Since the App Store user reviews were not all that favorable, I decided to take as objective an approach as possible to PDF Reader Pro while keeping in mind I had no immediate need to use it.

The initial syncing of .pdf files was a breeze, but I have to say the files I uploaded were small in size. Still, for a few pages, it was a quick and painless process.

Your computer and iPhone (or iTouch) must be on the same Wi-Fi network for syncing to work. What few .pdf files I had saved on my computer were almost instantaneously transferred and while I’m sure larger files would have taken longer, at least there was no confusion as to how to achieve the actual transfer. Simply click the wi-fi icon on the bottom left of the screen and enter the IP address into your computer’s browswer.

Once your .pdf file is on your device, you can go in to the PDF Reader Pro app and view it any time. There is a single touch navigation feature for zooming in and out and changing pages, but the overall viewing is kind of difficult. There is an option to change from fast speed view to “hight” quality, which is clearly meant to be “high” quality, but it’s not a difference I noticed either way. Other features the developer mentions include the ability to copy and paste, but I cannot get that to happen for the life of me. I figured copy and paste would work the same as it does with OS 3.0 and that simply touching and holding would engage the tool from within the document, but I was wrong. Instead, there is an “edit” function that presents the copy and paste options, but nothing seems to happen when I tap them.

The PDF Reader Pro “how to” doesn’t give any further explanation for how to use PDF Reader Pro except for how to get the file from your computer to your device in the first place. I suppose for further help, the next step would be to contact the developer directly. I have no reason to want to jump through those hoops to figure out how to copy and paste from PDF Reader Pro to say, an email, so I can only assume that if the function exists, there must be a way to make it work.

Since I don’t have any .pdf books saved on my computer, I also can’t attest to how quickly the transfer of one to PDF Reader Pro would be. I do know that if the experience of viewing my 3-page document is any indication, I doubt very seriously if I would be using it to read a book. However, I don’t think PDF Reader Pro was designed to be a book viewer, but rather a way to take .pdf files with you for browsing. There could be instances where you have a report or other important .pdf file on your computer and need to reference something within it on the go. In this case, PDF Reader Pro should work out OK and since it’s in the low price range for such apps, could even be deemed a decent value. However for higher performance and additional functions I might still be tempted to check out some of the others.

• app_name: PDF Reader Pro
• price: $0.99
• rating: 6/10

The iPhone 3GS is waaayy faster than my 2G. That’s not my impression; it’s a fact. Benchmarks conducted for ExtremeTech indicate the 3GS smokes nearly every smartphone on the market except one, which also happens to be running the same ARM Cortex-A8 processor as the iPhone. The 3GS also uses the PowerVR SGX graphics core, a bump above the PowerVR MBX in the iPhone 3G, says ExtremeTech.  In the real world, that means 600 Mhz, instead of 412 Mhz speed and 256MB RAM for the OS, double that of the 128MB in the original iPhoneAdd it up and you can believe the S in GS stands for “Speed” as Apple claims. Apps launch and close faster; Web pages load and render quickly; and zooming and scrolling are speedier. Everything, in short, is more responsive.

3G, finally! I seldom used EDGE networking with my 2G. It was much too slow and there were plenty of times I couldn’t rely on it at all. Fortunately, using Wi-Fi scanning apps I was often able to find an open network. Now, there’s no worry that I can get online no matter (almost) where I am.

The sky’s the limit with GPS. Using cellphone tower triangulation worked pretty well. I was able to pinpoint my location on a map close enough to figure out where I was and where I wanted to go. Now, with GPS, I can narrow my location or destination within a matter of feet. And if I want turn-by-turn directions, I can get that too. It’s still not as useful as a dedicated GPS, but it sure beats using the sundial and sextant that I used to lug around.

Greater clarity. My new 3GS has 3 megapixel camera and it’s auto everything: focus, macro mode and white balance. I also can now shoot VGA video (with audio) in portrait and landscape modes at 30 fps frames per second and I can edit my video inside the device.That’s a lotta cool.

which was never enough for my music and apps to keep me happy. With my current 32GB, I have four times the storage room, which is a big plus. When it gets to 100GB, I’ll be happier, but for now, 32GB is pretty darn good.

strong>Listen and obey. To make a call or play music, I can now use voice control by pressing the Home button for two seconds and then speaking a command. That’s the theory anyway. When I asked my phone to play songs by Stevie Ray Vaughn, my iPod played White Stripes. This is the one feature that has yet to work reliably for me. I’m not surprised. No voice control app I’ve used on the iPhone has been all that reliable.

