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

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

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

iPhone OS 3.0 review and features

Just finished downloading and installing iPhone OS 3.0 update. The installation went smoothly, better than what I was expecting. Few friend found the installation didn’t go smoothly, the iPhone OS 3.0 stuck on installation. They would need to close the iTunes and relaunched it. Then the installation continue. So, if you find the installation stuck and a message comes up, you could try to pick OK, close iTunes and relaunched it.

It took me less than 40 minutes to sync my iPhone (for backup purpose), download the OS, install it and sync back again. 

Updated: Battery life seems to be shorter after I installed OS 3.0. Full story http://a-jason.blogspot.com/2009/06/battery-life-of-iphone-3g-after.html

iPhone 3.0 OS Copy and Paste – Finally we got copy and paste feature, it’s pretty neat, you would are able to copy certain section of webpage in Safari and paste it onto your email. Play video below for demo.

Landscape Keyboard – Email application now can now be read in Landscape orientation.

SMS Enhancement – You could now delete individual SMS in a conversation and forward SMS.

Push notification – You would be able to receive a notification from your application providers. One application that I’ve been using is HeyWay it allows me to send my location to my friend and also receive location notification from my friend. The application doesn’t to run, the notification will push in anyway, just like an SMS.

HeyWay iPhone push notification

Spotlight Search – Put a word onto the spotlight search and it will find all contacts, emails, applications and songs on your iPhone… cool cool…

Tethering – Use your iPhone as 3G modem. You would be able to connect your laptop to your iPhone through Bluetooth and access internet over iPhone 3G.

Find My Phone – Register with MobileMe, you would be able to track location of your iPhone. Just in case you lose your mobile after a big night. You would be able to send message to the iPhone and checks it location.

MMS – MMS is now a feature of iPhone

Ready for Turn by Turn GPS

Related story:

Turn by Turn GPS for iPhone

Battery Life of iPhone 3G after installing OS 3.0

iPhone OS 3.0 review and features. All these features available for both iPhone 3G and 3GS.

Turn by Turn GPS for IPhone 3G

Turn by turn GPS for IPhone – IPhone is now ready for turn by turn GPS. Tom tom GPS for IPhone 3G will be one of the provider for this feature. Tom tom will provide offline map through ITunes and user would be able to download required maps.

Tom Tom will also provide IPhone car kit.

Related story:

IPhone OS 3.0 Review and Features

Checkout the full information of Turn by turn GPS for IPhone 3G on http://iphone.tomtom.com/

IPhone 3G Review Pluses and Minuses

Been using IPhone 3G for two and a half week, I keep getting same question from my colleague and my friends.

The question is "How is it?"
So here are pluses and minuses of out of the box IPhone 3G.

Pluses:

+ Excellent sound quality

Its far better than IPod Nano

Not so much noise

Crisp, clear and detail sound

Good range from high to low frequency

+ Excellent LCD screen and graphics quality

Images looks sharp with good color contrast

Its far better compare to my HP IPAQ rw 6828

+ WIFI detection is very responsive. IPhone switch quickly to WIFI when available

+ Quick access to email, internet, shares, Youtube without turning on your machine

Lying down on the bed while watching Youtube, browsing the internet, checking stocks and reading news

+ GPS reroute is quite smart, when you pass an intersection where you suppose to turn, you could reroute from your current location

+ Find Pizza shops around you and quickly get their website, numbers, and address or get the phone to show you the direction to there

+ All in one gadget

Minuses:

- BIG ONE - No copy and paste (highlight cut, copy, paste)

Have been using PDA for years, I think this is IPhone’s biggest weakness, unable to highlight text and do cut or copy or paste.

It means that I would still need pen and paper when I’d like to text a contact’s number, and etc.

- Another big weakness of IPhone is appointments aren’t display on home page, which mean we would need to launch calendar application before seeing our appointments / events.

Compare to Windows mobile which display upcoming appointments for the day and or next week (depend on the settings) on its “Today” screen which is the same as IPhone’s main screen.

- No continuous alert for appointments.

In Windows Mobile I am able to set continous alert, which mean the alert will continuously sound or vibrate until I turn it off. But I don’t have that choice in IPhone, maximum alert is two alerts.

- Loading contact list takes around 5 secs, which quite a long waiting time when I’m in hurry to give a contact number. There are about 220 contacts on the list.

- GPS requires Internet connection for downloading maps.

- No MMS

- No Video recording

UPDATED: IPhone 3G Review and Features