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The big news this week has been commentary, speculation, conjecture and downright silliness about the iPhone 4 antenna issue.  Who knows what Apple will say at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern today (although Scoopertino has a humorous prediction).  I’m sure that the announcement will be analyzed six ways to Sunday, but hopefully it will move us towards the end of this unfortunate chapter in iPhone history.  There were a few other news items this week of note, such as:

• David Pogue of the New York Times wrote (again) about Line2, an iPhone app that provides you with a second phone line.  The app is ever more useful under iOS 4.
• Pogue also iPhone apps that we wish we had, although frankly I think that several of these already exist.  For example, he wants an app that can tell you the aisles for items in the grocery store, but I’ve been using an app called Grocery IQ for a while now that groups like items together based on where they are likely to be in a typical grocery store (even if it doesn’t specifically say “in this store, Aisle 4, left side”).
• As David Chartier of Macworld reports, yesterday Apple released iOS 4.0.1, which changes the formula used by the iPhone to determine how many bars of signal strength to display.
• If you are in the market for an external battery for your iPhone, I use the RichardSolo batteries.  The company sent me free samples almost two years ago, and they are still working great.  The RichardSolo 1200 normally costs $45 but is on sale until Monday for only $20.  My review from 2008 is here.
• For just $10, you can buy a device that plugs into your headphone port and turns your iPhone into a universal remote control.  MobileCrunch has the details.  Looks neat.
• Dan Frakes of Macworld takes a first look at several cases for the iPhone 4.
• Rosa Golijan of Gizmodo reports that if you are a student with an e-mail account that ends in .edu, you can get a free year of Amazon Prime.  I’ve long been a subscriber and my wife and I use Amazon all the time.  iPhone J.D. is an Amazon Affiliate, which means that if you click here before you purchase something, for some of the items on Amazon, Amazon pays a tiny percentage of the sales to support iPhone J.D.  It doesn’t cost you anything extra.
• Steve Sande of TUAW has some tips for using FaceTime.
• Sebastien of the iPhone Download Blog describes how he went through three different iPhone 4s in three weeks.
• And finally, Benjamin Reece is a New Orleans-based filmaker who got a lot of press in 2008 and 2009 for his series of Fifty People, One Question short films (all worth watching).  Reece and filmmaker Philip Bloom announced plans to team up to create a cinematic short film shot completely with an iPhone 4.  They set up this site to solicit funding for a movie to be shot in Brooklyn, NY, but it appears that they didn’t get the necessary funds in time.  That’s a shame because the following teaser film, shot in New Orleans on an iPhone 4, gives you some sense of how cool the final film could be.  Hopefully it will still get made.

the first iPhone 4 cinematic film. from Benjamin Reece.

And by the way, here is one of the Fifty People, One Question films, one called PostSecret.  It interviews interesting people and features Mastermind Theatre‘s great Pictures of Audrey in the soundtrack:

I believe that the iPhone 4 is the best smartphone ever sold, and every day I am finding new things that I love about it.  One of its many advantages is that it does a much better job of getting a 3G signal.  Areas that used to be dead zones for me — such as certain locations in my office, 46 floors up in the air and far from cell towers — are now areas in which I can initiate and receive calls.  I don’t know if the improvement comes from better internal circuits, updated firmware, or the unique antenna on the outside of the phone, but the better reception is certainly real.  

Unfortunately, much recent media attention has emphasized reception problems with the iPhone 4 instead of the reception improvements, including the possibility that an iPhone 4 user can get worse reception if the user places a hand over the bottom left portion of the phone, something that a right-handed person like me would rarely do when using the phone but might be more common for lefties.  In my experience, this is not an issue in areas with strong 3G coverage, but if you are in an area with weak coverage — including, for example, areas where you could never get coverage with prior iPhones and are only now getting coverage with the iPhone 4 because of its improvements — then the problem is real.  I have not been able to force a call to drop under these circumstances, but I have been able to slow down downloads of data, so I can see how it is possible that others might see dropped calls with a hand touching that part of the iPhone 4.  A good recent post on Engadget evidenced how different people are seeing different issues, some seeing no iPhone 4 reception problems and others seeing real problems.  All in all, I think that Harry McCracken summed it up best when he recently wrote:

The iPhone 4′s innovative
antenna-wrapped-around-the-case improves reception.  Except when you use
the phone in an area with marginal reception, aren’t using a case, and
bridge the gap in the lower left-hand corner with your hand.  In that
situation, it can be deadly.

