CrackBerry Kevin decided to put the brand new BlackBerry Torch 9800’s brand new BlackBerry OS 6 WebKit browser up against iPhone 4’s iOS 4 Safari and Captivate’s Android 2.1 Chrome in a good, old-fashioned browser battle royal.

The results? Win, lose, or draw, RIM has certainly come a long way when it comes to browsers. See the video above and CrackBerry.com’s play-by-play for more. Let us know your thoughts below.

iPhone 4 Safari vs. Blackberry Torch 9800 WebKit — Browser Battles is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Other than the update of iOS for iPhone, Apple also released an update for the iPad OS with a version number of 3.2.1. The update contains a number of bug fixes and improvement. Most notably, it fixes the WiFi connectivity issue that was reported by some iPad users.

Other than improving the WiFi connectivity, according to Apple’s release note, the iOS 3.2.1 for iPad also comes with the following bug fixes:

• Fixed an issue that could prevent copy and paste of single-page PDF attachments in Mail
• Addressed an issue that could cause video playback to freeze
• Improved reliability of video-out when using iPad Dock Connector to VGA Adapter

The update also adds Microsoft’s Bing search engine as a new option. So, you can now switch the default search engine of your mobile Safari from Google to Bing, if you like.

The iOS 3.2.1 is now available via iTunes. But for those using jailbroken iPad, please stay away from iOS 3.2.1. Presently, the Spirit jailbreak tool does not support this iOS version. You’ll lose the jailbreak once you upgrade to the latest version of iOS for your iPad.

How does a photographer use his iPhone to get the job done and what iPhone apps help get him through his day? TiPb’s iPhone at work contest aims to bring you just such slices of the iPhone life. Here’s JustinHammondPhoto’s answer and as a small token of thanks we’re sending him a $20 iTunes gift certificate. If you want to see your name up on the TiPb home page and get a gift certificate all your own, head on over to the TiPb iPhone Forum and share your story now!

I’m a professional photographer from Massachusetts. I have the wonderful job of photographing some of the most beautiful women in the world in the coolest locations all over the country. Models, celebrities, NFL Cheerleaders, it goes on and on. My work has been in magazines, advertisements, Maxim, websites… the works! I love my job!

I honestly realized for the first time when reading this contest how much I actually use my iPhone on a day to day basis for what I do. It’s a lot! Especially now that I have my iPhone 4, it’s been even more. Here’s when:

• I own a studio, but I’m very often on location shooting, which means no wifi (on the beaches, bars, outdoors, etc). So having a 3G connection is great. I often pull up Safari in the middle of a photoshoot to come up with a pose idea, or sometimes girls want to show me a picture of a shot they really love so it’s easy to Google image search some ideas! It helps out a lot during a shoot!

• Also, because I do travel to photoshoot, I’m always using Maps! Maps is so crucial to getting around because I barely know areas well. It’s definitely got me out of so many jams or has even helped find shooting locations! I remember this one time I was doing outdoor shooting and I pulled up my map and noticed a large pond nearby so we walked toward where it was and got some really beautiful shots by the water at a place I would have had no idea about if it didnt show up on the gps.

• It works great in times of urgency! Even last night, the “model light” on my strobe died (lights the model so you can auto-focus on her when there’s low light/lights off). Well, I pulled out my iPhone, opened the new trusty video camera, turned on the new amazing light from the iPhone, and my assistant held it to the model! It was perfect! I was so happy about having the new iPhone 4 last night.

• Also with the new video feature, being HD, I have decided to do some “behind the scenes” videos that I will be posting in the near future of my photo shoots. This is really great for my website and facebook page as a lot of models/fans follow my work, and it’s real fun at photoshoots. I am beyond excited about that. I may even start video blogging and doing tips/pointer videos for photography.

• I also use it for networking with models and clients or even friends with my photography. I save all of my edited photos to my iPhone so when I am out and about, when someone asks what I do, I just open up Photos and show them my work right from my phone – they look amazing on the new retina display! It really allows me to have a portfolio with me at all times. Such a perk in the industry! It’s like carrying my book with me in my pocket!

Then obviously the basics! Calendar for booking shoots/remembering what I have to do that day, and Email for keeping up with everything going on in my life in and outside of photography.

iPhone tip: Always keep it charged/charge every night! I use my iPhone so much, so my battery tends to go fast. I do have multiple chargers to make sure I am never without it. The iPhone really is my personal assistant. If it could only bring me coffee and water and move around lights, I wouldn’t need to hire my real assistant anymore!

Favorite apps: Safari, Calendar, Mail, Photos, Maps. These are my most important and all Apple created! Thank you Apple!

