SLANT gets appy with BatterySense for iPhone + iPad

Booming announcer's voice: The BatterySense by Philips Consumer Lifestyle app is live in the Apple app store! Now you can be in control of your iPhone, iPod or iPad's power destiny... estiny...estiny.

OK, for real. It's totally gratifying to see this labor of love finally come to life so the rest of you can download it for free. (Please, let us know what you think!)

How did all this get started? SLANT worked with Philips Consumer Lifestyle to concept an app that would be relevant to their mobile power products. So we got to work and the result was BatterySense.

Our goal when designing Battery Sense was to reveal the most pertinent information right away and leave all the other details hidden until you need them. And since it will live on a sexy touchscreen device, we organized the interface with big, giant buttons and gorgeous graphics. That makes it easy to use and fun to look at.

But wait, there's more!

The real genius of BatterySense lies within the "What If" feature. Just slide your finger up the interactive battery meter to tell BatterySense how much more time you need for say, Internet Use, and voila... BatterySense will make some recommendations on what battery-hogging iOS settings you can turn off to help you get there.

And if you get a little greedy over how much extra time you need your battery to last? Well, Philips has some power products to help you with that power boost. (We don't want anyone running around with Dead Battery Anxiety now, do we?)

So after concepting, defining the app's feature, designing the interface, programming with our rockstar development partner Relium, and testing (and testing, and testing), BatterySense is approved and in the App store. Now go download it and cure yourself of Dead Battery Anxiety!

Not News: iPhone 4 Drops Calls. News: I think I know why...

Pretty. Dropped calls? Not so pretty.I'm struggling with a love/hate relationship with my new Apple iPhone 4. See...it's pretty. Really pretty. But making calls, that's not working out so well.  You've probably heard of the signal strength woes when you hold the phone a certain way.  But that's easily fixed: get a case or hold the phone differently. I'm actually ok with this issue.

What I'm not ok with is the call dropping issue. And I'm starting to think it may not be the antennas at all.

Since I started counting, I'm averaging 8 out of 10 calls just completely cutting off.  But I noticed I'm not getting the "Call Failed" screen you normally see when the call...you know, FAILS.  I've also noticed that my cheek has hit the mute button a couple of times during a call. The screen is supposed to be off when it's smushed against your face to keep you from pressing buttons.

So this leads to my theory that it's actually a faulty proximity sensor (which some people have already noted, having issues with screens not turning off in general) causing the dropped calls. A bad proximity sensor could keep the screen from turning off (or staying off) during a call.  Of course, when the screen is on, the buttons are on and your face becomes a giant finger...capable of hitting the "END" button and killing a call.  Which would also explain the mysterious absence of the "Call Failed" screen.

I wanted to document my brilliance in case it turns out to be true.

iTunes needs a facelift.

iTunes needs a facelift...bad. Not because it's "been a while and something fresh would neat." No. It's because the user experience of iTunes is broken.

iTunes is suffering from some growing pains. When it was first designed and released, it was for organizing and playing music. Now it does everything except mop your kitchen floor. The fundamental problem with this is that unless you "grew up" with iTunes, the interface is now very daunting.  It's hard to find things and when you do find what you're looking for, it's been forced to work within the confines of the iTunes interface - when certain things could benefit greatly from an entirely new interface.

Let me demonstrate. One of my gripes is with the iPhone management.  Those of you with iPhones will (hopefully) relate with me that clicking endless checkboxes and choosing from dropdowns is a pain.  Not to mention how much of a pain it is to organize all these new fancy apps on the iPhone's home screens.  So we decided to see what would happen if Apple spent some time rethinking the iTunes/iPhone management layout.  We think it should go something like this (click thumbnails to enlarge):

Main iPhone Sync Settings Screen

Typical Detailed Settings Screen

App Management Screen