Had Apple simply told all iPhone purchasers from the outset something similar to what McCracken wrote, perhaps we wouldn’t have seen all of the media attention, especially the attention that resulted from Consumer Reports articles concluding that the iPhone 4 is the best smartphone on the market and yet also stating that because of this antenna issue, Consumer Reports doesn’t want to recommend that anyone buy the iPhone 4.

Last night, Apple announced to media outlets such as Macworld and Engadget that it will hold a press conference tomorrow, Friday June 16, at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern to address the iPhone 4 — and presumably to address this antenna issue.  I’m curious to see what Apple says, and I’m hopeful that Apple’s announcements will allow people to move past this issue, because for me, the bottom line is (1) the iPhone 4 is an amazing smartphone, truly the best in class and (2) if you want to get better reception, that is a reason to BUY the iPhone 4, not a reason to avoid it, although you may have to be careful about how you hold it (or use a case) in those weak signals areas in which, before the iPhone 4, you might not have gotten a signal at all.

You can charge your iPhone by plugging a cord into the iPhone and plugging the other end either into a USB port on a computer or by plugging the other end into a USB power adapter that is plugged into the wall.  Which charges more quickly?

Justin Horn of the When Will Apple? blog ran some tests two years ago and found that his iPhone 3 charged in 90 minutes when plugged in to a wall outlet and in 140 minutes when charging over USB.  He recently ran similar tests on the iPhone 4, and his results are described in a post on Justin’s blog and shown in the following graph, which Justin gave me permission to republish here:

In his test, it took Justin an extra 30 minutes (130 minutes versus 160 minutes) to get a full charge on USB versus plugging it into a wall outlet.  And perhaps just as importantly, his tests show that you get more charge along the way using a wall outlet, so if you only have 30 minutes to spare, in Justin’s test you’ll go from zero to 25% over USB and zero to almost 35% with a wall outlet.

Different computers have different USB charging capacity, and the latest Apple computers provide more power over USB than earlier models.  Thus, I expect that if you expanded this chart to cover different Mac and PC computers, you’d see different results charging over different USB ports.  Having said that, I think that it is fair to say that if you want the fastest charge, use a power outlet.

Many attorneys who read iPhone J.D. write to tell me how they are using their iPhone in their practice.  I love to read these stories, and with your permission, I’d love to share your stories with others.  I find that when I hear what others are doing, it usually gives me more ideas for making the most of my iPhone in my practice.

I received a note the other day from Oxford, Mississippi attorney Tom Freeland.  Tom’s law firm Freeland & Freeland (and its predecessors) has been in the same location for over 100 years, but having one foot in history doesn’t stop Tom from having another foot in high technology.  He runs the great NMissCommentor blog which discusses everything from Mississippi and federal Fifth Circuit law to technology to food and drink.  (One recent post on the Ramos Gin Fizz spawned a vigorous debate in the comments over how to best make that drink and whether to use soda water.  Like Tom, I’d trust the New Orleans restaurant recipes over anything on Wikipedia!)  Tom is also on Twitter as @NMissC.

Tom Freeland wrote to me the other day to share this story on successful use of his iPhone and laptop at trial.  And as Tom suggests, I suspect that he could rely even more on the iPhone and less on a laptop in the future.  Here is Tom’s note:

I’m just at the end of a criminal trial in federal court (the jury is deliberating) that was estimated to take four to six weeks; we’re at four weeks plus a day now. [Jeff notes:  Tom’s trial is now over; Tom represented a defendant in a Medicare and Medicaid fraud trial, and while some defendants were convicted, Tom’s client was found not guilty.]

