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iPhone - Official Thread

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aparisi2274

Member
Lord Error said:
Yeah, they are 100% compatible with 3GS. Or 99%, as pressing and holding volume buttons won't lead to continuous volume decrease/increase. You have to keep pushing volume buttons repeatedly.

Fine by me!!! If I dont have to take my phone out of my pocket when I am jogging or walking, I don't care how many times I have to hit that volume button!
 
Not sure if this has been posted in this thread yet, but it's been discussed in the iPhone/Touch gaming thread. If you want to see the difference in power between the 3G and the 3GS, check out this video from FireMint, a company that makes a racing game for the App Store:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7SnwkdHO2o

Really impressive stuff and shows the vast gap in processing power between the two phones.
 

HoTHiTTeR

Member
Ok... I tried downloading fstream and hunting for some working ESPN radio streams, but I failed.

Is there anyone out there w/ a working solution to listening to national (espn preferably) sports radio?
 

Blackhead

Redarse
HoTHiTTeR said:
Ok... I tried downloading fstream and hunting for some working ESPN radio streams, but I failed.

Is there anyone out there w/ a working solution to listening to national (espn preferably) sports radio?
Wunder radio?


iPhone 3.1: Non-Destructive Video Editing, Bluetooth Voice Control, Vibrating Icon Moves, and More!
Early word from TiPb commenters and the Twitter show some new iPhone 3.1 features found already:

* Non-destructive video editing means trimming a clip no longer saves over the original video but gives you the option to “Save as copy…”
* Voice Control now works over Bluetooth
* iPhone vibrates when moving icons
* Updated AT&T profile to 4.2
* Updated modem firmware to 5.08.01

Behind the scenes changes abound as well:

* Improvements to OpenGL and Quartz.
* APIs to allow third party apps to access videos and edit them.

Update: Yes, MMS buttons appear to be back for AT&T users, but as with early iphone 3.0 Betas, they’re non-functional on standard devices. Whether they survive to the official release this time (they were removed in 3.0 Beta 5), who knows?
 

mrkgoo

Member
aparisi2274 said:
I am not sure if anyone knew about this nice new feature with the 3Gs, but if you are using those in-ear Apple headphones with the volume control:

828481b0c8a07a445f08e110.L.jpg


Originally when they came out, Apple had said that the volume control on it would only work on iPods and iPod touch, but that the remote functionality (REW, SKIP, PAUSE) would work with iPhones.

Anyway, last night I was out jogging and I had to lower the volume on a song, and on a whim I tried the volume control on the headphones and sure enough it worked. So I am not 100% sure if it was some unannounced feature in the 3.0 OS or something built into the 3Gs phone itself.

Just thought I would pass that along to any other 3Gs user who has those headphones.

Well, the volume controls access another contact in the headphone jack (the number of contacts they are fitting into that thing is getting to be like number of blades in a razor :lol), a contact that the older iPhones simply don't have. It was an obvious thing to build into the 3GS. I would nearly upgrade for that alone! To be able to control the iPhone from outside of your pocket is an important thing.
 
Kung Fu Jedi said:
Not sure if this has been posted in this thread yet, but it's been discussed in the iPhone/Touch gaming thread. If you want to see the difference in power between the 3G and the 3GS, check out this video from FireMint, a company that makes a racing game for the App Store:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7SnwkdHO2o

Really impressive stuff and shows the vast gap in processing power between the two phones.

I dunno, that seems a bit misleading. You don't ever see 40 cars on screen in that video. I don't doubt they're showing more cars on screen at once, but they aren't showing 40 like the screen said. On top of that, we don't know what it would be like running on the 3G in that state. That would be a much better comparison and show the framerate or something like that.
 

RubxQub

φίλω ἐξεχέγλουτον καί ψευδολόγον οὖκ εἰπόν
StrikerObi said:
Much much more but apparently it doesn't fix the high-pitched whine noise. I'm starting to believe it's a hardware problem.
Soooooo glad I don't hear that.
 
Marty Chinn said:
I dunno, that seems a bit misleading. You don't ever see 40 cars on screen in that video. I don't doubt they're showing more cars on screen at once, but they aren't showing 40 like the screen said. On top of that, we don't know what it would be like running on the 3G in that state. That would be a much better comparison and show the framerate or something like that.

You never see all the cars on screen at once in a racing game. While there may not be 40 on screen, there are 40 racing, and I don't think Firemint has a reason to lie about that. It's not like since the 40 aren't onscreen that the other 35 off screen use no resources, it's a racing game.

You can see a ton of cars onscreen though, as the driver passes them. Look at all of those cars!
oD4aV.png


I believe they compared it by after 6 cars, the framerate suffered, after 40 cars, the framerate suffered. A direct comparison would have been more revealing but oh well.
 

Shadow780

Member
Which video converting software won't leave black bar after converting files?

