nanoomi

The iPhone 4S launches in Korea tomorrow (11 November 2011) but yesterday I got a sneak peak at the 4S thanks to a source with access to those kinds of things.

On the outside the 4S is the same as the iPhone 4 albeit with a slight modification to the case in terms of where the volume buttons and standby button are.

But the insides are all new promising faster performance thanks to a better processor and a much better 8 MegaPixel Camera with a new lens optimised for low light conditions and a Sony made image sensor meaning you can leave the point and shoot at home – the iPhone 4S will probably be your new camera as well as your phone.

The most hyped and potentially killer app to come to the iPhone in this iteration is “Siri”. Touted as your personal digital assistant, Siri takes voice command of your phone to a new level. Able to parse real language you can tell Siri to send a message to a contact and dictate the contents of the message and check it before sending it off – all with a single touch.

“What can I help you with today?”

The funny thing is that, for now, Siri doesn’t speak Korean, nor does its database cover anything Korea related – the word from Apple being it might not be up and running until next year some time. Case and point:

If you are in the Market for a new phone – the iPhone 4S might just be the ticket – with KT offering some good deals:

The 16GB model will cost ₩814,000 outright. Going by my current phone plan i-Value for ₩54,000/month you’ll get 300 minutes of calling, 300 messages and unlimited Internet, while the handset will only cost you ₩212,000 or about ₩8,000 a month over the course of a 2 year contract.

BUT wait – there’s more! KT will let you trade in your iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4 and give a further discount on the price of the handset:

Trading in your iPhone 3GS will net you a discount of between ₩100 – ₩150,000 depending on the capacity and the iPhone 4 will net you a discount of up to ₩210,000! Meaning for some customers upgrading to the iPhone 4S is practically free!

Free!

If you are in the neighborhood, yours truly, The Chosun Bimbo wil be at KT’s Gwanhwamun Global store tomorrow morning between 7:30 – 9:30am demonstrating Siri (in English) at KT’s launch event. There will be balloons, geeks, girls in short skirts dancing to loud obnoxious music and there might even be snacks!

A big thanks to my source for the peek – the views expressed here have nothing to do with KT and they’re not paying me. Although if they’d like to give me a free iPhone I’ll say pretty much anything. Especially if it’s against dirty ol’ SK Telecom. Boo!

Chris Backe of Chris in South Korea fame, has been working on an iPhone app called Seoul Taxi. designed to make life easier for visitors and residents alike, the app concentrates on making your communications with Seoul’s many and varied taxi drivers something of a more pleasant experience. Chris was  gracious enough to give me a free copy to review.

Designed for iOS 4 , the app is specifically for iPhone and iPad Touch and gets scaled if you use it on iPad. I can understand the choice here, if you are going to a destination I guess you are more likely to take your phone with you. On the other hand the iPhone’s display is a little small for your average middle aged taxi driver. Having to hand one’s phone over to a taxi driver is always a dodgy proposition while in contrast holding up the iPad’s 10 inch display is fine for even the most far sighted of Seoul’s taxi drivers!

The app lists over 2000 destinations in Seoul including over 800 restaurants and close to 100 hotels as well as other destinations ranging from art galleries (who knew there were so many galleries in Seoul) to over 150 bars.

Now if you know where you are going and are strictly using the app to assist you in your taxi dealings, simply enter the name of your  destination and hit search, odds are you’ll get the info you need.

Once you have found your destination you are presented with a couple of options. Selecting “Taxi Card”will display the address information in big , bold, white-on-black Korean which you then show your driver. Being an iOS app, hitting the phone number will place a call to the destination – particularly good if your driver still hasn’t figured out where to go from the address and hitting the location address option will bring up Google Maps just in case the taxi driver still has no idea where to go.

one of the best features of Taxi Guide Seoul is being able to share the taxi card information. You are able to send the address to people via MMS message – handy if you are meeting a group of people and need to give them directions. Finally you can create your own cards for destinations you find that Chris and his developer HoodHot have yet to discover.