At the pretrial conference, I pointed out to the judge that many of the lawyers were from small firms in other towns (and states) and asked if we could bring smart phones and computers with
wireless access into the courtroom to stay in touch with our offices, something that is not allowed under the local court rules.  (The rules were amended last year to prohibit wireless “broadcasting” from courtrooms to
assure, among other things, that liveblogging would not happen from the courtrooms. While this was apparently because of the experience in the Northern District in the Scruggs cases, as one of the bloggers who actually blogged those hearings, I am unaware of any blogger who was “live”— it was explicitly against the court rules.)

The court allowed it, and has been extremely tolerant of the lawyers use of these devices as long as they do not make a sound.  (Any ringers going off result in a $100 fine, something that two lawyers have experienced. I have a very careful check-the-phone process precourt, and have just had the sound off on my computer all through the trial.)

The devices have been heavily used and very handy, such as being able to text my office with research projects or in search of documents.  (I’ve a full set on my laptop and if they get me a bates or exhibit number, we’re in business.)  A couple of times, wireless access to cases to respond to factually distinguish a case has been critical.  I’ve had intermittent access to wireless, and so have relied mostly on Westlaw on my laptop, although your comment about FastCase today on your blog has made me wish
I’d thought of it on occasion when a new case was cited in chambers.  I would be a little self conscious about staring at my phone in that  context, although with as many as a dozen lawyers in chambers at once that might not be that attention-drawing.

I’ve used my iPhone in trial for the exact same purposes — keeping in touch with folks at the office so that they can bring us what we need in court, and looking up cases on Fastcase.  I’ve also used Fastcase on an iPhone when in chambers during a jury charge conference, and to avoid being disrespectful it is helpful to have one of your partners on the front-line talking with the judge while you are in the background pulling up and reading a case, but then once you are done you can talk about the case and distinguish it as appropriate.  I feel bad for attorneys in courts that prohibit the use of an iPhone and similar devices during trial because they are incredibly useful.

If you have a story about the successful use of an iPhone in your law practice, please send me an e-mail at jeff@iphonejd.com
and I’d love to share the story here.

I have been using an iPhone 4 for almost two weeks, and the only problem I have had with it was that every once in a while during the first few days — when I was in the middle of doing something else — I would suddenly get an error message on the screen saying “No SIM card installed.”  The error was odd because it never happened when I was actively using the AT&T network, although I’m sure that my iPhone was communicating with AT&T towers in the background.  One of the times that it happened, I snapped a picture of it so that I could post it here:

 

Whenever this happened, if I restarted my iPhone (hold down the button at the top for a few seconds, slide to power off, then press the button at the top to turn the iPhone on again), the iPhone would again see the AT&T network and not display the SIM card message.  Nevertheless, it was annoying to have to restart my iPhone.  At one point, I actually had to restart my brand new iPhone 4 twice during the same day.

I have seen all kinds of advice online regarding what to do in this situation.  Some people suggested returning the iPhone to an AT&T store to get a new SIM card.  Some people have suggested going to Settings –> General –> Reset –> Reset Network Settings.  A third suggestion, and the one that I used, was to use a paperclip to eject the SIM tray on the side of the iPhone 4, take out the SIM card, put it back in again, and then replace the SIM tray.  After doing that, I have now gone over a week since without seeing the error message again … long enough for me to decide to post here that this was a fix that worked for me, at least so far.

I was surprised to see that this is not an issue unique to the iPhone 4.  People have been complaining online for years about seeing the same message on the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 3G.  I had just never heard about it before.  And the problem isn’t even unique to the iPhone; there are lots of posts on the Internet with people making the same complaint about other phones that use SIM cards.

I have also seen a few posts that suggest that the problem is that there is dirt or a smudge on the SIM card.  Thus, if the problem does happen to me again, I’ll try to gently wipe off the SIM card with a lint free cloth before I return it.  Maybe there was a speck of dust on mine and the simple act of removing it and returning it knocked the dust off without me even noticing it.  (And if there were any Whos down in Who-ville on that speck of dust, I apologize for not hearing you.)  (Yes, perhaps I have been reading too many Dr. Seuss books to my kids.)

