Linksys iPhone

Tweet

For today only the iMore iPhone Accessory Store has the Qmadix Vibe Flex-Gel Cover for iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 on sale for only 14.95! That's a whopping 40% off! Get it before it's gone!

Shop Qmadix Vibe Flex-Gel Cover for iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 now!

The Qmadix Vibe Flex-Gel Cover accentuates your style and personality in vibrant color while protecting your iPhone 4S, AT&T iPhone 4, or Verizon iPhone 4 from the elements. This sporty yet rugged case features a transparent window and is made from durable, abrasion resistant TPU.

The Vibe Flex-Gel Cover offers the ultimate in style and protection.

Features:

* Form fitting design

* Access to all ports and control

* Clear rear window display back of device

* Easy to install and remove

* Custom fit for iPhone 4S, AT&T iPhone 4, or Verizon iPhone 4

Tags: ipod next level  phone browsers  car socket power  iphone sync mail  ceo device staggering  3gs video integration  make dock out  bluetooth accessories  

Catan Vs The Settlers Which Game Will Colonize Your iPhone We

Tweet

We're pitting two iPhone and iPad games against one another that are all about settling a brave new world. On the one side, we have the digital adaptation of the classic board game, Catan. In the other, we have a veteran PC title that's made the leap to mobile, called The Settlers.

For some people, the word "Catan" will conjure up memories of hours spent haggling for sheep and building roads. Trust me, it's more fun than it sounds - that nostalgia is what will pull most iPhone and iPad owners to give the digital game a try. The game board is broken up into hexagonal tiles, each with their own resource type. Players build settlements at the intersections of these tiles to gather surrounding resources, and construct roads to connect their towns. Every turn, dice are rolled to determine which tiles produce resources, which the players can then trade with one another as needed. There are a variety of win criteria, none of which involve going to war and razing your opponents' cities to the ground, which is a nice change of pace. Instead, you earn victory points for having the longest road, the most (or biggest) cities, and amassing the largest army. The first one to a certain number of victory points (usually 10) wins.

The fly-in menu in Catan is very slick, and after a few games, navigating it becomes very natural.

The charm of the board game was playing with friends - wheeling and dealing in resources, cutting each other off in road construction, and planting robbers in their territory to plunder their resources. Despite the wide variety of turn-based online multiplayer titles available for iPhone, Catan only offers local hand-off multiplayer, which significantly stunts the fun factor. Catan also takes another knock for requiring you to buy "The Seafarers" expansion pack for 5 in order to access the single-player campaign mode, although it nearly doubles the number of scenarios you can play in the one-off custom games. Without the add-on, you're limited to the generic skirmish mode with AI opponents and a smaller handful of game variants. Given, the computer opponents have a wide variety of strengths and weaknesses, providing for some decent replayability, it's still not an ideal single-player experience with a level-by-level narrative. At least dealing with robots means you don't feel bad for taking a long time on turns or screwing them over in trades. I found the user interface and graphics for Catan to be pretty nice, and even when you're just playing with the AI, the fundamental gameplay retains its classic appeal.

Youll have a lot of buildings in The Settlers, and even more resources to manage.

Fans of the settling-themed games will likely be familiar with The Settlers series on PC. At its core, The Settlers is a production chain game. The line of production is sensible, but extensive. Make a woodcutter to chop wood. Make a sawmill to make boards from that wood. Use the boards to make a farm. Make a mill to turn the grain into flour. This goes on all the way through feeding miners to smelting iron to training troops to expanding your territory. Though aggressive military expansion is the inevitable outcome of all of that micromanaging, you spend the vast majority of your time making sure everyone is fed and properly supplied. The game stretches across four separate single-player campaigns, traveling through a wide variety of landscapes and pitting you against many different civilizations - both indigenous and competing colonies.

