Hasta La Gadget!

A screenshot of Infinity Blade II on the iPhone 4S illustrates the fine graphical detail enabled by Apple's A5 processor. Image: ChAIR Entertainment

If the last two weeks of mainstream press coverage are to be believed, the only relevant features in Apple’s new iPhone 4S are Siri, the phone’s remarkable digital assistant, and the new 8-megapixel camera, which delivers near point-and-shoot image quality to Apple’s mobile platform.

But there’s one other feature that’s largely been ignored, even though it too was demoed at the iPhone 4S debut: Apple’s A5 processor, which grants exciting new opportunities for iOS game developers.

The 1GHz dual-core A5, along with various aspects of iOS 5, have the potential to seriously supercharge gaming on both the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 (which uses the chip too). At Apple’s iPhone 4S launch event, we were shown a demo of Infinity Blade II, and its graphics were impressive enough to wow even jaded console enthusiasts and PC gamers.

In your curiosity duly piqued? Here are some of the virtual sword-clashing, adventure-questing and strategy-pondering improvements we can look forward to as game developers explore (and hopefully implement) Apple’s latest updates.

7X Graphics Power for Fancier Rendering Effects

Smartphones and tablets are great gaming platforms, but they have typically placed us in graphically simple visual environments (think Angry Birds or Scrabble). But now that Apple’s A5 processor is available in both iPad 2 and the iPhone 4S, game developers can go hog wild in designing graphically intense 3D worlds for iOS, confident of a growing installed base of Apple’s fastest mobile chip.

As Perry Tam, CEO of iOS gaming company Storm8 told us, the A5 processor will “certainly help remove some restrictions for developing games that demand more CPU power.”

According to Apple, its A5 processor delivers CPU performance twice as fast as its previous chip, along with seven times faster graphics processing — and all without additional battery life penalties.

“The A5 chip is very, very fast,” says Donald Mustard, creative director at ChAIR Entertainment, the Epics Games studio that developed Infinity Blade II. “[Game developers] love power. Extra power allows us to do more of everything.”

That “everything” includes high-end rendering techniques. At Apple’s iPhone event, Mike Capps of Epic Games said some of these techniques aren’t even used in top-line gaming consoles. For example, the A5 chip allows Infinity Blade II to include insanely detailed graphical flourishes, such as light rays shining through trees, character shadows cast on the game environment, koi swimming in a pond, and individual dandelions blowing in the wind.

The increased processing power enables richer, more cinematic gaming experiences, bringing iOS gaming much closer to what you’ll find on consoles, if not gaming PCs. Indeed, now it would seem that touch-based game control, and not graphics firepower, is the primary hurdle preventing iOS devices from becoming ideal platforms for shooters and other action games.

iCloud Delivers Seamless Gameplay Narratives

“iOS 5 is really slick,” Mustard says. “The best thing it offers to developers is iCloud.”

Mustard described how he was playing Infinity Blade II on an iPad 2. His character had just finished a fight, and picked up a sword that had fallen on the ground. Mustard then opened up Infinity Blade II on his iPhone 4S — and began playing the game exactly where he had just left off, his character with sword in hand.

“Seamless syncing across devices is a huge thing for gaming,” Mustard says. The iCloud feature enables users to effortlessly transition a game-in-progress from one iOS 5 device to another, allowing for an uninterrupted gameplay narrative as they move from, say, their subway seat to their couch, or even from room to room.

iCloud offers other unique benefits that game developers can begin coding for in updates and new titles. In Infinity Blade II, for example, users will find a new community-based gameplay mode called Clash Mobs.

It works like this: You get a notification that a big monster is available to fight for the next 24 hours. The monster is loaded with 1 million hit points. You fight him, knocking off 10,000 of his hit points. The monster now has 990,000 hit points. Thousands (if not millions) of other gamers take their hacks at the same bad guy, and together you work in concert to take him down, unlocking weapons and other features.

But that’s just one example of crowd-sourced gameplay. Other group-based challenges could be incorporated in a wide variety of games and game types. Just as the original iPhone’s accelerometer gave us the entirely new genre of physics-based gaming, we should expect developers to respond to iCloud with similar innovation in community-based gaming — leading to novel new modes of play we can’t yet imagine.

