If you bought your iPhone 3GS on or close-to the launch of the device in New Zealand (July 11th 2009), then your twelve-month manufacturer warranty is about to expire. If you’re not planning on buying an iPhone 4, then you may be interested to know that you can extend the original warranty to cover your purchase by a further year by purchasing an iPhone Applecare package at any time up to the last day of your original warranty. ‘Read on’ for more.

Yes, this escaped our notice until today (great timing, huh!) but Apple’s Applecare extended warranty for iPhone can be bought at any time while the original 12-month warranty is still valid. Priced at $129, the package gives you two years of telephone support and repair / replacement from date of original purchase. It covers the phone itself, the battery, and even the ear-buds which are worth $55 all by themselves.

Given that out-of-warranty iPhone repairs can be very costly, and in-warranty repairs are actually usually a replacement for a shiny new / refurbished unit, this is definitely worth some serious consideration.

Some will tell you that extended warranties are evil…

iPhone 4 pre-orders have begun in the US and low and behold the iPhone 3G has now gone, not only from the US store though, it would seem they have removed it from all their stores, including NZ.

Although the 3G has now gone, you can now get an iPhone 3GS with just 8GB of storage, in black for $899.

– Apple Store – iPhone

So you’ve got your nice new iPhone and what’s this…a dead pixel, a hairline fracture, or something else?

Today I’m taking a look at what is (well kinda – see below) and what is not covered under your 1 Year Limited Warranty and we’ll have a look at what to do should you have an issue. Please note this is an extensive post due to the nature of it and I have tried not to skip anything.

Every iPhone comes with one year of hardware repair coverage through its limited warranty and up to 90 days of technical support. (Note: If you want to extend your warranty you can get The AppleCare Protection Plan but it can be purchased only while your iPhone is still covered under the standard one-year limited warranty). But what does the limited warranty cover?

Apple doesn’t officially state what the warranty does cover, however they do go into great detail about what it doesn’t cover though. This is what they say it covers – “hardware and software defects related to the use of the iPhone”. That’s it. great eh!?

Here’s what it doesn’t cover – I would check with Apple…

Every day we receive lots of emails from people who have bought either a new iPhone 3GS or 3G, or have bought an original iPhone via Trademe or eBay, and they are confused as to which networks they can use it on or whether it’s unlocked or can do this-or-that. We’re not surprised, it’s certainly not easy trying to get your head around it all, particularly if you’ve only just started looking and are trying to size the lay of the land. To help you understand the differences between each of the three models, how they work with each of the main three networks here in New Zealand and to help you pick the phone that’s right for you, we’ve put together a handy comparison guide. Hit the ‘Read More’ link to view the guide on-screen or to download a printable PDF.

Click the image below to open a full-sized copy of the guide:

– Download PDF copy of comparison guide

Here’s an update we’ve been waiting for (it seems like was ages ago we first announced this). The TomTom car kit for iPhone should be available within a week and the price……..The car kit will set you back $199 plus the cost of the app ($119.99)

It will be available from Harvey Norman and Super Cheap Auto (unconfirmed)

So at a total of $318.99 for app and dock is it worth it, to be honest I think it probably is. The lowest stand alone unit runs at $299 and that doesn’t have hands free calling (via bluetooth) included. To get that you are going to be looking at spending at least $599 (for a TomTom unit)

Note: Prices taken from TomTom website and do not reflect any specials individual stores may have

Read our review of the car kit here.

Read our app review here. Not got the app? get that here.

What do you think? Worth the money? Let us know in the comments.

New Zealand just got a whole new load of GPS navigation love in the shape of CoPilot Australasia [iTunes Link]. Priced at $94.99, the app is another major GPS app in the same vein as TomTom and Sygic and features maps for both Australia and New Zealand. American and European versions of CoPilot have been out for a wee while with Gizmodo even naming it ‘Best Cheap GPS App’. We will be testing the app on the mean streets of Christchurch today and will report back with a full review either this evening or tomorrow morning, so keep your eyes peeled here is the review. In the meantime hit up the ‘read more’ link for the official blurb to whet your appetite!

