iPhone

Upgrading From an iPhone SE to an XR

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Michael Tsai writes up his experience moving from small form factor to the larger iPhone XR. Moving from Touch ID to Face ID.

Lots of detail, terrific read. One thing that did not come up is the move from a headphone jack to none. I suspect Michael already made the move to AirPods (or the like) and it just wasn’t an issue.

UPDATE: From Michael, via Twitter, on my question about the headphone jack:

The headphone jack is not an issue for me. I use AirPods and recently found a much better Bluetooth car adapter (will hopefully write about it soon).

Apple files new folding iPhone patent to address the “hinge wrinkle” problem

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Apple is clearly working on solving one of the knottiest of problems with foldable phones, that of hinge wrinkle. When you have a screen that crosses the fold of the phone, the screen can show wear, like you might see on the spine of a well worn paperback book, or if you folded and unfolded a piece of paper.

From Patently Apple:

A new patent application from Apple published by the U.S. Patent Office shows that Apple is working on a method to keep the fold area warm as a cold display could cause problems when folding.

Specifically, Apple notes that a folding device may have a hinge that allows the device to be flexed about a bend axis. A display may span the bend axis. To facilitate bending about the bend axis without damage when the display is cold, a portion of the display that overlaps the bend axis may be selectively heated.

Interesting solution. I do think the hinge wrinkle problem is a must solve for Apple. If I unfold my phone, a wrinkle, however slight, in the middle of the display, will kill the illusion of a single unbroken screen.

Apple and the NHL partner to turn candid player iPhone pics into giant ads

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Ad Week:

The Shot on iPhone campaign has long been known for highlighting the surprisingly artistic shots that can be captured by just about any caliber of photographer. Now the outdoor-focused effort is heading onto the ice and behind the scenes of the NHL to give fans a closer look at the game and its star players.

In new ads launching today on arenas across the U.S. and Canada, Apple features photos taken on the iPhone XS by some of today’s top hockey pros and featuring candid moments with their teammates.

These are some great photos. No way a fan photo can match a photo taken on the ice or in the locker room by a player.

This is a brilliant partnership. I hope it spreads to other sports.

Cellebrite iPhone hacking tool is selling on eBay for $100 — And it’s leaking data

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Forbes:

The U.S. federal government, from the FBI to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has been handing millions to Cellebrite to break into Apple and Google smartphones. Mr. Balaj (Forbes agreed not to publish his first name at his request) and others on eBay are now acquiring and trading Cellebrite systems for between $100 and $1,000 a unit. Comparable, brand-new Cellebrite tools start at $6,000.

More importantly:

Rather than return the UFEDs to Cellebrite so they can be properly decommissioned, it appears police or other individuals who’ve acquired the machines are flogging them and failing to properly wipe them. Cybersecurity researchers are now warning that valuable case data and powerful police hacking tools could have leaked as a result.

This was one of the scenarios that emerged, back in late 2015, during the Congressional hearings that followed the San Bernardino shooting, asking Apple to build a golden key to allow law enforcement to unlock any iPhone on-demand. The concern then was that the golden key might get into the wrong hands, risking the data and privacy of the larger iPhone community.

Why Goldman Sachs sees Samsung folding phone as challenge to Apple

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Lisa Eadicicco, Business Insider:

In a note published on February 20, the firm called Samsung’s newly introduced $1,980 Galaxy Fold “the main potential challenge” for Apple in the ultra-high-end smartphone market. “In terms of competition for Apple we see the Fold as the main potential challenge in the ultra high-end with a compelling form factor that only Samsung’s foldable OLED technology can deliver in our opinion,” the note said.

And:

“We see this as challenging for Apple who could find themselves with no access to the critical flexible OLED technology for which we believe Samsung has at least a two year lead over other display competitors.”

But:

Although Samsung demonstrated the device on stage, it did not allow media attendees to try the Fold after the event, which Goldman also flagged as a cause for concern.

The issue here: Samsung controls the supply of foldable OLED displays. A two year lead is formidable.

Nick Heer, from this post:

During the unveiling, Samsung emphasized the Fold’s versatility in being able to transform from an ordinary smartphone into a tablet just by opening it up. But this device — and others like it — are bad phones, and worse tablets. Every shot of the closed phone looks like it’s begging to be unfolded; its display looks narrow, uncomfortable, and cramped. It seems far better in its tablet-like configuration, but it is at best a diet version of a tablet.

Though Samsung does have a significant and protected lead, the product niche is nowhere near established. If Apple sees foldables in their future, they’re no doubt working on building the technology with another vendor, and/or working on the mechanics of building a foldable OLED display themselves.

