Got a replacement iPhone!

Apple customer service and repair/replace service are second to none, in my experience. As you know, I was sans-iPhone for 6 days. Considering the phone had to be shipped to and from another country and there was a weekend during those 6 days, that's pretty quick service. They obviously found the fault with my old handset, and a brand new one was delivered to me early on Wednesday morning.

And that explains why I haven't blogged in a few days....I was busy re-acquainting myself with the phone. Setting it up to replace my old one was a piece of cake, as I had backed-up my old one before handing it over. So iTunes did all the work for me, really.

One app I have used a lot since getting the iPhone back is GW Mail. It's a native app for the Novell Groupwise email server. Not everyone will need this app, but if you use Groupwise at all, then you should consider it.

At €4.99, this is not cheap for what it does, but it makes life a whole lot easier if you want to access your Groupwise mail account on your iPhone (it works on iPad too). It presents in a very clean and uncluttered manner all of the folders that you have on your desktop Groupwise view. There is a "mobile" version that you can view in Safari (or any other browser), but the controls are small and fiddly. If you access the full web version on your mobile device, the screen mimics the desktop version and has so much going on that it's difficult to navigate.

 So GW Mail sits in the middle between a fiddly cut-down version and a cluttered web version of the full program. It allows you to very simply view your inbox (this can be set as the default opening screen, reply to mails, compose a new mail (it's a button that appears discreetly on all screens) and switch between folders.

One omission from the app is the Groupwise Calendar function. I don't use that much on my desktop version, so it's not a big issue for me that it's not in the app. However, if you really want the Calendar function, the GW Mail developers have another app called GW Calendar that looks decent enough. As I said, I don't use it. so I can't say much about it. It currently costs €2.99, so to get both basically costs €8, which in my opinion is a lot. I'd imagine it would be possible to combine the Calendar and Mail functions into one cheaper app.

Day 2 without my iPhone

So today hasn't been too bad, but there are a couple of reasons for that.

Firstly, I found an update to the Opera Mini browser for the Tocco, which makes accessing websites a good bit easier than through the Samsung browser. Also, I found that Google have an app for that phone to make setting gmail accounts quite easy. So my main gripe yesterday was kind of balanced out by that (though the mail experience on the iPhone is way more slick).

Secondly, I've been at home all day, so I've had the Mac on most of the time, checking in and out of various sites.

When I got into Opera Mini on the Tocco I found that the shortcuts I added first were for social network sites. Opera Mini allows me to set up a home screen in the browser with icons for my bookmarks, a little like the way Safari does it on a Mac. Handy, but the shortcuts only bring you to mobile versions of sites by default (and the screen is too small to deal with the optional desktop view).

So the Apps I miss today are: Social Networking apps. As I mentioned, the Tocco does have the mobile versions of these apps, but they're fiddly and hard to get at: for example, it just took me 8 buttons presses and 1min 1 second to open Facebook on the Tocco. What would it be on the iPhone? I'd estimate 2 presses (if you include unlocking) and 5 or 6 seconds?

Facebook on the iPhone is just so simple to use. Nearly all of the desktop features can be found in this app. To be honest, I can't remember thinking "why can't I do this on the app, I can do it on the desktop version". So if you're like me, a casual user, the app has all the features you'd want. The fact that it's just there, as an icon you can click on and get straight into the app, is brilliant. If they ever update it to include the video calling function that's available in the full version, it will be excellent. This has such a head-start on google+ that I can't foresee a time soon when it will be unpopular.

Google+ is still a work in progress really. Android users tend to get updates before they hit the iPhone, but the fully finished product has yet to be launched to the general public. (Having said that, it's very easy to get an invitation to join the beta version). This app has a lot to do to catch up with the lead that facebook has at this stage. A couple of things mark it out as special though: the Circles function is really great for making sure your posts are seen only by those that you want to see them. Also the Huddle function sounds great, though I've yet to try it (it's like group chat, but with video). I don't have as many contacts on this as I have on facebook, but I miss being able to check in on it without my iPhone.

Twitter and Tweetdeck both do pretty much the same thing. If you have multiple Twitter accounts, either of these apps will allow you to view messages, tweets, profiles etc. And of course you can tweet from each of them too. What makes Tweetdeck different is that you can also add facebook accounts to it and view posts from facebook alongside Twitter feeds. It's a handy one-stop-shop for multiple feeds.

Of all the social network sites, I probably use LinkedIn the least. It's reserved for a more professional means of networking, and doesn't have any huge personalisation options. You can add a profile picture, and that's about it as far as photos are concerned. However, it is handy for keeping in touch with colleagues (or ex-colleagues) with whom you are not interested in sharing anything too personal. The iPhone app for LinkedIn is far from perfect, in that compared to all of the above apps it mirrors it's desktop version the least. Even sometimes I find that not all status updates come through properly. Not perfect, but it's okay.



With all of the above, there are ways to view them on the Tocco. But for speed and convenience, it's hard to beat a native app compared to a mobile version.

So in Day 2 I've been okay without my iPhone simply because I've been within close reach of my Mac all day. Tomorrow and the next day will be different, and I may well feel far more cut-off from the world that I did today.






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Friendly for Facebook (iPad)

This is just about the best way to experience facebook on an iPad. For now, anyway. Apparently a native facebook app is being worked on at present, and it remains to be seen if that will be better.

As an alternative, you can always log on to the full website using Safari, or the slightly more cut down mobile version at m.facebook.com

But what Friendly does better than either of the solutions using Safari, is the easy navigation and clear layout. In most cases, there is no need to pinch to zoom items, whereas this is nearly always necessary in the Safari solutions.

Viewing photos on Friendly is very easy and intuitive. Adding photos from the albums on the iPad is very easy too.

All the usual buttons from the web version are there, but when you press the "game" button, the app flings you into the web version, and the flash games don't work on the iPad, of course. The game button is a waste of space in the app for that reason alone.

Things like events, places, groups and notes are all present and correct. You can edit your profile within the app to (unlike the google+ iPhone app), which is handy for making changes.

It's really easy to set up multiple users for the app too, so you can switch between up to 4 different facebook accounts very quickly.

I have found that it trips out occasionally, so there's obviously a bug somewhere in there still. This can be annoying, and it means starting the app up again from the springboard.

Overall 8/10

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/friendly-for-facebook/id400169658?mt=8