Boy Scout memory. The built-in compass works remarkably well and it works with the map function to pinpoint your location. With GPS, I don’t know how often I might use it, but it’s nice to know that I can use those navigational skills I learned as a Boy Scout if I suddenly find myself lost at sea, or more likely, in one of those huge underground parking garages at some airport.

What it all adds up to: If you’re asking yourself whether you should upgrade, the answer is: “It depends.” If you have a 2G and you’re nearing the end of your contract, then an upgrade is definitely the way to go. If you have a 3G, wait until your contract is about to run out. It would be hard to justiy the cost of upgrading, even with the newer knobs and dials.

Bomberman Touch 2- Volcano Party

Bomberman Touch 2-Volcano Party for the iPhone and iPod touch is nearly identical to the earlier versions and the object is the same as it ever was:  Strategically place bombs to blow up boulders and grab power ups or other goodies.

This is the second Bomberman Hudson Soft has released into the App Store. The first, Bomberman Touch-The Legend of Mystic Bomb, has been fairly well received although many shoppers have said they were disappointed the game’s quality did not justify the $7.99 asking price (the main issues were the amount of playing time and the weak controls). On a personal level, I thought the controls were fine.

Hudson Soft must have been paying attention, however, because Bomberman Touch 2- Volcano Party is $2.99, yet, has all the features of Bomberman Touch-The Legend of Mystic Bomb. Some of the same complaints about controls are still there as well, unfortunately. I thought the finger-swipe controls worked fine, although I much prefer a virtual keypad.

What makes the two games especially different is the latest iteration features multiplayer controls either against the CPU or against another player via Bluetooth.

Bomberman Touch 2- Volcano Party  features a new Battle Mode for up to four players (including two CPU players), and a Challenge Mode that includes two-player action. In Challenge Mode, the user and other characters cooperate to avoid oozing molten lava and make their way to a labyrinth to defeat the boss waiting inside.

Bomberman Touch 2: Volcano Party will run on iPhone and iPod Touch (second-generation or later) installed with the new OS 3.0.

Bomberman Touch 2-Volcano Party is just okay, in my book. The problem is that I’ve been spoiled by playing the game on other platforms. I agree that it’s hard to move around because your finger blocks your view. The playing field — although graphically well rendered  — is too small to be practical. It’s hard to see what you’re up against, in my opinion. Not every game, even a classic, transfers well to the iPhone’s small screen and this is one that doesn’t make the cut for all but the most ardent fans. The $2.99 price is not bad, though.

• app_name: Bomberman Touch 2- Volcano Party
• price: $2.99
• rating: 7/10

Music iQ from Phase2 Media is like an iPhone version of “Name That Tune.”  Music iQ plays random songs one-at-a-time from your iPhone’s or iPod touch’s library, and the quicker you guess the songs, the more points you get. The good news is that Music iQ is a multiple choice quiz game, so you are given five options to choose from to help jog your memory.

The music library on my iPhone is small; I keep most of my music solely on my iPod so I don’t use up all my iPhone’s memory.  If you do the same, you might find that Music iQ might be better used with your iPod touch than your iPhone.  The larger your music library is, the more challenging it will be to play Music iQ.

A nice side effect of Music iQ is that it keeps you in touch with all of your music, not just with the artists or albums that you listen to the most.  Along that same line, you can also ban individual songs, albums or artists from showing up when you play Music iQ, for example, an artist whose music you are not in the mood for or a friend’s homemade album whose song names you have listed in your iPhone as “Track 1,” “Track 2,” and so on.

Music iQ functions as described with no problems or quirks.  It is easy to play, and you can pick it up whether you have a few minutes or an hour at your disposal.  Whether you play to pass the time or to test your knowledge, Music iQ is a great app for music lovers.

• price: $0.99
• rating: 8/10
• app_name: Music iQ

Players choose where to place their battleships, which are really just groups of squares outlined in pen with Xs inside, and deploy their fleet onto the graph paper grid to begin.

In Battleship By Pen you can touch  and drag the ships to position them and tap them to change orientation. When it’s your turn to try to find and destroy your opponent’s battleships, you simply select and tap a square on the screen. If it is a hit, an X will mark the square and if it’s a miss, a small dot serves as a marker. The first player to destroy their opponent’s entire fleet wins.

As I said, I give points for complete originality in the design of Battleship by Pen. Everything right down to the instructions and navigation buttons have the same hand-drawn appearance. It’s obvious the designer was going for casual and the pen and paper graphics combined with the recorded voice sound effects achieves a result somewhere between aloof casual and unintended comedy. The sound effects can’t even be explained in words, except to tell you to ask a ten-year-old what it sounds like when something is blown up by a missile.