The problem with The Settlers is that the sheer complexity of the chain of production creates a very cluttered user interface on the iPhone. There are tons of sub-menus to pinpoint specific units. Terrain is graded on how quick it is to build structures, creating this jarring blur of red and green dots. Though some of the nitpickier parts of the PC game have been axed for simplicity, such as creating the network of roads to connect buildings, and upgrading building levels to increase productivity, I would say they could have cut even more while keeping the same core, appealing gameplay. For example, we could skip the coal requirement to smelt iron and gold, get rid of stone mines since there are already quarries, and reduce the number of unit types to avoid confusion. There are 33 different types of settlers that you have to manage, each with their own tool, material, and building requirements, not to mention the second- and third-level military units you can train - that's a lot to juggle. They've even introduced a lot of extra elements that I don't recognize since playing Settlers 7 on PC, like sulfur mines, eyecatcher buildings, and priests.

Is this what combat is supposed to look like?

Sure, great real-time strategy games benefit from extensive tech trees, but for an iPhone game, it feels cramped, and I imagine even on an iPad The Settlers would be hectic. The graphics are decent, but zooming in on gameplay just shows a pixelated blown-up view, rather than higher-res textures.

Picking between the two is a tough call because they both have pretty specific flaws; Catan is missing vital online multiplayer support, and Settlers has a cramped user interface. Despite having similar themes, both have fairly different game mechanics, too. Besides having a more streamlined user interface, I found the pace of Catan's gameplay more sensible for mobile; even with a fast-forward button, The Settlers is built for long-haul single-player missions. Meanwhile, you could have a rewarding turn in Catan in a split second, and quickly put it away if something else demanded your attention. I'm sure The Settlers would be less cluttered on the iPad, and if you're a hardcore fan of the franchise, I'd suggest checking it out, but for casual players looking for a fresh colonization game on iPhone, go with Catan.

4.99 - BUY THE SETTLERS

4.99 - BUY THE SETTLERS HD

4.99 - BUY CATAN

4.99 - BUY CATAN HD

Tags: product has iphone  wheel car hands  install custom mount  steve mac ios  iphone car deck  returns iphone service  kit offers available  ceo tim total  

Mobile Phone Web Browsers

Tweet

Opera, the popular mobile browser across many platforms has pushed out an update of Opera for iPad. The new Opera Mini for iPad update brings various improvements. The new Opera version is now live for download.

What makes browsing the internet through Opera Mini even more spectacular is the screen real estate of the iPad 2. Available for all iOS devices, Opera Mini brings the fastest and most cost-efficient web-browsing experience for your iOS device.

The new Opera Mini for iPad brings smooth switching of tabs by just tapping on a tab preview and background loading of tabs is also present. The UI animations are overall smooth. In the Opera Mini menu, you get the usual slew of sharing, bookmarking, history and settings options. Social integration support for Twitter, Facebook and My Opera is also included.

Opera Mini also comes with support for the Retina Display on the iPhone 4. This browser can be downloaded on any iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad running iOS 3.0 or later.

Download New Opera Mini for iPad

Tags: right speakers  your bluetooth kit  cradle iphone touch  diabetes ipod touch  apple make ios  iphone external sound  ipod options radio  usb car your  

1 3 iPhone Apps To Work On

Tweet

Firmware version 1.1.3 has just been jailbroken, today on January 19 with read and right access. iPhone firmware version 1.1.3 has still not been unlocked yet. The 1.1.3 Secpack has been found. The jailbreak was done by the iPhone dev Team and Elite Team. But there have been some rumors that they're going to wait until the iPhone SDK comes out in late February to release it. This could be false, though. At this time the jailbreaking procedure is very long. It should be much easier soon. Hopefully the dev Team will release it next weekend. When new information comes out I will update. To watch the video with firmware version 1.1.3 jailbroken in action click here.

Update 1/20 5:30 PM PST: The iPhone dev Team will hold off the release of the 1.1.3 jailbreak until the SDK comes out in late February. That could be a good thing because if Apple requires us to update to a newer version in order to download apps from iTunes, we would still be able to jailbreak and we would still have the ability to download apps through iTunes. They are also working on getting the 1.1.3 iPhone apps to work on 1.1.2. Another downside is that with the 1.1.3 firmware many of the applications will not work. The applications from the Springboard do not have root access anymore which means we wouldn't be able to use Customize. The dev Team is also working on fixing Installer so it will work on 1.1.3. Many applications would have to modified to to work on 1.1.3. The 1.1.3 jailbreak does not look like it will be as great as we expected.

