iPhone 4S camera ‘haze’

First picture taken with my new 4S iPhone

The iPhone 4S camera, it’s heralded as the best smartphone camera in the market. It was one of the largest highlights out of this years ‘minor’ hardware revision the iPhone saw (aside from the dual core A5).

This was THE main reason I upgraded my iPhone (at least that’s what I tell myself). I mean c’mon: 8MP, f2.4 (a half stop better than the iPhone 4), kick ass sensor and an array of lenses including an IR lens to help with colouration. The picture on the left was one of the first images I took with my beautiful phone. You can see the rich yellow colour of the kronenbourg, the clarity of the lettering on the glass and the fact that I’m sitting in a poorly lit bar.

Now I’d like to take you to how my images look now. Over 2 and a half months (the phone only came out Oct 14th here in Canada), my phone has gone from amazing to shaite. In the image below you can see on my phone the whole image has a haze to it. Almost like it’s not focused. The light seems really misty and colours are all off. The haze also seems to get worse closer to the bottom of the picture, especially around the sunglasses.

My coffee and sunglasses

The culprit? a protruding camera. The camera on the iPhone 4S sticks out from the rest of the body just barely, but enough to be the main part sitting on the table you just put your phone on.

Can you buff this out?

I took a peek at my iPhone 4 (handed down to my wife) and the lens is perfect. The metal ring seems flush with the phone and the lens perhaps is slightly recessed. I never had a case for either of my phones. I can’t stand how bulky the cases are. I also have a mount specific to my phone that fits it perfectly. It was a pain to have to take the case on an off every time I got into my car. I suppose I’m paying for it now.

I’ve got an appointment with the ‘Genius Bar’ tomorrow to have a chat and see if I can’t get a replacement. I went and put on a skin until I figure out what they’ll help me out with. It’s in the picture above. You can just see the edges of the skin around the camera. It’s amazing. If you’re looking for a great skin: Best Skins Ever. Hopefully tomorrow I get good news and a replacement phone.

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23andMe DNA testing

23andMe

For those of you that have never heard of the company 23andMe, a little background from Wikipedia:

23andMe is a privately held personal genomics and biotechnology company based in Mountain View, California that is developing new methods and technologies that will enable consumers to understand their own genetic information. The company is named for the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a normal human cell.
The 23andMe website is currently split into four categories: Health and Traits, Ancestry, Sharing and Community, and Research. They currently test or are researching over 100 diseases, conditions, and traits.

Essentially for $200, you get a kit, spit in a tube, send it back and they analyze the sample provide you a breakdown of health predispositions, traits and ancestry. The first time I’d heard about 23andMe was when it was mentioned in a segment on how evil Google is on a show called Hungry Beast.

They mention 23andMe at the minute and a half mark. A couple episodes later, they dedicated an entire segment to 23andMe.

This got me curious. Despite the ‘What if you find out something bad?’ thoughts, I decided to go ahead and order a kit (oh and one for my wife, cause nothing is more fun than doing it with your partner). What if I find out I have an 80% chance of getting Alzheimer’s disease? Well, it’s going to happen anyway. I WANT TO KNOW!

Right now, my profile reads “Your sample was received on December 30, 2011.   Allow 6-8 weeks for processing.”. This will be perfect timing as my wife and I are heading travelling for the month of January. Check back soon for a chat of the results!

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Awesome Travel Charger for only $35!

Mobile Travel Charger

Charger with my wife's old 3GS

My wife and I are booked for a nice little vacation in January to Costa Rica, and I’m really really looking forward to it. Mostly to relax, but still we’re doing a LOT of travelling within the country to many cities. With all this travelling around, I find myself wanting to research, document and kill time on my iPhone and iPad.

Side Note: Before judging me on the merits of bringing my iPhone and iPad while on vacation understand that I’m not a paper person and ALL my travel research is stored on my iPad (details on another post on another day).

As some have heard and some already know, constant use of your mobile device EATS your battery alive before you get a chance to get back to some kind of outlet.

Lo and behold this travel charger. I’ve now owned this particular unit that I got from DealExtreme for some time now and it’s fantastic. The reason this $37.99 beauty is better than most is that it packs a 9000mAh capacity, which means it’s charged my iPad once and my iPhone several times in one charge. It’s 2.2A output covers the 2.0A minimum req’d by the iPad to charge. I’ve just ordered the 9600mAh battery as a second unit for my wife to carry around and for me to compare. Happy charging!

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App store updates

Thanks for the update Shoeboxed!

Probably one of my biggest pet peeves on the app store is a severe lack of app update description. As a developer, I tend to look at each app update to see how other devs (or marketing group) are telling their users “what’s new!” I used to just to the ol’ “Update All”, but the more I use an app the more I want to know if new features are getting stuffed into the app. I’m sure we want to get the most of our free or 99c apps.

I try and provide my users with the most detail on an update as I can. Minor Enhancement? Here is a list of most or all of the bugs that I’ve found based on feedback and testing! Major revision? Here’s a solid laundry list of what you can expect out of the enhancements! Of course, the list that I give to our business lead doesn’t always match word for word what ends up in the app store. But I try.

Camera+ update FTW!

Camera+ on the other had does a great job with both their app and their app updates. They even throw in whimsical little icons!

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WordPress for iOS

iTunes placeholder for wordpress iOS app

Wordpress for iOS

In three words: ‘Not that great’. I was kind of hoping for a mechanism to upload images from my iPhone into my media library without creating a full blown post with each photo. Most of the review of gadgets that I get my grubby hands on, I’m going to be taking pictures with my iPhone camera. I mean, I have the phone on me 24/7 anyway, so naturally I’m going to use it’s camera. I see there are some 3rd party tools that will do the trick for me, but I was hoping that this app would take care of that for me.
Still on the topic of image, I’m not sure if anyone that has used the app has attempted to upload and use an image in a post? For some reason the app doesn’t really like to play nice embedding the html. Once you’ve decided to use the image in the post and publish, I find I just get stripped up HTML.

At least you can view your blog stats. I’ll just be happy with that.

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Hello world!

Yes. Hello World.

Although I feel like I should be saying hello again old world as this may be my 3rd attempt at holding up a blog. Hopefully it sticks this time. I feel like I have more to talk about this time round. Since my last blog attempt I have more hobbies it would seem as well as a more involvement in the development community. I hope to share it all with you here.

Stay tuned

Me trying to rock a 'stache

This guy knows Movember

Oh, and happy Movember. Hope it was a good one. It certainly was for me and the Prostate Cancer Canada Network

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