Mossberg Picks iPhone Apps

PC Magazine gives you the scoop on the new slate of titles for Apple juggernaut

(NEWSER) - The best part about the iPhone 3G's debut, writes PC Magazine, is the new abundance of software for the handset. Most of the apps work on the original iPhone, too. The cream of the crop:

• AIM: Should need no introduction, although it was a major omission from the original iPhone's slate.
• Bejeweled 2: A popular time-waster gets a suitably beautiful iPhone port.

(NEWSER) - Even a gadget as good as the iPhone isn't without its annoyances, although luckily bigger geeks than you have cooked up workarounds for most of them, Jared Newman writes in PC World. Some major gripes:

• AT&T: The carrier's stranglehold in the US is becoming even more irksome as foreign iPhone users start to enjoy better tethering and multimedia messaging services.
• Weak email management: An update has added bulk email management, but there's still no simple way to delete or move batches of messages.

Deal could come through when AT&T's exclusive rights expire next year

(NEWSER) - Apple is in talks about developing an iPhone for Verizon’s wireless network—with possible deployment next year, USA Today reports. Currently, the iPhone is only available on AT&T’s GSM network, which is incompatible with Verizon’s CDMA operation. AT&T has exclusive US rights to the iPhone into 2010, and analysts expect AT&T to try to retain them for at least another year. More»

Apple loophole makes photos vulnerable

(NEWSER) - It's not only contacts that can be snatched from your cellphone by apps—photos, too, can be yanked, thanks to an Apple loophole. Once a user allows an application on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch to have access to location information—to launch a mapping function, for example— the app can copy the user’s entire photo library, unbeknownst to the user, reports the New York Times . But the Times notes that it's not clear if any App Store apps are actually uploading users' images. More»

Finally, an iPhone you can use ... as a phone

(NEWSER) - The iPhone 4 has finally arrived on Verizon , and what that means is … now you can actually make successful phone calls on your iPhone. Reviewers give it a thumbs-up:

• “The Verizon iPhone is nearly the same as AT&T’s iPhone 4—but it doesn’t drop calls. For several million Americans, that makes it the holy grail,” writes David Pogue in the New York Times . In five cities, including San Francisco and New York (“the two Bermuda Triangles of AT&T reception”), the Verizon version successfully held a call to a landline while the AT&T version dropped it, sometimes more than once. OK, the “holy grail” did drop one call, and AT&T has better coverage in some areas, but the bottom line is: “The Verizon iPhone has more bars in more places.”