Google Maps for iOS

If you weren’t aware from the very loud sighs of relief from Apple customers worldwide, Google Maps for iOS was finally released Wednesday night.

Whilst Apple are still working on repairing their somewhat faulty version, Google has reworked their maps app for the iOS release so that it is remarkably different from the version we have known before (and the android version).

The new version can be used on all iPhones starting from the 3GS, an iPod Touch fourth and fifth generation, or an iPad running at least iOS 5.1 (although on the iPad you will be using the iPhone version).

When you start to use this version, it will ask you to sign in to your Google account. If you do this, the app has numerous additional extras you can utilize, but it is not necessary in order to use the app.

Let’s say you do log in, you now have the ability to recall all your previous searches (including trips looked at on separate devices), and have access to shortcuts to the addresses of your home or work. Nice.

After you make the choice of logging in or not, you’ll come to the main maps screen. A clean, nice looking interface with the search bar at the top, a directions button and a profile button on the top right, and a location icon on the bottom. To the right is a button made up of three dots, when swiped or clicked, it produces a screen that lets you choose traffic, public transit, satellite or Google earth mode.

The profile button is where you’ll find you’re saved shortcut addresses and all your previous saved searches (which you can also edit and delete at will).

Now to the important part: Searching. When you search for a business, each matching result will be represented by a red dot- tap on a specific red dot and the name of the business and the approximate time to that location by navigation will appear. You can swipe left to right to get to the next venue, and information about each venue will appear at the bottom of the page – information such as reviews, website, and the ability to call them or save the address.

So, you’ve found we’re you want to go, or you just want to go to a specific address. Here’s the other important part- navigation.

From the original main maps page, you can click on the navigation icon in the search bar. If you have already searched for a business or location, you can click on the transport icon down the bottom right of the page, it will ask if you want to go from your current location (change if you don’t). Pick the best option for you – you also have the option here to avoid highways and tolls by clicking ‘route options’- click start, and voice and map instructions will begin.

The app will continue to instruct you even when the phone has locked, but if need be, you can turn off the voice instructions and change the map into a list in settings.
One last cute Gimmick- shake the phone when you’re using Google Maps, and a screen appears asking you for your feedback.

Google Maps is back for iOS users. It looks good, it looks useful, so let’s see how this plays out, especially when Apple re-release Apple Maps… Should be an interesting match.

Google Maps for iOS available now for free in the App store.

Christmas Apps!

Hey Guess what? It’s Christmas!! Whether you’ve been dreading it or shave been dying to be amongst the tinsel, trees, gifts and all things Rudolph, we have some iPhone apps to help you out this festive season! See below for the best useful, fun, silly and magical Christmas apps.

Cards from Apple. Everyone likes Christmas cards! Create custom Christmas cards with their pre-built templates and photos from your iPhone, and address them using the contacts in your address. (Free)

Amazon.com. If you, like most I imagine, haven’t prepared your gift purchases in advance, or you just like getting your Christmas shopping done in one sitting without the crowds, the obvious answer is Amazon. Cheap, quick, and easy. December 19th is the last day to buy presents delivered before Christmas.

Christmas Countdown Recipe’s
With almost 210 easy but impressive Christmas related recipe’s available, a easy to use shopping list, nutrition tips, photos of each dish and the ability to share through social media, this is the go to Christmas recipe app. Free.

Sleeps to Christmas.  Simple but exciting for the kids and the young at heart. A countdown to the second for Christmas day with some Christmas animations and songs to accompany. Free.

Sing Along Christmas Carols
Christmas Carol karaoke anyone? For family, party or bar-time fun. Everyone likes a Christmas carol! Free

Trade Nations: North Pole
Create a Santa’s workshop to make presents, complete with elves as cobblers, wood carvers and present wrappers. A really nice way to pass the time and keep in the spirit. Even better -if players fill the present meter and create enough presents to reach their goal, the creators will donate $15000 to Child’s Play, a charity that improves lives of children in hospitals throughout the world. Free

Elf yourself is a classic, bound to make all ages laugh. Take a photo or use one from your phone’s photo album, the app puts your face onto an elf, and makes it dance to silly Christmas songs. Free ( more songs available for a fee).

Gangnam Santa Booth
Similar to Elf Yourself , and very silly for the silly season- Do just as above, instead your face goes into a Christmas themed Gangnam style dancer.

Christmas!! This all-encompassing app has everything you might need for the season- present lists, games, wallpapers, advent calendar with secrets you can unlock each day, a small selection of Christmas songs and a countdown. For the Christmas spirited. Free.

