I’ve been using the new version of Touchnote’s iPhone app – out later today – and I feel exactly the same. All the niggles that I complained about before have been worked out.

If you’re not aware of Touchnote, it allows you to send postcards – real, physical ones, not eCards – using photos from your iPhone. I loved the idea when the Touchnote app came out in 2009, and used it to send a few cards on holiday.

There now are other apps that offer the same sort of service, such as goPostal and Postagram, but these only work in the US, and in the case of Postagram, only work with Instagram photos.

Unfortunatey, using Touchnote’s app was always a bit of a hassle. Creating the postcards was fine, but paying for them was a complete faff. You were directed to a mobile Paypal gateway with a tiny font, so it required zooming and panning. I remember I tried to send a card while I was in France, and the just as I’d pained my way through Paypal to pay for a card, the wifi crapped out, and I had to start all over again. And if you wanted to send another card – same process. I gave up sending Touchnote postcards after that.

But the new version of the app? Superb.

There’s a very simple interface to add a photo, caption, text, address (more than one if required), and an optional Google map showing where the photo was taken. The interface has been simplified and expanded – so you can now crop, zoom and rotate your photos.

The Touchnote iPhone app interface

However it’s the payment that’s way easier. You can now log in with your Touchnote account, just as on touchnote.com. So if you’re in credit, there’s zero friction to sending cards. It just depletes one credit per card. You can also buy credits from within the app using Paypal or credit/debit card, both with native interfaces. This alone means I’ll be sending quite a few cards. At £1.49 a pop, it’s not much more than the cost of getting a photo printed out and posted, and certainly a lot less hassle.

I would love to see Touchnote continue to improve:

* You can send cards to multiple people, but sometimes it’s not just a case of adding another address – I’d like to be able to edit the text. So I want to be able to re-open a postcard that I’ve already sent.

* You also can’t save a card in draft to edit later, unless you hit Send then Cancel.

* The ability to move the caption around and resize it would be good

* There’s no in-app purchasing, which would make payment even easier, but Apple doesn’t allow physical goods to be purchased in-app.

* Maybe integration with Facebook or other sources to print and send photos from there? EDIT: I’ve just found out that Facebook integration is coming soon. Result.

It has been a long wait for a decent upgrade since the app was released, but the new version is great. The only real problem I have with Touchnote now is that I may never have to say “Deux timbres pour l’Angleterre” again!

Touchnote
Version reviewed: v2.0
Category: Photography
Developer: Touchnote Ltd.
Price (at time of review): Free to download, £1.49 per card
Platforms: iPhone (version reviewed), iPod Touch
UK App Store Link

Enter DataMan. It uses location services to determine where and when you use wifi and mobile data; you don’t have to keep it running in the background, by the way.

The app gives you local notifications when you hit daily, weekly and monthly limits, based on percentage of allowance thresholds you set. A really good idea if you’re not on an unlimited data plan.

In keeping with my policy of not writing about things when they’ve been perfectly well covered elsewhere, take a look at Craig Thornton’s review of DataMan if you’d like to know more.

Improvements

There are two additional things I’d like to see, or rather remove:

• Daily and Weekly notifications
• Two of the four percentage usage notifications

I don’t need to be notified that much about my data. Saying that, you can work around those by setting daily and weekly allowances to the same as the monthly allowance, and percentage usage alerts to above 100%. But the developer has also told me that options to turn some things off is en route. Actually, I’ve just noticed that DataMan Lite only has the monthly usage, so if that’s all you need, give that a go.

I’ve also come across an app called Download Meter that does the same sort of thing – I haven’t tried it, but here’s the iTunes link.

So I started looking around for alternatives, and came up with TuneIn Radio. And you know what? You get what you pay for. This is a superb app.

There are plenty of reviews around for this app, but I’m going to concentrate on using it with BBC content.

Functionality

The functionality has been covered very well elsewhere, but in brief:

• Streaming internet radio, Formerly powered by RadioTime’s directory

– music by location, station type (talk / sports / music / language

• Add your own streams, either by URL or browsing using the web browser
• Supports the following streams, protocols and playlists: MP3, AAC, WMA, Real, Ogg Vorbis, FLV,HTTP, RTSP, MMSH, RTMP,M3U, PLS, ASX, RAM, SMIL

• Bookmarkable stations, which update with the current DJ/show
• Record / timeshift / pause live radio (sweet!)
• Alarm function (no DST bug that I can see!), plus scheduled recordings
• Works as a background app in iOS 4

Background usage is supported with iOS 4

The app works over wifi and 3G. It doesn’t really do very well on GPRS.

And how does it work with the Beeb?

Pretty much all the radio stations are there, including the World Service.

There are a couple of ways of finding all the BBC content within the RadioTime directory:

Browse –> Enter “BBC” as the search term –> Then you can choose BBC, BBC TV, BBC Local Radio, BBC Nations Radio (Radio Cymru, Ulster, etc.), and a list of stations.

Alternatively, once you’ve chosen a BBC station and are listening to it, click “Options” near the bottom right, then “You may also like…”. This will give you a selection of similar stations, but below those is “Networks” and “BBC”. Click on this and you’ll get more listings.

In case you’re wondering, BBC TV is the audio of BBC Parliament, and BBC Arabic and BBC Persian TV. And yes, sports fans, you can get Radio 5 Live. Also: both LW and FM versions of Radio 4.

If you want to check out which stations are available before you buy the app, you can look through the directory at RadioTime.

Oh, wait, there’s iPlayer!

Again, if you’re listening to a station, click on Options –> View Schedule. You’ll get the schedule for that station.

Say I’m listening to Radio 6, I’ll do the above, pick “Steve Lamacq”, and get the previously broadcast shows currently available through iPlayer. Excellent!

(You can also just search for say “Steve Lamacq” using the browse funtion, and it’ll give you his iPlayer-available shows.

