Notifications are an important part of every smartphone. They can truly make or break the experience. If you aren't notified of incoming texts, emails, or calls, you're required to be constantly checking your phone (even though, let's be honest, we all do anyway). However, for the iPhone, to receive notifications, you must have the phone on and be looking...
Fresh rumors are today suggesting that the iPhone 6's camera will feature some key new features to make taking photos on the iPhone even better. Analyst Sun Chang Xu has reported that Apple plans to increase the pixel size of the iPhone 6's camera to 1.7µ, up from 1.5µ in the current iPhone. Ideally, this should ensure that the camera will be able to...
Every year when Apple announces its latest iPhone, iPad, or any other device, it will often compare it to the previous generation of that device. Usually, the company will briefly discuss the improvements made to the new generation, such as the spec upgrades in memory, processor, battery, and other aspects that make using the device a much more enjoyable...
Lewis Hilsenteger of Unbox Therapy has published a hands on video of a leaked iPhone 6 case. The video shows off a pink gel case, which Hilsenteger apparently acquired with the help of Sonny Dickson, an influential insider who brought us very accurate revelations concerning the iPhone 5s and the 5c last year. It's this connection that gives today's leak...
Apple has announced that it will replace the sleep/wake button of certain iPhone 5 models manufactured in March of last year. In a release on its website, Apple recognised that a "small percentage" of iPhone 5 models may have been affected by faulty mechanisms that cause the button to permanently jam, leaving it useless. The replacement scheme began...
The dust has finally settled following Apple's Q2 2014 performance announcement on Tuesday. With that in mind, it would seem appropriate to run through exactly what we learned about Apple's performance, examining its recent success, and hopefully establishing where Apple might be headed in the future. As you well know, Apple posted some barn-storming...
Apparently curved glass may be the new thing when it comes to building smartphones. LG implemented a very curved LG G Flex device, which honestly looks pretty nifty, if not gimmicky. However, a new report claims that Apple will be one of the next companies to implement a curved glass display on its next iPhone 6 device. The latest rumor surrounding...
Apple has today released its report on its financial performance in the Second Quarter of 2014, with some rather excellent results. Apple's quarterly revenue reached a staggering $45.6 billion, and a quarterly net profit of over $10 billion! That makes for some nice year on year growth, in the same quarter last ear, Apple's revenue came in at $43.6...
I've written before about how the App Store could be improved and, as of yet, nothing I offered in that piece has been implemented. While no one expects major redesigns or reworkings of the App Store in a dot release of iOS, a minor amendment in iOS 7.1.1 has again highlighted an area where the App Store is disappointing: In-app purchases. As you may...
Well the saga of Nike's FuelBand future continues to get stranger by the day. A couple days ago, there was a report that claimed that Nike was cancelling the FuelBand and abandoning plans to make a thinner FuelBand, and had even fired a majority of employees that had been assigned to the product. Instead, the report claimed, Nike would aim to work more on...
WWDC 2014 is inching ever closer. At that event, we’ll get our first glimpses of the next version of Apple’s mobile operating system: iOS 8. iOS 7 was a huge update in terms of design and functionality — Apple rebuilt the OS from the ground up — so we’re expecting iOS 8 to be an iterative release, improving and perfecting everything that iOS 7...
News fresh out of Re/code has today revealed that Apple has very serious plans to build and expand its own electronic payments business. According to reports, Jennifer Bailey, Apple's head of e-commerce has been interviewing candidates for two positions at the head of product and business development. Sources purport that Apple is planning on building a...
Recently, MacRumors posted renderings of what the iPhone 6 could look like, based on leaked schematics. Now, the same designer has offered up some awesome renderings of what the iPhone 6 could looked like, but based on the iPhone 5c, rather than the 5s. The renderings are very interesting because as we know, last year Apple released the iPhone 5s and the...
Music videos are making a comeback. That much is clear in the success of platforms like YouTube and Vevo who showcase music videos from the world's biggest artists. It's also evidenced through established artists' attempts to do something different with the medium to gain some press — Pharell's recent 24-hour music video for "Happy" being one example,...
Photos released from Nowhereelese.fr appear to show manufacturing moulds of the iPhone 6 that would suggest a 4.7-inch form factor. The photos offered give iPhone measurements of 64mm x 138mm (roughly). A superimposed iPhone 5s image reveals that the mould would house a device with a 4.7-inch display, arguably confirming rumors that the iPhone 6 will...
According to reports this morning, Apple is negotiating with carriers in order to raise the price of the iPhone 6. Peter Misek, analyst at Jefferies claims that Apple is negotiating a $100 increase on the starting price of the iPhone 6. The iPhone 5S currently retails at a minimum price of $199 from Apple's website, sold on contract with AT&T, Sprint...