Humorous as it is, the sound effects in Battleship by Pen actually got on my nerves after awhile, but not as much as overall stability of the app. While I enjoyed the game immensely despite the eventually nerve-grating sound effects, the single-player mode crashed every time I played. I tried to remedy this with a restart and tested it out on both iPhone with 3.0 OS and iPod touch with 2.2.1 – both yielding the same result. As for the multi-player mode, I didn’t care all that much for it, but the implementation of a wi-fi mode is a great expectation and should prove to be a positive improvement.

Battleship by Pen is a highly creative rendition of a classic game and the developers definitely bring their own unique flair into the mix. It certainly has huge potential, but unless the stability of single player mode is improved and the wi-fi game mode brought to fruition, Battleship by Pen may die a slow, silent death as it sinks into the unknown murky waters of the App Store.

• price: $0.99
• rating: 7/10
• app_name: Battleship by Pen

To my surprise and delight, I ordered it on Thursday and it arrived on Monday. Not bad at all, especially with the intervening weekend to slow things down. I received a black one, which is what I wanted, although I didn’t have the option to order it in white. Word is that Apple will make the 3GS available in other colors once the buying frenzy subsides.

I bought my 2G with 8GB the day after Apple dropped the price on that model from $600 to $400. Although my 2-year contract had a few more months to run, I was able to upgrade for $18, so I jumped on board.

After lovingly unpacking the box, which in itself is an object d’art,  I plugged the phone in for about an hour to make sure I had a fully charged battery (it was already partially charged). Then, I fired up iTunes to activate the phone with Apple and transfer my existing apps and music to my new phone. The entire process took about an hour, which is less than I expected because I also had heard horror stories about Apple having problems handling activation requests.

Once that was done, I went online to activate the iPhone with AT&T, which took all of about 15 minutes, again a pleasant surprise.

The first thing I noticed was everything was speedier — apps loaded faster and I was able to move icons from one screen to the other with a zipadeedoodah. I launched Free Memory, after about an hour of toying around and saw that I had 81.77 MB room left to play with. With my 2G, if I had say, 22 MB, it was a big deal.

I fired up Speed Test-iNetwork to see what kind of download speeds and latency I was getting off 3G and EDGE networks. It was no contest, as you would expect. Now, I’m looking at getting downloads speeds that are almost twice as fast. “You can’t beat that with a stick,” as my friend Howie used to say.

This phone sounds better too. The familiar click, for example, was replaced by one that is “meatier,” which is about the only way I can describe it. The phone is louder for the same setting as my 2G and the ring tone seems more full. All this is purely subjective, I admit, but all I can say is that it rings with quality.

The headphone jack is no longer proprietary like it is on my 2G. Listening to music with a high-quality pair of Sennheiser headphones was a revelation compared to everyday earphones like the one Apple includes with the iPhone and iP touch.

It’s still early, so please give me a little time to poke around with the hardware and report in.

Next up: I’ll answer the question that everyone wants to know: Should I upgrade to the new iPhone 3GS?

Sevens

Just in case you’ve never played Sudoku before: The playing field consists of a 3 x 3 grid of squares. Each of the nine squares consists of yet another 3 x 3 grid.Your job is to fill in missing numbers from 1 to 9 in rows and columns without using the same number more than once in all the  rows and columns.  Depending on the difficulty of the level you’re attempting to play, some numbers already will be filled in to help you get started. It’s not like arithmetic; it’s more a process of elimination or fill-in-the-blanks.

Most people find it challenging, although some weirdos like my daughter and wife can knock these games out like a pro bowler knocks over pins in championship play. Me, I’ve never managed to complete an entire puzzle before giving up in frustration.

So, when I set out to review Sevens, “I’m thinking, hey, this has to be easier than Sudoku. It’s only one grid, 7 x 7, and and not 3 x 3 squares within a 3 x 3 grid. How hard can it be to compared to regular Sudoku?”

But here’s the catch: Sevens requires that you fill in the numbers in each row and square, using only the number 1 through 7. At the same time, you must insert the correct numbers into a color group that also must have only a unique number from 1 to 7. If you look at the screen capture on the left, you’ll see exactly what I mean. It’s almost like doing two games, one on top of the other.

Sevens also pits you against the clock and when I discovered that extra challenge, I knew I was pretty much sunk. This is a tough game for guys like me whose brains are stuffed with bits of junk that tend to get in the way of logic and rational thought processing.

Sevens has 3 levels and 200 puzzles in each, so anyone playing this app will find it will keep him or her busy from now until infinity, at least.

I’ve been working on Sevens off and on for the past week and I haven’t made much progress. I tried to interest my wife into taking on the game but she’s been too busy. I hope I get a chance to see how well normal people do with Sevens.