Talking Santa
A great app for the kids who can talk with Santa and have him repeat what they say. There is a really nice option to make videos of Santa saying a special Christmas message and send it via email, text or facebook, or just replay it for the kids on Christmas eve/day as a special surprise. Free.

Happy Holidays! May Santa get you all the iPhones you wanted- and don’t forget to send us your stinky old one’s in the New Year!!

New iPhone to Be Released September 21st!

It is official.  The iPhone 5 has been announced for release on September 21st!  Apple will begin taking preorders for the device come this Friday.  Many of the specs are as we had reported before.  It looks like the primary differences that set this iPhone 5 apart from the last iPhone 4S is that it has a taller body and screen, measuring 4″ rather than 3.5″ previously and it is a surprising 20% thinner.

The device will have the same width, and appear quite similar from the front.  The headphone port has been moved to the base of the device, and surprisingly enough, the iPhone 5 will feature a new dock connector.  The back of the iPhone 5 will be based primarily in aluminum and will be quite interesting to see in person.  In addition, there will be a new processor, as well as several other increases in its computing power.  It will be available for the standard iPhone pricing, starting at $199.99 for a 16gb iPhone 5.

New iphone release dates

According to multiple sources today, we are now pretty close to having confirmation of the long awaited iPhone 5 release!

Come September 12 we will not only see an Apple event introducing the world to the new iPhone, but pre-sale orders will begin that day as well. The release of the phone will be (we suspect at midnight), nine days later on September 21^st.

Start getting excited! Less than one month until we know all the secrets and only a little longer until we can get our hands on the new baby!

iPhone 5 Release Date Leaked, Announcement Coming September 12th

It has been a pretty exciting few days if you have been following up on iPhone leaks.  And today, we have the supposed release date of the new iPhone 5 as well as a few other things.  The big date to come is September 21st.  That is the leaked iPhone 5 release date, and this sounds in line with previous expectations (late-September, early-October).

It looks like on this September 12th date, we will have an Apple announcement that likely consists of the specs of the new iPhone as well as introductions of the new iPad Mini and iPod Mini.  This should definitely be a pretty exciting date.

In case you hadn’t seen yet, we actually have a decent amount of the info about the new iPhone, and a bunch of new pictures of it as well!  Take a look!

Credit to iMore for the image

Let your imagination run free- iPhone 2052

Let’s play a game. Instead of trying to guess the specs or shape of the iPhone being released this year, let’s imagine for a moment that instead we’re eagerly anticipating the release of the new iPhone, June or October 2052.

Screw guessing shape. We’re going to start by thinking about the quality and clarity of hologram the new release will allow us. HD holograms. People are talking about how they will assuredly have, by now, fixed up the bug in the iFeel app so that when you use the app to touch something thousands of miles away, there is no time lag. There is a large group excitedly anticipating and discussing the controversy of the iChip that we can place on our wrists that will come with a surge of dopamine, and how the amalgamation of pharmaceutical companies and Apple has made taking prescription drugs easier, and with this release, more prescription drugs have been added to the list Apple works with. There are people raving about how glasses and contacts will be a thing of the past once the new release comes out equipped with a way to make your eyes work better only using invisible electrical messages. Educators everywhere are waiting to have the ability to be able to map their student’s brain activity, and have that map available to them whilst they’re teaching, to better understand the way that the student’s brain works, and how they learn.

Scientists and governments are wondering how to police and politicize the iFeed program while the rest of us are wondering how it will change our world- if someone doesn’t want to finish their meal, they can take a photo of it and send the nutrients to a bank that can be accessed by NGO’s in the few still poverty stricken communities.

Everyone knows by now that the technology that comes with the new Apple release will make their world better. What do you think we’ll be looking forward to with the new i-release, 2052?

iPhone iOS 5 Tips & Tricks Part 2

Welcome to our second part of  iPhone Tips and Tricks! We hope you found some useful and easier ways to use your iPhone in the last article, and hope you’ll find even more in this second part!

Choose different vibrations for different contacts
Now this is very cool. Now not only can you have different ring tones for different contacts in your phonebook- now you can have different vibrate alerts too. Fantastically useful if you use your phone on vibrate and you need to know who is calling in the middle of class/that meeting.
Simply go to Settings – General – Accessibility – Custom vibrations and turn on.
Then, whilst still in Settings, go to Sounds, and right down the bottom with be vibration. In there you can create your own vibration or choose one of the generic ones. In the contact you want to change in contacts, hit ‘edit’ and under ringtone will be the vibration option. Done!

Space on your iPhone
If you have limited space on your iPhone, and don’t know where it’s all going- go to Settings – General-Usage and you can see all the apps on your iPhone and how much space they’re taking up. If you decide that one app isn;t worth keeping, click on it and you have the option to delete it.

