Truth be told, there are several iPhone applications that are designed to be .pdf readers. Depending on your line of work and line of interest, the ability to upload and view .pdf files on your iPhone or iPod touch could prove useful in many ways. I have little experience myself with .pdf readers for iPhone, but recently took a gander at PDF Reader Pro by YUYAO Mobile Software.

Since the App Store user reviews were not all that favorable, I decided to take as objective an approach as possible to PDF Reader Pro while keeping in mind I had no immediate need to use it.

The initial syncing of .pdf files was a breeze, but I have to say the files I uploaded were small in size. Still, for a few pages, it was a quick and painless process. Read the rest of this entry »

I bought my first iPhone soon after it came out, almost 2 years ago. I bought my second iPhone last week, and received it 2 days ago. It was the smartest thing I’ve done since buying my first iPhone and here’s why:

The iPhone 3GS is waaayy faster than my 2G. That’s not my impression; it’s a fact. Benchmarks conducted for ExtremeTech indicate the 3GS smokes nearly every smartphone on the market except one, which also happens to be running the same ARM Cortex-A8 processor as the iPhone. The 3GS also uses the PowerVR SGX graphics core, a bump above the PowerVR MBX in the iPhone 3G, says ExtremeTech.  In the real world, that means 600 Mhz, instead of 412 Mhz speed and 256MB RAM for the OS, double that of the 128MB in the original iPhoneAdd it up and you can believe the S in GS stands for “Speed” as Apple claims. Apps launch and close faster; Web pages load and render quickly; and zooming and scrolling are speedier. Everything, in short, is more responsive.

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Bomberman Touch 2- Volcano Party was originally launched in the US in 1987 and since then has come out in 60 versions for nearly every game platform. Hudson Soft, the developer, says that it has sold more than 10 million copies.

Bomberman Touch 2-Volcano Party for the iPhone and iPod touch is nearly identical to the earlier versions and the object is the same as it ever was:  Strategically place bombs to blow up boulders and grab power ups or other goodies.

This is the second Bomberman Hudson Soft has released into the App Store. The first, Bomberman Touch-The Legend of Mystic Bomb, has been fairly well received although many shoppers have said they were disappointed the game’s quality did not justify the $7.99 asking price (the main issues were the amount of playing time and the weak controls). On a personal level, I thought the controls were fine.

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I smartly downloaded Music iQ before embarking on a four-hour car ride.  Perfect timing!  I entertained myself, the car trip went more quickly, and I discovered I am terrible at remembering the names of songs, even when I recognize a tune.

Music iQ from Phase2 Media is like an iPhone version of “Name That Tune.”  Music iQ plays random songs one-at-a-time from your iPhone’s or iPod touch’s library, and the quicker you guess the songs, the more points you get. The good news is that Music iQ is a multiple choice quiz game, so you are given five options to choose from to help jog your memory. Read the rest of this entry »

If you ever played battleship as a kid, then no doubt you can appreciate Battleship by Pen. Created by RedMadRobot, Battleship by Pen gets bonus points from me for originality in design. An app that appears to have been drawn entirely by hand on graph paper with a blue Bic pen, Battleship by Pen is the same concept as the original board game, but with some original features of it’s own.

Players choose where to place their battleships, which are really just groups of squares outlined in pen with Xs inside, and deploy their fleet onto the graph paper grid to begin. Read the rest of this entry »

After a wait of 4 days, FedEx plopped my new iPhone 3GS on my doorstep yesterday. After hearing all the stories about how difficult it was to get one – Apple sold 1 million 3GS phones in the first 3 days alone – I went online and bought it from the AT&T store and figured that I would wait it out.

To my surprise and delight, I ordered it on Thursday and it arrived on Monday. Not bad at all, especially with the intervening weekend to slow things down. Read the rest of this entry »

Sevens, from developer Nigel Hanbury,  is a spin on the wildly popular Sudoku number puzzler, of which there are several variations in the App Store.

Just in case you’ve never played Sudoku before: The playing field consists of a 3 x 3 grid of squares. Each of the nine squares consists of yet another 3 x 3 grid.Your job is to fill in missing numbers from 1 to 9 in rows and columns without using the same number more than once in all the  rows and columns.  Depending on the difficulty of the level you’re attempting to play, some numbers already will be filled in to help you get started. It’s not like arithmetic; it’s more a process of elimination or fill-in-the-blanks.

Most people find it challenging, although some weirdos like my daughter and wife can knock these games out like a pro bowler knocks over pins in championship play. Me, I’ve never managed to complete an entire puzzle before giving up in frustration.

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