Thomas Blog - Who needs an iPhone 3G? (Part2)

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Who needs an iPhone 3G? (Part2)

Apple - iPhone/iPod Touch

Written by Thomas Baltruschat

Thursday, 21 August 2008 11:19

In the first part of this series I basically compared iPhone 3G and the iPod Touch. Basically missing from the iPod Touch are the GPS and GSM/3G function (i.e. no phone calls and no internet unless you are close to a WiFi hotspot).

Im my opinion GPS is not so important in Hong Kong:

Hong Kong is a rather small space.
GPS does not work too well in the urban areas of Hong Kong, because to get a location you need to receive a signal from at least 3 different GPS satellites. This means you need a clear view of the sky in 3 different directions. You have probably noticed that Hong Kong has many high rise buildings which will block the clear view and therefore also the GPS signal.
Many tunnels, high ways etc. make it quite confusing to tell on which road you actually are.

About the Mobile Internet something can be done for the iPod Touch, you can't add it or buy it, but some clever 3rd party software is available that can download the articles of websites while you're close to a WiFi hotspot (i.e. at Home or at Starbucks) and you can read it while you're on the Bus or MTR, where no WiFi hotspot is close.

This software is called Byline and is available from the Itunes store for US$ 9.99. You can check the website of the software company here (Phantom Fish). They have a nice video tour there which shows you basically how it works, but you can also read on:

First you need an Google account and you need to configure the Google Reader for some RSS feeds from your favorite websites.
Some websites make it much easier, if you try the RSS feed from this website, you can see a icon in the top right corner "+Google". Click on that and afterwards onto "Add to Google Reader" and you have already subscribed to this RSS feed.
Now start Byline on your iPhone/iPod Touch. The first time you start it you will need to enter your Google account login information. Afterwards you will see the unread RSS articles and at the bottom of the screen should be message like Downloading 1 of 26. Byline is now downloading the articles you marked earlier in Google Reader. Depending on the websites and the number of articles this can take some time.
Once the downloading is done please tap on Starred, which will show you the starred articles. If you tap on one article you can see the web page where this article belongs to. You can rotate the iPod, zoom in and pan just like in Safari.
Something you need to remember, while Byline is downloading the articles you can't go to another application (e.g. check emails) on the iPod/iPhone. Byline will stop as soon as you press the home button, once you start it again it will resume though where it left.
This is actually true for all iPod/iPhone applications and something you need to get used to.

Byline has still some limitations as you can't select which RSS feed to read, it will always show you all new articles from all RSS feeds you have subscribed to. Hopefully they will update this soon. But otherwise this works very well and browsing though RSS feeds is pretty fast.

Byline doesn't have too good reviews in the iTunes store, but I am 95% happy with it and it is the only 3rd party application on my iPod Touch which I use daily.

Limitations:

If the article is written over several webpages you will only get the 1st page.
Password protected articles (usually don't work), it works for one RSS feed I have though...don't know why

Other options:

Byline can download all webpages, so no need to star them. I haven't tried this, sometimes I have about 400 unread articles from my RSS feeds and I don't think I want to read them all.

I think it also is good enough to make the guy next to you in the MTR think, that you're actually using a iPhone 3G and the download speed for the websites is blazing fast.