I've been using WinAVI and set the resolution to 480x320 it gives me black bars (top & bottom) every time :(
 

mrkgoo

Member
Note in the demo, despite it saying iPhone 3G, it's clearly a second gen iPod touch, which is known to be better at 3D than the iPhone.
 

RubxQub

φίλω ἐξεχέγλουτον καί ψευδολόγον οὖκ εἰπόν
Shadow780 said:
Which video converting software won't leave black bar after converting files?

I've been using WinAVI and set the resolution to 480x320 it gives me black bars (top & bottom) every time :(
To get rid of those blackbars (and maintain aspect ratio), you'd have to cut out actual video content on the sides.

Is that what you're trying to do, or are you cool with it just stretching vertically?
 

Shadow780

Member
RubxQub said:
To get rid of those blackbars (and maintain aspect ratio), you'd have to cut out actual video content on the sides.

Is that what you're trying to do, or are you cool with it just stretching vertically?

If it's possible I don't wish to lose any video contents.

Is there a way to stretch without the iphone zooming in?
 
Marty Chinn said:
I dunno, that seems a bit misleading. You don't ever see 40 cars on screen in that video. I don't doubt they're showing more cars on screen at once, but they aren't showing 40 like the screen said. On top of that, we don't know what it would be like running on the 3G in that state. That would be a much better comparison and show the framerate or something like that.

Yeah, it's a bit misleading that you don't really see all six of the cars in the other game at all times either. ;) They still exist within the game space, and has jonnybryce said, they're taking resources.

The point is, the 3GS can handle that far better than the 3G. It really is a solid demo of how much better, performance wise, the new phone is, and Fire Mint doesn't have a reason to exaggerate the performance gains.
 

kaching

"GAF's biggest wanker"
Not that I doubt the tech demo, but a motive for FireMint to exaggerate the results could always be to justify selling a "deluxe" version of their game to 3GS owners at a premium price...

This is what's going to be interesting to see about this performance gap - will devs largely ignore it and code to Lowest Common Denom., will they take the PC route and build scaleable engines, or will it be something more like a Basic/Premium approach?
 
kaching said:
Not that I doubt the tech demo, but a motive for FireMint to exaggerate the results could always be to justify selling a "deluxe" version of their game to 3GS owners at a premium price...

This is what's going to be interesting to see about this performance gap - will devs largely ignore it and code to Lowest Common Denom., will they take the PC route and build scaleable engines, or will it be something more like a Basic/Premium approach?

ngMoco has already said they'll be scaling their games to offer more detail on 3GS. This is the smart way to go. It'd be stupid to segregate your market by making 3GS-only games. Though I'm sure some applications (probably not many games) may offer 3GS only features related to video recording.
 

mrkgoo

Member
Tobor said:
What would Firemints motives be in faking the results? It's a tech demo, not finished software.

Just what I thought. Come on, people shouldn't be THIS cynical. Even if they were making a special 3GS version, they still don't get anything out of lying about it.

I'm pretty sure they're just excited bout the power of the 3GS. They don't really claim 40 cars on screen at once, but rather 40 cars on track. They may be taking advantage of the extra ram to hold the cars in memory. Point is, the 3GS is better at it than previous models, and I would guess their ulterior motive is to make it known - perhaps they do want to make a distinction in software, and they want other developers to explores it as well.
 
Tobor said:
What would Firemints motives be in faking the results? It's a tech demo, not finished software.

I'm not sayin they're faking it. I'm saying their claim is misleading that it's a 6 to 40 comparison. In the original game I did see at least 5 cars on screen at one point and assuming you're the sixth, that would be all cars on screen. The big bulk of framerate time is typically dependent on rendering time not position simulation so tracking 40 cars isn't nearly as hard as drawing 40 cars. The bottleneck in the performance is going to be rendering and while they definitely have more cars on screen, you're not seeing anywhere close to it. Now if they could render 40 cars on screen and show it, then that would be more of a showcase or show what the performance would be like on a 3G, that would be a better comparison. I'm not saying they're lying but that the video is misleading just like a lot of PR is.

As to why they would do this? It promotes their company. Heck we're talking about it now. It gets buzz around about te company and their existing game and their future products. It's promotion for them. They're in the spotlight cuz of it and look it works to a degree cuz we're talking about it not to mention you can bet a bunch of iPhone sites are going to post the video. It's great PR. They certainly have a motive for putting something like this out there.
 

mrkgoo

Member
Marty Chinn said:
I'm not sayin they're faking it. I'm saying their claim is misleading that it's a 6 to 40 comparison. In the original game I did see at least 5 cars on screen at one point and assuming you're the sixth, that would be all cars on screen. The big bulk of framerate time is typically dependent on rendering time not position simulation so tracking 40 cars isn't nearly as hard as drawing 40 cars. The bottleneck in the performance is going to be rendering and while they definitely have more cars on screen, you're not seeing anywhere close to it. Now if they could render 40 cars on screen and show it, then that would be more of a showcase or show what the performance would be like on a 3G, that would be a better comparison. I'm not saying they're lying but that the video is misleading just like a lot of PR is.