A New Twist in Turn-Based Gaming

Asynchronous turn-based gaming: It’s a fussy phrase that describes something quite simple. In effect, iOS 5 lets you play turn-based games against friends in a non-live, non-real-time environment. In iOS 4, both players had to have their apps running at the same time to, say, play a game of chess. But now, thanks to asynchronous turn-based gaming support, you can play all variety of turn-based games at a much more leisurely, convenient pace.

After you play your turn, a push notification is automatically sent to your competitor — who can act immediately, or pick up the game when time allows. And via the iOS Game Center app, which was added in iOS 4, players can manage multiple games-in-progress to keep up with the action (or whatever passes for action in the asynchronous turn-based gaming paradigm).

“The ability to play turn-based games asynchronously with your friend via Game Center in iOS 5 makes mobile social gaming even more convenient on mobile devices, which people tend to pick up and put down throughout the day,” says Tam, whose company developed a turn-based game called Cannon Ball, pictured here.

“Turn-based games used to require a separate infrastructure that cost the developer time and money,” Tam says. “iOS 5 takes care of that for you.”

And that means developers can spend more time creating rich, well-designed gaming experiences with more creative twists.

Connecting With Friends

iOS 5 makes it easier for you to discover new games in Apple’s Game Center by exposing the preferences of your trusted confidantes. Specifically, Game Center can now make recommendations based on what your friends (and non-friend competitors) are playing. iOS 5 users can also connect with friends of friends without knowing their email addresses or nicknames.

Players can now also download games directly from Game Center if they see one of their friends is playing a game they don’t already have. Before, you had to exit Game Center and go find the game in the App Store.

“This is a major benefit to developers because it makes it that much easier for people to get involved with a new game,” Tam said.

The Overarching Upshot: More Games, More Updates

Platform updates always pose a challenge to game developers: Should they start coding their games for the new hardware and software, confidant of an enthusiastic (and large) installed base? For that matter, should they go back and update previous versions of popular titles, if only to take advantage of a few new features?

Tam believes that as developers get more familiar with what iOS 5 and the A5 have to offer, we’ll see a lot more games that incorporate these new features. In fact, says Tam, updating a game to take advantage of these features, or even creating a new game from scratch, is “very easy to do.”

Easy: It’s a relative term. Nothing about the graphics of Infinity Blade II looks that “easy” to pull off. But one thing’s for sure: Apple’s latest hardware and software updates are great news for mobile gamers, and the pressure is on developers to innovate.

What iOS games would you like to see updated with new features described above? Please tell us in the comments section of this article.

Behold: Razr redux.

Tuesday morning, Motorola announced its new flagship Android smartphone, the Droid Razr. Now, after spending some quality hands-on time with the phone, I can say it’s poised to become a formidable competitor in the Android space — if not also a challenge to Apple’s much-lauded iPhone 4S.

Motorola is celebrating the new Razr as the world’s thinnest smartphone, and its slim packaging is the first thing I noticed as soon as I picked it up. At 7.1 mm, the Razr dethrones the previous “thinnest device” title holder — Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Arc — by a full 1.6 mm. It’s difficult to tell just how thin the Razr is from promotional press shots, but considering the amount of high-end hardware packed inside — a 1.2GHz dual-core TI processor, 1GB of RAM and 32GB of storage (16GB care of a microSD card) — the phone’s svelte shape is impressive.

In order to slim down the phone’s profile, Motorola used threaded Kevlar fiber on the Razr’s back casing. This material, most famously used in bullet-proof vests, helps maintain structural integrity while keeping the phone’s figure trim.

With Kevlar on one side and a sculpted Gorilla Glass display on the other, the Razr is built for durability, yes. The phone’s innards, however, are also sealed inside a stainless steel interior chassis for extra shock absorbancy and all-around toughness. The phone is named after one of the most successful gadgets in Motorola history – a product famous for its iconic design — and it’s clear that Moto paid attention to all design features in order to elevate the Razr to a marquee-level status worthy of its namesake.

