In some circles the iPhone has been regarded as an expensive toy for teenagers. There are a number of things which seem “playful” on the phone and the iTunes Apps store has enjoying a rush of game downloads since its opening recently.

One does wonder then, is the iPhone capible of being a “business phone” as well ?

Mochasoft have released an iPhone Application which puts a positive score in the “yes” column. Mochasoft’s VNC client is able to connect to a VNC server (tested on RealVNC, TightVNC & UltraVNC) and allows a user to view a computers desktop remotely.

This enables people who are “on the go” to log on, from anywhere in the world, to a pre-configured computer that has an active internet connection and to interact with the desktop in a similar way as if they were sitting directly in front of that computer.

You might ask, who would use such a thing? – “I would” would be my 1st answer and here is why:

As an I.T. Support technician I am often required to be many places at the same time. The posibility would exist where I could log into my office computer, view invoices, client records, and email (even though it would possibly be easier to access it from the iPhones Email) etc – I would also be able to do the same for any remote clients who’s net work I support.

The software comes in two versions, a lite “free” version which has no support for the windows ctrl-alt-delete function, and has no right mouse click, and a paid version (approximately $6), which at the time of this article being published is currently subject to release after Apple’ software team’s review.

Read more about this at Mochasoft’s VNC page

While the waiting and excitement might be over for some, they are reporting that the 2nd generation of iPhone (the one that will soon be hitting South African shores) may have screens which are ‘defective’.

In the picture below, it can be seen that the iPhone 3g has a noticably more yellow screen than its predicessor the iPhone “2g”. Speculation as to why this has happened revolved around what some say are Apples laxed quality control standards and their sourcing of screens from different vendors.

While that speculation may or may not be true, the word-on-the-street is that Apple have deliberately lowered the screens colour temperature in order to get richer colours, deeper blacks and generally more defined images from the screen.

Error or not, it is still a good idea to keep your firmware current through the iTunes restore updater.

It has been called for, for quite some time. Users wanted a way for them to be able to take pictures of the screen of the phone, from the phone itself.

Well, its available via the iPhones operating system (2.0) by pressing the Home & Sleep/Wake buttons together. The screen of the phone will then briefly flash and whatever was onscreen at that moment, will be saved to the Camera Roll.

This feature can also apparently be enabled on 1.1.4 through the use of a .plist file.

There is a lot to be said for all the positives of the new iPhone 3g… but lets take a moment to focus on some of the negative aspects…

• First and foremost (to ease us into the bad) here is a bittersweet problem -
  With bandwidth being as expensive as it is in South Africa – One really wonders what the overall total cost of ownership would be for running an iPhone in this country.

  Recent international figures indicate that consumer usage of bandwidth may be up to 30 times higher than on a regular phone.
  All that ooohing and ahh’ing over a rich web experience and the host of available things to do on the phone would undoubtedly lead to more usage and may result in overall prices.

• The prospect of having GPS functionality on your phone is great, but the truth is that the A-GPS technology that is present in the new iPhone (a technology which factors in hot-spot and cell phone tower location data into positioning calculations) is only really as good as the information the iPhone is being fed. Does Vodacom have this functionality present on their cell towers, and if so, how wide-spread is it?Then there are the maps, which are a separate issue altogether, what map data will the phone make use of, can it be updated, would there be a choice of 3rd party mapping, and how complete are those maps?
  

• On the iPhone (1st Gen) – There was also an apparent issue with connecting to a laptop via bluetooth, to use the phone as a dial-up modem for laptop surfing. A few hacks were discussed to make this a reality. Has that issue been resolved in the iPhone 3g?The new specifications are still reporting to have “Bluetooth support for headsets only” – This isn’t nearly enough of a standard if the iPhone wants to compete with the other vendors in this arena.
• The battery life is not actually as long as it reportedly is the iPhone specs informational pages. Some people see the iPhone as an expensive teenagers toy, whilst others hope to embrace the host of features it offers to use it as a successful business tool. How will the limited battery life effect this?The battery is also not user-replaceable and this could lead to more expensive ownership in the long-term.
• Video Camera & MMS – There is still no video recording, and the only apparent way to send images from the phone is via email, and not by MMS like some of the other phone vendors allow.

Some people were “put-out” by how quickly the iPhone 3g was put out after the iPhone 2g – My gut tells me that Apple have done this new version of phone largely in response to the wide spread jail-breaking of the 1st generation iPhone, and in an attempt to drive market penitration in many more countries. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if a 3rd generation of iPhone was to hit the shelves a year and a half – two years from now…