Different calender view.
In your calender, if you have it set to see a month view, you can actually get a week view simply by turning your iphone horizontal. You can scroll across to see the days and up and down to see the hours. Turn back up the right way to go back to the month view.

Edit your music tabs
Not everyone listens or organises their music the same way. Because there are quite a few options available in your music app, Apple sends all iPhone’s out with the same organization. To change this, simply go to ‘More’ on the bottom right hand side, and the press ‘Edit’ on the top left. This allows you to change the bottom buttons to however is best for you to use and listen to your music.

Calculator
This is a very easy one, but not well known and can be very useful. Once in the calculator, if you turn the iPhone on its side, you get a scientific calculator!

Home Button
Here’s a clever one… Now, here at iPhone Antidote, we think that if your iPhone is damaged, you should sell it and trade up to a new one! But, if that’s just not possible, here is one rescue feature. If your home button no longer works, go to Settings, General, Accessibility, then turn Assistive Touch to ‘ON’. This will place a moveable home button on the screen.

here’s to easier iPhone use!

iPhone iOS 5 Tips & Tricks Part 1

The following two part article is a summation all the tips and tricks that iPhone Antidote are aware of. We’ve given you a few necessary ones already, but here are the rest- all the ways to make you the most savvy iPhone user around!

Making new photo albums
A lot of people only have the one photo album- all the photos they’ve ever taken in one long, long, scrolly list. If you want to break it up into a more accessible list, you just need to open the Photo app, and on the top right will be an edit button. Press it, and on the top left press the add button. Name your new album, save, and then simply choose the photos you want to add to this album by clicking on them from your previous album and pressing done.

Emjoi keyboard
The Emjoi keyboard gives you a tonne of icons to add to your text vocabulary. Previously to utilize the Emjoi keyboard, you needed to download the app. Not so with iOS 5. Simply go to Settings – General – Keyboard – International Keyboards. Scroll down until you find Emjoi and enjoy!

Have more tone in your emails
Now you can use italics, underlining and bolding in your emails. Simply type your email, press and hold on the word/s that you want to change and a bar will come up with options. Press ‘Select’, and ‘Cut’ ‘Copy’ and ‘Paste’ will come up. Beside that is an arrow. Press it, and you will see BIU ( Bold, Italic, Underline). Press this and a further bar will appear asking you which type you would like.

Saving Images
Next time you see an image you’d like to keep for yourself, be in on the net, in an email or in a text, just press and hold on the image and a bar will appear asking if you want to save the image. Save it and it will be stored in your photo albums.

Stay tuned for more useful iPhone tips and tricks to come shortly!

Facebook Smartphone?

It seems inevitable, but there is proof now more than ever that Facebook are looking to design their own smartphone. Today sources claim that facebook has headhunted more than a dozen Apple software and hardware engineers in their attempt to design a Facebook smartphone.

There has been a few attempts in the past, but this time, ‘Buffy’ is apparently under development– a phone in coordination with HTC that will try to tackle the fact that facebook currently has no meaningful revenue from mobile app users. Even though they are using post Apple engineers, they will not be trying to tackle Apple’s share in the market, rather, device’s running Android, Google’s mobile operating system.

With so many people using their smartphone’s as a very expensive text message and facebook machine, we can only wait and see when and how popular the Facebook smartphone will be.

iPhone with Facebook: Maybe in iOS 6

iPhone already has Twitter; wouldn’t you be delighted to have Facebook integration into iOS?  Well, as per reports Apple is also considering the same to get on-board with the most popular Social Networking platform.

Apple joining hands with Facebook?

Reportedly Apple Inc. is in official talks with Facebook to work on a piece of code to integrate the Facebook app into the iOS. Possibly named Sundance, this integrated app would grant Apple users to interact with other iOS apps directly avoiding the sign-in on each occasion.  It’s not only Apple who gets the benefits—at a time when share prices are dropping horrendously and facing tough competition from twitter and others, this would be a golden opportunity for Facebook to get into the iOS devices.  Twitter, integrated more than a year ago in iOS 5 is receiving quite a good response and surely Apple Inc. at this critical point of would keep no stone unturned.

It has been two years since we started hearing buzz about Facebook-Apple co-operation. But there are issues—low similar sort of services can run parallel like Apple’s music network or Ping. But in recent times Apple’s stance has been softened to a great extent, even at last D10 conference Apple CEO Tim Cook hinted at future co-operation between the two Giants.

At a time where Facebook is having their own share of problems with the pricing issue at stock markets and on the back foot, Apple perhaps thinks it’s the best to push forward with the integration. Well, whatever it is—iOS users are the one who would be getting the benefits.