By Leo Stiles
With the release of the iPhone 4 in Ireland, many of the apps in the App Store are getting an upgrade to take advantage of the new phone’s extra features such as the HD display and camera.
To get you ready for the iPhone 4 launch, JOE presents five apps that will make your new phone the centre of attention.
iMovie
This app was designed by Apple specifically for the iPhone 4 to take advantage of the phone’s ability to record video in HD. Based on the popular application for Apple’s Mac computers, iMovie is a video editing suite that will spruce up that video of your mates drunken antics from last weekend, before uploading it to YouTube in all its embarrassing glory.
Apple have kept everything simple but there are still a good chunk of things to play around with that will turn your rough footage into a mini masterpiece. You can stitch multiple videos together, add in stills, use transitions, add titles and subtitles and choose from multiple themes to tie your project together. You can even add in a music track that automatically reduces its volume when anyone is speaking in the clip.
The app costs €4.99.
N.O.V.A.
This game is impressive even when it’s running on an iPhone 3G but you will be blown away on the iPhone 4. The latest update adds HD visuals, improved performance, enhanced controls, and is guaranteed to make your iPhone 4 shine.
N.O.V.A. is a shooter in the Halo tradition which puts you in the shoes of a space marine and lets you shoot the crap out of some alien stereotypes. While the game certainly won’t win awards for originality in its design or setting, playing the game reveals a polished shooter that controls extremely well despite relying on touch screen controls, something that very few games on the iPhone have managed to pull off.
At just €3.99, the game is very good value and offers a meaty single player option alongside some decent multiplayer options. Add all this to the visuals, which are more advanced than on any other handheld game at the moment, and you have a must buy for any gamer.
Facebook isn’t the most obvious app to benefit from the iPhone 4 but a couple of new features specific to the phone will have many users leaving the PC version behind in favour of the mobile app.
First of all the app is now in HD which makes for a much more enjoyable experience, especially when viewing photos. In the past these photos have sometimes appeared quite blurry on the application despite the fact that they would be perfect when viewed on a PC.
Next is the ability to background the app which allows you to run Facebook at the same time as other apps, allowing you to chat with friends who are online while doing other things with your phone.
Add in the ability to upload HD pictures, view videos (at last!) and you have the best version of Facebook for any mobile device.
iBooks
This is an iPad app that made its way to iPhone users via the software update last June and was pretty well received even though it wasn’t perfectly suited to the older models. The app really comes into its own on the iPhone 4 with the high resolution screen finally making the reading of large volumes of text a lot easier on the eye.
Reading a book is a nice simple experience and has all the features you want from any e-book reader such as bookmarks, scalable text and a screen orientation lock to stop the screen from rotating if you tilt the phone too far.
The app also has a store built into it which at the time of writing was still restricted to free classics. The launch of the iPad and now the Phone 4 should mean that we can buy the latest releases via the app shortly.
Tom Tom UK & Ireland
The ability to run apps in the background on the iPhone 4 makes navigation apps, such as the one from Tom Tom, a genuine alternative to buying a dedicated satellite navigation device.
The latest version of the UK and Ireland app allows you to run the app, set up your destination and then put it in the background while you use your phone for other things such as music or calls. The app will still give voice instructions when needed and the map can be brought back up on screen with a couple of quick taps.
The app has also had a visual upgrade to take advantage of the HD screen which makes it far more visually appealing and easy to use.
The digital compass and gyroscope also give you refined positioning and enable turn by turn navigation by car or on foot.
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