Here you can see the Razr's Kevlar surfacing — as well as the top portion of the phone, which exceeds Motorola's category-besting 7.1mm thickness.

But how does this curious object feel? Well, however attractive its hard edges and boxy aesthetic may be, the squared-off chassis did feel a bit awkward in my hands. The display measures in at 4.3 inches. It’s by no means the largest screen on the market, but the phone itself feels considerably larger than what a 4.3-inch display should suggest. But I did enjoy the Razr’s Kevlar backing. The woven material is soft to the touch, with a pleasingly grippy surface quality.

I loved the image quality of the screen. Photos render in crisp detail, with bright, brilliant colors. Shah said in order to save on battery life, the design team went with Samsung’s Super AMOLED display, which is famous for its modest power requirements. Considering that the phone comes with a battery-sucking 4G LTE radio, you’ll want every bit of power conservation that Moto’s engineers can muster.

One of my favorite Razr features is Motorola’s Smart Actions app. In essence, it’s a user-friendly scripting tool that helps control all the phone features that suck down battery life. Using Smart Actions, you can set up automatic tripwires that will adjust screen brightness, Wi-Fi, 4G and GPS settings when power conservation becomes critical. For example, you can set the Razr to automatically lower its display brightness as soon as battery life drops below 30 percent.

Smart Actions also contains settings that have nothing to do with battery conservation — for example, automatically switching your phone from vibrate to ringing mode when GPS detects that you’ve arrived at home. How ’bout them apples, Siri?

This full-frontal shot shows how the Razr compares to an iPhone 4/4S. You get a much bigger screen, and the Razr even weighs 13 grams less.

As with most of Motorola’s high-end devices since the debut of the Atrix in January, the Razr will launch with a slew of peripheral options. Back again are the webtop and lapdock stations. Like those that work with the Atrix, Photon and Bionic handsets, the webtop dock allows you to plug the Razr into an HD charging station and connect to an external HD monitor. As such, you’re able to use the phone as makeshift computer. Moto’s patented webtop environment is a nifty desktop-style UI, complete with the ability to surf the web using Mozilla’s Firefox Browser.

The new dock comes correct with Ethernet and USB support among other business travel-friendly goodies.

Shah said Motorola learned from user experience studies of previous lapdock-capable phones, and, as a result, its two new docks include extra ports and connectivity option. Specifically, the Razr-compatible Lapdock 500 Pro now features an Ethernet port and multiple USB ports. In essence, it has most of the I/O attributes of an actual laptop.

The company has bet big on connectivity and peripheral hardware options before, and failed miserably in execution (see Atrix, Xoom, et al.). But after these first impressions, it seems Motorola’s Razr redux may have gotten peripherals right.

Apple may be having its time in the sun with the new iPhone 4S, but Motorola is wasting no time in trying to steal some of the sunshine. This Tuesday, Motorola introduced the Droid Razr, the second-generation version of the most popular phone the company has ever sold.

“We wanted to create a true object of desire,” Motorola Mobility chairman and CEO Sanjay Jha said at a Tuesday press conference. “Not only is it a marvel of modern engineering, it is beautiful.”

Like its predecessor was in its day and age, Motorola says the new Razr is the world’s thinnest smartphone. The Droid Razr measures 7.1mm at its thinnest point, and weighs in at just 127 grams, keeping bulkiness as low as possible. In comparison, the iPhone 4S is 9.3mm thick and 140 grams. The Droid Razr will run on Verizon’s 4G LTE network, and should be available for pre-order later this month.

When the original Razr launched in late 2004, Motorola was flagging in marketshare and suffering a reputation for stale mobile product design. Rival handset maker Nokia held a secure lead among manufacturers in the cell phone space, and as Scott Anthony wrote in a 2005 piece for Strategy and Innovation, “Emerging Korean competitors Samsung and LG had the lock on cool.”

The original Razr changed consumer opinion about Motorola nearly overnight. That phone’s slim, clamshell design was entirely unique (if not wowing), and customers flocked to the thin aesthetic that made all alternatives look chunky. Motorola went on to sell more than 130 million Razrs — by far the most successful mobile product in the company’s history.