How hackers and scammers break into iCloud-locked iPhones

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Motherboard:

In 2013, Apple introduced a security feature designed to make iPhones less valuable targets to would-be thieves. An iPhone can only be associated to one iCloud account, meaning that, in order to sell it to someone else (or in order for a stolen phone to be used by someone new) that account needs to be removed from the phone altogether. A stolen iPhone which is still attached to the original owner’s iCloud account is worthless for personal use or reselling purposes (unless you strip it for parts).

And:

The iCloud security feature has likely cut down on the number of iPhones that have been stolen, but enterprising criminals have found ways to remove iCloud in order to resell devices. To do this, they phish the phone’s original owners, or scam employees at Apple Stores, which have the ability to override iCloud locks. Thieves, coders, and hackers participate in an underground industry designed to remove a user’s iCloud account from a phone so that they can then be resold.

This is a fascinating deep dive into the sophisticated black market that evolved for the sole purpose of defeating iCloud security locks.

The rise of the iPhone auteur

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The article is about Steven Soderbergh and his continued quest to create mainstream movies shot completely on an iPhone.

Great read, though I think a bit of backstory is missing. Soderbergh was the director of the movie Moneyball and was fired. From the Moneyball Wikipedia page:

On June 19, 2009, days before filming was set to begin, Sony put the picture on hold. Soderbergh’s plan for the film called for elements considered non-traditional for a sports movie, such as interviews with real-life players. Soderbergh was dismissed and ultimately replaced by Bennett Miller. Aaron Sorkin wrote a third version of the screenplay.

That firing started a rift between Soderbergh and the studios, traditional moviemaking. The iPhone brought him back to moviemaking, with the “shot on iPhone” independent release Unsane, shot entirely on an iPhone 7.

Soderbergh’s latest effort, High Flying Bird, was shot entirely on an iPhone 8, and was done for Netflix. I find Soderbergh’s reemergence, in part thanks to the capabilities of the iPhone, fascinating.

Shot on iPhone XR, tweeted by Tim Cook

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[VIDEO] Came across this tweet from Tim Cook:

https://twitter.com/tim_cook/status/1093210790369341440

I spent a nice stretch in New York last week, and this video (part of a series) really clicked for me, captured the essence of the city. It also gives you a sense of what you can do with video using the iPhone XR.

The full video is embedded in the main Loop post. Nice work.

Bloomberg: Apple Is planning 3-D cameras for new iPhones in AR push

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Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. plans to launch iPhones with a more-powerful 3-D camera as soon as next year, stepping up the company’s push into augmented reality, according to people familiar with the plans.

The rear-facing, longer-range 3-D camera is designed to scan the environment to create three-dimensional reconstructions of the real world. It will work up to about 15 feet from the device, the people said. That’s in contrast with the current iPhone 3-D camera system, which points toward users and operates at distances of 25 to 50 centimeters to power Apple’s Face ID facial-recognition feature.

I tend to avoid rumors but, right or wrong, this article is full of fascinating detail. If and when AR gains enough traction to be part of our day to day lives, I think Apple will be perfectly placed to sell an entirely new generation of iPhones.

NOTE: Do not confuse AR with VR. AR (augmented reality) layers simulated information on top of what you see through your iPhone’s camera. VR (virtual reality) is a virtual world, fed to you through special interface devices, like gloves and helmets.

I see AR as eminently useful, letting you measure rooms and place virtual furniture, or helping map your trip through the grocery store, finding items and comparing prices. The use cases are here, the hardware and software is still in the works.

Apple shifts gears, will pay license fee to top 10 winners of their shot on iPhone contest

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No doubt due to the public outcry, and to avoid the appearance of using people’s work for “exposure”, Apple added this paragraph to the very end of their recent press release:

Apple believes strongly that artists should be compensated for their work. Photographers who shoot the final 10 winning photos will receive a licensing fee for use of such photos on billboards and other Apple marketing channels.

Good solution.

The secret history of iPhone

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[VIDEO] Rene Ritchie:

On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs put sneaker to stage for what was the most incredible keynote presentation of his life.

Great turn of phrase, Rene. This video is a terrific look back at the birth of iPhone, with some excellent weaving of elements to tell the story. Video embedded in main Loop post.

An iPhone dropped in a pool, and the battle for warranty coverage

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The linked Reddit post was called, provocatively, “I fought Apple and won!”

From the post:

I purchased an iPhone XS in September of last year. The first week of December I accidentally dropped it in my sisters swimming pool at the shallow end – a depth of approximately 1.10m. Immediately, I jumped in an pulled the phone out, switched it off and let it dry for a few hours (as indicated in the steps of what to do when your phone gets wet on the Apple website). A few hours later I turned the phone back on and all was good. Fantastic!

As you might guess, all was not good. Over time, the poster’s phone died a slow death, and they eventually took it into the Apple Store for a look see.