The big advantage of Taxi Guide is its ability to be used off line – visitors to Seoul don’t want to be paying expensive roaming charges.

However this means some features that would otherwise be standard in an app like this are missing. Any app that deals with destinations these days needs Foursquare integration. It just makes sense that upon arrival at your destination you would “check-in”. And for the legions of people intent on sharing every aspect of their lives, Twitter is also missing. Elsewhere, Seoul is constantly changing and apps like this need frequent updates. Future updates will have to be potentially large downloads, where as a “live” app might be able to handle the dynamic nature of Seoul more efficiently. A way around this might be to make users own notes able to be uploaded and shared beyond just their friends.

the only other quibble I might have is the price. while I scored a free copy for review, HoodHot’s other apps for other destinations in Asia range from $4.99 at launch to a whopping $9.99. I would have to say I would not be prepared to pay that much for an app that has no social media integration and lacks the ability to upload and share user created information, and especially when there are a number of (albeit slightly more complicated) free alternatives, such as Google maps and even Foursquare which provide address and direction / destination information.

Bimbo Rating ★★★✩  – half a star off for lack of social, 1 star off for price.

Last night I sat down (virtually speaking) with Jeff Lebow of Koreabridge.net and freelance web designer Mattew Weingard, and discussed the state of the Internet here in Korea.

On the table, Google’s most recent run in with the Dongdaemun Police Station Cyber Crimes unit, a surge towards responsible web design, a merging of the way Korea and Koreans use The Internet with the way the rest of the world uses The Internet, The Galaxy Tab 10.1 and my new watch.

Of particular interest, aside from the topics discussed, is the voodoo that Jeff has put together to allow him to record interviews etc on Google+ using Hangouts, Live Stream, some chewing gum and Gaffer Tape, the results of which you can see below:

With one click, QR codes offer smart phone users contact information, websites, and more.

You may have noticed them cropping up in advertising, on the sides of buses and even street signs—strange black-and-white pixelated boxes that look like some madman’s attempt at a crossword. What are they? QR Codes.

Originally an alternative for tracking car parts and other inventory, the QR (standing for “quick response”) code is akin to the more recognizable bar code but can provide much more information. With a scanner and the right software, you can obtain phone numbers, web addresses and text from the little black and white boxes.

The most recent and growing use for QR codes is “mobile tagging,” which allows smartphone users to take a picture of the code with their phone’s camera and then access the information. Apple, Android, Nokia and Blackberry all support QR codes and have a number of apps available to decipher them.

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A hotshot young app developer, a great idea, and technology that lets you know where your loved ones are. What could possibly go wrong?

Plenty, as it turns out.

Last week, a 25-year-old identified only by his surname Kim discovered the perils of being a technological pioneer when he was charged with distributing people’s locational data without their permission. Kim is the creator of the wildly popular 오빠믿지 (Oppa midji or “You trust oppa, right?”) app, which lets users keep track of  their boyfriends/girlfriends’ location via their smartphone. If that sounds icky to you, you’re not alone — despite its enormous popularity, it was widely dubbed “the Devil App” in Korea.

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This is the third, and final, part of a brief series looking at Google’s Android mobile Operating System and its success (or otherwise) in Korea.

So I’ve looked at Android in general, and already those stats are beginning to look a bit shoddy as news came out this week that Android handsets are outselling Apple’s iPhone. I’ve also gone into a brief history of Android in Korea, and indeed looked into our crystal ball at one rumour that I would like to come to fruition. In this final post I’m going to look at arguably the most important part of the whole equation – especially in terms of handset sales and market dominance – Content.

Its one thing to have a flash whizz bang handset, but if you can only make calls on it you may as well go back to your Motorola RAZR. Smartphones are all about doing more. Some have called them mini computing platforms, still others have shied away from this moniker, but everyone agrees that smartphones are excellent for content consumption.