Here’s the official blurb for CoPilot:

CoPilot Live is the award-winning GPS Sat Nav system that runs on your iPhone, with complete street maps of USA and Canada. It’s your personal travelling assistant that’s always at your side, ready to guide you with turn-by-turn directions and keep you better informed with useful live information about your route.

Every journey easier
CoPilot Live is packed with sophisticated features, previously…

As reported earlier, a major update of Sygic Mobile Maps 2009 [iTunes Link] has gone live through the App Store today. Weighing in at around 350MB, it’s a fairly hefty download which introduces a good amount of new features and a number of improvements and fixes. One of them – text-to-speech – is an exciting and major introduction which could give it quite an edge over the competition. But how does it stack up in real-life use?

The text-to-speech function actually works very well. Instead of just generic “turn left” and “turn right” announcements, Mobile Maps now reads out explicit instructions including the street name, thus eliminating any confusion as to which street you are being directed to. There are four English-language voices to choose from that support text-to-speech – an American male and female, and a British male and female. All four voices are very clear and sound a bit more polished than the original voices (which are still available should you prefer them).

Pronounciation of English / Western names is very good on the whole, with streets like Hereford Street, Gloucester Street, Queen Street all sounding very natural and almost recorded. Unfortunately, though, it does struggle…

This mornings Apple event is done and dusted, and while we’ll provide a wrap-up of the announcements later this morning, the juicy bits for iPhone owners are that iTunes 9 and iPhone OS 3.1 are now live and ready for your consumption! Here’s a quick overview of what’s new in each.

iTunes 9

- iTunes LP. Clearly trying to stimulate sales of whole albums rather than the current trend of buyers picking and choosing select tracks, Apple have added some pretty interesting new features that come packed with select albums. Animated lyrics, liner notes, videos and photos of the band, full-screen art – it all sounds very promising.

- Home Sharing. Apple have dramatically improved the library sharing function of iTunes. In the past, you could see and play tracks from other libraries over your LAN, but now you can authorise upto five computers on your home network to actually import tracks from one library to another, plus purchase syncing – buy a track on one computer and it instantly appears on the others. Great stuff!

- Genius Mixes. Building on the functionality of the genius playlists introduced in the last major iTunes refresh, Genius Mixes automatically…

Since the dawn of time (well, the dawn of the App Store at least), iPhone owners have been craving a Flickr app. We’ve reviewed what we consider to be the best of the third party offerings, and the Flickr Web App has gone some way toward filling that gaping hole where an official app should have been, but today – seemingly out of nowhere – Yahoo! have released an official Flickr app. But should the likes of Mobile Fotos be quaking in their boots?

It has to be said, the official Flickr app makes a great first impression. Upon launch (screenshot in the header), you’re presented with a simple, uncluttered and clean interface with the Flickr logo atop a very slick slideshow of public photos all sweeping effortlessly across your screen in gorgeous pan-and-zoom-o-vision, similar to the effect you get on your iPhoto screensaver on your Mac (and that was sadly missing from the built-in stock Photos app). This, you say to yourself, is gonna be good.

At the bottom of the screen are three simple buttons – ‘Recent’, ‘You’, and ‘Contacts’. Hitting any of these three the first time…

If you’re an iPhone newcomer, you may not be aware that there is a free Apple-produced app on the App Store that really should be baked in to the iPhone OS. Called simply ‘Remote‘, it’s a fantastic app that turns your iPhone into a remote control for iTunes on your Mac or PC. Even if you have downloaded it already, you may not be aware of all the ways you can use this app to turn your home computer into a music powerhouse. Read on for our definitive guide.

Getting up and running couldn’t be simpler. Download the app, and with iTunes running on your computer, start it. Your iPhone will find your computer’s iTunes library. Select it, and Remote will generate a 4-digit pin code for you. In iTunes, you will now see the remote control appear as a ‘device’ in the left-hand sidebar around where your iPhone would normally appear when connected via USB. Click it, and you will be asked to enter the 4-digit pin code from your iPhone. Once entered, the two devices are paired. You only need ever do this once.

