One of the new features in iOS 4.1 in the introduction of HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography for iPhone 4 users. With HDR option enabled in Camera app, you can take more detailed photos than what a normal photograph can show or capture. This feature basically takes three photos in quick succession, one properly exposed, one overexposed and one underexposed, and then combines all three to produce one single detailed photograph.
A new Cydia app by the name of Gridlock has been released which enables iPhone and iPod touch users to freely position icons anyway they want on their homescreen. With Gridlock, you no longer need blank icon apps which has these ugly shadows and you have to be careful not to tap on them by mistake. It gives you full freedom arrange your apps any way you like, as can be seen in the screenshots below.
There is now a new jailbreak application available on Cydia which helps in extending battery life on iPhone 4, 3GS and 3G. Available by the name of Auto3G on BigBoss repository, this app basically turns off the 3G radio and switches to 2G (EDGE) when you lock your phone, and turns it back on as soon as you slide-to-unlock your phone again.
iTunes App Store, which was launched back in 2008 with the introduction of iPhone 3G and iPhone software 2.0 (now iOS) has just passed a quarter million apps mark this Friday, with more than 50,000 developers working on them. As of the time of writing this article, the tally stands at 252,227 apps to date. This includes apps for all iOS based devices like iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. If inactive apps are to be counted, then the number of apps go way above 300,000. The Graph below shows the rapid rate at which the App Store is growing.
The wait is finally over. Netflix app which was previously only available for iPad has been updated to version 1.10 to bring full compatibility with all the iPhones and iPod touches out there. In other words, Netflix app is now a universal binary across all the iOS based devices, oh and it is free!
iOS 4 brought tons of new features to both the iPhone and iPod touch, the major one being multitasking or task switcher. But if you prefer Exposé style of multitasking in OS X, then Multifl0w is for you! We covered this app last year as well for iOS 3.x, but this new version which has just been released is compatible across all iOS based devices, including iPad on iOS 3.2.x and iPhone on iOS 4.x.
Facebook for iPhone App has Over 100 Million Users! That is as Much as All iOS Devices Sold by Apple
According to a recent post on Facebook blog, Facebook has over 150 million users actively accessing the worlds largest social networking site via mobile devices. Out of those 150 million active mobile users, “Facebook for iPhone” accounts for a staggering 100 million users per month. Now that is as much as the number of iOS based devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod touch) sold by Apple as per June of this year. What this means is that there is a “Facebook for iPhone” app installed on almost every iOS device ever sold!
Did you ever felt the need to close all the apps in one go which are running in background on any of your iDevice running iOS 4.x? While multitasking in iOS 4 and above is useful, it may slow down things a bit if too many apps are backgrounded, specially on iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G (Jailbroken with Multitasking enabled) which have half the RAM of iPhone 4. So instead of killing all the apps and processes manually in multitasking tray (aka Task Switcher) to free up the RAM, you can close them all in one tap with “Remove Background” toggle for SBSettings.
Facebook for iPhone version 3.2 was rolled out last night which brought support for the newly launched “Places” feature, support for background uploading of pictures and videos in iOS 4, along with other visual enhancements such as “Pull-to-Refresh” to iPhone. However for many users including myself, this new version was mostly broken, throwing “Unable to Load this Page” error on most pages. Oh and if you tried removing and reinstalling the app, it simply refuses to login.
As promised, Facebook 3.2 for iPhone is now available on the iTunes App Store. The most significant change in this new update is support for Facebook’s new service called “Places”. Apart from this, this new version also finally brings new “Pull-to-refresh” feature like Twitter app, and uploading of photos and videos in the background (iOS 4 multitasking). Full change log is as follows.
