Hasta La Gadget!

I’ve used a few wireless, always-on webcams in my day and I’ve found Dropcam to be the best. Suddenly, however, Dropcam just got better.

Dropcam cameras connect wirelessly to the Internet, allowing you to connect to them remotely and watch live audio and video from anywhere. They had a few basic apps available, including an iPhone-only app that offered very little in the way of usability on the iPad.

The new app, however, allows you to place up to four of your Dropcams on the same page. If you have more, you can simply swipe to move to another set of four. It also allows you to play back events on the camera with a simple draggable interface. The video is crisp and clean and looks great. It essentially turns the iPad into a fairly capable security camera system.

“It wasn’t easy to build,” said Greg Duffy, Dropcam CEO. “In fact, we even had to write our own video decoding framework for iPad.”

The quality is quite nice – the $149 Dropcam HD supports 720p streaming – and the app even includes a number of public Dropcams that display pet stores and beaches around the world. “We think it’s pretty game-changing, because we’re now the only ones in the space with realtime 720p video, multicam, and seamless DVR browsing all figured out on iPad,” said Duffy.

I rarely like to talk about app updates – usually they’re blips in the app store – but this one was pretty interesting. Now I can turn my Dropcams on myself and watch myself from all angles. Maybe I’ll make the feeds public.

Click to view slideshow.

We knew this was coming, just no one thought it would be quite this fast. The iPhone 5 has only been available for a matter of hours and surely many of you are still patiently (or impatiently) waiting in line to get your very own 4-inch iPhone. Today however those sneaky folks from Cygnett have already done the inevitable iPhone 5 drop test.

Cygnett is a popular accessory and case manufacturer, and we’ve taken a look at plenty of their impressive products in the recent past, including some for the iPhone 4. Today however they’ve already got this awesome new smartphone from those Cupertino folks and are breaking them already. In what appears to be one of the first iPhone 5 drop tests, enjoy watching the screen crack!

So how does the all new and improved iPhone 5 handle the 4 foot drop? Quite well actually. Even with no case involved the new brushed aluminum design seems to handle the rough ground somewhat okay. No shattered glass everywhere and the back still looks pretty, aside from a few scratches. The front glass covering that beautiful and bigger 4-inch Retina Display takes on a little damage however. This time around it surely isn’t bad and won’t hider your usage too bad. Obviously you’ll want to protect this beauty with a new case from Cygnett, right?

Apple worked hard on the new design, while not too different from first glance, they’ve made significant improvements to the overall design. From the small details and level of precision, to making it lighter while stronger at the same time. Obviously you guys all know this already though right? If you’re still on the fence about buying the new iDevice you’ll need to take a look at our iPhone 5 review, then for more details hit our iPhone 5: Which model, where, and why post! That poor iPhone is cracked already. Sad right?

Cygnett does the inevitable iPhone 5 drop test is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
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