As to why they would do this? It promotes their company. Heck we're talking about it now. It gets buzz around about te company and their existing game and their future products. It's promotion for them. They're in the spotlight cuz of it and look it works to a degree cuz we're talking about it not to mention you can bet a bunch of iPhone sites are going to post the video. It's great PR. They certainly have a motive for putting something like this out there.

Possibly the 3Gs can't handle 40 cars on screen. That isn't what they claim, they simple state how many cars on track. It is what it is. You might think it may be misleading, but the average user would see this as exactly that - a racing game with 40 racers. Whether you see those 40 at any one time is irrelevant to them, so the 'tech demo' isn't that misleading.

For sure, tracking is easier to handle (as a car drops off frame, just revert to a dot on a map). I agree that without a control of showing what the "3G" is capable of, it may be moot, but you presume that the 3G drops in performance soon before the 3GS, which is all that they are implying.

And noone has argued that this isn't for promotional purposes.
 
mrkgoo said:
Possibly the 3Gs can't handle 40 cars on screen. That isn't what they claim, they simple state how many cars on track. It is what it is. You might think it may be misleading, but the average user would see this as exactly that - a racing game with 40 racers. Whether you see those 40 at any one time is irrelevant to them, so the 'tech demo' isn't that misleading.

For sure, tracking is easier to handle (as a car drops off frame, just revert to a dot on a map). I agree that without a control of showing what the "3G" is capable of, it may be moot, but you presume that the 3G drops in performance soon before the 3GS, which is all that they are implying.

And noone has argued that this isn't for promotional purposes.

But it sounds like you agree with me then; without showing a baseline of what the 3G is, the comparison is a bit meaningless. Sure it can do more but how much more. Showing 6 vs 40 implies a much larger performance capability than what might be true which is what I'm getting at which is why I feel the video is a bit misleading especially since they expressed it bluntly with their 6 vs 40 screen.

As for arguing that it wasn't for promotional purposes, sure there was. How many people said, why would they lie? What would their motive be?
 

Tobor

Member
Marty Chinn said:
I'm not sayin they're faking it. I'm saying their claim is misleading that it's a 6 to 40 comparison. In the original game I did see at least 5 cars on screen at one point and assuming you're the sixth, that would be all cars on screen. The big bulk of framerate time is typically dependent on rendering time not position simulation so tracking 40 cars isn't nearly as hard as drawing 40 cars. The bottleneck in the performance is going to be rendering and while they definitely have more cars on screen, you're not seeing anywhere close to it. Now if they could render 40 cars on screen and show it, then that would be more of a showcase or show what the performance would be like on a 3G, that would be a better comparison. I'm not saying they're lying but that the video is misleading just like a lot of PR is.

As to why they would do this? It promotes their company. Heck we're talking about it now. It gets buzz around about te company and their existing game and their future products. It's promotion for them. They're in the spotlight cuz of it and look it works to a degree cuz we're talking about it not to mention you can bet a bunch of iPhone sites are going to post the video. It's great PR. They certainly have a motive for putting something like this out there.

Tracking 40 cars and drawing every car that can fit in the pixels of the visible frame is still impressive. There are a lot of cars on screen in that video, and the framerate is rock solid. I'm looking at this as nothing more than what they say it is, a demo. I can't wait to see what they can accomplish in a 3GS specific finished version, so yeah, PR mission accomplished.
 

mrkgoo

Member
Marty Chinn said:
But it sounds like you agree with me then; without showing a baseline of what the 3G is, the comparison is a bit meaningless. Sure it can do more but how much more. Showing 6 vs 40 implies a much larger performance capability than what might be true which is what I'm getting at which is why I feel the video is a bit misleading especially since they expressed it bluntly with their 6 vs 40 screen.

As for arguing that it wasn't for promotional purposes, sure there was. How many people said, why would they lie? What would their motive be?

Yeah, I wouldn't disagree. But I don't think it's misleading, as the average user doesn't interpret as 40 cars on screen at once anyway. They interpret it as 40 cars in the race, and just take it for granted that this is an amazing feat.

I agree that that there is motive to lie for promotional purposes in general, but I think the point is, they really don't get much out of it specifically themselves, since there isn't actually an app now that specifically does this. That is they're not promoting the actual engine, nor the software, nor themselves, they're actually promoting the 3GS. Why would they actually lie?
 

