After finally acquiring a shiny new iPhone 3GS, I started playing around with the new camera and video features. Rather than talk about it, I thought showing the video on a number of different online services would better illustrate it. So this is handheld iPhone 3GS landscape video shot while driving over the newly opened Golden Ears Bridge at dusk (approximately 9:30pm):
YouTube:
This video is the full trip across the bridge…once home, I pressed the ‘Send to YouTube’ button on the iPhone and it compressed and sent it to YouTube as you see above.
Flickr:
I trimmed the video down to 1:30 on the iPhone using the new trim feature. Flickr seemed to handle the video just fine.
Vimeo:
Note there is no sound on Vimeo…this is probably a codec issue that I’m sure Vimeo will fix very soon.
Both Flickr and Vimeo were manual uploads of the same source file so in theory they should be higher quality than the YouTube version since it was compressed on the phone before upload. I also tried MobileMe but couldn’t get the video to playback properly from my account, as well, there is no embed option on the video there so I’ll keep trying to play with it.
So far, I’m very happy with the camera/video upgrades the 3GS has – I’d probably upgrade just for those alone, nevermind all the other new things I’m still exploring on the phone. I can’t wait to try more things with the new camera!
Looks like Rogers is about to repeat their PR nightmare from last year’s iPhone 3G launch by holding back the pricing of the iPhone 3GS for current 3G owners until the last possible minute.
There hasn’t been nearly the same level of outrage as last time around but the rumours and speculation are running rampant…being dodgy about tethering policies and pricing certainly isn’t helping.
I’m still expecting some surprises from Rogers/Fido for current customers….last year they relaxed the upgrade rules a few weeks after the initial launch…most likely to boost sales after the initial rush.
The thing most people aren’t realizing is that they got the iPhone 3G was a subsidized device….the initial iPhone cost $499US when it launched in 2007 from AT&T then dropped to $299 in 2008 under a subsidy. I would expect those with a high monthly iPhone bill to get a break on the ‘rumoured’ full, no-contract prices for the 3GS of $699/$799 for the 16gb and 32gb respectively since they’ve most likely paid a fair bit of their subsidy down. But since Rogers/Fido uses a fairly complex tier scheme to catagorize their customers, the prices will most likely vary by individual account…possibly another reason why they are keeping the prices quiet since they may not have a blanket price for all 3G owners that want to upgrade.
On the bright side, it looks like there will be a full unlock/jailbreak by the weekend for the 3GS….hello Ultrasn0w!
I guess we’ll have to see what transpires over the next couple of days leading up to the release on Friday of the 3GS.
UPDATE: As I predicted, Rogers came out with decent upgrade pricing for iPhone 3GS. You can read the specifics on the Rogers and Fido websites. Pricing varies by your account specifics but assuming you got an iPhone 3G last year before September and have a certain level of voice/data plan combination, you should be able to upgrade for the ‘new customer’ price of $199/$299.
As I said on Twitter to the Rogers PR person, “RogersKeith“, I hope that he relays to his superiors the frustration felt by many customers (not just me) by leaving the pricing details to the last minute. It’s not a good way to engage and endear customers to your brand, especially in the fast moving social media world we now live in.
While not quite the angry mob like last year, anger was certainly growing online because of the lack of information when other carriers around the world had made their plans known in advance. Hopefully they learn from this experience for next year when Apple will inevitably release another version of the iPhone and all the 3GS owners will want to upgrade. RogersKeith said on Twitter, “iPhone launches aren’t typical” to which I replied that iPhone users aren’t typical either….this isn’t your daddy’s Blackberry hardware refresh.