[UPDATE 8/5/10:  After several weeks of everything being fine, the problem happened to me again last week IN THE MIDDLE OF A PHONE CALL.  The call dropped, and I thought that maybe I just lost a 3G signal — something that doesn’t happen to me very often, but at the time I was in another city and wasn’t paying attention to the strength of the 3G signal in that area.  But then I looked at the iPhone and saw the dreaded No SIM message.  Arggh!  So on Friday, July 30, I visited my local AT&T store, and the helpful salesperson said that the best fix is to replace the SIM card, which he did quickly.  So far I’ve been using this new SIM card for about a week without any problems, but I’m keeping an eye on this.  I’ll keep you posted on my experiences.]

[UPDATE 8/23/10:  See this post.]

Hopefully this problem will never happen to any of you, but if it does, now you know some possible solutions.

I didn’t run across a huge number of iPhone-related news stories this week that I considered worth sharing here, but these struck me as interesting:

• One of the limitations of FaceTime is that it currently only works with Wi-Fi.  However, the Fring app recently added two-way video calling, and it works over 3G.  Click here for Fring (free): 

  

• Miguel Helft of the New York Times reports that Apple banished a developer from the App Store after he somehow accessed the accounts of users and then used those accounts to purchase book apps that the developer was selling on the App Store, resulting in those books shooting to the top of the top seller list in the book category.  Tsk tsk.
• iSmashPhone lists some top iPhone productivity apps.  There are some good ones on that list.
• Minneapolis attorney Randall Ryder opines on the Lawyerist site that lawyers do not need the iPhone 4 because there are problems with reception and because the extra features do not justify the price.  I am waiting to use my iPhone 4 a little longer before I write my review, but let me give you a preview:  Ryder is wrong.
• Ryan Davis of Gizmodo writes an amusing story about leaving his new iPhone 4 on the roof of his car.
• MacYourself describes four good but not-so-obvious features of iOS4:  (1) the screen orientation lock, (2) the ability to display a character count in text messages, (3) using letters in addition to numbers in the password to unlock your iPhone and (4) the ability to detect tracking numbers.
• Tony Bradley of PC World writes about the increasing use of iPads at large companies.
• Earlier this week I wrote about the new Fastcase app.  Unfortunately, the app is still not available in the App Store.  However, 3 Geeks and a Law Blog has some screenshots of the app on an iPad.
• Josh Barrett of Tablet Legal reviews the different word processors available for the iPad and analyzes which ones have the best MS Word compatibility.  Like Barrett, I wish we had a way to handle track changes in an iPhone/iPad app.
• And finally, here is a cute cartoon on what might be a typical reaction to a new iPhone 4 (via Gizmodo):

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

I never thought I would review a flashlight app on this website.  I don’t mean to imply that an iPhone isn’t useful as a flashlight.  For as long as I’ve had an iPhone — and even before that when I had a Palm Treo — I’ve occasionally used the screen of my phone as a flashlight.  For example, if I find myself walking upstairs in the dark at night, I may turn on my iPhone to make sure that there are no children’s toys that I might trip over.  Nevertheless, I’ve always thought that it was a little silly to pay for a flashlight
app considering that most any app will light up your iPhone screen
enough to provide some light in the dark.  If the iPhone doesn’t seem bright enough, just tap an app like Mail or the Calendar that has a lot of white space.

But with the iPhone 4, there is finally a real reason for a flashlight app.  The LED light that provides a flash for the camera provides much more light than the iPhone screen, even if your brightness is turned all the way up.  Thus, having an app that turns on the light quickly can be quite useful.

The iPhone 4 has not been out very long, but we already have a ton of flashlight apps, many of which cost $0.99.  I haven’t tested any of them because there is an app called LED Light for iPhone 4 Free that does the job just fine and, as its title suggests, is free.

The app could not be more simple.  Start the app and you see a button.  Touch the button and the LED light comes on.  At that point, I recommend that you just leave the button in the on position.  Every time you exit the app the LED light goes off, and every time you return to the app the LED light comes back on.

  
 

If for some reason you have the need for a flashing light — a strobe light — just tap the button at the bottom.  A slider comes up so that you can control the speed of the strobe effect.

 

Using the flash for a long period of time surely wears down the battery, but I suspect that when you use an app like this as a flashlight, you are typically just using it for a minute or less.  If you plan to use the app as a strobe light for your next disco party, consider plugging in your iPhone first.

By the way, this is one of the first apps that I’ve used that has Apple’s new iAds in it.  If you are curious to see how an iAd works, that is another reason to download this app.  And I cannot think of a better app for an iAd.  It makes little difference what is on the screen while you are using this app — all that really matters is that the LED light goes on — so why not stick an iAd in there.  It certainly doesn’t get in the way.

[UPDATE:  MacRumors reports that Jason Ting, the developer of LED Light for iPhone 4 Free, made $1,372 from iAds revenue in just the first day that his app was available.  Apparently, giving away a free app can be quite profitable!  To be fair, though, this may just be a lot of people who, like me, saw this app as an opportunity to try out iAds for the first time.  As more and more apps have iAds and thus the novelty to users wears off, revenue to developers may decrease.]

As I noted above, we already have several apps in the App Store that do the same thing.  In fact, before I downloaded this one, I downloaded the free app LED Torch Flashlight and it works very similar to LED Light for iPhone 4 Free except that it lacks the strobe light function.  Even though I doubt I will use that function very often, why not get one that has that feature just in case you want it.  Having said that, I’m sure that we will soon see many more LED flashlight apps for the iPhone 4 adding lots of additional features.  Perhaps we will see one that integrates with Facebook, posting a status update every time you use the app.  “My light is now on.”  “My light is now off.”  Maybe there is some feature to be added to a flashlight app that will actually have some utility, but for now the LED Light for iPhone 4 Free app seems to do everything I would want.  And the price is right.

If you own an iPhone 4, I think that you will find this app useful from time to time.

Click here to get LED Light for iPhone 4 Free (free): 

There are lots of great stories about people finding their lost iPhone by using the Find My iPhone feature available to subscribers of MobileMe — sometimes because the iPhone is stolen, but often just because a person cannot remember where they left it.  As useful as Find my iPhone is, be aware that if you find yourself in a tall building, the feature doesn’t work very well.

For example, my law office is on the 46th floor of One Shell Square.  When it was built in 1972 it was the tallest building in the entire Southeast, and it remains the tallest building in New Orleans.  From my office, I have a great view of the city and the Mississippi River, but that high up I don’t have great AT&T reception (although it is much improved with the iPhone 4).  Here is a view of the Mississippi River and the Warehouse District in New Orleans, taken from my office using an iPhone 4 (click to see the full size, original file):

 

The Find My iPhone feature, like the iPhone Maps app, uses GPS and cell tower triangulation to determine where you are located, but I suspect that it presumes that you are at ground level because whenever I am on the 46th floor of One Shell Square or any other tall office building, I find that Find My iPhone is really off.  For example, here are two recent readings when I was sitting at my desk in my office.  My office building is located where I placed a green rectangle with arrows pointing to it, but my iPhone thinks that I am located many blocks away.  In the first picture (using Maps), it thinks my iPhone is close to where the New Orleans Convention Center is located.  If I didn’t know better, looking at this map I’d think that someone in town for a convention had stolen my iPhone.  In the second picture, taken a different day (using the Find my iPhone app), my iPhone is supposedly on the other side of the Superdome from my office.

  
 

If you subscribe to MobileMe and you lose your iPhone, by all means use Find My iPhone to try to locate it.  But just keep in mind that if you lost your iPhone on the upper floors of a skyscraper, you can’t trust the Find My iPhone map.

Click here to get MobileMe discounted at Amazon for only $89.24 (about $10 off).