Motorola hopes for a repeat win with the next-gen Razr, which combines the thin, sleek look of the first model with the powerful tech specs of today’s top gear.

The new Razr packs a 1.2GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM, as well as 16GB of on-board storage with another 16GB care of an included microSD card. You’ll also find an 8-megapixel back-facing camera that is capable of capturing 1080p HD video, and a front-facing camera for video chat. All of this hardware hooks into Google’s Android 2.3 operating system, aka Gingerbread.

It all makes for a robust internal package, and the Razr should be tough on the outside as well. Jha says the phone is built atop a stainless steel core, and is sturdy enough to “withstand the famous back pocket test.” Indeed, the Razr is wrapped in woven kevlar fabric — you know, the same material they use for bullet-proof vests — and shielded in Corning’s Gorilla Glass, a scratch-resistant material found in a number of high-end smartphones.

Nice specs, features and packaging? Yes. But is the new Razr a rock star product of iPhonian proportions? This remains to be seen. The Razr’s main competitor, of course, is Apple’s recently launched iPhone 4S. Despite an initially disappointed reaction from the media, the 4S moved extremely well in its first days of release, selling a unprecedented 4 million units within three days.

Some analysts say that while the stakes are high for Motorola, the market for Android and iPhone customers is still big enough for two players.

“I see the market dividing somewhat between the techy crowd that likes Android and the more fashionable crowd that likes iPhone,” said Gartner analyst Phillip Redman in an interview. “In a few years, though, as penetration increases, the demand for innovation and differentiation will only increase too.”

That means Motorola will have to keep up with the fast pace of tech innovation, especially when Apple is putting out products like the much-ballyhooed digital, voice-activated assistant, Siri.

Much like Apple’s new iOS 5 and Siri roll-outs, the Razr comes with a host of software perks to sweeten the deal. The MotoCast app allows users to share content — including pictures, video and streaming music files – between computers and smartphones over a Wi-Fi connection. Essentially, MotoCast adopts the basic scheme of cloud-based computing, but replaces server farms with your desktop or notebook.

Motorola also wants to appeal to the corporate crowd with a suite of business-ready features, including corporate e-mail access, calendar and contacts sync, and the ability to view and edit Microsoft Office documents. It’s a move into BlackBerry territory, and a challenge to RIM, a company long known for its enterprise-friendly devices.

“We believe the enterprise is important because it is getting consumerized,” said Jha. “The Droid Razr isn’t an enterprise device; it’s a consumer device with enterprise features.”

The iPhone isn’t the only Apple device in Motorola’s crosshairs. With its sights set squarely on Apple’s iPod business, Motorola also unveiled Motoactv, a new wearable fitness-tracking music player. Motoactv allows users to track personal workout statistics, while also serving as an MP3 player.

Sold in a wrist watch form factor, the device comes with a 1.6-inch, full-touch color screen and FM radio, and is resistant to sweat, water and scratching. It’s compact at 46 x 46mm, and weighs only 35 grams. Syncing the device with your PC uploads all of your exercise data to an online profile, allowing you to track your workout progress over an extended period.

Motoactv comes in 8GB and 16GB versions, and essentially combines Apple’s iPod nano and the Fitbit product into one device. Apple also worked in conjunction with Nike to offer its own music player cum fitness device — dubbed Nike+ — which requires users to place a sensor in their shoes to track exercise time, distance and calories burned.

While Apple sold more than 20 million iPhones last quarter, the product’s massive growth in sales came at the expense of the iPod, which was the only Apple device line to see a decline in sales.

That decline could be Motorola’s window of opportunity into cannibalizing Apple’s music player business, with the added benefit of marketing the device as a fitness tracking tool.

Motoactv also comes with connectivity benefits that span across multiple Motorola devices. For example, the device syncs wirelessly with the Razr smartphone, letting you know when you receive calls and text messages via notification icons.

“We can create intuitive hardware matched with intelligent software that will forever change the way you work out,” Jha said.

