iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

I've just recently returned from a 10-day vacation in Tübingen, Germany, a university town with a remarkable and picturesque old city and castle. Many of the buildings in the old city date back to the 15th and 16th century. In preparation for the trip, I spent more than $50 on Tom Tom's navigation app for Europe, wanting to make sure I could get where I wanted to go in the city. Its offline feature was the most important for my needs, mapping info on my iPad without requiring an Internet connection. I have a Verizon LTE iPad and could have paid for data service, but it would have entailed some extra charges, and it seemed like Tom Tom, while expensive, would ultimately save me money. (Long story short: I'm currently grandfathered into a $20/month data plan with Verizon, but would have had to forego that plan if I signed up for service in Germany, and would have been forced into the $30/month data plan forever after.) 

Ever since the social app Snapchat debuted on the App Store two years ago, parents everywhere have been hyper aware of the downsides of their teens downloading and using the popular app.

Parents are concerned about enabling their children to receive (or send) sexually inappropriate photos or videos, photos that bully, or images taken in bad taste. If parents think they can routinely check their teen's phone to look for signs of these behaviors, Snapchat puts an end to that. When you take a photo in the app, it's not saved to the camera roll, and when you view a photo in Snapchat, it's available to the viewer for less than 10 seconds, and then it's gone forever. 

Welcome to my iPhoneography workflow. Here, I'll share the images I create with my iPhone and the hand-picked, trial-and-error methods I use to capture and edit them with.

This image I took recently, titled "Sunday Serenity," is a very easy-to-approach iPhoneography photo. I want to share a few quick tips first off. Using your iPhone to take professional-looking photos involves a little manipulation. Trying to get those far-away landscape shots with your iDevice can be difficult compared to using a DSLR camera.

In this photo, the sun was about to come up, which is THE BEST time to catch sunrises (for sunsets, the best time is right after the sun goes down). It all relates to lighting, and colors are more intense before or after the sun makes an appearance.

This article is intended for readers suffering from the narrow field-of-view of iPhones starting with the iPhone 4 and for programmers offering any kind of video recording in their apps.

As you may know already, recent iDevices use image stabilization during video recording. Unfortunately, not even the latest-and-greatest iPhone 5 has optical stabilization, only electronic, unlike the Nokia Lumia 92x. This, unfortunately, means part of the sensor is used for the stabilization itself, further narrowing the already limited field-of-view (FOV). I recommend you watch engadget's iPhone 5 vs. Nokia Lumia 920 videos so you can see how immensely better optical stabilization is.

Marriage may be an ancient institution, but that doesn’t mean you have to take an old-school approach to planning your wedding. The devil is in the details, and when it comes to your big day, there are a lot of details. Ditch the notebooks and go digital with these apps that put your wedding plans in the palm of your hand.

The new, highly-anticipated Lifeproof iPad mini case ($99.99) is now available. Available now at Best Buy as well as at Lifeproof's website, the frē is nothing short of a feat of modern design genius.

The frē takes all of the best elements of its Lifeproof predecessors and fuses them to create a case that is Lifeproof’s best so far. If you are already familiar with Lifeproof cases, you know that the company (recently purchased by Otterbox) excels at crafting some of the best protective cases for iDevices. Sporting slim profiles, supporting full-time use, complete functionality, and control accessibility, Lifeproof cases could perhaps be considered more of an enhancement to your iDevice as opposed to an encumbrance. If Steve Jobs had designed a ruggedized, waterproof, shock proof, snow proof and dust proof iDevice, it likely would have turned out similar to the Lifeproof case. This go-anywhere, do-anything case is simply the best in its class.

Divoom, in my mind, holds the title as the champ of high quality small speakers. One of my favorites is the Bluetune Solo, which I wrote about recently for iPhone Life. And now, there is a new kid on the block with Divoom's recently released Onbeat 200 ($79.99).

I never cease to marvel at the amazing crisp, clear sounds that small speakers can produce these days, and the new Onbeat is no exception.

It measures 6.25 x 2.75 x 2 inches, which makes it totally portable for use at home, in the office, or on the road. I enjoy taking mine out in my Japanese garden while I’m working. I’ve even taken it bird watching with me and called birds with it. As a test while on the road, I listened to an audiobook borrowed from my library on the Onbeat. I was able to hear the spoken words clearly over any road noise and enjoyed the story as I rolled along. Even the people in the backseat were able to listen in without any difficulty. So it passed all the tests.