Welcome to the second installment in my series of wallpapers for iPhone, iPod and iPad. To view all posts in this series, please visit the iOS Wallpaper page.
 iPhone & iPod | iPad |
 iPhone & iPod | iPad |
 iPhone & iPod | iPad |
 iPhone & iPod | iPad |
 iPhone & iPod | iPad |
 iPhone & iPod | iPad |
I’m close to the end of my first AT&T billing cycle to consist primarily of iPhone 4 use. So far I have used about 1.5GB of 3G data with wifi disabled, and at this rate I should come in at less than 2GB by the end of the billing cycle.
With my iPhone 3G I usually used quite a bit less since it had slower hardware and a slower Internet connection.
I think I use my iPhone more heavily than most people, so the 2GB plan should be plenty in most cases. But if you’re using a lot of Pandora, YouTube, etc. on a 2GB plan, you might want to keep wifi on to avoid overage charges.
And the 200MB option? If you do anything more than basic email and Twitter you’ll almost certainly want to keep wifi on.
Ultimately 2GB would be enough for me but I’m not letting go of my unlimited plan just yet. To me it’s worth paying the extra $5 to not have to worry about it.
Starting today I am posting wallpapers for iOS devices on my blog. They will appear in weekly installments.
There are two versions of each image. They are edited and cropped with your iPhone, iPod or iPad in mind, to make sure they look their best on whatever device you use.
 iPhone & iPod | iPad |
 iPhone & iPod | iPad |
 iPhone & iPod | iPad |
 iPhone & iPod | iPad |
 iPhone & iPod | iPad |
iPhone & iPod | iPad |
Most Twitter users today post using the Twitter website, or a program or browser extension on their desktop, or an application on their phone. But lest we forget, Twitter was originally conceived with text (SMS) in mind. Consequently “tweets” are limited to 140 characters in length so that they fit in a single text message.
All good iPhone Twitter apps tell you how many characters you’ve used, but until recently the iPhone’s “Messages” app did not. If you wrote a message that was longer than the limit it would simply be split into pieces and transparently delivered as multiple separate messages. That’s fine when texting your fiends, but can be a real pain if you like to be old school and tweet via SMS.
With the new iOS 4 for iPhone, you can enable character count. Just open your Settings app, then Messages, and switch “Character Count” to “On.” Just remember that the iPhone shows how many characters you’ve used out of 160, not Twitter’s 140. Still, its better than manually counting to make sure you haven’t exceeded the limit.
It doesn't take much contrast to get a blown out image.
While the new iPhone doesn’t have a screen orientation lock button (like iPad), iOS 4 does allow you to prevent auto-rotation of the screen using a software switch. This is handy in case you want to read a web page or iBook publication while laying sideways on your couch.
Repeat steps 1-3 to disable orientation locking.
I discovered a nice surprise by playing with multitasking when Pandora was running. Not only does it keep streaming music in the background, it actually hooks into some of the same system services that control the iPod app.
For example, double-click the home button while Pandora is running in the background. (If the device is unlocked, it will bring up the task manager which includes audio controls. If it’s locked, it will bring up the audio HUD on top of the lock screen.) In both cases the audio controls connect to Pandora rather than the built-in iPod app. Similarly play/pause and other buttons on external keyboards will now control Pandora if it’s running.
Out of curiosity I hooked the iPhone up to my car stereo’s iPod integration cable. In this case the steering wheel buttons did not control Pandora.
The double-resolution display on my iPhone 4 is beautiful! You can really see the difference between apps that have updated their icons and graphics and those that haven’t. For example, Twitterriffic (yes) vs. Facebook, Reeder and Beejive (no.)
Others report it works with their 3GS. Also works fine with my older 3G and an iPod touch running iOS 4.0.
IM on the iPad is in a rather sorry state right now. Ironically the free AIM client, which I normally avoid like the plague, is the most usable option for me.
Current Options
AIM works reliably and is free, but it only connects to AIM and Facebook chat. It occasionally jumps to a past point in the conversation and has to be manually scrolled to the end. This is annoying but forgivable.
IM+ is not free, but it supports multiple IM services (AIM, MSN, Jabber, etc.) However, it occasionally forgets it’s already logged in and warns about multiple sing-ins. Again, annoying but forgivable. The real problem I have is that it doesn’t seem to be usable at all with a keyboard attached. It seems that the message entry field is directly connected to the on-screen keyboard, so when the keyboard his hidden you don’t have a field to type in. And apparently when the device is sitting in my iPad keyboard dock, the on-screen keyboard is not only hidden, but can’t even be activated! The button to restore the keyboard does nothing at all. Hopefully this quirk will be fixed in an upcoming update.
Future Options
Beejive is hopefully coming soon. This is my favorite IM client on iPhone and iPod touch. It has been dead reliable and is very polished. But so far it has not been enhanced to take advantage of the iPad’s larger display.
iChat is probably coming as an avenue for video chat, but it won’t appear until iPhone OS 4.0 hits the virtual shelves.