You will now be able to control your iTunes library on…

We have been receiving a lot of questions about the car kit for TomTom, so we thought we’d get in touch with them to get some answers. Unfortunately at this stage they haven’t given us any details on pricing but have said that they expect it will be available at the end of summer (US). Here’s what they said….

“More information on the specifications and pricing as of the car kit as soon as the car kit becomes available, which we expect around the end of summer.

Some of the details we can share are:
The TomTom car kit for iPhone is a new car kit especially developed for the iPhone 3G and 3Gs. It ensures easy and safe docking in the car to securely hold and power the iPhone while driving.

Furthermore it offers:

• enhanced GPS performance especially in areas where GPS reception is limited, i.e. when driving through a city with high buildings or forests
• a Built-in speaker for loud and clear voice instructions and hands-free calling in the car
• optional music playback over the car stereo, via standard audio cable (not included with the car kit)
• car charger to charge the iPhone to avoid

…

Well, we’ve had a chance to put it through it’s paces and here it is, the first review of the TomTom iPhone App.

This app needs no introduction and  I would suggest that most people have heard of TomTom. They are quite the household name when it comes to Turn-by-Turn navigation and finally the wait is over, from what feels like such a long time ago when it was announced at WWDC in June.

First things first, price. TomTom for iPhone will set you back $119.99, that’s $35 more than it’s closest competitor Sygic, but are you just paying for a brand name or is it worth the extra money? The TomTom New Zealand app is just that, for your money you only get the New Zealand maps, if you want the Australian maps you are going to be stumping up an extra $104.99, totaling $225 for both sets of maps whereas Sygic will only set you back $84.99. Now if you are not a big traveler it might not make much difference to you, but for people who regularly visit Australia this could be a deal breaker.

When…

The New Zealand version of Tomtom’s turn-by-turn GPS navigation offering for iPhone has been released today. The app is priced at $119.99 and we will be reviewing it in full later on today once have reviewed it now we’ve had a chance to put it through its paces, so keep your eyes peeled for updates.

Here are the prices for the 4 options available:

- U.S. & Canada [App Store]: NZ $124.99
- Western Europe [App Store]: NZ $179.99
- Australia [App Store]: NZ $104.99
- New Zealand [App Store]: NZ $119.99

Losing precious photos is a terrible thing. I learned that the hard way when I accidentally wiped the contents of my hard drive last year. That’s where sites like Flickr (with Flickr itself being arguably the best of them) are real life savers in this world of digital photos where hard copies are so rare. But how can the power and convenience of Flickr be harnessed on the iPhone?

MobileFotos is a kiwi-made app that has been around for as long as the App Store itself, so this is by no means a review of a new product, but a reminder of another great locally-developed app that really does deserve a place on your device.

Once you have authorised your Flickr account on the app, you are launched into a very familiar environment that uses the native iPhone colours and menu structures to allow you to navigate around your Flickr account. Access is given to your photostream, sets, contacts, groups, favourites and tags. Navigating your photos themselves uses an almost identical interface to the Photos app that comes built in to your iPhone. Thumbnails are displayed in a grid which can be fluidly flicked through and then…

Did you feel that? A disturbance in the force… like a million voices suddenly cried out in joy, and were suddenly silenced (while they ran speed tests)…

We are hearing anecdotal reports that Vodafone “may” have tweaked their network in the Auckland area today to improve 3G speeds on the 2100Mhz frequency. This could mean a boost in speeds for the iPhone 3G / 3GS, but for now it’s just rumour. We are currently waiting for official word from Vodafone and will post back with an update once we know what’s going on.

UPDATE: 13/08/09 08:25. Vodafone’s external communications manager Paul Brislen has advised that “[our engineers] have been doing something with the software lately, but nothing in particular that should have that kind of impact.” So…. Overactive imaginations? Coincidence? Conspiracy? Now we don’t know *what* to think, but keep us updated in the comments with your experiences.

Sygic have posted details of new features coming to an update on Sygic Mobile Maps 2009 Australia / New Zealand on iTunes. They include:

*Voice guidance announcing the name of the next street or road
*Choose addresses straight from your iPhone contacts and navigate to them.
*Easy scrolling leverageing the unique iPhone interface
*Improved GPS lock, now faster than ever
*Smoother position display as you follow your route
*No disclaimer warning message after completion of phone call.

The update will be free to existing customers and is currently with Apple for submission to the store. Personally I’m stoked by this update, hopefully the ‘smoother position display’ will iron out the ‘dithering’ issue I mentioned in my review but I am skeptical as to how well the voice guidance is going to handle some of the street names we have in New Zealand!

I know the tests have already been done, and we know that XT wins on the speed front, but I thought I’d do one last comparison of all 3 from the same spot.

Now we have to remember that 2degrees is running on Edge and not 3G, so you can say that the comparison is unfair, but I am not comparing 3G speeds here, I am comparing the providers speeds in general.

At the end of the day, if you are going to choose a provider you need to know what speed you are going to get, and at the moment the speed on 2degrees is EDGE, and it’s only right to compare them to the speeds on XT or Vodafone (for this purpose).

The three tests were done in the square in Christchurch. I stood in the same spot and ran each test, switching the iPhone off/on between SIM swaps. Some users have made comments that better speeds can be achieved on Vodafone by disabling and then re-enabling 3G, but we don’t think consumers should have to go out of their way to learn about and jump through hoops to get around network issues, therefore we…

Voice control. How are you finding it? Personally, I find it about as useful as a chocolate teapot. So much so that I’ve almost given up on it completely, but before I do that I wanted to give it one last chance.

The first time I used Voice Control, I was walking to work with my iPhone in my pocket and I was listening to some Coldplay, but I felt like listening to some Kaiser Chiefs instead so I thought I would test out Voice Control. I held the button on my earphones and said to it “Play music by the Kaiser Chiefs.” To my complete horror, it then replied with “Calling Doctor” and preceded to dial my GP. By the time I’d fished the iPhone out of my pocket and got my bearings enough to end the call it had rung twice. At that stage I disabled voice dialing and haven’t had the guts to switch it back on since.

Even with it being limited to just music controls, I still find it very unreliable and find that it gets commands wrong about as often as it gets them right, which isn’t a good success rate. To…

Back when we launched, we spoke to 2degrees about their plans for the iPhone. They told us that they would let Vodafone and Telecom battle for that market, but that iPhone owners would still be welcome. Well, that welcome has turned to somewhat of a frosty reception this morning with the company’s pricing announcement.

While calling are text rates seem extremely competitive (22c per min to landlines, 44c per min to mobiles, both anytime) and hopefully game-changing, data has been priced at a lofty 50c per MB with no bulk bundles available. The company has also chosen to offer only pre-pay solutions (presumably to minimise operational costs), meaning that iPhone users will be severely stung for choosing 2degrees – a $20 top-up would give users just 40MB to play with, versus 240MB for $18 on XT or 200MB for $20 on Vodafone.

Furthermore, data is provided via EDGE – a data protocol that sits somewhere between GPRS and 3G in terms of speed. There is no 3G service available.

It is unclear at this stage whether or when better data deals will become available, but with the deepest regret we can only advise iPhone users to…

Apple have released an iPhone update this morning -  3.0.1. The update is a very minor one which does nothing more than patch an SMS vulnerabity highlighted yesterday. Do not confuse this with 3.1 which is still in beta – tethering for XT remains unaffected by updating to this release so go ahead and download it. Remember to hit ‘Update’ rather than ‘Restore’ to save you the task of having to re-apply our carrier bundle.

To continue development with iPhone SDK 3.0 on your iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS running iPhone OS 3.0.1 will need to perform the following: Click Here

Anyone about to lay down $140 for an annual subscription should stop what they’re doing right now, and read on to find out how you can buy the exact same thing for just $89.

Amazon are selling what they describe as an “old version” of MobileMe for US$57.99 which equates to NZ$88.93 at today’s exchange rate – but there is nothing “old” about it other than the retail box it arrives in. Inside the box you will find an activation code that you can enter into MobileMe which will give you access to the service for twelve months – nothing “old” about it!

Apple confirm that activation keys are valid for ten years before they expire. There is one small catch however – Amazon don’t ship this to New Zealand, so you’ll need a friend or relative there that you can ship the item to. They won’t need to forward the box to you as all you need them to do is email you the activation code inside, so there are no further shipping costs and shipping within the US is free.

If $89 still doesn’t sound like a deal, then stick around as we’ll be bringing you our guide…

According to campaignmonitor.com, the iPhone now commands a 5.78% marketshare of all email clients, outstripping even GMail. This is pretty big news, considering that the iPhone has only been around for just over two years and that it’s a mobile client. No other mobile clients even make the radar. Not that we’re surprised – the iPhone mail app is by far the best email client I’ve ever used, mobile or desktop. Hit the link to get the full details.

Now here’s a curious couple of apps — dubelle.com produce a series of apps they call “Mobile City Maps” which are essentially cached maps of many world cities, each city sold individually, with POI information such as restaurants and museums. Priced at $1.29 each, I thought I would check out ‘Christchurch‘ and ‘Wellington‘ to see if the price of the app was worth the potential savings on data charges.

Upon opening Christchurch, the user is presented with a map of the city. Zooming and panning is similar in technique to Google Maps, however this is where the similarities end. The maps themselves are – how can I put this politely? – ‘minimalist’. The closest I could zoom in is pictured above, which is almost forgiveable, however I found that once I had scrolled beyond the ‘four aves’ of the Christchurch CBD, street names were no longer present which are kind of, you know, the point of a map.

I hit the little red icon you see at the lower-right of the screenshots to bring up the POI info and tested whether it would at least show me the location of one of these un-named…

Let the stalking commence! Yesterday, Google announced the release of Latitude for iPhone. For those unfamiliar with this lesser-known Google application, Latitude is a somewhat controversial app that lets you see the real-time location of your Google contacts, provided they have given you permission. The service is limited to use in just five countries right now – but guess what? New Zealand is one of them!

Google say that they “worked hard with Apple” to bring Latitude to the iPhone and at first coded it as a native app, however Apple pushed back on this fearing it would cause confusion with the existing Google Maps app. As such, Google coded the application as a webapp. Upon hearing this, I was expecting a somewhat clunky interface but against all the odds Google have managed to pull-off an extremely polished job that is barely recognisable as HTML.

To use the service, users need to navigate to www.google.com/latitude direct from Safari on iPhone. Safari will ask for permission to use location services, and upon okaying this you will receive a second system message asking specificly if www.google.com/latitude can use location services. This is a new API for webapps enabled in…

Since the 3.0 update, a bug has hit the iPhone which causes Caller ID issues for all New Zealand carriers. The issue is that some events such as text messages send the number to your iPhone in the international +64 2xxxxxxxx format, but other events such as calls send the numbers to your iPhone in the national 02xxxxxxxxx format. Most phones will see these as the same number, but since 3.0 not the iPhone.

The result is that if you have your numbers saved in the international format, incoming calls will not marry up with your saved contact and display the number only, not the name. On the flipside, if you save your numbers in the national format, incoming texts will display the number only and not the name.

The only workaround at this stage is to save the number in both formats, but this is a real mess and causes other complications in itself, like having to manually choose which of the “two” numbers you want to send a text to, and if you pick the “wrong” one the reply will come back in a separate thread in the messaging app.

According to a dicussion…

Common Question: Where is the best place to buy an iPhone?

As there are a number of options I have decided to cover them below, giving you some pros and cons for each. Now I know that most people that visit this site will already have an iPhone, but if you already have a 2G or 3G and are moving up to a 3GS and looking around to figure out where to buy, hopefully this will help you out.

A lot of where you are going to buy will come down to which carrier you intend to go with. If you are going to go with XT or 2Degrees then you are probably best to buy from Vodafone Online or the Apple Online Store. If you are going to be a Vodafone customer then really anywhere would suit and it simply comes down to personal preference. Wherever you purchase your iPhone it will be “Factory unlocked” so you will be able to use any SIM card in it. Please note that I have based this on purchasing outright. Yes, there are ways of getting it cheaper by buying it on Vodafone account, then disconnecting, paying penalty fees and…

Ah, winter. Those cold, dark mornings aren’t exactly conducive to getting your arse into gear and getting to work on time, are they? If you’re anything like me you dither around in the morning trying to keep warm and telling yourself “just another minute” before forcing yourself out the door to go to work. And then, as if as punishment from some time-keeping God, you hit traffic. Bad traffic. Or, if you’re bussing, the bus whizzes past you before you get to the bus stop and the next one is 20 minutes away. However with the right tools on board your iPhone, this reality needn’t be yours.

