The iPhone 5 and fifth-generation iPod touches have been with us for quite some time now and although they have proved to be extremely successful, consumers are still noticing that some of their favorite apps have yet to be updated with full user-interface support for the larger display that Apple bundled with the devices. After the initial influx of app updates around the release date of the hardware, things have substantially slowed down, but today has brought two notable and much welcomed iPhone 5 based updates, including one that some users never thought would actually come due to the recent Google acquisition.
There have been so many media and press events held by technology companies recently that it's extremely difficult to keep up with what has been announced and what we can expect to see imminently hitting the market. At the extremely recent event, that was dedicated to all things mapping, Nokia took the opportunity to announce their intention to release their Nokia HERE Maps app onto the iOS App Store to allow iPhone, iPod touch and iPad users to feel like a local wherever they are in the world. The Finnish company have stayed true to their word with the HERE Maps app now available as a free of charge download for iOS users.
City Maps 2Go, a self-explanatory app that lets you download and view maps even when offline, has gone free for this weekend only, so if you're looking for an all-weathers mapping app to aid you even when you've no network coverage, this is certainly it.
Towards the end of last month, we introduced Letterpress - a fun and addictive puzzler invented by the same development team behind popular Twitter app Tweetie. Since then, we've become completely engrossed, and every single member of the Redmond Pie team has joined in. Now, Letterpress has been updated to version 1.1, and as well as a bunch of bug fixes, there's also a new rematch feature.
Facebook has today released relatively major updates to its two biggest mobile apps, with iOS and Android users being treated to a bevy of new features and fixes.
If you use your iPad for the purpose of reading news and magazines, you haven't adequately done your tablet justice until you've used Flipboard. A stunning, innovative interface makes keeping up with the latest content a real joy, and if you like reading books as well skimming through the content of Flipboard, you'll be pleased to know that the app has just added a Books category which integrates with Apple’s iBookstore.
Since its inception, the iPhone's camera has gotten stronger and stronger. While the hardware has improved to the point whereby the iPhone is now the most popular point-and-shoot on the market, the actual app has remained largely unchanged. There's nothing wrong with it, so to speak, but if you like to make casual edits as you go along, it certainly comes up short.
Although iOS is one of the faster and more fluid mobile operating systems out there when it comes to viewing UI animations, it seems that jailbreak fans do seem to love a good Cydia package that gives the impression that the system is performing faster that it actually is. In the past we have had tweaks such as ClockWind that existed to boost animation speed, so users perceive it to be faster than it actually is, and now we have a tweak called Accelerate that is claiming to be the revival of iOS, although we aren't to sure that it was in such a state that it needed revival.
Navigating through apps is probably one of the most important aspects of using software on devices like the iPhone or the Galaxy S III. Being able to move to new interfaces, use the features within the app and then navigating back to where we came from is extremely important, but we sometimes take for granted how this is achieved. Android fans generally appreciate the dedicated back button that exists on devices but iOS fans generally need to rely on developers incorporating the navigation methodologies or hope that an app is built around a navigation controller that automatically applies a back button to go to the previous location.
It's absolutely true that there is an app for just about everything on the App Store. If you want to take notes, there's more than enough choice out there. It's the same if you want a particular genre of game, too. There's one type of app we've not really come across before, though, and it goes by the way of Kount.ly.