You can see some of Justin’s work at Justin Hammond Photography. Are you a photographer? If so, what apps do you use to help you with your job?

iPhone at Work: Professional photographer is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

When you tap into the Safari’s URL bar in iOS 4 and start typing, Safari starts to do a “keyword search”, i.e. display predictive results based on your bookmarks and history. Anything that contains the text you’re inputing either in the URL or history is listed below the URL field so the moment you see what you want you can just tap it and go.

This makes it easier to find something if you don’t remember the exact web page address or if you know you recently saw a site, and know what it was about, but don’t remember where exactly it was. Just start typing what you do remember and let Safari do the heavy lifting. Highly convenient and certainly “awesome”. [To misappropriate the term from Mozilla]

When you try out the new Safari URL bar, let us know how it works for you. For more, see our complete iOS 4 feature walkthrough.

[Thanks to @jaerre for the reminder]

iOS 4 features: Safari URL bar gets “awesome” is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Summary of the new features include:

• Safari Reader
• Even Greater Support for HTML 5
• Better Performance
• Bing Search
• Safari Extentions

How about our readers? Are you seeing a speed difference? If you find a site that can take advantage or Reader, post it in the comments!

You can download Safari 5 here.

***UPDATE: In order for Reader to appear, you literally have to click on an article on a website. For example, click on this article in its entirety and the Reader button will appear in the smart address bar.

Safari 5, now available for Mac and PC is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

I’m sitting here at the airport waiting for my flight (or the first leg of my flight rather, grrrr!) to San Francisco for WWDC 2010 and catching up on the latest, greatest, coolest, and craziest rumors to hit the web — namely Safari 5, a new version of Xcode, and more.

Safari on the iPhone and iPad is typically ahead of the curve when it comes to supporting Apple’s version of (still emerging) HTML5 and CSS3 standards, and their Nitro Javascript engine, but desktop Safari typically leads the way in terms of cool features like local RSS, Top Sites, etc. According to Macgenerations Safari 5 looks to increase that lead:

• Safari Reader (does that remove Google ads for that “calmer experience”, I wonder?)
• 25% faster Javascript rendering
• Bing as a search option. (Enemy’s enemy, indeed!)
• Dozens of new HTML5 features including Geo Location, full screen video, captioned video, section elements, AJAX history, EventSource, WebSocket, draggable elements, and more. (Begun these Flash wars have).
• Improved developer tools.
• Smarter address field
• Improved tabs settings
• Hardware acceleration for Windows
• Easier Top Sites/Full history switching,
• Private browsing (aka porn mode) icon for easier on/off
• DNS pre-fetching and improved page caching
• XXS auditor
• Faster running JSON (for better web apps).

MacRumors meanwhile hears Xcode 4 might get shown off as a “major update”.

Less rumor and more wishful, if awesome, thinking, Lonely Sandwich wonders if the “lame” Video app on the iPad is a precursor to it getting an Apple TV app as part of Apple’s next gen Apple TV, iTunes.com rollout. Now that would spectacular.

[Macgeneration via 9to5Mac, Macrumors, Lonely Sandwich, photo credit: Flickr/Adam Jackson]

Apple to debut Safari 5? Xcode 4? How about Apple TV on iPad? Pre-WWDC crazy! is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

This is one of the frequently-asked questions from iPhone users:

How can I download file from websites and save it on iPhone?

The built-in mobile Safari does not allow you to download all types of files. File download is only limited to Word, Excel, Powerpoint and PDF files. And, it just lets you view the file via the built-in viewer. You can’t download and save the file into the internal file system of iPhone.

An iPhone developer, Emanuel, answered the above question by developing a cydia app called aDownloader. aDownloader is a great download manager available for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. The download manager lets you download any types of files from any websites via EDGE, 3G or WiFi network.

It supports over 40 types of files including: PDF, Word(doc and docx), Excel(xls, xlsx), Power Point(ppt, pptx), Audio files (mp3, m4a, wav), video(mpeg, 3gp, mov, youtube), Image files (jpg, png, gif, bmp), text files (txt, html, xml), RAR and Zip archives (including multipart, password protected).

With aDownload, it keeps the saved file in your iPhone. You can re-open it anytime. You are also allowed to create folders, cut, copy, delete, and move around files.

Like other download managers on desktop, aDownloader offers simultaneous download feature. At any time during the download process, you can pause the download and resume it later. If you encounter any connection failure, you can resume always resume the download at the point of the interruption.

aDownloader also comes with a sharing feature. By enabling the feature, your iPhone is easily turned into a thumb drive. You can then transfer the file back to your computer over WiFi.