As we all know, your iPhone comes equipped with Google Maps and using GPS it can plan your route and track your progress along the way. But throw into the mix one of the many New Zealand traffic apps available on the App Store and you have not just a route but an indication of how busy the route is likely to be. Just type the word ‘traffic’ into the App Store and you’ll find a plethora of apps that utilize feeds from Land Transport’s numerous webcams all around the…

In a recent test performed using speedtest.net on the same iPhone 3GS, Telecom’s XT network has beaten Vodafone in the speed department hands down.  Telecom XT hit 5.74Mbps in our test, with Vodafone managing a paltry and decidedly red-faced 0.113Mbps. Without wanting to rub salt into the wound… what you gonna do, Vodafone?

I don’t know, you put up with one iPhone-capable network for a year, and then two more come along at once! Joking aside, new-comers 2degrees are about to crank the competition dial up to new levels of awesomeness this August when they go live with their brand new network. 2degrees has commited to spending $250 million dollars on building their new network with new cell sites in the main centres and a roaming agreement with Vodafone to get service to customers when they stray outside of those cities. The network will operate both 900 / 1800Mhz 2G and 2100Mhz 3G services making its ability to deal with the iPhone relatively similar to Vodafone’s.

iPhonewzealand caught up with Bryony Hilless from 2degrees to talk about the compay’s strategy with regards to iPhone — do they intend to be an official carrier? Will they go the back-door route like XT?

“It’s no secret that we are not stocking the iPhone at launch” Bryony tells us, “and at present we are quite happy for Telecom and Vodafone to fight out the iPhone/high-end data market amongst themselves.”

So does that mean 2degrees aren’t interested in connecting iPhones? Certainly not! “People will certainly…

Telecom’s new XT Network, a 100% 3G network operating at 850Mhz in 97% of the places that New Zealanders live, work and play, was practically built to support the iPhone. It’s specs match the Jesus phone perfectly, leaving Vodafone’s network support for the device looking shakey at best. So it’s only natural that users have been holding their breaths waiting for Telecom to announce official support for the iPhone, and placing a crucial second offer on the table for would-be or existing iPhone users.

Despite tempting us with promises early-on of being in “deep discussion” with Apple over the iPhone, Telecom refused to provide anything more solid even in the weeks and days leading up to the official New Zealand launch of the new 3GS device on July 10th. On July 14th, however, Telecom surprised everyone by playing a cheeky wild card that has no doubt had Vodafone scrambling for their lawyers – Telecom are offering iPhone owners a $600 account credit when they sign up to a OneRate 180 plan for 24months, plus throwing in 240MB of data each month for the life of the contract.

OneRate 180 is priced at $79.95 and as the name suggests gives users…

After enjoying a whole year as New Zealand’s only official and capable carrier, Vodafone are now carrying Apple’s iPhone 3GS – only this time they’re not the only network users can connect to. With the spectre of competition in the shape of Telecom’s XT Network, expectations prior to pricing announcements were high for a more aggressive set of plans and subsidies, but have Vodafone delivered?

The hardware on offer, as if we need remind you, are the iPhone 3G in both 8GB and 16GB flavours, as well as the newer iPhone 3GS in 16GB and 32GB sizes. The iPhone 3G 16GB is officially discontinued by Apple so sales of these will be while stocks last only. The iPhone 3G 8GB is available in black only, while all other models are available in both black and white.

In terms of outright pricing for those not wishing to commit to a term or who would prefer to be on Pre-Pay, hardware pricing is as follows:

• iPhone 3G 8GB: $979
• iPhone 3G 16GB: $979
• iPhone 3GS 16GB: $1179
• iPhone 3GS 32GB: $1379

These are some pretty affordable prices for a Smartphone that is arguably the class leader. Compared to…