iPhone Extras
iPhone Extras Add Custom and Flair – Personalize Yours!
Taking the plunge and buying my most precious iPhone was only the beginning. It really has become an extension of myself. On the day I brought it home – I realized that hey – this thing is slippery. And my quest for the perfect iPhone case began.
The variety is pretty wide but I like to shop at Amazon.com
My favorite brand when it comes to cases for the phone and the iPod Touch is iSkin. I have used their cases in the past and found them to be durable and nice looking as well. Most reviews at Amazon seem to agree with the exception of the Fuze which many people did not like.
I ended settling for the iSkin Revo2 for 3G
iSkin Revo2 Case for 3G iPhone
Recently another iSkin case hit the market. This one is called the Solo
Once I took care of the case, my list of iPhone extras that I still needed included a car charger. I haven’t yet made my decision on this one. With my iPod Touch I had a Kensington charger/FM transmitter that allowed me to play music through my car speakers via FM radio channel while my device charged on the go. Lo and behold there are not many of these on the market for the Apple phone. Why? Because of interference with the 3G/Edge network. All of the buzzing, popping, and crackling would make the sound unbearable. Unless you switched the phone into airplane mode – but then you would not be able to make and receive calls.
The solution seems to be to get a regular car charger and an audio cable that hooks directly from the headphone jack into the audio inputs in the car radio. That is – if your car has audio inputs. Mine does – but my car is old and the inputs are in such a spot that a cup of coffee or two may have spilled on them over the years. I will have to head down to Radio Shack and pick up the cables, cross my fingers and hope that they will work. Then I will buy my car charger.
A few final items on my list of iPhone accessories are a clock radio will dock and charge the device such as those from iHome, and just a regular old dock that will plug into a wall outlet. I a have even seen models that will charge several Apple iPods at once. Not a bad family charging solution.
What are your favorite iPhone extras?
Apple Mac Laptops and the iPod Touch
People with Apple Mac Laptops very likely are also owners of either the iPod Touch or the iPhone.
I use the iPod Touch as PDA right now. But with the release of the iPhone 3G ~ I have to say that I am tempted.
However after the release of the 2.0 software, my Touch has become much more useful.
I signed up for the free trial for 60 days of mobilme. This service has come under fire because of bugs and glitches that are still apparent. In fact, I have not yet set up the push functionality for calendar and contacts.
Interestingly, it does not seem like I need mobileme for push email on the iPod Touch, since I appear to get my email “pushed” whenever I am in a hotspot.
I am still trying to figure out the underlying logic and the best configuration for my devices.
One thing that seems to be confounding many iPod Touch owners after the update is the long sync times with Apple Mac laptops and other computers as well. iTunes goes through a backup on every sync that takes a long time. I don’t know if this backup was performed prior to the update, but sync times have definitely increased.
I haven’t found a solution yet. But I know that I will change my habits and do the sync at night so I won’t have to wait for it when I need the PDA on the go.
Please share your experiences with the Apple update.