It’s a cool application. Best of all, aDownloader is available for free via cydia. Needless to say, you need to have a jailbroken iPhone to enjoy the app.

If you’re interested in the app, here is the detailed procedures about how you can use it.

How to Install and Use aDownloader to Download File on iPhone

1. First, launch cydia and search for “aDownloader”. Install it once you locate it.

2. After installation, launch the app by tapping the aDownloader icon.

3. Once it’s launched up, you will find a familiar browser-based interface. aDownloader is actually a browser with additional feature for you to download files. Say, you are visiting www.download.com and find a file to download. Simply tap on the download link and aDownloader will then start the download process.

4. You can always view the download status through “Downloads” tab. When the file download completes, you can then access the file in the “Documents” tab.

Sometimes, you may want to transfer the files from iPhone to computer. aDownloader also comes with a Sharing feature that lets you share the file over WiFi. Simply enable the “Sharing” feature in Settings and you can access the file from your computer via browser.

What do you think about aDownloader? As always, leave us comment and share your thought.

H.264, the video codec Apple supports for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad playback, and for the HTML5 video tag in Safari, and now Microsoft is supporting it as well, which means its 66% share will likely go up. Add to that Steve Jobs think the competing, Firefox-supported license-free alternative, OGG Theora, will face patent infringement claims, and it’s looking like we have a web video standards winner.

As anyone who read Steve Jobs’ thoughts on Flash knows, he made a strong case for H.264 video and his hopes/belief it would render the need for Flash’s FLV container, and especially its older, software-bound H.263 codec obsolete. TechCrunch contacted Encoding.com and found out it might just be already. According to the graph above, and given YouTube’s 40% market share alone, it looks like H.264 is up around 66% and growing.

That’s bad news for Adobe, and for OGG Theora whose competing standard is implemented alongside H.264 in Google’s Chrome browser, and exclusively in Mozilla’s Firefox. Worse news is that Microsoft has announced they’re going exclusive for Internet Explorer 9, and like Apple they’re doing it with H.264.

Mozilla backs Theora as a matter of policy, since even though H.264 is free for non-commerical end-users for years to come, it’s owned by a consortium who could theoretically seek a license in the future. Theora is theoretically license-free in perpetuity — but companies like Apple believe that’s also theoretical and only ever one lawsuit away from changing.

Steve Jobs, sending from his iPad again, says exactly that:

All video codecs are covered by patents. A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other “open source” codecs now. Unfortunately juste because something is open scourse, it doesn’t mean or guarantee that i doesn’t infringe on others patents. An open standard is different from being royalty free or open source.

So Apple is paying for H.264 and not risking getting sued for Theora later, and they’re banking on H.264 uptake to be so fast and far, Flash won’t be needed for video playback. At 66% we’re getting close to that point. At 75-80% we’ll be at it. H.264 will be the standard and all of Apple’s devices and platforms will already support it — and support it well.

Now H.264 becoming the standard doesn’t mean it’s the best choice or even the right one, just like DVD, Blu-Ray, USB, MP3, etc. might not be the best or right choices for their standards, but at a certain point all the major browsers and platforms have to get behind something that’s good enough so that when users hit the web or load a video, it just plays.

Firefox should add H.264 support as well. It’s time to check that box off and start arguing about the next one. 3D or a smell plugin or something…

[TechCrunch, fsfe.org via Microsoft blogs, 9to5Mac]

H.264 ascendant: why Apple’s no-Flash, no-Theora gamble is paying off is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

It’s a surprises to many that, Apple approved Opera Mini for iPhone on Tuesday and is now available on App Store for free download.

I am excited when Opera first announced the Opera Mini in mid-Feb. The major selling point is it’s very fast and much faster, faster than Safari. As I mentioned in the earlier post, Opera uses another approach to load web page that reduces the page load time:

Opera Mini takes a different approach to display web page. When Opera sends a request for accessing a web page (say, nytimes.com), that request is actually sent to Opera’s server, which acts as a proxy to contact nytimes.com. The web page is then processed, rendered and compressed by Opera’s backend server before sending back to Opera client on iPhone. As only the rendered result (which is like an image of the actual web page) is sent back to the iPhone, this minimizes the local processing and thus, results in significantly faster web page loading.

With the debut of Opera Mini on iPhone, let’s see if Opera delivers what it promises.