Stream quality

Most BBC stations stream as 48kbps WMA, and it’s very listenable. It’s not CD-quality, but sounds pretty good with my iPhone docked in my Logitech speakers. There are some differences: BBC Mundo streams at 96, BBC Chinese and Persian at 32, and BBC Parliament at 256.

Any drawbacks?

You’ll need to be in the UK to access iPlayer content. However, if you’re not then you can get around this by connecting to a VPN service that gives you a UK IP address.

The odd BBC radio station isn’t available, for example, BBC Radio Orkney.

I also wish I could bookmark the BBC network, so that I don’t have to trawl through the app to find the stations everytime.

You can’t save your recordings. If you have a jailbroken iPhone, you used to be able to navigate to to app’s Documents folder, pull off the big files to your computer, rename as *.mp3, and that would be it. The developer has now implemented some file splitting, which only makes it readable by the app.

Conclusion

Free isn’t always best; I’m happy to pay for polish. And this is one polished app. The way in which you navigate BBC content could be improved a bit, but overall – recommended.

Also: the iPad version is dropping any day now!

TuneIn Radio
Version reviewed: V1.6.4
Category: Music
Developer: Synsion Radio Technologies
Price (at time of review): £1.19
Platforms: iPhone (version reviewed), iPod Touch, iPad (soon)
UK App Store Link

And it’s pretty nice; so nice that I’ve switched from using the Proporta recycled leather case.

The case is made from leather, and the inside is a suede-type material. The one I’m using is black with a green interior, with matching interior and exterior stitching. The leather on the outside has a diamond pattern and a sheen to it. It’s available in other colours – I’ve also got a red one here, but it looks a bit handbaggy for my taste.

The iPad is held in place with four leather clasps. However, only half of the iPad is secured with the clasps, leaving the bottom half of the iPad to swing out and slot into one of two grooves. This gives you a solid base, and viewing angles of about 41 and 60 degrees. You can also slide the iPad down to rest on the front cover’s large clasp (which keep the case closed), giving you a another position to work with, of about 20 degrees. If you want, you can slide the iPad back beyond the second groove, to give a higher viewing angle, but you’d better ensure it’s on a stable surface or it’s likely to fall over. Finally, you can flip the case over to provide an almost-flat angle (about 5 degrees).

The two grooves give the case stability, and these main viewing angles are really comfortable. It’s easy to sit down and start typing, as I am now, and also very easy to use in bed – the fact that the case is quite sturdy and forms its own base adds to the usefulness.

The iPad’s ports are all exposed, and the case doesn’t get in the way of accessing them. The only problem I’ve had is in attaching Apple’s component cable; there doesn’t seem to be quite enough space to allow it to comfortably remain seated in the dock. Regular dock cables aren’t a problem and fit snugly.

I really like the profile of this case. It allows to me to use the iPad in a comfortable typing position, but still remains svelte. It adds only a little to the iPad’s dimensions, especially compared to Proporta’s book-ish recycled leather case. Dimensions of the iPad plus case are 196mm across, 18mm thick and 244mm high.

The downside to this case is that it’s not ideal in portrait mode. If you want to use your iPad like a book, then you have to fold the cover back around itself, which leaves a gap between the iPad and the back cover. It’s a shame they couldn’t have provided something to clasp the iPad more in place when you’re using it like this. But then you would have to unclasp it again to angle it in landscape mode.

In short, it’s my new iPad case, having supplanted Proporta’s recycled leather case. It looks slick, has a low profile, and has quite a business-like feel to it – not that I’m in any hurry to work in an office again!

I haven’t seen these for sale in many places, but you can get them direct from Viva cases for US$59:

The case was kindly supplied for review by KJC Technologies.

[See image gallery at www.allaboutiphone.net]

Now, though, there’s Refills to play with and it turns out to have a twist that I think has a lot of potential.

It’s full name in iTunes is ‘Refills (for Google Calendar™)’ and, as this suggests, it’s designed to deal with your Google Calendar as opposed to the inbuilt iPhone one. I prefer this approach as syncing with Google Calendar means it’s always backed up, accessible even if I lost my device and allows the option to add entries using a computer when a lot of typing is required.

As I use an iPod Touch (and following my experience with [shudder] Agendus), I made sure my Wi-Fi connection was turned on before starting Refills. After pausing to update its holidays database – specific to your country – I was presented with today’s (empty) page.

Toolbar
The toolbar along the bottom gives you quick access to 1 day, 7 day, Monthly and Tasks views. The ‘More’ button leading you to an options page. The first port of call here was ‘Calendars’ to setup my Google account but there was nowhere to input my details. I did see this message however:

“In order to use multiple calendars, you need to setup syncing with Google Calendar.”

Yes, I know but where do I do that? I should point out that, at this point, I hadn’t read the Help screens. I like to play around with the app first, seeing how easy it is to use before digging into the help later. With no other clues, I assumed I would find the Google Calendar options in the iOS settings app (there was nowhere else for them to appear within Refills) but why not mention that in the message above? Sure enough, after coming out of Refills and into the Settings app, I found a pleasing number of options to twiddle with, beginning with your Google account details.

After adding those, I backed out of settings and fired up Refills again. This time (with ‘Sync at startup’ having been selected), my calendars were retrieved without a hitch. Later, I did notice that if I ran Refills while Wi-Fi was off, an error message popped up saying ‘Sync Login Failed’ that had to be manually dismissed before I could get to see my Calendar. I imagine this is another example of a developer making assumptions about their users: they’ll have an iPhone and it’ll always be connected. This would be fine except the app is available for the Touch too which certainly won’t always be connected even if the Wi-Fi was permanently on. Is there a need for an error message to get in the way at this point? Wouldn’t it be more elegant just to sync when there is a connection and carry on serenely when there isn’t? Bit of a rough edge, that.

Day View
For most, this will be the main view they use in Refills. It’s clean and well presented showing the period you set: 8:00am to midnight by default but the start time is configurable as is the time interval displayed although only with the choice of 1 or 2 hours. Other options include font size and number of lines visible. Similar choices are also available for the other views.

You move easily between days with a left or right swipe and a press of the ’1 Day’ icon on the toolbar always brings you back to ‘today’. One minor gripe is that nothing on screen indicates ‘today’. Unless I’m going blind or missing something very obvious, I couldn’t spot any indication showing which day is today. Other calendars will display today’s date in a different colour or bold or something but not Refills. Seems an odd omission to me.

There’s often a slight pause to load events when moving from one day to the next. I suspect anyone with a device more recent than my 1st gen’ iPod Touch probably wouldn’t experience this but I did find it became quite annoying. It often doesn’t even seem to cache the next and previous days events in preparation for a swipe which would seem an obvious improvement.

Pressing the ‘+’ icon (or double tapping a time slot) allows you to add an event. The usual items appear here such as title, start/finish time, location (where you have to option to use Google maps if you’re online), reminder (unsurprisingly, pop-up reminders from Refills only work if you’re running iOS 4 or above), repeat, notes and so on. All pretty standard and work fine. It is possible to set the time of the event by incorporating it into the title e.g. “3p – 4p Meeting”. This is a nice idea but, when I tried it, I found the iOS spell correction got in the way and the syntax Refills requires wasn’t quite as forgiving as I would have liked. In the end I found it quicker to simply set the time manually rather than using the iOS keyboard.

7 Days
The week view holds no surprises. It shows the period from Monday to Sunday with the start day being configurable. It would be nice to have the option to switch between ‘this week’ (Monday to Sunday) and a next 7 days view (today to 7 days hence) but unfortunately there isn’t.

It initially looked like the week view (and Month view) indicated which day was ‘today’ (unlike the Day view) but it turned out only to indicate the selected day. Tapping on another day moved the highlight, confusing matters somewhat I thought.

Month
Again, little in the way of the unexpected here. The start day is configurable (gotta be Monday for me). Swiping changes the month shown while a double tap opens the day view to that date. I also discovered that tapping the title bar (here and in the other calendar views) brings down a secondary toolbar with a redundant ‘+’ button (there’s one in the top right corner anyway) and another button on the left. This brings up an otherwise hidden set of options: Jump To Today, Jump To Date and Sync Now.

Tasks
The first time I ran Refills, I was a little surprised to see I already had 7 tasks to complete. It turns out these are a few helpful hints to get you going created in the form of tasks. By the way, the first one tells you where to setup Google Calendar settings – nice touch developers but I still say it’s worth mentioning in the options screen.

Tapping on the title area in this view brings down a toolbar allowing you to display the tasks by ‘My Order’, Due Date or by Completed. You can also add more task lists by pressing the ‘action button’ on the left and choosing ‘Add Task List’ from the options that appear. Once you have more than one task list, you can move between them with a left/right swipe and relocate each task by editing it and selecting which task list you want it to appear on. You can also easily reorder tasks in a list (when viewed in ‘My Order’) by dragging them up or down.

The most disappointing thing about Tasks, in my view, is the fact they’re not synced to any online service. I prefer PI’s ability to sync tasks to/from Toodledo but many will be happy enough with Refills simple onboard task list and what it does, it does nicely. The developers say that rather than sync to another service, they are waiting until Google allows syncing to its own tasks so, hopefully, that might happen at some point in the future.

Landscape
None of the calendar or task views work in landscape orientation, it’s portrait mode only I’m afraid. In fairness, portrait suits the views better and there’s not much to be gained in landscape mode, with the possible exception of the week view perhaps?

After I’d finished playing with the app and went through all the help and read the developers website, I discovered there is one particular circumstance when Refills throws caution to the wind. When you add or edit an event it’s possible to turn your device and use the larger keyboard available in landscape.

Help
Pressing ‘Help’ in the options/more page opens a web page style document (you don’t have to be online to view it but some links won’t work). This is rather poorly designed for use on the iPhone or Touch as a great deal of zooming and panning is required to read the tiny text, making it much more awkward than it need be. That said, the actual content is clear enough and helpful but the best way to view it is on your computer via this link.

Refill Catalog
For me, the most interesting aspect of the app showed up when I looked into the ‘Refill Catalog’. I’d assumed it was simply a set of skins that changed a few colours and added the occasional background texture. It turned out to have an unexpected twist with a lot of potential.

Refills gives you option to download and install more skins which are to be found listed in the ‘Refill Catalog’ screen. Some are free while others are 59p. The first skin I tried was called ‘Stone Black’ which, as its name suggests, darkens the pages. I was surprised to discover that as well as the visual alterations, it also included quite a drastic change of layout for the 7 day view (see above, right). Instead of the familiar grid of 6 blocks (a layout I’ve never been a fan of), you get 7 horizontal slots. I rather liked this layout and found myself wanting to use it in the ‘Standard’ skin.

My wish was soon granted as I looked a little further into the ‘catalog’. There are several (free) variations on the default skin, one of which is called ‘Standard (Wide Week View)’. This gave me exactly what I was after in the 7 day screen. Looking further still, the ‘Standard (For Weekenders)’ skin provides another variation where the 7 day view shrinks the weekdays down into one column expanding the size of Saturday and Sunday into their own half of the screen. Presumably, this is for those people with particularly hectic weekends.

Suddenly, the possibilities of a small feature I’d assumed was just a superficial colour change, widened the potential for the whole app. If more of the view options were made available to change and users allowed to design and create their own skins, customised to their particular needs, this could be a very interesting and unique feature for Refills.

I should stress this is just in my fevered imagination right now. From the examples I saw, only the 7 day view can be dramatically redesigned and users are not able to create their own skins. I can only hope the developer is heading down this road (and Apple’s guidelines allow it).

Verdict
Refills is modest in its ambitions and fulfils them reasonably well. It doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is, a pretty, on-device front end for your Google Calendar. Occasional interface quirks such as a needlessly replicated ‘+’ button, no visual indication of ‘today’ in the various calendar views and a couple of items that feel somewhat hidden away aren’t enough to spoil the experience to any great degree.

I don’t usually comment on the price of apps (I figure readers will decide whether an app is worth the cost to them) but I must say that £5.99 does feel too expensive for what Refills offers. This is made worse by the fact there is no free/lite version to try first. For a couple of quid more you could get the most comprehensive Calendar software on iOS, Pocket Informant, and that’s where I’d still spend my Calendar money. But, if you’re ok with the price and just want a nice looking, simple front end for your Google Calendar that you can carry around with you, Refills does a decent, if unremarkable, job.

Potentially, I think the big unique selling point for Refills could be the ability to change skins. At the moment it’s closed and limited but if this was expanded and allowed users to create and use their own skins, I could see Refills carving out a very nice little niche for itself with a genuinely useful and (as far as I know) unique feature.

A calendar app you could customise to fit your needs perfectly? Now that would be worth £5.99

Here’s a video of the app in action:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Refills
Version reviewed: V1.2
Category: Productivity
Developer: KGT Inc.
Price (at time of review): £5.99
Platforms: iPhone, iPod Touch (version reviewed)
UK App Store Link

I have a wifi-only iPad, and I’m too cheap to pay for a MiFi*. Besides which, I’m already paying Vodafone for 1GB of Internet usage through my iPhone contract. But with both a jailbroken iPhone and a jailbroken iPad, I can keep the cost down by using two handy apps: TetherMe and iTether.

I’ve written up a little setup guide, plus my thoughts on how it works in practice.

Not sure what tethering or jailbreaking are? Check here and here, then read on.

To get this working, you have to install two apps:

• TetherMe on your iPhone
• iTether on your iPad

Both of these apps are available through Cydia, and using them is really straightforward. This is a two-part setup:

First, I installed TetherMe on my iPhone, which will be providing the data connection to share.

There is another option: install MyWi. This creates a wireless network to which any device can connect, which is great, but absolutely kills your battery. And I mean stone dead, damn quickly, in my experience.

TetherMe uses the built-in tethering option, so there’s no app icon. You’ll have to:

• reboot
• enable tethering
  – (Settings –> General –> Network –> Internet Tethering)
• choose to “Turn on Bluetooth”

Done. You can now use your data allowance to tether, whether to your iPad or another computer, such as a laptop.

Second, install iTether on your iPad, enabling your iPad to use its Bluetooth to receive the data connection being shared by the iPhone.

Click on the iTether icon. If Internet Tethering and Bluetooth are enabled on your iPhone, it’ll find your iPhone. It’ll ask for a passkey. Choose anything you like; a dialogue will pop up on your iPhone requesting a PIN. Enter the passkey/PIN.

[See image gallery at www.allaboutiphone.net]

Following this, whenever you want to connect to your iPhone’s data connection, just make sure Internet Tethering is on, then launch iTether on your iPad, and select your iPhone.

If you want to make it even quicker and you use SBSettings, then there’s an option to set a particular iPhone as your default device, which allows you to use the SBSettings iTether toggle.

And how does this money-saving hack fare?

Pretty well. Once the connection’s working, all is fine. I’ve noticed the occasional drop-out when I’m working, but not much.

I did install the optional SBSettings toggle, but it’s been more hassle than it’s worth. The toggle doesn’t work for me. And then I sometimes hit the Bluetooth toggle as well, which screws iTether right up. When iTether is on it disables the Bluetooth control within Settings, but if you accidentally turn it on via SBSettings, iTether throws a wobbler. A couple of reboots are usually needed to fix it.

Theres also the problem that you can’t use a Bluetooth keyboard at the same time, as the Bluetooth connection is in use for tethering. This means it’s not an ideal mobile office solution.

Neither of these apps are free. TetherMe costs, and iTether costs $4.99. But they work well, and it’s a lot less. Paying through Cydia is still a bit of a pain – it always seems to need a few goes for me.

But overall: awesome.

I hardly get close to my data limit with Vodafone anyway, so although this isn’t strictly within the Terms and Conditions on my contract, I don’t feel I’m ripping them off. Besides which, much of my “3G” data usage at home is back hauled over my own broadband using a Sure Signal box. Karma.

The data connection is really quick via Bluetooth, and the battery drain on either device is negligible.

Worried about breaching your contract?

Obviously, you can use this without TetherMe if you have a non-jailbroken iPhone with tethering authorised officially by the carrier, or if you have another phone that allows tethering. That means you’re paying extra for a specific tethering data connection, but that’s up to you. But that way, only your iPad has to be jailbroken.

If you do the unofficial route and are worried about your mobile network finding out, then there’s a solution which I’ve written about before: use a VPN. Your network can’t see any of your data traffic then, so they have no idea which device is using the connection.

* That may well change after my broadband went down this week. No broadband plus one bar of EDGE if I’m lucky around my house has driven home to me that I can’t afford to be without connectivity…

The HDR (High Dynamic Range) technique has been around since the 1930s, but this is the first time that it has been offered as a default option on a smartphone. What does it mean and should you use it instead of the standard photo option? Let’s find out. (Non HDR shots on the left, HDR shots on the right).

When you take a photo with the iPhone the exposure is automatically set to render the best possible range of luminance based on the centre of the scene or, if you tap on a part of the scene, that area. As I’m certain you have noticed for yourself, this means quite a bit of experimentation to find the best compromise between under and over exposure. Under expose the photo and you risk crushing all the blacks and dark colours, over expose the photo and you’ll surely end up with washed out colours and very little detail in the highlight areas.

Of course, the iPhone 4 camera unit is no DSLR, the tiny optics and sensor means that most photos will be a compromise. If the scene has quite a flat dynamic range of luminance, such as in a well lit room, you may get a very good representation of reality. However, if the scene has a broad dynamic range, as is usually found on a bright sunny morning or late afternoon, then you will likely lose a lot of the detail in the shadows and highlights.

Apple’s HDR option for the iPhone 4 running iOS 4.1 gets around this by very quickly taking 3 photos at 3 different exposures and combining the results almost in realtime. There is a delay or about 3 seconds whilst the A4 processor does its thing. The results are quite striking. As you can see from the images here (for the full set head over to Flickr), areas that are devoid of all detail without HDR now retain detail in both the shadows and the highlights. That is the true power of HDR.

In short, Apple have given the iPhone 4 camera a significant boast with hardly any drawbacks. There are times when you will need to turn off HDR and they include fast moving objects, scenes that are interesting or beautiful because of their high contrast and fast paced photography when the 3 to 4 second wait is simply too long.

Apple have thrown down the gauntlet with their HDR implementation. It’s now up to the likes of Nokia, Samsung and HTC to respond. I’m convinced that realtime HDR is the way forward for smartphones.

Details of the case

As the name suggests, this folio-style case is made of recycled leather, and is complemented with a green fabric covering and stitching. The iPad slides in nicely to a black leather holder, which provides a snug fit. All of the controls and the dock are exposed.

It does add a bit of bulk to your iPad, but not so much that it hinders operation.

The inside cover has an elasticated holder for a pen, and also fabric pocket, which comfortably holds my small notepad. There’s also a strap above the pocket, which I assumed was to keep things secured in the pocket.

Anything else?

Boy, was I wrong about the strap. I’d had this case for about 6 weeks before I thought, Hmm, this strap comes undone, and there’s a popper on the back… Wait a minute!”. I folded the strap around the back, and turned the case into a stand. Altering the spine allows for two angles in which to position the iPad, one of which I’ve found ideal for writing with a Bluetooth keyboard. I should have noticed this from their website!

What’s good?

The case feels durable. The leather gives it an air of sophistication, and it doesn’t immediately scream “Mug me, I’m carrying an iPad!”.

What’s bad?

I find it a little hard to keep Apple’s Component AV cable connected – it’s just a bit big compared to the dock opening, and I have to keep nudging it back it. Other than that, a normal Apple dock cable fits very nicely.

The rotation switch is slightly harder to operate, so it requires the thumbnail to flick it to the lock position.

Overall

It’s quite a bookish case, but I quite like that. It’s very well made, but then you’d expect that for £35. Then again, I get the impression it’ll last as long as my iPad. Sorry, but I won’t be giving this one away!

Proporta Recycled Leather case
Price: £34.95
Available from Proporta

Thanks to Rosie at Proporta for providing the cases for review.

[See image gallery at www.allaboutiphone.net]

This is a very different kind of satnav app – there are no maps included at all, and very few user-configurable options. The philosophy of this app is very different to the traditional, “do everything” satnav from TomTom and Garmin.

So in this case, is less more?

Before I start, I should point out that there are several versions of this app knocking around. When I was first given this app, only the lifetime subscription version (£24.99) was available. That app later went up to £34.99, and Trafficmaster introduced cheaper PAYG and Lite versions.

Now it seems there is only one Trafficmaster Companion version available on the App Store. The lifetime subscription has gone, and the app is now free to download. You have to pay per block of routes using in-app purchasing, namely

• 10 routes: £4.99
• 20 routes: £7.99
• 30 routes: £9.99

The free app does come with 7 days of free routing, so it’s worth downloading anyway to give it a spin.

However, I have the lifetime subscription, so that’s the one I’ll be reviewing. The only difference between this and the current app is that I can’t look at purchasing of routes.

First use

When you start this app up, you have to enter your phone number, so that the app can check your subscription status. This means that this app require a data connection – at least GPRS – in order to obtain (and update) your routing.

I wondered if this would put people off. One of the reasons I prefer to use a dedicated satnav app over Google Maps is that the latter requires a constant connection in order to update the map. However, if hasn’t put me off, and I don’t think it should put others off either. The amount of data required to update routing is minimal – it’s only voice routing, not full map data that is downloaded.

Here’s a short video walkthrough showing the main options of the app:

Click here to view the embedded video.

How to get route guidance

I’ve found the quickest way to obtain a route – if you don’t have an address saved as a favourite – is to tap Satnav –> Postcode, and you’re away. The voice routing will inform you that, “You have a route of x miles, which will take you on…”, and it’ll list the major roads, followed by an ETA.

There’s one routing option that’s unique to this app: the ability to call a PA. I was told to “be as vague as you like!” when calling the PA, in order to check how good they were. And I have to say, it’s a good option when you have a hazy idea of where you’re going, or don’t know the detailed address or postcode. But it is £1.20 per minute to call, so I wouldn’t hang around chatting to the PA about where you want to go. A little Google search may help pin things down initially, and avoid paying that high per-minute fee.

The options while you’re on a route are fairly basic:

• suspend/resume routing
• clockwise arrow: re-read the directions to you
• cancel routing
• night mode

Lack of maps

As I mentioned at the start of this review – there are NO maps. It’s all voice guidance. It’s a satnav without anything to look at, other than distance and the next turn.

I was quite hesitant about this at first, but it has really grown on me. One of the things I liked about CoPilot Live is that the maps are detailed and you can see where you’re going. One of the things I didn’t like about CoPilot Live is that my eyes are drawn to the map constantly. Unless you’re disciplined it’s a distraction.

There’s no such problem with Trafficmaster. I find myself ignoring the app, apart from when I’m approaching a turn, when I glance at it to confirm my turn. No maps means it’s not sexy, it’s not amazing to look at – but I’ve come to see that as an advantage. I’m much more focussed on my driving now, and there is enough audio guidance to get me to my destination.

Integration with your iPhone

It doesn’t integrate much. I have all my addresses in Contacts, but there’s no option to choose a contact as a destination.

The app has been updated since I received it to play iPod music, and it fades music when directions are being spoken. But there are no iPod controls other than double-tapping the home button to bring up basic overlay controls. You can’t start music playback from within the app otherwise.

It also doesn’t fit in with multi-tasking very well – if you get a phone call, the app will let you take the call, but then starts up again, checks your subscription and resumes the route – rather than suspending itself and starting from where it was. It needs an update for multitasking iPhones.

How good are the dierections?

I’ve found the routing to be quite good. As far as I can tell, this app plumps for the quickest route (rather than shortest), which means it tends towards the major roads. Consequently, it does take the long way round sometimes – for example, it added an additional 5 miles on a journey from Reading to Surrey compared to my usual route. But I was travelling at rush hour and didn’t get stuck in any traffic. I think this is fine as I get the feeling this app is targeted at commuters and professional drivers.

If you do leave the route, the app will recalculate. I like the fact that it tells you it’s recalculating the route, rather than the silent “we’ll get you there how ever many wrong turns you take” approach of other satnavs.

What’s Good, What’s Bad?

It seems to lose the route fairly often, which I imagine is dependent on the location data it receives from the iPhone’s GPS chip. This means the app goes on a bit about going to wrong way, even when you’re not, and “re-routes” you – along the same route. The developers need to account for the lack of sensitivity in the iPhone’s GPS. But I have noticed that the GPS lock stays a lot better with my iPhone 4, which has a better GPS chip than my iPhone 3G.

I’ve noticed discrepancies between the Estimated Time of Arrival that’s spoken, and the time that’s displayed – the time displayed is often 5 or so minutes ahead. Also, if the time is after midday, then the ETA that’s spoken is always indicated as “AM”, even though it’s PM.

I also noticed a slight discrepancy in distance on one route I measured – my car registered 106 miles, whereas Trafficmaster stated 108 miles. Which is a bit picky and makes not a jot of difference.

More importantly, the first time I used the app, I was off to Heathrow Terminal 5. I entered the postcode from BAA’s website – TW6 2GA – but Trafficmaster could not find it.

There are no Points Of Interest built in. You do need to know the address or you’ll be calling the PA.

As I mentioned, it’s light on user-configurable options. For example, there’s no option to switch to kilometres as units. You can choose to avoid motorways, and change the interval that the app checks the traffic from 1 minute to 5 or 10. You can see this as an advantage or disadvantage, depending on how much you like to tinker with settings.

On the plus side, Trafficmaster Companion seems to be very light on memory requirements compared to more graphical satnav apps, and so is suitable for even 1st generation iPhones. It’s very quick to start up, and doesn’t lag.

I also quite like the fact that the app recognises if you’re moving when you start using the app, and will ask you if you’re the Driver or the Passenger, in order to check that it’s safe to use the app.

Overall

There are some things that need work to polish this app up. Better integration with the iPhone’s address book and music capabilities would be welcome. I’d like to see the the discrepancies between the ETA as spoken and displayed sorted out too.

I was very surprised that the app couldn’t find Heathrow T5, but I haven’t had any similar difficulties since.

One additional piece of information I’d like spoken to me is traffic incidents – if I need to be re-routed, or I’ve been routed based on a minor or major incident, I’d like to know about it. Otherwise there is some uncertainly about why Trafficmaster has routed you a particular way.

But in general, I like the model of Trafficmaster Companion. I now use it for most of my journeys. I feel that it will get me there in good time (if not necessarily on the shortest route). But more importantly, I feel safer driving with it as it’s largely distraction-free. It does the job and gets out of the way.

I’d happily recommend you try this app, especially now that 7 days of free routing is bundled in with it.

Thanks to Trafficmaster for providing the review copy of this app.

Trafficmaster Companion
Version reviewed: V1.6
Category: Navigation
Developer: Trafficmaster PLC
Current Price: Free, with free routing for 7 days. Additional routes via in-app purchase.
Platforms: iPhone (version reviewed), iPod Touch, iPad
UK App Store Link

I’ve previously looked at Pocket Informant and was very impressed. The regular updates since my review have meant it continues to be an excellent replacement. After all this time though, I was curious to see if PI now had serious competition with the appearance of Agendus from iambic inc.

Agendus is a name I’ve been aware of for many years. It’s calendaring software available on every major mobile platform but, for some reason, one I’ve yet to try. It’s been going since the digital stone age (or about 1999 if you prefer) – not quite as old as the fondly remembered Psion Agenda but certainly one of the elders. With all that time to develop and mature, I was expecting a smooth and pleasant experience.

Starting off
When you run Agendus, the title screen proclaims it to be an ‘All in one personal information manager’. While I was impressed with the ambition of the developers, I did wonder if it could live up to that aim and my initial impression didn’t turn out to be good.

One thing becomes very obvious straight from the off. Agendus is designed on the assumption it would be running on a device that’s always connected and for an app that supports the iPod Touch (such as my 1st gen model), that clearly won’t be the case. You may find, as I did, you’ll encounter a few quirks when it’s run with your Wi-Fi connection off.

After confirming I wanted to sync with my Google account and inputting my user information, I was greeted with an obscure error message rather than the more useful suggestion that I turn on my Wi-Fi connection and try again. Ok, so after backing out of the app, turning Wi-Fi on and trying again, it connected to Google calendar and synced my data with no further problems – that’s more like it. At this point you’re greeted with one of five screens Agendus uses, the Today view.

Today
This unsurprisingly lists any events and tasks due today but also has slots for ‘quote of the day’, ‘this day in history’ and weather. I’ve never been a ‘quote of the day’ fan but I do like ‘this day in history’ (as long as it isn’t too America-centric) and discovered that a tap brought up another example (assuming you were still online of course). I was pleased to later find the option to choose which items to show on this screen – goodbye ‘quote of the day’.

The weather slot requires a tap to change from the default Californian location to your own home town but once it’s updated, another tap brings up the forecast for the following eight days. If you prefer your temperatures spelt with a C rather than an F, there’s an option in the settings screen to display them in Celsius.

A problem that doesn’t become clear until you use it for a few days is the fact the weather doesn’t update automatically. The trouble is the summary forecast given on the main Today view isn’t dated so you’re left wondering when it relates to. Although appearing on the ‘Today’ screen, it might actually be a previous days weather. To update it, you have to move into the 9 day forecast page and hit the refresh button which strikes me as unnecessarily cumbersome.

Each item in the Today screen (Events, Tasks etc) has a plus or minus icon on the right hand side to expand and contract them. Very quickly, I noticed a couple of problems with this screen. Attempting to press the + icon for the top line (Events) actually brings up the ‘Add Items’ pane about 80% of the time. This happens because the two icons are so close together, precisely hitting the ‘+’ icon to expand the line without accidentally tapping the ‘+’ icon to add an entry requires the skill and precision of a keyhole surgeon.

Secondly, When the Events or Tasks panels are rolled up there’s no visual indication whether they contain any items, requiring you to open them to find out. When they’re empty, pressing the icon simply toggles it between + and – with no other visual indication.

Above all this though, is the feeling the space is poorly used. Not only are there two icons to get you to the Settings screen (a specific Today view cog icon on the top left and a different cog icon at the bottom right that takes you to the general options page) but each item seems fatter than it need be and, with no way to zoom out, the screen real estate seems to be used rather inefficiently.

Calendar
This screen offers several views:

– Day
– List
– Week
– Month
– Year

Each of them display your events much as you’d expect and each event is made up with the traditional title, location, due date, contact, alarm, notes etc. You can also assign an icon to it from a selection of 69 that come built into the app.

Tapping in a time slot within the Day view instantly adds a new event. This sounds very convenient until the you find yourself doing it accidentally, time after time. This quickly becomes maddening when you find more and more actions get misinterpreted for an ‘add event’ tap. For example, according to the tutorial video, a simple tap on the top of an event allows you to drag it to a different time slot. It might when using the mouse in the iPhone simulator as featured in the video (actually, even there it takes several attempts) but in the real world, I found this almost impossible. What happens is you scroll the view down a little to give yourself space (probably invoking an unwanted ‘add event’ action in the process) then, very carefully, tap and hold on the top edge of the event (as seen in the video) and guess what? Another unwanted ‘add event’ occurs.

What makes this absolutely infuriating is the fact that when the keyboard pops up for you to add text to the event, there’s no cancel button! You’re forced to create this unwanted event. After much experimentation and investigation, I discovered a shake seems to (eventually) dismiss the keyboard but still leaves you with an unwanted ‘New Event’.

So, after making a dozen unwanted events, it’ll be a simple swipe to delete them, right? Wrong. Swiping or tapping on the event brings the keyboard back so what you have to do for each item is very carefully hit the tiny ‘>’ arrow in the upper right corner of its box to bring up the ‘View Event’ screen (although you’ll inevitably spark off another ‘add event’ action half the time). Here you’ll find the delete event button which you press and confirm. At best, three taps (assuming you get lucky and not kick off multiple new event actions in the process) instead of a simple swipe and tap to delete.

Another problem (admittedly minor in comparison to most others) is the fact that ‘all day’ events and tasks (even ones with a due time) are parked off the top of the day view at the midnight position. Unless you’re in the habit of scrolling to the top of the screen every day you look at, you’ll never see them in this view.

By comparison, the other views were a joy to use. Don’t get me wrong, they were still rather poor by normal standards but compared to using the Day view, they were a delight.

I should note that Agendus includes a year view (something Pocket Informant lacks) but as welcome as it was, it didn’t seem to use the space well and every change of year prompted another pause with only a ‘Loading Events’ popup for entertainment. It was here I first noticed the lack of support for landscape orientation. Every calendar view would benefit from this option but there is zero support for it in Agendus.

For a long time, I hunted around for a way to return to today’s date in these various views. It’s not obvious but I eventually discovered that a shake does it. Personally, I’d prefer a button or possibly a double tap on the title bar to get the same effect – I’ve never been a fan of the shake action.

Tasks
Here you can add a task and assign it a category, due date, icon and add some notes. There’s no pretence at using the GTD philosophy (which, not being a fan, is fine with me) and the tasks, although simple, do their job well enough.

I was surprised and disappointed to find the tasks didn’t sync to an online service such as ToodleDo or Remember the Milk. Having become accustomed to this functionality in Pocket Informant and seeing the other items sync to Google Calendar, I’d assumed Agendus would allow for tasks to be synced to the cloud somewhere. The idea of them not being backed up makes me a little nervous and I also miss the ability to use my PC to type long notes or easily add several new tasks when I need to.

Contacts
This screen puzzled me. Why would I want my contacts duplicated in my calendar app I wondered. On first inspection it offers little more than the native Contacts app but does provide a ‘Birthdays’ view listing everyone whose birth date you’ve added in upcoming order as well as showing how old they’ll be. Useful I suppose but it seems rather unnecessary – your opinion may differ of course especially if you’re using an iPhone which means you’ll be able to dial direct from this view.

The manual suggests Agendus adds valuable functionality to the contacts by integrating it into various aspects of your tasks and calendar (i.e. adding a contact to a calendar or todo entry). I wasn’t convinced by this and more than a little wary (possibly unfairly) of the fact that Agendus seems to be able to write to the native Contacts file. Given the lack of polish evident in most other areas of Agendus, I wasn’t happy for it to mess with my contacts and wished there was the option to disable it.

Prefs
As you’d expect, there are options here to change many aspects of the software including selection and rearrangement of the items on the Today view and much else besides. It also includes two items that caused me to shoot tea out of my nose but I’ll come to those later.

Help
I always like to first try using an app ‘blind’ before diving into any documentation as this gives me a good idea how well designed and easy to use it is. Agendus faired pretty well here. I was able to operate it successfully before looking at the documentation (or even the demo video). Much of this is down to the simplicity of the app. It isn’t packed with features and you’d expect it to be reasonably straightforward to get your head around and so it proved.

When you first start Agendus, you’re offered the chance to watch a brief (online) tutorial video. You can also get to this via an option in the prefs screen (or find it located at the end of this review). As I didn’t see it before jumping in (I wasn’t connected to the net, remember), I chose to avoid watching this as part of my ‘dive in with no instruction and see how well you get on’ approach. Watching it later revealed a couple of surprises. The main one was the ‘shake to return to today’ functionality. I’d already tried that when I first looked at the calendar but it hadn’t worked for me. So I tried again and it still didn’t work and so I tried again with a really exaggerated shake and… it worked! And it’s worked ever since. As much as I’d like to blame Agendus for this, I’m happy to put this one down as my fault.