UPDATE 2 (June 20th): The good news is that I finally have an iPhone 3GS. The bad news is that it took over 6 hours of wasted time to get it. I went down to Wireless Wave bright and early on launch day (19th). I was first in line of about 5-6 people. I expected the computer systems to be totally overwelmed and of course they were so the dealer wasn’t even able to log in and see my availability for a long time. I’m pretty sure Rogers computer systems are running on Vic-20’s. I waited about 4 hours at the store for them to be able to process my phone upgrade which they were unable to do. I don’t blame Wireless Wave, I blame Rogers unpreparedness for this portion. Unfortunately, I couldn’t wait at the store any longer as I had to leave for Whistler. Since I was leaving town, I basically had to give up the phone I had on hold – I was hoping to get one from a dealer en route to Whistler but alas all were sold out. I came back from Whistler on Saturday morning and called the same Wireless Wave to see if they still had stock. I was told they didn’t over the phone. A friend had called the Apple Store and was told they were doing upgrades as well as new activations so I stopped by there on the way back from Whistler and was told they weren’t doing upgrades in the store right now. I then had a friend check in with Wireless Wave if they had any stock left and they did so I was back in the line for one. I was told they would process the order and it should be ready by the time I got to the store. It wasn’t. They basically set it aside for me and were going to process the paperwork when I actually showed up. Then began the 45 minute wait on hold for the Rogers dealer person to confirm that I was in fact eligible for a hardware upgrade (at $299). Once the dealer finally got through, they confirmed I was eligible. There was a problem though – the Rogers computer system (Sales Central) didn’t show that I was eligible for any kind of upgrade. The manager at Wireless Wave wouldn’t process a manual transaction for the phone because it’s their policy to not do them as there is a chance the paperwork will fall through the cracks and they won’t get their commission. The manager did call his bosses who confirmed that he wouldn’t be able to sell me the phone despite being eligible. A visit to another store in the mall confirmed the same thing. It wasn’t until I got a tip from Gary that there was a store in another mall that had staff that should be able to help me as he had a similar issue with his upgrade. I drove over to that mall, and within ten minutes of dealing with Thomas and Kelsey, left the store with my 32gb iPhone 3GS. They appeared to have no issue doing a manual transaction with the approval of the dealer call centre.
So what are the issues here? Well, inconsistent policies for handling customer upgrades – even between stores of the same dealer. I really suspect that the reason Wireless Wave didn’t want to sell me the iPhone was that because I wasn’t a new activation, they weren’t going to make as much commission. The fact that they led me on for over 6 hours also pissed me off. I know the systems were busy but I didn’t get a sense they were really trying too hard to get the answers they needed to get. There seemed to be a lot of policies that threatened termination if not followed correctly that the staff kept bringing up. The fact that other customers were able to get iPhones also pissed me off as I know that some of those people had the same account setup as me. A couple of friends that came with me to the store on launch day all had different experiences with getting the upgrade but had similar account/upgrade configurations as me.
I even decided to reach out to the Rogers PR person on Twitter who ultimately wasn’t needed to help me get the phone but did result in my getting a call from an advisor from the (Rogers) President’s office who wanted to know the full story. We had a good discussion about the problems I encountered and had I not been successful the day before, I’m pretty sure he would have helped me get a phone today. I wanted to make sure they understood this iPhone thing isn’t a fad and there will be another update next year so hopefully they will fix some/all of these issues – which are really more communication issues between Rogers and their dealer network. Customers shouldn’t have to run all over town to get a phone upgrade if they’re eligible.
Overall, I feel that Rogers did everything they could *for me* given the situation. Twitter was instrumental in helping me get in contact with the right people to escalate my concerns. So we’ll see what happens in 2010…I sure hope I’m not writing another deja vu post.
Today Apple unveiled the latest iteration of the iPhone, the iPhone 3GS. The ‘S’ stands for speed. It will be available in North America on Friday, June 19th.
This is a big deal for a number of reasons. I won’t get into all the new features of the device (and 3.0 firmware update), just a few that stand out to me since there is a lot to talk about.
First of all, for me personally, it means that I’ll have a new, faster, bigger iPhone in less than two weeks as my iPhone 3G was stolen last December so I’ve been getting by with my first gen iPhone for 6 months now. While it hasn’t been that bad, I really do miss the 3G speeds, the GPS and having double the storage space (16gb vs 8gb).
We also finally get an improved camera now at 3 megapixels with touch auto-focus and macro! While 3mp isn’t the most amazing thing ever, it’s still an improvement. I’ve been a big fan of the iPhone camera and all the fun apps that have taken advantage of it. I can’t wait to have a little more pixels to play with. With it also brings the ability to shoot video (too bad it’s only VGA quality and not HD). It also will be able to do some minor editing on the iPhone itself. It’s unclear if the video function, combined with new APIs will open up the app store to Qik and UStream type applications. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what Apple approves.
The new Voice Control feature also comes with the 3GS. I’m going to reserve judgement on this one until I get to play with it myself…voice apps have always been disappointing and you ALWAYS feel stupid yelling at a device in public because it doesn’t understand your mumblings…although the voice activated bluetooth feature in my car is making think that voice recognition software may have improved a fair bit in recent years.
Pricing has been set at $199/$299 for the 16gb or the 32gb iPhones respectively and that appears to be the price in Canadian dollars according to the ‘Social Media guy’ for Rogers which is hopefully a welcome sign that Rogers might be catching on. Unfortunately as I write this, specifics about the upgrade path for those that got the iPhone 3G last July (11th) haven’t been released yet. Considering it’ll be about 3 weeks shy of a year between those dates, hopefully Rogers allows those that waited in line on launch day to simply extend their contracts from the July date forward and pay the new customer price. Rogers and Fido have also stated they will be reintroducing (for a limited time), the 6gb for $30 promotion. With tethering now a fairly straightforward affair for those with the 3.0 firmware, having that much bandwidth may finally start paying off.