As you also might guess, the Apple Store opened up the phone, and:

Two hours later I come back and they say the Liquid Contact Indicators have been activated, which means there is internal liquid damage and they won’t cover liquid damage under warranty.

And this is where the story gets really interesting. The poster pointed Apple to the original rollout video for the iPhone XS, where Phil Schiller, talking about water protection, says these words:

So if you happen to be hanging by the pool, drop your phone in the water, don’t worry. Let it dry, you’ll be fine.

To see this for yourself, follow this link and jump to about 40:40.

Follow the headline link for all the legal details but, bottom line, the poster did eventually get their phone replaced.

Should the words in a marketing pitch establish repair policy? Interesting.

Jeremy Burge: Google’s Night Sight is the new benchmark

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Last week, we highlighted a tweet from Jeremy Burge showing pairs of low light images, taken with an iPhone and a Google Pixel using Night Sight.

Jeremy pulled together his findings in a blog post that makes the case for Google’s Night Sight as the new benchmark for low light image capture on a smartphone.

From the post:

Despite being a long-time iPhone user, I often find myself with other phones for testing purposes. Sometimes they have nice features my iPhone doesn’t have, but rarely does any single feature make me even consider changing devices.

The release of Google’s Night Sight feature for the Pixel line in 2018 is a game changing feature.

Having used it for the past month, I now carry both my iPhone and Pixel of an evening. That’s how good it is.

And:

Since posting about this on Twitter, time and time again people said “just edit the iPhone pictures!”. This misses two points:

  1. Most people don’t have the time or ability to fix their dark and/or blurry iPhone photos taken at night
  2. Some of this cannot be done by editing. That 2-5 second time used to capture more light in the Google camera app isn’t an option provided on iOS.

I couldn’t agree with Jeremy more. Like it or not, this is the new benchmark for low-light photos.

I would gladly tap a button in the camera app to turn on/off low light mode before I take a picture. And if Apple can just do this automatically, even better. I frequently find myself unsatisfied with my iPhone camera in low light situations. I would love an iPhone version of Night Sight.

And to be fair, the iPhone XS clearly has made great low-light strides. But Night Sight runs on older hardware. It’s a software fix. Feels like this sort of technique should be possible on previous generations of iPhone.

7 tips most iPhone owners won’t know

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[VIDEO] When I see a post like this, I am automatically skeptical. This one passes muster. Take a look. The video is embedded in the main Loop post.

My favorite was using Siri to jump to a specific app’s Settings page. I spent some time playing with this one and it does work well, but does not work with all apps. I suspect there’s some API the developer needs to support for this to work, and not all apps do that.

To try this for yourself, pick one of your apps, then fire up Siri and say:

Settings

Many apps jump right to their settings page. But some (looking at you Twitter app) throw Siri for a loop.

iPhone, Pixel night mode, and low light pictures

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Jeremy Burge did some side-by-side low light shots, showing the iPhone camera vs Android’s Night Sight. Scroll through the tweets below:

https://twitter.com/jeremyburge/status/1083676824343887879

To me, this is my iPhone camera’s biggest weakness, the one feature that tempts me to carry a Pixel 3, just for the ability to capture better low light images.

Google has a fantastic writeup on Night Sight in this blog post. Jump to the section titled “Capturing the Data” for the details.

As you make your way through the Twitter thread, don’t miss the interaction between Jeremy and Rene Ritchie. It’s not clear that my iPhone is not capable of producing similar, or even superior low light images. It may be simply that Apple chose not to ship a low-light mode that did not deliver pictures that met their standards. But as is, I’d rather have the oversaturated Night Sight images than ones that were simply dark.

How charging is handled by the new iPhone Smart Battery Cases

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Christine Chan, iMore:

When you charge your iPhone in the Smart Battery Case, the iPhone will usually have priority when normal or fast charging. Once the iPhone reaches about 80 percent charged, the charging is split and allocated to the Smart Battery Case instead. However, if you use a power adapter that can provide more power, such as a MacBook Pro USB-C power adapter, then it can fast charge both the iPhone and Smart Battery Case at the same time. What has priority depends on how much power is being taken in.

Good to know.

Apple’s Biggest Problem? My Mom

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Kevin Roose, New York Times:

She’s a relatively tech-savvy retiree and a longtime Apple fan who has used many of the company’s products over the years. I learned to type on an Apple IIGS at her office, and she was an early adopter of the original turquoise iMac. These days, she uses her iPhone to check Facebook and Instagram, talk with her friends and relatives, and play solitaire and Words With Friends.

Her phone isn’t the latest model — it’s a three-year-old iPhone 6S — and it’s missing some of the latest features. She can’t take portrait mode photos using a dual-lens camera, a feature introduced in the iPhone 7 Plus, and she can’t unlock her phone using Face ID, which was introduced in the iPhone X in 2017. Her phone’s battery life could be better, and the device sometimes runs out of storage space.