My first impression is Opera Mini is fast but not lightning fast as it advertised. I tried to access nytimes.com and Opera Mini loaded up the page quickly. However, when I did the same on mobile Safari, it is just 3-4 seconds slower when a readable web page (i.e. to the point I am able to read the page, even it’s not fully loaded) is displayed. I also ran through the same test using my iPhone 3GS on other sites and the results are similar. The test was done on 3G network. When it’s performed on WiFi, the speed advantage of Opera Mini is less notable. But testing on EDGE network using the original iPhone, I did notice an uptake in speed for Opera. It renders web page much faster than that on mobile Safari. Despite the speed advantage on EDGE network, I wonder how many iPhone users are still using EDGE to web surfing.

Speaking of page rendering, Opera is not on par with mobile Safari, which uses WebKit as the rendenring engine. On Safari, webpages are rendered to look exactly the same as the desktop counterpart with good layout and great graphics. Opera has mentioned in its the speed improvement comes with no major sacrifice. However, that’s not very true for page rendering. Opera only renders webpage in “Helvetica” font and ignore all the fonts defined in the webpage. When the webpage is first rendered, without zooming in, it’s almost unreadable. By turning iPhone sideway, Safari instantly widens the webpage and makes it more readable. On the other hand, Opera keeps the webpage as it is in portrait mode.

The worst is Opera Mini does not render some websites properly.

That said Opera allows you to tap on a particular section and zoom into it quickly. Once the webpage is enlarged, you will not have any problem reading the page and scroll through it. Unlike mobile Safari that lets you pinch-to-zoom, Opera offers tap-to-zoom with two zoom levels only. That means you can either read the whole web page or zoom into a particular section.

The Opera team completely redesigned the user interface controls such as button and menus, as well as, the control placement. For instance, the “Back” button is placed on the top-left corner for iPhone applications that follows Apple’s guideline. However, as you will find, the “Back” button is situated on the top-right corner in Opera Mini. If you are accustomed to the standard interface design of iPhone applications, it will take you some time to get used to Opera’s interface. Riccardo Mori gave a very good review regarding Opera’s user interface and here is his brief description about the UI,

Opera Mini doesn’t look like an iPhone application at all. No UI element looks or is positioned like the familiar CocoaTouch UI. Buttons are different, menus are different, switches are different.

In term of user feature, Opera Mini adds some goodies that are not found in mobile Safari. When Opera is first launched, it shows a “Speed Dial” page that lets you access your favorite website by just a single tap. It’s a very nifty feature that I enjoy most. Opera Mini comes with a predefined set of bookmarks including Facebook, My Opera, BBC News and CNN. You can simply tap on a free spot to add in your favorite website. While viewing webpage, you can always use the “Find in page” function to search for text. Opera Mini also allows you to save the webpage for offline reading and lets you access the browsing history. The tab interface is also a cool add-on.

Overall, Opera Mini offers some really nice features and it’s great to see Opera release an alternate browsers for iPhone. Now, you have more choices. However, unless you’re still using the original iPhone and EDGE network, the speed improvement and other nifty features offered cannot outweight the superior browsing experience on mobile Safari. I just don’t think Opera will become a mainstream browser on iPhone, though it was downloaded over one million times. At least for me, mobile Safari is still my favorite.

Anyway, Opera Mini is free. It won’t hurt to download it [iTunes link] and give it a try. Perhaps, you may enjoy using it.

So, what do you think about Opera Mini? As always, leave us comment and let us know your experience.

Well, technically not Apple the entity, but an employee of Apple named Anders Carlsson announced WebKit 2 yesterday and for geeks it could easily have been a Jobsian “One more thing…”

This is a heads-up that we will shortly start landing patches for a new WebKit framework that we at Apple have been working on for a while. We currently call this new framework “WebKit2″.

WebKit2 is designed from the ground up to support a split process model, where the web content (JavaScript, HTML, layout, etc) lives in a separate process. This model is similar to what Google Chrome offers, with the major difference being that we have built the process split model directly into the framework, allowing other clients to use it.

They’re also offering non-blocking API which Clint Ecker at Ars Technica

should result in much more responsive applications which hook into WebKit2. Theoretically, while the renderer is rendering something, the main application loop can move on to doing something else as requested by a user.

WebKit is the open-source browser rendering engine that originated as KHTML/Konquerer on Linux but was taken under Apple’s wing and became the core of Safari on both the desktop and the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. (Google also uses it for Chrome, Android, and Chrome OS, Palm for the webOS browser, and RIM is developing a WebKit browser for BlackBerry).

What this means for iPhone and iPad users, of course, is that we’ll eventually get faster versions of Safari that when one page crashes just drops us back into another page rather than taking the whole browser down with it. Put that together with the other advances in HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript (including frameworks) Apple has been pushing out, and the future of the web for developers and users gets really interesting.

WebKit2 with speed and crash-proofing — Apple’s other big announcement is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog