40 of our favorite iPhone 6 cases for style and protection

Apple has unveiled the iPhone 6, and it’s gearing up to sell millions of them. Shortly after they hit the stores, they’ll also hit floors and sidewalks as horrified new owners accidentally drop them. You can alleviate the worry by investing in some protection. That new sexy, svelte look demands some respect and we’ve got a range of the best iPhone 6 cases for you here to suit any style or budget.

Thoughtful design and quality materials make this case well worth checking out. It will suit anyone on the lookout for a wallet-style case for the iPhone 6. The exterior is genuine leather in black, red, or brown. Inside there’s a hard shell that holds your phone in place. It has all the usual cut-outs for easy access, and there’s a blue check or blue dot lining. You’ll find three slots for credit cards and ID, and a large pouch for cash. The elastic closure keeps the case firmly closed, and when you open it to take a call, there’s a clever magnet that holds the flap back for you. Use code DT15 to get a 15 percent discount if you order before the 1st of May.

At first glance, you might recoil at the price tag on these luxury bumpers, but the quality is impressive. The metal series offers aluminum in different shades with different colors of plastic on the joints, but it’s the wood series that’s more likely to seduce you. The top and bottom comes in your choice of bright silver or darker gray aluminum, and you can combine that with oak or walnut sides. There are also perfectly sited aluminum button covers. The bumper is fitted by unscrewing the top piece and sliding the iPhone 6 into place. Strictly speaking there’s no protection front and back, but the frame is larger than the iPhone all the way round, so the screen and the camera lens on the back won’t be touching if you put it down or drop it on a flat surface. These bumpers are really all about style, and they match the elegant design of the iPhone 6 beautifully.

This is something a little bit different. What if your iPhone 6 had a bungie cord attached, so it couldn’t hit the ground, even if you dropped it? Kenu has come up with a very minimal shell in matte black, with large cut-outs, and a texture that really enhances your grip. The case isn’t going to save your phone if it actually hits the floor, but that’s what the elastic leash is for. It clips onto the case and into the Lightning port, and it boasts a Kevlar core, which means it isn’t breaking. Attach the loop to something like a zip, and you can whip that iPhone out on the ski lift, or at the top of the Empire State Building without a worry.

If you thought the self-healing coating on LG’s Flex phones was interesting, then take a look at this case. It’s a very svelte, minimalist, transparent case that allows the iPhone 6 design to shine through, but it also boasts a self-healing coating. This is important, because transparent cases can be prone to picking up light scratches. It’s not going to bounce back from deep gouges, but light scratches fade away at room temperature, and you can speed up the healing process with the warmth of your touch. You can get it in a couple of alternative shades.

Here’s a budget option that goes perfectly with the gold iPhone. The case is made from a translucent gel material, so it’s very easy to fit, and it doesn’t cramp your iPhone’s style. The back panel has a glittery effect, but it’s not over the top. There’s a lip on the front to protect your screen, and you’ll find that the cut-outs are precise. This case also adds a little grip, but it’s slim so don’t expect rugged drop protection. We have a lot of pricey options on our iPhone 6 cases list, but this one won’t break the bank.

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208 Awesome iPhone Apps for 2015

We don’t know what kind of iPhone app you’re looking for, but we’re hoping you’ll find it here. We’ve got more than a hundred of our favorite apps spanning a bunch of different categories, all of which you can find in the Key. Click on any category or subcategory to jump right to it, and click on the name of any app to link directly to the iPhone App Store.

Below are our app picks for Entertainment, Work and Organizing, Security and Utility, What’s Around Town, Social and Chat, Fitness and Health, Travel and Maps, and The Dark Arts. We’ll add new categories in the coming weeks and months. We hope you enjoy and please give us app suggestions or feedback in the comments.

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Our list is being updated all the time with the newest and best apps we come across. Here are the latest additions to our collection of favorite iPhone apps.

Joobik Player allows users to queue up video playlists from iTunes and play them on any AirPlay device. It’s a nice feature, considering that Apple still hasn’t created a queue feature for iTunes.

Hate missing your TV shows? Checkout TeeVee 3, the app that provides a countdown calendar for all your favorite shows. Choose which shows to follow and the app will provide information and video supplements as they’re released.

Storehouse is a storytelling app that lets users upload photos, video, and text to create a personalized story of just about anything. The app even lets you embed your story on blogs and browse other users stories.

Chronicle your adventures with this travel journal app that easily uploads your musings and images. You can share with your friends and family over FB and Twitter. It’ll  even work offline so you can report from the most remote locales.

Duolingo is a good way to learn the basics of a language for the excellent price of zero dollars. Add-free, Duolingo currently offers mini-tutorials for 10 languages with fun, game like lesson plans. Before you know it you’ll dream in German.

A simple messaging app to ask a friend to get a beer. Beer!? was inspired by Yo, the app that lets people message Yo. All you do is select a name from your Beer contacts and the app will send them a message that reads Beer!? It’s a fun way to pester friends.

The text-based Device 6 isn’t your standard mystery game. The game reads like a mystery novel with puzzles and a healthy dose of intrigue to propel you through this unorthodox thriller.

Twitter’s answer to Meerkat, Periscope lets users live stream on Twitter. Your followers can interact by commenting on the view. Finally, a way for your friends to respond to your live stream of the bus ride home.

Nuzzle will aggregate news stories from your Twitter and Facebook feeds to give you one place to catch up on the important stories. Set alerts to receive notifications when news stories are shared by certain friends.

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White iPhone 4 to ship on April 20 in UK

UK residents can now place an order for the white iPhone 4 with mobile retailer Three UK. But some doubt remains that all is as it seems.
The absurdly long wait for the white iPhone 4 is (probably) over. British retailer Three UK has officially listed the elusive smartphone for order on its website, reports The Next Web. The device will sell for a subsidized price of £159 for the 32GB model, the same as the black version. The site estimates delivery for April 20, this Wednesday.
If it all pans out, Three’s white iPhone 4 listing is the first of its kind, with real carrier options to boot. It also confirms earlier rumors that have been around for some time that Apple would release the device sometime at the end of April.
According to Engadget, however, Three was unable (or unwilling) to confirm the listing, or the April 20 availability, when the site spoke with Three representatives. This implies that someone at Three may have put the listing up earlier than intended.
Other rumors out today point to the exact date of April 26 as so-called “white iPhone day.” That detail comes via iPhoneItalia, and, if accurate, probably refers to the white iPhone’s release date in Italy, not the US.
Also today, we have new rumors about the iPhone 5, which some say will be pushed back to an October release date. According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of Concord Securities, the iPhone 5 will come loaded with the same A5 processor that’s found in the iPad 2, as well as an 8 megapixel camera. (That camera is said to be made by Sony, rather than Apple’s regular optics supplier OmniVision.)
Kuo also says that, while Apple will offer “slight” design modifications on its fifth generation iPhone, the company will focus more on the software’s operating system (i.e. iOS 5) rather than major hardware changes.
As far as the white iPhone 4 is concerned, we’re all once again waiting to see the device can actually be purchased. That is, those of us who haven’t given up on the device entirely are waiting. Everyone else is just waiting for the iPhone 5 — even if that one is a little late, too.
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Apple iPhone 4 to become most-used camera on Flickr

According to Flickr's count, popularity of Apple's iPhone 4 has skyrocketed while point-and-shoot cameras appear to be quickly going the way of the Dodo bird.
Apple’s iPhone 4 is on track to surpass all other cameras used to take photos posted to Flickr within the next month. Point-and-shoot cameras, on the other hand, have fallen in the opposite direction.
According to Flickr’s internal analytics, the Nikon D90 is used by more of the site’s photographers than any other camera. In fact, aside from the iPhone 4, DSLR cameras dominate the top five spots, with Canon’s Digital Rebel XSi, 5D Mark II and Rebel T1i taking ranks three, four and five.

Since Flickr has become a favorite among professional photographers and amateur photographers who wish they were professionals, it’s no surprise that DSLRs are as popular as they are. As TechCrunch points out, however, the important factor to take into consideration when looking at this graph is that the iPhone 4 is less than a year old. Compare that to the D90, which has been available for three years, and the meteoric rise of Apple’s latest smartphone seems even more impressive — or terrifying, if you’re in the camera-making business.
Point-and-shoot cameras have gone in the exact opposite direction as the iPhone 4. Canon’s PowerShot line completely dominates this sector, but the percentage of Flickr members who use these cameras has plummeted to staggeringly low numbers.
The most popular point-and-shoot, Canon’s PowerShot SD1100 IS, for instance, was used by 496 Flickr members on Sunday, who uploaded a total of just over 10,000 photos. The iPhone 4, by contrast, was used by nearly 10 times as many people — 4,653 users — on Sunday, who uploaded more than 43,000 pictures.
While Flickr’s analytics should be taken with a grain of salt — they don’t necessarily represent the market at-large — the data does support a long-standing belief among industry watchers that the point-and-shoot is gasping its last breaths. The smothering pillow of connected devices like the iPhone 4 only makes staying alive that much more difficult.
To anyone who uses the iPhone 4 on a regular basis, the benefits of the device are obvious: For the average user, the photos it takes are just as good — or better — than most point-and-shoots; its wireless connectivity and apps allow for simple photo-sharing.
Yes, the iPhone 4 is more awkward to use than a dedicated camera, especially without the presence of a physical “shoot” button. And the phone’s digital zoom is nothing compared to an optical zoom, especially on the high-quality point-and-shoot devices made by Canon. But when uploading photos to Flickr can be done on the go, and iPhone apps like Instagram quickly make photos look more interesting than anything most people can crank out of a point-and-shoot, it’s easy to see why the iPhone 4 has become such a worthy adversary to the camera industry.

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Latest iPhone 5 rumor: October release, 8 megapixel camera

The rumors continue to indicate that the iPhone 5 will skip summer and will debut this fall instead.

It’s another week and another iPhone 5 rumor. (Better get used to it, too, looks like the trend may continue throughout the summer.) This one comes from Ming-Chi Kuo of Concord Securities as reported by AppleInsider. The analyst issued a note today stating that Apple’s 5th generation iPhone will enter into production in September and will feature a design that only marginally differs from the current iPhone 4.

That “slight” redesign will include an A5 processor, the same found in the iPad 2, and a new 8 megapixel camera, a bump up from the 5 megapixel camera found in the iPhone 4. Apple will also reportedly redesign the phone’s antenna and adopt a Qualcomm baseband for both the GSM and CDMA models.

Kuo’s report states that the phone is slated to enter trial production in August, mass production in September and will be go on sale sometime in October.

Kuo stresses that, given the “slight modifications” in design, Apple will attempt to focus attention on the iPhone 5's operating system, presumably iOS 5, rather than hardware or design.

There’s no indication yet when Apple will announce the iPhone 5, but it’s not likely to be at this year’s World Wide Developer’s Conference (WWDC)– Apple’s traditional event for announcing its next generation phone. Apple is expected to use WWDC , which kicks off on June 6, to show off iOS 5 as well as the OS X 10.7 Lion operating system. An iPhone 5 announcement would likely come in late summer or early fall.

Kuo’s report made no mention of near-field communication (NFC) technology, which has been widely anticipated as being a key feature of the next generation iPhone.

There’s good reason to believe Kuo’s report. As AppleInsider points out, the man correctly predicted several key features of the iPad 2. He’s also indicated that Apple would finally release the white iPhone 4 this spring — one rumor that we’re still waiting on to become a reality.

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You Won’t Have an iPhone moment Without a Brand

I got back from Lotusphere in an interesting frame of mind. On the one hand something kind of amazing is happening. I could tell the Web developer/designers I share an office with that IBM was going to create opportunities for them in its customers. That’s right – the banks, the retailers, the insurance companies, the government departments- all of them are likely to buy into IBM Social Business story, and associated tech stack. The skills needed to extend and integrate with the environments, or even deploy them, are Web skills: REST, HTML5, Javascript and so on: IBM is going to create economic opportunities for the folks currently camped out in Silicon Roundabout. Weird, huh.
I am not invested in the Lotus brand like, say, Stuart Mcintyre but I think it has an opportunity to own an enterprise Web Stack, to nail the consumerisation of IT, to bring new developers to the Smarter Planet party. That’s the line I took in a post before Lotusphere – Lotus Gears Up To Embrace The Web, Rebuild its Developer Story, pwn Social Business and its the line I took in a speech to Lotus and partner engineers at the event.
I told the Lotus engineers that now was the time to double down on developers, and that IBM should look at Apple for inspiration. I don’t mean the Apple of today, the crushing bruising shiny leviathan that colours our dreams white, and brings us digital content as fast as our ADD can handle it. I meant the Apple of yesterday. The “dead” Apple.
The Apple that inspired Michael Dell to say in 1997:

“What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”

The Apple that might have gone under without being thrown a $150m lifeline by Microsoft.
So what does this have to do with Lotus? The first point is blindingly obvious – people have been saying Lotus is dead for years. Before he became FakeSteveJobs Daniel Lyons at Forbes would regularly write off Lotus. The meme had legs. But IBM kept pushing back. For more than decade.
IBM has been pushing the idea for years now that Software Group is a set of capabilities and brands rather than a set of products. Then last year it became apparent that IBM was beginning to decommission individual software brands in favour of IBM Software. That’s right- IBM as the brand. At first glance the move makes sense. IBM marketing is of course on a roll at the moment. IBM’s share price is at record levels. And why keep defending brands that people don’t like, anyway. Rational has its cadre of haters. Tivoli has been known to drive some customers nuts.
So lets just call it IBM, then, shall we? The problem is is that IBM is, as Alan Lepofksy says, so darned big. It is big. It feels big. its hard to navigate around. But developers don’t like stuff that’s hard to navigate. Developers want easy to navigate, with no barriers to entry. Developers don’t press buttons to call salesmen. Developers don’t register their details to download white papers. Shit – developers don’t even read white papers.
Brands help us navigate. Brands represent opinions – they represent a way of thinking, and as such are crucial – especially when you are as BIG as IBM.
How as a developer do you deal with a property like Developerworks? By technology sure, but brands also offer useful signposts. And they can humanise IBM.
I was talking to Jonathan Lister aka Jayfresh while thinking about this post and he said:

“when you think of Lotus you think of a team in a building somewhere, not 350k people in a massive corporation”

It is of course too simplistic to say all collaboration and lightweight application development is Lotus’ bailiwick. After all- Javascript and HTML are certainly part of the WebSphere development story. But I think Lotus has value. Its not dead. And it could be the best signpost to attract developers into the fold. IBM will have to invest significantly to attract and serve a new developer community. But that’s where organic growth can come from. IBM is doing great in sales and in high level marketing, and the street is buying into the strategy. But there has to be more to growth than M&A.
So what does IBM do? Create a new brand- IBM WebStack say? Does it go with a functional description – The Social Business SDK?
The problem as I see it is that developers don’t see themselves in those terms. You’re not going to hear one say: “I am a social business developer.” A social business consultant perhaps – there are, and will be, no shortage of those. But developers are going to build the new world, and IBM needs to court them in language they use.
I think Alan Cooper nails some of my thinking in a recent post about Windows and Apple

I believe that Microsoft first grabbed the developer market because they understood, respected, and cared for developers. They have lost that market because they apparently have forgotten those values and their concomitant skills.
In January 2000, Bill Gates stepped down as president of Microsoft, and Steve Ballmer took his place. Ballmer was then, and is still, a legendary salesman, a brilliant businessman, and he possesses abundant force of will. But Steve never really understood the pivotal role programmers played in the tectonic market shifts the way Bill did.
By the late 1990s, the growth of the Internet, the inevitable progression of Moore’s Law, and the commoditization of manufacturing moved the central mass of the marketplace away from the office desktop and towards the consumer and home computing.
So by the end of the oughts, a hat trick of forces has dethroned the development platform king. Ballmer’s lack of focus on developers, the easy availability of open-source Unix, and Steve Jobs’ prescient attention on the consumer, have combined to attract multitudes of programmers to a most unlikely platform.

A most unlikely platform- like uh, Lotus perhaps. One of the crucial decisions that got Apple back in the game was to adopt industry standards- namely FreeBSD and Intel. Lotus today is looking to package a new wave of “consumer” tech standards for the enterprise. The best packager in any tech wave wins, and brand helps define the package. It seems to me that now is the time to invest in the Lotus brand, and aim for a developer-driven iPhone moment. Apple is a phenomenal growth story, and they don’t really do M&A.
disclosure: IBM is a client. They paid my T&E to Lotusphere. Microsoft is also a client.
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GetJar: Android will outsell iPhone two-to-one

Online mobile application store GetJar—which competes with the iTunes App Store, Android Market, and other venues and claims the “largest open app store” in the world—has published the results of a global consumer survey it commissioned to look at mobile phone users’ app usage, brand loyalty, and acceptance of in-app advertisements. The results: GetJar says about twice as many mobile phone users plan to switch to Android rather than the iPhone when they get their next phone…and that mobile users are surprisingly OK with in-app ads.
“The survey results make it clear that all eyes are on Android, as well as the importance of brand equity in the increasingly competitive mobile app space,” said GetJar’s chief marketing officer Patrick Mork, in a statement. “In addition, the data also reveals that brand marketers and advertisers also have a reason to be hopeful about consumer’s appetite for in-app advertisement.”
GetJar did not reveal who they commissioned to conduct its survey, or how the survey was conducted. Sample bias may be an issue with GetJar’s figures. GetJar offers some iOS applications, but most iPhone users are locked into Apple’s iTunes App Store, so iPhone users may be significantly under-represented in GetJar’s survey. Historically, GetJar users have predominantly used Symbian phones and Java-based feature phones.
According to GetJar’s survey, about one third of mobile phone users spend an hour or more a day using apps on their phone, compared to about half who spend the same amount of time watching television. Some 58 percent of respondents reported using apps more than once a day. Users find apps in a variety of ways—and not always through stores: almost half of respondents said they discovered apps while browsing online, while only 25 percent said they discovered apps in an app store. Some 17 percent say they discovered applications through social media or friends.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the survey found that gaming applications were the most popular with respondents, followed by social networking applications. Users reported that the most important things that users considered in a mobile application store where the ease of searching and the number of free apps available; furthermore, the single biggest factor in deciding whether to download an application was its price. GetJar found that app quality impacts brand perceptions: some 80 percent of respondents said a good app makes a brand more trustworthy, and 72 percent said they were more likely to “engage” with a brand if they thought its app was good.
The survey also found that 73 percent of respondents said they have downloaded an application that had embedded advertising, and some 60 percent of those respondents said they would do so again. Surprisingly, the survey claims one in four respondents made a purchase after clicking on a mobile ad.
GetJar says the “pro-Android” views revealed by the survey bolster its resolve to expand its own program for Android publishers to “secure its position as the premier open Android Market alternative,” although GetJar says they still plan to support BlackBerry and iOS devices.

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IPhone 5 said to be in ‘trial production,’ rumored to include NFC

A report out of China suggests Apple is going ahead with plans to support "wave and pay" NFC technology in the iPhone 5 and is also looking to establish a manufacturing base in South America to help meet North American demand for its products.

A new report from China Times is the latest in a steady stream of rumors indicating that the iPhone 5 will include near-field communications (NFC) technology to support mobile “e-wallet” transactions. The report says that the next-generation Apple smartphone has entered the “trial production stage” en route to a summer 2011 release.
Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that Apple was working on developing NFC technology for a “coming” iPhone model, but didn’t indicate if that would be the iPhone 5. The new reports favoring the inclusion of NFC are in contrast with a report out of the U.K. suggesting Apple was dropping its plans for an NFC-ready iPhone 5.
China Times has reported that the phone will have a redesigned metal chassis meant to improve antennae function. The iPhone 4 was widely criticized for its poor antennae design, which was blamed for weakening signal strength when the phone was gripped in certain ways.
The iPhone 5 is also said to feature a new 4-inch scratch resistant touchscreen, adding weight to rumors that Apple would offer a larger screen on the new iPhone model. A 4-inch screen would offer a half-inch more over the 3.5-inch screen of the iPhone 4. It’s widely suspected that Apple will increase the screen size without increasing the overall size of the device by opting for an edge-to-edge touchscreen design. The report also said that the iPhone 5 will include the A5 dual-core processor, which made its debut in the newly-launched iPad 2.
The China Times has also indicated that Apple and its manufacturing partner Foxconn may be looking to establish a new facility in Sao Paulo Brazil. The new facility would be dedicated to producing Apple components and would be up and running sometime in 2013.

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