New and updated apps hit the iOS App Store every day. It can be hard to keep up with all of the latest and greatest that the App Store has to offer but here at TiP, we’ll bring you a weekly roundup of some of the most noteworthy additions and updates. Let’s check out what this week had to offer… Rormix Rormix, a music discovery app for...
The iPad is a great device for reading books. You can store thousands of them on a device as thin as a pencil and view any of your books, at any time, on its beautiful display. There are also many iOS apps in the App Store to help you discover, download and read books on the iPad — and the great news is many of them are free. With so many apps to...
iPhone 6 renderings via MacRumors The extremely well-sourced KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has already laid out his expectations of what Apple's 2014 product roadmap will look like, and has provided additional details as to what the biggest changes will be in the next generation iPhones, as reported by MacRumors. Passing along information from...
Mark Gurman, the well-known Apple blogger that often has leaks which pan out to be accurate more times than not, is now laying out some interesting news. According to Gurman, Greg Christie, the guy who came up with "slide to unlock," is leaving Apple. Why would someone who has influenced the iPhone be leaving Apple? Jony Ive, apparently, is the reason. The...
The iPhone 6, over the past months, has seemingly developed from one new iPhone to two different sized models. Rumors from all corners of the web, some from respectable sources, others not so much, all seem to agree that we're going to get a 4.7-inch model and a 5.5-inch version. Today's fresh reports back that speculation up. According to Industrial...
Scotty Loveless is a former Apple Store employee, where he worked as a Genius and iOS technician. He also has a blog at Overthought.org, where he happened to write a post titled "The Ultimate Guide to Solving iOS Battery Drain." He has, over the years of working at the Apple Store, researched how to best combat the effects of battery drain on iOS devices,...
If you’re multi-lingual, and have friends or family that you communicate with in different languages, it can be useful to have multiple language keyboards on you iOS devices. Fortunately, there are many, many language keyboard options in iOS and the best part is the ability to quickly switch between them when necessary. Here’s how to add more...
As sketchy rumors go, it's hard to get anything more dubious than DigiTimes citing Chinese Economic Daily, but that's what we have today. The site claims that it has information on iWatch production straight from the supply chain indicating that the iWatch will be released at some point in the third quarter of this year. Suppliers have supposedly...
For Apple developers, one of the most exciting events of the year is the Worldwide Developers Conference, also known more popularly as WWDC. The event is the annual conference where Apple usually announces the brand new version of iOS (this year, expected to be iOS 8), and sometimes reveals new devices such as a new MacBook Air, or even give us a sneak...
If you drive a lot, such as myself, something you may do is use your phone while driving. We all tend to admit that it isn't the safest thing to do, however we all (or at least, most of us) seem to do it anyway. With this, however, I found that I was keeping my eyes on the road more than before because I was using Siri instead of holding my phone in my...
During the most recent Apple-Samsung trial that kicked off in San Jose last week, internal documents used as evidence have already revealed that Apple is aware of customer demand for a larger-screened iPhone. Now, internal Samsung documents have divulged the Korean company's desire to "Beat Apple". The document describes Sammy's "lessons learned"...
The most recent Apple-Samsung trial kicked off in San Jose last week and, as usual, suing and countersuing your main competitor drags out a whole host of internal documents that are used as evidence. The public doesn't usually have access to this confidential information, but it can often provide an insight into a company's thinking, future plans and...
When HTC announced its latest One M8, I was startled that it was equipped with a fast-charge feature that'd let you charge it from 0-100 battery within about half the time it'd normally take a top smartphone to fill up. But then I saw the video above, produced by StoreDot to promote its latest rapid charging technology. As you can see, it takes around...
Despite loving everything about my iPhone and the iOS platform, I’ve never been the sort to constantly browse the App Store with the hope of finding something new and quirky. I’m more laid back, happy with what my iPhone can already do and not really bothered with what else is out there. I do, however, have a handful of apps installed that I...
Apple vs. Samsung may be a dull affair in the big picture sense, but when you start digging in to the evidence offered up at court, some tasty tidbits start to surface. On Friday, Greg Christie - the head of Apple's human interface team - took the stand and revealed the companies original plan to have the iPhone as an 'always on' device. They wanted...
New and updated apps hit the iOS App Store every day. It can be hard to keep up with all of the latest and greatest that the App Store has to offer but here at TiP, we’ll bring you a weekly roundup of some of the most noteworthy additions and updates. Let’s check out what this week had to offer… Cameleon Cameleon is a neat new camera...
With the recent reveal of the HTC One (M8) and the announcement and impending launch of Samsung's flagship Galaxy S5, it was a only matter of time until they were given the drop test treatment alongside Apple's iPhone 5s. So, armed with the three best phones on the market, TechSmartt took to the streets to put the devices through their paces as glass...