But she’s happy with it, and doesn’t feel the need to upgrade.

The case I’m getting here is that this “hold the phone a long time” is something new, something unplanned, something that is happening to Apple.

I see it as strategic planning, long term thinking on Apple’s part. Part of Apple’s iOS evolution was to create an operating system that would support a deeper run of older devices, even improve the experience from previous iOS versions.

To me, what this article shows is that Apple has been successful in this goal. And that means, as the smartphone market has matured and grown more saturated, Apple could ease from a dependence on iPhone sales to pay the bills, to a future where other devices, as well as a growing services ecosystem, could shoulder more and more of that load.

How to create blank icons on your iPhone

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Sébastien Page, iDownloadBlog:

Whether you want to show off your beautiful wallpaper, or simply want your set up to look different from the millions of other iPhones out there, one of the best way to do that is to add blank icons to your Home screen.

These invisible icons will allow you to create empty spaces on your Home screen to either let the wallpaper shine, or to arrange your app icons in a very specific way.

This tutorial will show you how to create create blank iPhone icons, no jailbreak or hack required.

This is my new favorite way to add blank icons to customize your home screen. Note that you have to re-jump through the hoops if you want to change the blank icons.

In a nutshell, you use iPhone Safari to browse to iempty.tooliphone.net. That site lets you customize your page, as you like.

Some pretty cool panorama selfies

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Not sure selfies is the right term here, but these panorama shots are both cool and, if you are into this sort of trick photography, inspiring.

https://twitter.com/akirareiko/status/1071850669496254464

Load the tweet above, click play.

How to wake up to a weather forecast on your iPhone’s lock screen

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Tim Hardwick, MacRumors:

The feature is part of Apple’s Do Not Disturb at Bedtime mode, which prevents notifications from being displayed on your iPhone’s Lock Screen when you’re supposed to be sleeping.

Many users don’t realize you can get the weather forecast to show on the Lock Screen because of the odd way that Apple has implemented the feature. Regardless, here’s how to get it working.

Coincidentally, I posted this on Twitter this morning:

https://twitter.com/davemark/status/1070673135215763456

As is, getting the current temp on your lock screen is a bit of a one-off. I’d love something like an Apple Watch complication on my lock screen, something I can feed from one of my apps, something I can customize.

Some might argue that with the advent of Face ID, the lock screen is dead. Perhaps, but I would argue for the usefulness of the lock screen as a status page before you move on to the busy, populated Springboard interface. And the lock screen requires no gestures, it is effortless. Just raise to wake.

Apple finally selling that iPhone XR clear case, available this Monday

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From Apple’s official product page:

Thin, light, and easy to grip — this case lets you enjoy the look of iPhone XR while providing extra protection. It’s also crafted with a blend of optically clear polycarbonate and flexible TPU materials, so the case fits right over the buttons for easy use. On the surface, a scratch-resistant coating has been applied not only to the exterior, but also to the interior. Need to wirelessly charge? Just leave the case on your iPhone and set it on your Qi-certified charger.

Puzzling why it took this long. Available for delivery Monday December 11, for pickup Tuesday December 12.

Apple commissioned this Shot On iPhone Japanese decorated trucks video

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[VIDEO] Apple:

Step into the world of decotora, Japan’s lavishly decorated trucks, where drivers’ livelihood and passion meet in one extravagant machine. Shot on iPhone XS.

Interesting that Apple commissioned this work. I love the video. Embedded in main Loop post.

Google’s cheap and super-simple cellphone service will now work with iPhones

Written by

CNBC:

Google Fi (formerly known as Project Fi) is a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), which means that instead of just using one of the “big four” carriers, it automatically jumps between several cellular networks depending on which has better service. Fi hops between Sprint, T-Mobile, and US Cellular, and also favors Wi-Fi whenever possible, including for calls and texts.

And:

It costs $20 for unlimited calling and texting, and $10 per gigabyte of data. Users get money back for whatever data they don’t use, and data usage over 6 GB is free (though Google will throttle speeds after users hit 15 GB). It also has no roaming fees in more than 170 locations.

This something Apple could do? Is there some contractual agreement that prevents this? Interesting development.

Apple promo offers up to $100 in extra trade-in credit toward new iPhone XR or XS

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Juli Clover, MacRumors:

When you go through the normal trade-in process on the trade-in site, Apple offers $150, but if you use the trade-in option during the checkout process of purchasing a new iPhone XR or XS, the bonus trade-in credit is displayed.

See the chart in the article for specifics. Nothing you need to do to get this bonus trade-in money, but if you are considering whether to sell your old phone or trade it in, this will help with the math.