The Droid Razr will be available for pre-order online beginning Oct. 27, and will launch globally this November. The phone will cost $300 with a two-year Verizon contract. The Motoactv fitness device will also launch in November in the U.S., and will cost $250 for the 8GB version and $300 for the 16GB version.

It’s doubtful that we’ll see the same glowing consumer response to the Razr that Apple has enjoyed with its 4S. But with an undeniably cool smartphone form factor, a host of new software features, and a push into fitness tech, Motorola is certainly intent on staying relevant.

The new article view is easier on both the eyes and the thumbs

Instapaper, our favorite read-it-later app for the iPhone and iPad, has just gotten a huge update to version 4.0. This is the first major update since the developer, Marco Arment, started using his own app on the iPad. And man does it show. Instead of being little more than a scaled up iPhone app, the iPad version of Instapaper has been completely redesigned.

If you have never used Instapaper, it’s a combined web service and app. When you find an article on the web that you want to save, click the “read later” bookmarklet in your browser and it is saved. Then, when you open the app, you’ll find the article there, stripped of ads and other cruft, in a plain and easy-to-read format.

You’ll notice two things after you tap the new icon to launch the app. The first is that the navigation has moved to a bar at the left of the screen, allowing easier tapping on the iPad’s larger display. It also stays put, and small arrows let you know what section you are in at all times.

The next is the new article layout. Instead of just a list, the saved articles appear in a grid. It feels more like a newspaper.

And as you save new articles, they will now appear with the author’s byline, the date and the title of the publication they are from. Speaking of reading, there are some changes here too. Any footnotes are now converted to inline pop-ups so you no longer need to scroll up and down to read them.

You can browse all articles shared by your Twitter and Facebook friends, as well as your Tumblr feed

Also, the scrollbar is now draggable for faster scrolling, the brightness control is hooked into the actual hardware brightness control (previously it just made the screen grayer) and the iPhone version gets a full-screen mode without the status bar.

If you ever used Instapaper 3’s (anti) social networking features, you’ll like this update, too. Now Instapaper can pull in all shared articles from your friends’ Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as your Tumblr subscriptions. It’s a bit like a Flipboard lite, and is a great way to find something to read if you ever manage to plow through your own reading list.

My first search turned up just one result. And yes — I really am this childish

The last big change is full article search. This lets you search across the content of all your saved articles. It works on the Instapaper servers, so even archived articles not currently on your device can be accessed. To use search, you’ll need buy a subscription. I was already subscribing via PayPal, but newer users can do it more easily through an in-app subscription of just $1 per month.

If you are already using Instapaper, you get this great update free. If you’re new, it’ll cost you a mere $5.

Instapaper product page [iTunes]

Introducing Instapaper 4.0 for iPad and iPhone [Marco.org]

See Also:

• Instapaper: A $5 App That Justifies Your iPhone Purchase
• Instapaper 3 Adds Sharing, Curated Articles and Plain Old Speed …
• Preview: Instapaper Pro for iPad

iPhone 4S owners are poised to become members of an elite class. Their new phones boast an improved camera, dual antennae and an unpaid personal intern named Siri — all relevant talking points in “Who’s got the real iPhone?” one-upsmanship battles.

Siri is exclusive to iPhone 4S, but even 4S have-nots can still enjoy sundry other benefits of iOS 5, one of the new phone’s best features. Released Wednesday, Apple’s new mobile OS is a no-brainer download (we gave it an enthusiastic 8 verdict). It’s also entirely free, and compatible with iPhone 3GS, 4 and 4S, the 3rd- and 4th-gen iPod touch media players, and iPad and iPad 2.

Downloaded the new OS? Good. The blogosphere is teeming with iOS 5 feature guides, but aside from exposing Easter eggs hidden in Siri voice recognition, many sites are glossing over some of the OS’s most hidden or novel new features. Here we explore some of the more notable or quirky additions to grace our iPhone and iPad interfaces.

User-Defined Keyboard Shortcuts

At first glance, iOS 5 does nothing to address the pain and embarrassment of auto-correction mistakes. But go to your Settings menu, and navigate to General>Keyboard. Scroll to the bottom, and you’ll find a prompt to add a new shortcut. Just type in the word or phrase that deserves a shortcut, and then plug in the shortcut itself.

Now, for example, when you type in “fwiw,” iOS will provide an auto-correct prompt for “for what it’s worth.” It may not be a Twitter-friendly tool that’s compatible with character count requirements, but it can help ease the pain of constantly miss-typing (or miss-tapping, rather) long or vexing words.

And the fun doesn’t end there. I see great potential for mischief too: Grab your pal’s iOS 5 device, and begin entering shortcuts for common words like “hi” or “siri,” as in the screenshot above. Hilarity abounds as your friend suspects his or her iDevice is suffering demonic possession.

Create Custom Vibrations for Stealth Alerts

You’re in a high-powered business meeting. Your phone volume is mute because you don’t want to offend the client. But you really need to receive that critical phone call from your pilates instructor scheduling a rain check. By assigning a unique vibration sequence to any contact, you can leave your iPhone on the table and listen for the sweet euphony of a customized “zizip, zizip” as your device resonates against the table top.

Interested? Go to Contacts, choose a contact and tap Edit. Navigate to Vibration>Create New Vibration. You’ll be greeted by the screen above. Simply tap out a new vibration rhythm, save it, and prepare for near-stealth notifications of when special people are trying to reach you.

Create LED Flashes for Visual Alerts

We all have different preferences when it comes to how we receive iOS notifications. Some people like audible alerts, some like vibrating alerts, some like no alerts at all. But the more flamboyant among us may prefer a new visual alert buried in the Accessibility menu in General settings. Toggling on “LED Flash For Alerts” will prompt your iPhone to trigger your camera’s LED whenever you receive a message or email when the phone is set to silent mode.

This feature offers great utility to anyone who can’t hear, but we also see great potential for multiplayer gamers who like to create a chilly-spooky vibe in darkened rooms. Huzzah! says the flash. Your pizza has arrived!

Instant Definitions

Much has been made about iOS 5’s new text formatting options. You can select a word or text string, and then make it bold, italic or underline. That’s well publicized. But check out all the other options that become available when you hold down a selection of a word.

The Suggest function provides a list of other words you may have preferred to type. Quote Level either increases or decreases the number of vertical lines that appear before text — helpful when you’re annotating a threaded conversation. But one of the niftiest options is Define, shown here, which provides a tight (but surprisingly robust) dictionary entry for the selection, complete with a definition, usage examples, and often information on word derivatives and origin.

Cover Your Digital Tracks

The new iOS includes a number of key features that foster more private, secure use. In Safari’s settings menu (shown above), you can toggle on Private Browsing. Once enabled, Safari will refrain from building a history of your browser activity (hey, we all have something to hide).

Over in the new Message app, which provides for seamless transitions between traditional carrier-hosted text messaging and Apple-hosted iMessages, you can define whether to allow Read Receipts, which notify your friends when you’ve read their messages. So, if you want to continue the charade of, “Oh, did you send me a message? Never saw it,” then head to Settings>Messages, and turn Send Read Receipts to off.

Finally, you can put an end to those awkward conversations that occur when you leave your iPhone on the table, and someone reads the first few sentences of one of your text messages or emails on the lock screen. Go to Settings>Notifications and turn off Show Preview for both Messages and Mail.

Check App Usage, Dispatch Offenders

If you fear your iDevice is approaching the limits of its storage capacity, head on over to Settings>General>Usage, and start surveying your worst offenders. Clicking on an app name will provide a bit more detail — specifically, the footprint of the document and data files associated with the app. You’ll also see a button to delete the app entirely.

Alternate Routes in Maps

Views of alternate routes have always been available in the desktop version of Google Maps, and now they’re finally available on iOS devices too. After defining where you are and where you want to be, just tap Route 1, Route 2, etc., to toggle between Google’s recommended directions.

Did I leave out any hidden features that really blow your mind? Please comment below, or tweet me with suggestions. I, meanwhile, will be parsing through the 190-odd other new features released in iOS 5.