You’re the outdoorsy type and tend to get your electronic gear in places it shouldn’t go: you could just toss it in a Ziplock bag. Or you could get a fancier type of plastic bag to put it in. The BubbleShield is just that, a double-zipper bag with a hook. The hook is there for easy transport, while the pattern at the back is interrupted in the general vicinity of the iPhone’s camera, allowing you to still take shots with it. And while it’s clearly aimed at iPhone owners, this would work with any phone, really. It’s rated at a IPX5 waterproofing specification, which means:
Protected against water jets – Water projected at all angles through a 6.3mm nozzle at a flow rate of 12.5 liters/min at a pressure of 30kN/m2 for 3 minutes from a distance of 3 meters.
So no submersion but decent protection.
However given that it’s $20 for a pack of 5… maybe double that Ziplock bag and call it a day?
The SNAP! case comes from company Bitplay, which we talked about a few days ago in the context of a wacky shootout lamp. This particular product doesn’t do much more than make your iPhone look a lot like an actual camera, but in our eyes does it really well. There’s a dedicated shutter button and of course you can keep your device’s full functionality. It should work with the iPhone 4 and 4S though pricing or availability information have not been released yet.
You should be able to see a prototype at Tokyo Designer’s Week event if you happen to be in Japan this week.
Getting around in London on public transport just got a little easier. The BusChecker app not only gives you countdowns until your next bus arrives at any of the 20,000 London bus stops, but it packs a neat feature that any drunk/sleepy person could use. See, with iOS 5s region monitoring feature, you can simply get on the bus, tell the application where you’re going and doze off. An alarm will ring as you reach your station. Whether you’ll be awoken from your slumber is another matter altogether.
Aside from that, you can keep track of your bus on a map. BusChecker is around $3.
Ok, so we may be late to the game here, but this little device looks too cool for us to pass on it. It’s basically a lens that allows your iPhone’s camera to shoot in 360 degrees… simultaneously. No stitching images together.
Snap Dot onto your iPhone 4 / 4S, download our free Looker app, and instantly record fully immersive 360° videos right on your iPhone. Going to a concert? You can record the show and the audience. Heading out on a road trip? Leave Dot on the dashboard and record your highway adventures. No matter what you’re recording, Dot sees everything!
Our unique catadioptric optical system is fully AR-coated for excellent color fidelity in all environments. Dot is a lightweight attachment that doesn’t require batteries or external power. Dot comes with a microfiber pouch that doubles as a lens cloth.
Most impressive is when you watch the below video and realize you can pan the camera around, 360 degrees, as the video plays.
We were amazed last time we mentioned the iPhone camera’s medical abilities: there’s an app to monitor not only heart rate, but also heart rhythm, respiration rate and blood oxygen saturation. Yeah, and now it turns out your iPhone can be turned into a Geiger counter without the need of an extra accessory like the one from Scosche we talked about a while ago. See, all you have to do is block the camera with dark tape (electrician’s tape will do) and run this app, the Wikisensor. Turns out that radioactive particles can go through dark tape and be detected by the sensor on the iPhone’s camera as little flashes. Since no visible light is supposed to be coming through, the app correlates the little flashes to radioactivity. Its detection threshold is 5 MicroSieverts per hour.
Watch the video below to get an idea of what radioactivity looks like to your iPhone’s sensor. The Wikisensor application seems to cost $1 or 0,79 €.
“I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” These are words that almost every geek knows, and hopes that they never hear from a computer system. If they don’t ring a bell, they were the ones uttered by HAL 9000 to Dave Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey. HAL was an intelligent computer that was capable of making decisions, as well as (usually) following commands. Naturally, since Siri was introduced earlier this month, there have been a lot of HAL references. In fact, if you ask her about him, she will refuse to discuss the matter.
Well thanks to the bright minds at ThinkGeek, you’ll soon be able to transform Siri into HAL. This IRIS 9000 docking station features a remote with a single button that activates Siri. The station’s built-in microphone will pick up your voice commands, and Siri will respond as usual. The only difference is that the light in IRIS’s eye will flicker while she speaks. I don’t know about you, but I find that both creepy and awesome. For $60, this will also act as a normal docking station, a speakerphone and music player.
The situations in which we’d find ourselves needing to project images from our iPhones onto some surface are few and far between. Still, we’re not all created equal and we can imagine there are those who would indeed enjoy the ability to do just that. For those people, the Monolith case by Century gives you the ability to project images in 640×360 resolution, with a 1000:1 contrast ratio and 12 lumens of brightness. The largest projection size recommended is 60 inches (not 60cm as others have stated, unless the info in the promotional video is incorrect), although at 12 lumens, you better be in a dark environment. The Monolith also does double duty as an external battery pack, raising your phone’s life by an estimated 50%. It will require 4 hours to fully charge although it shouldn’t impact your phone’s charge time.
Sadly again, it’s Japan only at the moment and costs around $260.
Hit the jump for a couple more pictures and a video with totally not annoying music. At all.
This is an object of desire. It’s terribly awful looking and at the same time just awesome. It’s ostentatious, gaudy and classless but also gutsy. See, the EXO7 is a belt buckle that’s large enough to hold your iPhone. Heck, it was made for that very purpose. But if you grow tired of it being a belt buckle, there are attachments that turn it into a pocket holster. It’s made of either brass or aluminum and the sides are inlaid with Pau Ferro wood. If you want to use the phone, flip the top which is held in place with rare earth magnets and hinges smoothly on stainless steel.
As much as we’d like to hope they’ll be, every single Apple PR event can’t be a game changer. And today the world breathed a somewhat disappointed sigh when Apple’s public faces unveiled a marginal update to the current iPhone 4. The mythical iPhone 5 that’s been spotted roaming the woods in Washington, and hanging with Salman Rushdie in dark corners of pubs, was no where to be seen. What took its place was the also speculated iPhone 4S, which like the iPhone 3GS, has a host of marginal updates that will probably have most iPhone 4 users upgrading anyways.
On the inside it’s packing a dual-core A5 chip which Apple claims is twice as powerful as the iPhone 4′s brains. With seven times the graphical prowess, while still being power-efficient for a slightly longer battery life. The notorious iPhone 4 antenna problem has supposedly also been resolved, adopting the case design of the Verizon model. But the 4S is now also a world phone with both GSM and CDMA hardware inside, making them easier to sell from a trunk the world over.
The camera on the iPhone 4S has also received a notable bump, with an 8MP sensor and an f/2.4 aperture making it better suited to shooting in low light conditions. On the video side the iPhone 4S now records in 1080P as well. Combined with the imminent release of iOS 5 next week, and cool new tricks like being able to launch the camera from the lock screen, the iPhone 4S is probably going to continue to be tough competition to dedicated point and shoots.
Last, but certainly not least, is a new feature that’s going to be exclusive to the iPhone 4S, all but ensuring we’re all going to upgrade. Siri is billed as an “intelligent assistant” that’s able to perform a host of iOS related tasks by simply asking her too. Want to know the weather? You can actually ask several different ways, instead of having to regurgitate a small selection of specific phrases. And Siri seems far more capable than the iPhone’s current voice command functionality, allowing you to make calls, set appointments, even text people, just by asking. So hopefully I can finally get my personal assistant off the payroll. (He was actually just an old Thundercats action figure that should have no trouble finding other work. So don’t worry.)
The iPhone 4S will be available starting October 14 in 16, 32 and 64GB capacities for $199, $299 and $399 respectively. (After signing your life away to your local provider.)
Related Tags: accessories, iPhone
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By David Ponce