Click here to get the Find My iPhone app from Apple (free): 

I’ve raved in the past about Fastcase, a must-have app for any lawyer using an iPhone.  The app allows you to search and access caselaw and statutes on your iPhone, for free.  Up until now, you could use the app on an iPad in expanded screen mode, but today Fastcase is releasing a new version of the app that runs natively on the iPad to take full advantage of the large screen and which also runs even better on the iPhone.  [UPDATE 7/17/10:  The app is finally in the App Store.]

I don’t own an iPad yet, but apps like this push me closer towards getting one.  Ed Walters, the CEO of Fastcase, sent me some images so that I could see what the app looks like on an iPad and gave me permission to share them here.  It looks like this app really shines on the iPad, with a large screen making it easy to read cases and statutes.  Click on any of these pictures for full size views:

  
 

  
 

I see that there is a slider that allows you to increase the font size to make it even easier to read cases.  It is unclear to me whether you can also change font sizes in the iPhone app; the app still isn’t live in the App Store as I type this, so I’ll have to see for myself later today.  I also love that in landscape mode on the iPad, you can see both the list of cases on the left and the case itself on the right:

Obviously, the app preserves the “Save” feature, and that is one of my favorite parts of the Fastcase app.  There are several cases that I find myself referring to frequently, and it is great to be able to essentially carry the cases around with me at all times just by saving the case to the Saved Documents area of Fastcase.

Ed tells me that if you use Fastcase on an iPhone, the changes in the new version are more subtle, things like different page navigation.  It is not yet clear to me whether this version of Fastcase is optimized for iOS 4 to provide, for example, fast app switching; again, I’ll find out later today when the app is out.

As I mentioned last Friday, the American Association of Law Libraries recently named the Fastcase app the best new product of 2009-2010 — high honors considering the other great legal research products to come out recently such as the new version of Westlaw.  The honor is well deserved.  I love having an iPhone with me in court because I know that I can always use Fastcase to pull up any case that I need.  For those with an iPad, you now have that same ability, although with a larger screen that ability is far more compelling.

Click here for Fastcase (free): 

Last week I mentioned that you can use the Glyphboard web app to access 48 special characters, such as an Apple, that you can paste into the title of a folder.  After the article was picked up on Daring Fireball, I got a large number of comments on that post, including some pointing out that you can do a similar trick with Emoji icons.

Emoji is the Japanese word for picture characters, and in Japan, Emoji are incredibly popular for use in text messages and instant messaging.  There are tons of different Emoji images ranging from happy and sad faces to animals to flags to musical instruments, and most Emoji characters are in color.

Emoji has been a part of the iPhone since version 2.2 as an alternative keyboard, but it is typically available only to Japanese iPhone users.  (Indeed, I remember reading way back when that few Japanese customers would consider buying a smartphone that lacked Emoji, so Apple essentially had to add the feature for that market.)  Nevertheless, it is possible for iPhone owners outside of Japan using iOS 4 to enable Emoji just by downloading a free app and restarting your iPhone.  This does not require jailbreaking your iPhone.  Sebastien at the iPhone Download Blog has a great post on how to enable Emoji on your iPhone running iOS 4, so rather than repeat the steps here I’ll just refer you to his article.

Once you have turned on the Emoji keyboard on your iPhone, you can just switch to that keyboard and select a picture character to use in the title of a folder using the same steps that I outlined last week.  In fact, it’s even easier because you don’t have to copy from one location and them paste into a folder name; just enable the Emoji keyboard and directly type any picture that you want.

 

Some pictures look better than others.  For example, I tried to use an umbrella for the folder containing my weather apps, but it didn’t look very good against a dark background.  So instead, I used the sun icon, and that works quite well.

 

I also like using some musical notes for various music-related apps and a color airplane for some travel apps.

I don’t plan to have picture icons for all of my folders, but so far I find that having pictures on a few folders is nice.  Indeed, it seems faster to identify a folder with a unique picture.  I suppose that is because of the old picture-thousand-words phenomenon. 

UPDATE:  I see that Alan at Art of the iPhone has a similar post today, and in his examples he puts an Emoji icon right before the text in the folder name.  That’s another interesting way to do it, so check out Alan’s post to see that approach.