It’s also interesting that the ‘older’ iPhone 3G will still be available at the very attractive price of $99 at Rogers and Fido on June 19th.
And finally, something that I’ve been eagerly awaiting is TomTom’s iPhone application which was finally announced today. Until the 3.0 firmware, iPhone developers were restricted from creating applications that used the iPhone GPS for turn by turn directions. TomTom even created a nice iPhone windshield mount which extends the GPS antenna and charges the iPhone. It can also rotate to hold the iPhone in portrait or landscape…which is also a nice touch for watching video in your car (while parked of course). I’ve used TomTom GPS units for years…I even had the software installed on my Treo 650 and used it with a bluetooth GPS module on my dash which worked perfectly since you could search for a location and even get and dial phone numbers for stores and restaurants.
Here’s their video demoing the application and windshield mount:
It will be interesting to see how they price both the app and the windshield attachment. I wouldn’t be surprised if they take advantage of the new subscription model (for the map data) the app store now allows under 3.0 not to mention the fact that the dedicated in-car units have seen quite a price drop over the last few years thanks to competition.
So if you or someone you know wants to know more about iTunes and using it with your iPod, iPhone and Apple TV, this might be for you (or them).
It should now be available in London Drugs (I believe in store only) and for purchase online directly from MacVideoTraining.com with more retail stores coming soon. Apparently a few clips from my course are playing in a loop in London Drugs so if you hear me talking about iTunes while you’re checking out the computer department, don’t be alarmed.
I’ve got a few copies to give away so drop a comment below and tell me why you want a copy and I’ll pick the best ones and send it to you.
Light Writer is a persistence of vision application for the iPhone. Essentially it’s a tool for using your iPhone to paint with light…and it’s pretty fun to play with.
You will most likely need a camera to actually be able to see the effect. A slow shutter shot will allow the full message to be displayed and your movements while displaying it can further enhance the effect:
You simply enter your message, choose your color(s) and then move the iPhone infront of the camera – it’s accelerometer will start displaying the message once it detects movement. It can take a lot of tries to get it to work right…I’ve got lots of shots of a blur of light rather than the message because I was moving the iPhone too fast.
I finally got around to trying out the macro feature of the lens adaptors I bought awhile ago for my iPhone (which I can also use on my Zi6 which has it’s own macro mode):
You basically just have to unscrew the wide angle lens and it breaks down into two parts – the macro piece and the wide angle piece (which only works when attached to the macro).
It has a crazy short depth of field but it pretty clear considering how tiny it is. It costs a little more than my previous macro option, but arguably works and looks better.
Stumbled across a fun new camera app for the iPhone called QuadCam [App Store link] after seeing photos taken with it popping on Reilly’s site.
It’s from the same guy that created the CameraBag app that I previously mentioned and it’s just as fun. It basically lets you set a timer and it takes a number of shots in sequence (you specify the delay between shots) and can choose the effect (vivid, B&W, high contrast with more coming) and it then creates one image in your camera roll based on the shots it takes. These images should convey the effect pretty effectively:
It can also do eight shots at a time:
It’s only $1.99 for a little while but it’s worth much more to me…tons of fun!
Update: Takayuki left a comment correcting me about not being the creator of CameraBag. He actually developed Toy Camera which I mistook for CameraBag. You should definitely check out Takayuki’s site for QuadCam too…he’s got a cool animation tool (desktop app) for animating photos taken with QuadCam.
Want to use your iPhone 3G with a different carrier? The iPhone Dev Team have released their unlock tool for the iPhone 3G, called yellowsn0w.
It’s a package available via Cydia which gets installed when you jailbreak your phone with QuickPwn or Pwnage. You will need to add a new source to Cydia as well (http://apt9.yellowsn0w.com). The unlock tool will only work with the latest firmware and baseband versions. So if you waited for a QuickPwn update when the 2.2 firmware was released and then jailbroke your phone, you’ll have to restore and reupgrade via iTunes in order to have the latest baseband which the tool requires.
Sadly I had my iPhone 3G stolen earlier this month so I can’t use this….my 1st gen iPhone is already unlocked but is stuck in Edgeville. I’m hoping to get a 3G replacement soon. Perhaps now that the unlock is out, prices will start to drop for iPhones since there will be more options globally now.
Head over to the iPhone Dev Team Blog for the full scoop and the necessary download information as well as the usual caveats and known issues.