One thing I will say: Seven looks a heck of a lot better than any Sudoku games I’ve tried on paper and online. Its graphics are polished; game play is smooth; and I didn’t encounter any glitches or other weirdness

I don’t even know why I’m mentioning this, but in an update, I’d like to see the option of being able to play head-to-head over a network. I don’t know if my ego would be able to handle Sevens at that level, but I’m willing to give it a shot.

• rating: 9/10
• price: $.99
• app_name: Sevens

When I sat down to use SpinArt, the first thing I realized was that I needed to read the instructions.  SpinArt isn’t hard once you read the descriptions of how to the tools, how to start the spinning, and how to make it stop.  The learning curve is not steep, but it definitely helps to watch a SpinArt demo video (available after the jump).

SpinArt fans have uploaded a plethora of SpinArt projects onto a SpinArt Flickr photo group as well, many of which put my juvenile creations to shame.

One request I have for developer Brian Smith is to add an undo button to SpinArt that would undo a step or two without clearing the entire canvas.  That way, if a mistake is made, it does not have to ruin the piece.

The only other downside of SpinArt, besides my obvious lack of artistic ability, is that I got dizzy after watching it spin for a few minutes.  A little Dramamine might help.

Some user reviews on iTunes reference a problem using SpinArt with the iPod touch.  The developer’s notes say that SpinArt is compatible with iPod touch.  I tested SpinArt on an iPhone so I can’t comment on this possible problem.  I would suggest you research this issue before buying SpinArt for the iPod touch.

SpinArt is a fun app for all ages.  SpinArt will not turn you into an artist, but it will give you a way to add some color to a rainy day.

Watch the SpinArt video demo:

• rating: 8/10
• price: $1.99
• app_name: SpinArt

News Addict is quite comprehensive in its selection of news sites, though a few, like Digg, Google News and Yahoo! may not meet some users’ requirements as news sources and others, like ESPN may not even be on their radar. Since many news junkies have their personal news preferences, the inability to rearrange the News Addict home screen icons in order of preference or even delete the ones that are never used may seem a bit inconvenient. It’s possible that this ability will be enabled in a future update though, and in the mean time there are plenty of credible sources regardless of your personal leanings.

As comprehensive as News Addict is and as nice as it is to have all your major news sources tied up neatly in one app, there are a few minor draw backs to News Addict that should be addressed. The first is the inconsistency of text size between the different sites. Some sites, such as The New York Times, loads very small text that is impossible to read without zooming in. This helps, but creates the need to pan left and right to read an article or to switch to landscape mode.

The other minor annoyance I found was in navigation. Tapping the bottom left corner acts very much like the back button of any browser, however, to view the full navigation bar, you have to tap the tiny tab in the lower right. I appreciate the full-screen viewing, but often find myself tediously trying to hit the tiny little tab just right to get the tool bar response. I don’t appreciate having to cajole the little button when I’m casually catching up on news.

Aside from these small flaws, which you really can work around if you try, I found News Addict to be user-friendly in most other aspects. Some features, such as the pictures and videos available from some sites load slowly, but for the most part the individual sites and the text therein loads quick enough. The biggest advantage I see with News Addict is to eliminate screen clutter on your iPhone by having access to nearly all the major news sites under one icon.

News Addict is only a buck as an introductory price and for obtaining quick, comprehensive access to mobile news, it’s pretty much ideal. It’s not the most sexy app ever, but it is well-designed – enough so that I didn’t mind the few ads that appeared atop some of the news sites and I definitely appreciate more news, less clutter. Even though I kind of prefer some of the individual site’s apps, like USA Today and there a few minor adjusments that could stand to be made,  in my opinion once News Addict is downloaded it’s still a keeper.

• price: $0.99
• rating: 7/10
• app_name: News Addict

Control mechanics are solid, but they’ll take some time to get used to. Movement left or right is controlled through holding the arrows on the screen. If you want to jump, you have to tap the arrow that isn’t being used while holding the arrow that is being used to walk. This isn’t a scheme I was used to, but it was the right decision versus having an imprecise control stick on the screen. Shifting is done by tilting the iPhone, but there are ways to modify that mechanic in the options menu.

The presentation in Shift will not blow up anyone’s skirt, but the minimalistic approach is effective. After all, there’s only so many things you can do with a black and white color palette. Slick menus and short loading times are included, but my favorite part of the presentation is the music. It uses a throwback detective musical ditty that’s full of percussion and brass instruments. If you’re not feeling the music, the game allows you to listen to stuff from your iPod library as well. For a buck, I had a great time playing through Shift. It’s not the most full featured game out there, and it’s not going to be the hardest or most expansive game you’ve ever played either. All I can say is that Shift is an outstanding and unique puzzler that I suspect many people will enjoy.

• price: $0.99
• rating: 8/10
• app_name: Shift