Enter Tatter & Media, a blog aggregation, curation, organisation, and among other things design, company which I am affiliated with through Nanoomi. TatterMedia (for short) curates so-called “power bloggers” in Korean-language K-Blogland who discuss all manner of subjects in their respective fields of interest.

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In this, the second of three posts looking at Android, I look at the situation in Korea.

Android in Korea is characterized by one letter and one letter only: “S”, as in Galaxy S and Samsung, but while Samsung has a long pedigree in Smartphones (I can’t say I miss my BlackJack II or my Mirage) and indeed Android outside it’s domestic market, it wasn’t first to market with an Android handset in Korea. That dubious honour goes to Motorola who, despite falling sales world wide, launched the Motorola Roi back in January.

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An interesting name for an iPhone App, which unfortunately has nothing to do with dessert. But don’t let that put you off, Pudding Camera, the Apps full name is finally a camera app for iPhone worth downloading.

I have tried a number of photo / camera apps for iPhone but up until now have been pretty unimpressed. I fear the iPhone 3GS’ (no iPhone 4 here in Korea yet) paltry 3 megapixel camera is pretty crap as it is – adding Lomo effects and various other tweaks in apps like Adobe’s woefully inadequate Photoshop Mobile ended up degrading the quality of pictures even further.

Pudding Camera, on the other hand, offers 7 different film effects and 7 different camera / lens effects. On the film side you have your standard iPhone basic, Mono (black and white), Noir (adding that faded “I took a photo in 1972 and now its faded” look), Vintage Brown and Vintage Blue which pushes up the yellows and blues in the exposure, Vignetting (which is an effect cameramen generally try to avoid unless wanting it for effect), and Dazzel (overexposed look). Pretty standard, but here is the key and what I suspect leads to much better photos.

Rather than applying the filter before taking the snap, the effect (camera, film or both) is done in software after the image has been captured. (I stand to be corrected on this point, but the processing time between taking a picture and being able to view it can take some time if you have something process-intensive, say vignetting and fisheye effects.

On the camera effect side you have another 7 options, A “4 lens” “Motion” camera producing a 2×2 square of 4 images at  37mm equivalent, 4:3 image, and a “4 lens” (Linear) “motion” camera, producing a 4 cut 37mm equivalent, 1:3 image. Pudding again does something unique here, previous motion apps I have seen actually take a video (meaning you have to keep the phone still) and then slice up the action. Pudding takes 4 individual snaps and then joins them together:

and the results:

Another exceptional feature to Pudding Camera is the ability to change the exposure, with a difference of about 4 f stops

The viewfinder screen – unlike most camera apps you hold the iPhone in landscape mode. Controls from Left to right: Exposure control, Camera effect and film type. (In a nice touch the film is actually pictured “in” the camera), Sharing settings, album viewer and self portrait mode. The shutter button is on the far right.

Other camera effects include a fish eye lens which produces some good results:

As well as simple snapshot mode, and “Fantasy” mode which allows spot focus and blurs everything else – and may allow some interesting tilt shift effects – I will have to do some experimenting.

The only letdown in terms of camera effects is Panorama which is not actually panoramic (obviously you would need a different lens at the very least) instead it squishes the snapshot to a 1.85:1 ratio, its a bit of a cheat, to say the least, but in terms of panorama with the iPhone you would be better off taking a series of shots and putting them together with Auto stitch on the phone or with an application on your PC.

Pudding is built ostensibly by Paran, one of the also-ran Internet portals here in Korea, well behind Naver and Daum. But if you are a member of Paran, (good luck trying to join if you’re a foreigner) Pudding also gives you access to their cloud storage solutions in a fairly simple matter.

Pudding Camera is a neat app, put together by a developer who must have some experience in real photography, and who has taken a great deal of time to pay attention to the little things in the interface that make Pudding easy and fun to use and also look good on the iPhone. If I had an iPhone 4 with its decent camera, this would be one of the first apps I would download.

Pudding Camera is free from the Korean iTunes App Store.

Bimbo rating: ★★★★★