Meier

Member
I simply can't reiterate enough how amazing it was for me to get to listen to Vin Scully broadcast a game last night LIVE and now on top of that I'm able to actually watch today's game. Sony had it wrong -- this is living.
 

subrock

Member
this has probably been asked already but did they remove the "hold home to reboot an app" feature with the 3.0 firmware? mine isnt doing it anymore.
 

Blackhead

Redarse
Meier said:
I simply can't reiterate enough how amazing it was for me to get to listen to Vin Scully broadcast a game last night LIVE and now on top of that I'm able to actually watch today's game. Sony had it wrong -- this is living.
How is it determining what games are available in the region? gps?
 

LCfiner

Member
subrock said:
this has probably been asked already but did they remove the "hold home to reboot an app" feature with the 3.0 firmware? mine isnt doing it anymore.

they had to change the button combo due to voice control on the 3gs.

hold the sleep/wake switch on top till the "slide to power off " screen comes up.

THEN hold the home button till you're back on the home screen and you force quit the app.
 

Barrett2

Member
Are there any general tips to improving my 3G's performance? I don't mind the occasional sluggish typing / interface, but are there basic things I could do to maximize speed or prevent programs crashing?
 

AirBrian

Member
lawblob said:
Are there any general tips to improving my 3G's performance? I don't mind the occasional sluggish typing / interface, but are there basic things I could do to maximize speed or prevent programs crashing?
Whenever I install or update an application, I always do a hard reboot (hold home button and top sleep/wake button until it reboots). That really seems to mitigate most sluggishness and app crashing.
 
lawblob said:
Are there any general tips to improving my 3G's performance? I don't mind the occasional sluggish typing / interface, but are there basic things I could do to maximize speed or prevent programs crashing?

Close Apple apps for real, since they run in the background. Force quitting them frees up some resources. I have a 3GS so but on a 3G it should be either hold down circle button instead of pressing it quickly. On a 3GS it's hold power button until slide to turn off appears and then hold the home button since holding the home button is the Voice app. It may or may not be that on the 3GS.

But yeah, that's a tip a lot of 3G users use often.
 

burgerdog

Member
jonnybryce said:
Close Apple apps for real, since they run in the background. Force quitting them frees up some resources. I have a 3GS so but on a 3G it should be either hold down circle button instead of pressing it quickly. On a 3GS it's hold power button until slide to turn off appears and then hold the home button since holding the home button is the Voice app. It may or may not be that on the 3GS.

But yeah, that's a tip a lot of 3G users use often.

I have a 3GS, but for future reference - which Apps do I have to hard close so they won't take up memory in the background?
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
Marty Chinn said:
But it sounds like you agree with me then; without showing a baseline of what the 3G is, the comparison is a bit meaningless. Sure it can do more but how much more. Showing 6 vs 40 implies a much larger performance capability than what might be true which is what I'm getting at which is why I feel the video is a bit misleading especially since they expressed it bluntly with their 6 vs 40 screen.
It still remains that they almost for sure couldn't put more than 6 cars to race in their game, because of whatever constraint they hit with original Iphone. Memory, rendering speed, tracking position and physics for the cars that are outside of the screen... Something must have been a problem because they'd put more than 6 if they could for sure.
 

LCfiner

Member
Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
Why are we talking about resource management like we're all still on Windows XP? Vista and OS X don't care about things like this anymore.

In fairness, when app devs implore users to reboot their iphones after downloading their app to prevent crashes due to limited memory, people can get a little paranoid.
 
Costanza said:
HELP!! All my App Icons got mixed up. How do I fix this?!!

edit: Rebooting did nothing.

You can restore your iPhone and the backup will put everything like it was before, just make sure you stop it from backing up it's current state when you plug it into iTunes.
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
Picked up an iphone 3gs 32gb black today. My first smartphone, damn this thing is sexy. All this functionality in my pocket wherever I am, already feels essential.
 

DMeisterJ

Banned
EviLore said:
Picked up an iphone 3gs 32gb black today. My first smartphone, damn this thing is sexy. All this functionality in my pocket wherever I am, already feels essential.
It's just the beginning. The whole Internet and associated properties are at your fingertips. And once I found out about the GAF webapp, it changed my life. Poductivity went down to zero... Lol.

Have fun.
 
What is with ghost applications on the iphone? I unlocked mine in the middle of the night and somehow my flashlight application which I deleted off the phone more than a month ago started running.

Is this some kind of Apple thing where things you think are off the device are actually still on there? Music previously thought to be deleted off my wife's ipod can be played via certain devices with USB connections.
 

Costanza

Banned
Xeke said:
Drag them back?
The ICONS, not the apps themselves, are mixed up. Like right now, my TapStar app has the icon from Car Jack Streets. It's a shitty 3.0 bug that apparently can only be fixed by....
jonnybryce said:
You can restore your iPhone and the backup will put everything like it was before, just make sure you stop it from backing up it's current state when you plug it into iTunes.
 
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