While Samsung's latest flagship phone, the Galaxy S5, hasn't officially launched yet, a new video has emerged comparing the device's fingerprint scanner to Touch ID in the iPhone 5s. After the Samsung announcement, many were quick to call Samsung out for copying Apple's implementation of biometric security (essentially embedding a fingerprint reader...
Siri is a gem - really is! And it's apparently set to get a lot stronger and more worthy, following Apple's secretive purchase of yet another voice recognition company - Novauris. The company was founded in 2002 and comes from Dragon Systems, a perhaps better-known company. It's one of the pioneering forefathers of the modern voice recognition technology...
WWDC dates have been announced, and you've seen some opinions on what may be shown there. What about a countdown? Every time Apple announces a new event date, I fire up Xcode, open my ol' stock Countdown project code, and drop in some new images as well as the updated date and put it on my phone. I love keeping a little countdown on how long until Apple's...
Last of our three comparisons before the full head-to-head is the speed test. We're not interested in misleading Geekbench scores, or any geekiness like that. We wanted to see how each phone's performance was in real life. That means loading up different apps, and testing the internet speeds. What made a surprising difference was the 802.11ac technology...
Monument Valley is one of the most beautiful puzzle games you'll play this year. Using inspiration from MC Escher's mind-twisting drawings, this game challenges you to get Ida from one level to the next by twisting, sliding and moving parts of the architecture to give her a clear path. Also: watch out for those pesky crows! Its design is elegant,...
When the first Auxo came out last year, it reimagined what the app switcher can and should be. iOS 7 introduced a completely new app switcher, so it was back to square one for the Auxo team. They’ve built on the new app switcher and Control Center to create the ultimate switcher in the form of Auxo 2. The tweak merges the two into one beautiful, and...
WWDC 2014 is official folks! Apple just announced it a short while back and it'll be running from June 2nd to June 6th at the usual location: Moscone West, SF. "Developers can apply for tickets via the WWDC website (http://ift.tt/k4YNlp) now through Monday, April 7 at 10:00 a.m. PDT, and tickets will be issued to attendees through random selection....
Within iOS 7, to delete an iCloud account requires you to have Find My iPhone disabled. And, if you need to change any settings for Find My iPhone, you need to log in using your Apple ID and password. The whole reason for this security is so that no one can grab your iPhone and switch off the location service, in order that you can track it, disable it...
iMessage is one of the few reasons that I am hesitant about giving up my iPhone. The service is so convenient, especially as I am often in areas without cell service, and the only way I can message people is through WiFi on iMessage. It's probably one of my favorite iOS features, and one that I use literally every day (realistically probably hundreds of...
At Microsoft’s BUILD developer conference today, among other things, the team from Redmond unveiled the latest iteration of their mobile operating system: Windows Phone 8.1. The star of the show was arguably Cortana, Microsoft’s personal digital assistant for Windows Phone. Cynics will say that Cortana is a blatant rip-off of Apple’s own Siri...
Nokia just took the wraps of its next Lumia flagship, and it looks a great update to its existing lineup. From a manfacturing and design perspective, it looks like the spitting image of the Verizon-only Lumia ICON released earlier in the year. Its main difference is its GSM network capabilities and its brightly colored plastic back. Like the ICON, it...
Amazon has just announced its much-rumored television product at its event in New York. The set-top streamer is the company's attempt to take over the booming connected TV market and the new device is packed with interesting features. Let's take a look at how the Amazon fireTV stacks up against Apple TV and Google's Chromecast... Hardware Apple...
Flexibits finally made Fantastical available for iPad today, and I couldn't wait to sink my teeth in. At $9.99/£6.99 it's not the cheapest calendar app, and that's the introductory price. At some point in the near future it's getting raised to $14.99/£9.99. Price aside, it looks fantastic and works beautifully. Natural language is as reliable and...
At long last, Fantastical 2 has crossed the iPhone/iPad border and landed on the App Store, fully optimized for our favorite iOS-powered tablet. Like the iPhone version, it's got an amazing natural language engine, can display maps, and give you the option to call, email or message meeting invites right from the app. For me, alongside the natural...
It was only a few days ago that Microsoft finally pushed out an iOS version of its famous Office package. Now, looking to have one over its prime competitor, Apple has updated its iWork apps for iCloud, Mac, and iOS. The update brings updated designs for the document, spreadsheet, and presentation editors in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote for iCloud. As...
In 2007, Apple released what the world called "The Jesus Phone". If Steve Jobs wanted to "put a dent in the universe", this was the product that really did it. No product before or since had as big impact on the consumer market as the iPhone did when it was released in 2007. Unlike everything else on the scene before, it had no buttons, except one. It...
For years, Apple's created its own custom designed silicon chips for use in iPhones and iPads. And although everything is designed in-house, it's always had to rely on other companies to manufacture them. The same can be said for the chips and drivers exclusively responsible for the LCD display panels. But, a report from Nikkei.com claims that our...