Another titbit gleaned from the video was the ability to move an event or change its duration by dragging the upper or lower edge in the Day view. I found changing the duration worked well enough but dragging the top proved almost impossible as I’ve already explained.

I’m always pleased to see developers taking the time to provide detailed support for their apps whether it’s in the form of an ‘onboard’ help screen, website, video or, as in this case, a downloadable PDF manual. I found this oddly in keeping with the rest of the app. Superficially, it did the job but spend any time with it and little quirks and oddities soon show up (“The upper portion of the screen displays an common full-month”). I also found reference to ‘Day View Preferences’ which would supposedly allow me to set the start time for a day. Search as I might, I couldn’t find it in the app and an email to the developer confirmed it’s a mistake which needs to be removed from the manual. The lesson from this? I hope they take the trouble to get the next version of the manual properly tested and proof read.

Future features
Planned features include integration with the built-in iPhone calendar and a desktop version to synchronise with (although I’m not sure if that’ll be Windows, Mac or both). I’m also told the developers are on the verge of releasing an iPad version and I’ll be curious to see how it differs from the iPhone and how well they’ll fair, designing the interface.

Verdict
This has been the most difficult app review I’ve written so far.

You know in the Pink Panther films, the way every little thing Inspector Clouseau does infuriates his boss, Dreyfus to the point where Dreyfus develops a nervous twitch and wants to cause physical harm to Clouseau every time he sees him? That’s a pretty accurate reflection of my time with Agendus.

I like to believe my reviews are detailed, fair, reasonable and while I express my opinion, offer enough unbiased reporting to allow the reader to draw their own conclusions. This time though, I’ve found it extremely difficult to stop myself shouting incredulously about all its faults and simply writing ‘Don’t buy it!’

I’d assumed that an app with such a long history would be refined and polished to near perfection (it should be shouldn’t it?) but this version at least is frustrating to use with its design and layout feeling rather rushed and badly thought through. Not having experience of Agendus on any other platform, I can’t judge whether this follows the same historic layout and functionality of other versions or is simply a particularly poor implementation.

Although it’s a little more expensive, Pocket Informant offers more features, better design and largely flawless implementation. It also has regular updates, something I’m unable to judge for Agendus although I know new features are being planned. Perhaps it’s unfair to judge one app against another in terms of numbers of features, after all, Agendus doesn’t claim to do anything that it doesn’t (I’ll be generous and ignore the “All in one personal information manager” line in the title screen). But even if PI only had the same features as Agendus, it would still win easily as they’re designed and implemented so much better – almost as if someone had given it some serious thought, employed competent professionals to implement it and taken the time to test it. Oh, they did.

Is Agendus really that bad? Time and again, when I went to explore the next new part of the app, I’d find some new horror to spoil the experience. The difference between baffling design and poor implementation became blurred as I came across one irritant and another. The annoying wait for ‘Loading Events’ every time it’s started, the weather not being dated on the Today screen, no cancel button when adding a new event in the Day view, design inconsistencies (two cog/settings icons on the Today screen but nowhere else), no support for landscape orientation, being unable to delete unwanted events in the Day view with the standard swipe (it activates the keyboard), the multiple ways to accidentally add a new event in Day view… I could go on.

It got to the point when I started to think these mistakes were deliberate. Surely no-one could make this many wrong decisions? It’s as if the developers had a meeting, decided what all the correct ways to do things were, threw them out and asked themselves ‘what’s the wrong way to do this?’. Don’t believe me? How do you suppose you move from one month to the next in the month view? Swipe horizontally? No. You swipe vertically. I am not kidding. It’s in the manual, check it for yourself – page 18, near the bottom.

That is some radical, free thinking right there. Or do I mean moronic?

As if the poor design and implementation wasn’t enough to make me dislike this app, two items in the settings screen only served to put the nail in the coffin. There’s an item in there to set up your Twitter account. Why? According to the manual, “The Twitter field allows you define which Twitter client to “Tweet the Love” about Agendus.”

Love!? By this point Agendus had provoked many, strong emotional reactions in me but love was most certainly not one of them.

Imagine the state of my blood pressure by this time then consider what seeing the following item did for me. As if supplying shoddy software (that you have to pay for) wasn’t enough, the developer adds insult to injury with the following button, found at the bottom of the options screen:

‘Buy More Icons’

Yes, ‘Buy’. I did a double take when I spotted that. Of all the money grabbing ways to exploit your users, this struck me as particularly cynical, irksome and insulting. If you’re interested in the details, they’re offering two sets of 48 icons for 99 cents per set. I’d suggest the developers concentrate on improving their software so sales naturally increase and throw in the icons free for their poor, suffering paying customers.

Never before has an app actually made me angry.

I suppose someone, somewhere (presumably with masochistic tendencies and supreme patience) could use Agendus and find it does what they want but, really, why live with that pain when there are much better alternatives? If you’re looking for a replacement Calendar app, install the lite version of Pocket Informant and see how it should be done. I’d offer the same advice to the developers of Agendus too.

Have I gone over the top with my dislike of this app? All I can say is I’ve done my best to deliver a calm, sober reflection of my experience using Agendus despite its best efforts to wind me up (and, indeed, drive me to drink). I’ve had to very deliberately rewrite this review a number of times, toning it way down each time. You should have seen the earlier drafts.

To sum Agendus up in as restrained and objective a way as I can manage: it’s disappointing and very often infuriating.

Here’s a video (released by the developer) of the app in action. Bear in mind it’s a video of the app running in the iPhone simulator where the selection is made not by a human finger but with the pixel precision of a mouse:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Agendus
Version reviewed: V2.3
Category: Productivity
Developer: iambic inc.
Current Price: £4.99
Platforms: iPhone, iPod Touch (version reviewed), iPad (in development)
UK App Store Link