Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Best Free iPhone 3G / 3GS Applications

Close to a year now since I received my iPhone application. I would like to share Best Free 3G / 3GS applications that I use often.

Push Notification iPhone 3G Applications 2009

HeyWay – HeyWay uses GPS to locate your current position to share or send it to your friends through Push Notification. Which mean you don’t need to have the application running all the time. More about push notification check out this out iPhone OS 3.0 Review and Features. Your friends would be able to send their location and you will receive notification.

Trapster – Trapster will notify you of red light cameras and speed cameras around you. It also stores location where Police Often Hide. As you drive, it will notify you by voice when you are approaching any of those camera or police hide out location. Pretty cool application, just imagine your mobile telling you that you are moving towards speed traps :)

Newly updated!

Ping! – Send text messages to other iPhone user for free. iPhone to iPhone text messaging. This application use push notification.

CatchOfTheDay – Catch daily bargain!! Only one item per 24 hours. Receive daily offer direct to your iPhone through push notification.

Non Push Notification applications

Bloomberg – Nice application for checking shares price, it has around 20 minutes delay. Its features include short term and long term graph, the graph stretch in landscape mode on iPhone. Nice one. It also has related news for each share. Commodity, oil price and also indices.'

Metro Melbourne and Metlink Melbourne – Living in Melbourne and catching public transportation to and from work each day, make this application very useful. It stores timetables of train lines, tram and buses. Ability to setup Favourites points (could be train stations, tram stops or bus stops) makes it very user friendly.

Currency – As you would probably guessed, currency converter. Useful for quickly checking currency exchange rates.

Facebook – Connect with your friends on Facebook, everywhere with 3G connection.

Zynga Live Poker – Play poker live with real people on the train. Users are able to connect and use their Facebook account to play. Few rounds and you are home. Time flies…

Twitterrific – It is a twitter client. I keep myself up-to-date with latest news and updates on Silverlight. I also follow updates from Kevin Rudd our PM and opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull.

Palringo – Messaging / chat clients, it works with Yahoo! Messenger, MSN and etc.

Holy Bible – Get multiple version of bible translations and languages on your IPhone. You able to choose either to store it locally or access it online. Bookmarking and the highlighting feature is quite cool as well. Highlight a verse in your bible to store it for later viewing or email it to your family / friends. Simply one of the best iPhone application.

Linked in – Network with your ex-colleagues, employment agencies and your co-workers.

Dictionary – It’s very handy to have a dictionary app on iPhone. I don’t need to open my browser anymore. It has a thesaurus and voice feature.

Units – Unit converters. Convert from one unit to another. Speed, Volume, Data, etc.

Mind you that all best iPhone 3G / 3GS applications above are FREE!!!

Related Story

iPhone OS 3.0 Review and Features

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Tips on How to Preserve iPhone Battery Life

There are few things that we could do to preserve battery life on iPhone.

  1. Mail Settings
    1. Turn off Push Email if you don’t use it
    2. Fetching email manually instead of getting it on specific interval will help with your battery life.
  2. Location Settings
    1. Turn off Location Service. Switch it On only when you need it, eg when using Maps (GPS).
    2. The application will ask you whether you allow for it to turn on Location Service and use your location.
  3. Brightness
    1. 30% of brightness usually sufficient for different type of light.
    2. Set Auto Brightness to “On”. This will allow iPhone light sensor to adjust brightness automatically.

How long the battery life can stay? It depends on your usage. GPS / Location service are power hunger processing, you may find your battery run out quickly if you use those features. Playing IPod especially videos will also drains your battery quickly.

Hope tips above will help to preserve battery life on your iPhone.

Related story:

Battery Life of iPhone 3G after installing OS 3.0

iPhone OS 3.0 Review and Features

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Battery Life of iPhone 3G after Installing OS 3.0

After installing OS 3.0 on iPhone 3G’s battery runs out around 20% faster than it used to be. I used to be able to use my mobile for 2-3 days before recharging it. Now I have to charge it every single day.

I have iPhone 3G Push Notification turned on all the time. It seems to be the cause of the battery runs out so quickly. Apple introduces this Push Notification to prevent applications running as background process. The thought was by stopping application running on background, they would be able to conserve battery life and preserve performance of the iPhone devices.

Well, that’s not seems to be the case, the battery runs out lots quicker with Push Notification turned on. Currently, I have two Push Notification Applications that I use often are HeyWay and Trapster.

Check this out on Best Free iPhone 3G Applications 

So, if you wandering why Battery Life of iPhone 3G after Installing OS 3.0 seems to run out quicker, well, yes it is.

UPDATE: I turned of Location Service under General Settings, it seems to help a bit. Battery life can now last for 1.5 day at least.

Related Story:

Preserve iPhone battery life

Best Free iPhone 3G / 3GS Applications