONG. It kind of pissed me off, but then my faith in the almighty Apple kicked in and I thought, “They’ll fix it.”

They didn’t. Over the last few weeks, I kept getting angrier and angrier at Apple because my stupid email icon was NEVER right. In order to know how many emails I had, I basically had to load the stupid mail program EVERY time. It was like the program wasn’t checking unless I loaded it.

And then it hit me. Maybe it wasn’t.

When I looked at my settings, the Push feature had been turned on. I don’t know if I did it or if it was reset with the last update, but Push means that my mail server would PUSH the emails to me. Instead of my mail program checking for mail every fifteen minutes like it used to before the update, it was dutifully waiting for my mail server to send the email to it, just like the settings told it.

If you have been frustrated with the mail program on your iPhone, check the settings for Push. Turn Push off and it will FETCH your mail every fifteen minutes (or whatever time frame you choose), just like it used to before the last update.

Now, I’m only embarrassed that I was so angry at the almighty Apple for “breaking” my mail.

When we talk about design, sometimes things just seem a little familiar. Take this design for a yo-yo, for example. It’s used to charge your iPhone.

• Peter Thuvander: Yo-Yo Charger

It’s a design for a yo-yo that has a LI battery cell that gets charged when you play with it. Ingenious, isn’t it? Who would have ever thought of something like that?

Well, it just so happens that Chris Aimone and Tomek Bartczak thought of it a full two years earlier:

• Gadgets Page » Gadgets of the Future? Yo-Yo Powered MP3 Player

They actually were the grand prize winners for the Pop-Sci Core77 Design Challenge. Sorry, Peter. Try again and this time come up with your OWN idea.

Via: Popgadget, DVICE, TreeHugger, Engadget and Boing Boing. NONE of whom noticed the similarities.

After MONTHS of dealing with my 3G iPhone thinking I was in Minnesota, something FINALLY has been fixed. I don’t know what it was. It didn’t happen with the last update. Somehow, the 3G data for the cell tower, or whatever Apple had done to the programming has been fixed and now my iPhone finally believes that I’m in Utah.

What about the rest of you? There were people in Oregon, Minnesota and Philedelphia having these problems. Did they get fixed? Does your iPhone believe you are back in your hometown yet? I’d hate to think that this was just a singular fix and I’m hoping that everyone who has had this problem is enjoying the 3G iPhone the way it was MEANT to be enjoyed.