Update 1/22 9:45 PM PST: The iPhone dev Team and Elite Team have recently merged to develop the jailbreak for firmware version 1.1.3. It took about seven members to develop the jailbreak. This jailbreak will not require any hardware modification of any kind. The jailbreak is done by some command line work. Also all apps will go into the mobile section of the iPod's file system (/var/mobile).

Tags: parrot installation dodge  bluetooth have drivers  iphone lineup  inc feedback ipad  iphonemp3 car aux  white delays year  iphonemp3 car  car kits without  

Apple iPhone Tops J D Power Smartphone User Satisfaction Survey Obviously

Tweet

Surprise! Everyone loves their iPhones. J.D. Power and Associates have just announced the results of their annual smartphone customer satisfaction survey, and like usual, Apple's iPhone has topped the list. On a 1,000-point scale, spanning criteria of performance, ease of operation, physical design, and features, Apple scored 839. Second place was claimed by HTC with a score of 798, while the industry average was 774. This is the seventh consecutive win for Apple in this particular survey.

ChangeWave recently published a survey which backs up the sentiment, but I don't think we really need a lot of stats to prove the point that people love their iPhones. The J.D. Power and Associates survey does a good job highlighting what's important to people, though. Battery life is the least satisfying part of a smartphone, according to their research. Software stability is also really high on the list; devices which experienced a crash at least once a week averaged a score of 691.

On that note, what's the very worst thing you could say about your iPhone? The screen size?

Source: J.D. Power and Associates

Tags: have new ipad  iphone must accessory  aol which systems  diy iphone dock  bluetooth kits any  vitaminwater application weeks  integration monster mount  

iPhone Apple Patent App Portends Gadgets Made Of Glass

Tweet

Thought all those shattered screens and iPhone 4 backplates would push Apple towards making mobile devices machined from aluminum like its laptops and tablets? Think again, friends, because a newly published patent application from Cupertino indicates the company is considering crafting portable computing devices out of glass. The app claims a "substantially seamless enclosure... extruded in its entirety with glass material" so that wireless signals can freely flow to and fro, along with a method for manufacturing such a device. Naturally, this is only an application, and it doesn't say exactly what kind of super-durable glass would make this a desirous design change. So, who knows if we'll ever see an all-glass exterior on an iPhone or iPod, but you can get a more in-depth peek at that potential future at the source link below. You can also get a glance at what'll be Android's new anthem should that glass-filled future come to pass.

Continue reading "Apple patent app portends gadgets made of glass"

Apple patent app portends gadgets made of glass originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink USPTO Email this Comments

Tags: griffin autopilot review  released statement  fixer released iphone  microsoft sync car  option listening  bluetooth things way  out ranking  some tablets  

I Buy An iPhone To Get iOS

Tweet

Why would Apple ever prioritize over "When HAS Apple prioritized market share over profits? And how did that turn out? (Hint - cloning; almost put Apple out of business, before Jobs came back and refocused the company on wait for it profitable activities.)

I'm sure Apple is capable of producing a feature-phone that maybe looked like an iPhone, but it wouldn't "an iPhone if it didn't support all/most of the features of iOS. It would be the equivalent of the new iPod nano Looks like iOS, but isn't; removes features that people think of when they think of iPod nano. It's not clear to me why they build it other than "because we could" -- or who is buying it.

Would a smaller iPhone be neat? Sure. Would I want one? Eh, not if I lost capabilities just to get a smaller device. I buy an iPhone to get iOS, apps, GPS, FaceTime, the "real browser" experience, etc. etc. Not because it has a shiny Apple on the back.

Tags: iphone dock old  ipod ipod kia  mounted free player  bricked ipad update  apple launched management  your stereo mp3  gorilla carbon iphone  keep ipod audi