The User Interface: A cartographic interface is just beautiful and cute, there are several nice animations and overall the UI is just awesome and the Grid lens teams has done a great job with it. Its one of the most creative designs I have seen, and its really simple to use.

Taking Photos: There are a variety of customization possible. You can create grid or your own, change the grid color, border width etc. You can take photos by, either tapping each grid one by one, or, just tap the Shutter button and it will automatically capture each after a preset time interval, which you can change in the setting menu. (burst mode and manual shoot mode)

Editing: The app offers several filter that the makes the photos even more magical.

Sharing:  You can share your photos online, through twitter, facebook, flickr, Instagram and email.

You can view a Flickr group of Grid lens photos here.

You can get Grid Lens from the App Store here.

This app has a simple UI, which you’ll get used to in a few minutes, and even though some may like it, I’m not by pleased with it. The UI is very similar to the native iOS user interface and I would have been happier if they were a bit more creative.

The editing and viewing is really simple, it renders most of the files well, and editing is just easy. It has a very useful toolbar at the top that allows me to quickly change formatting, and you can import photos and other content into the documents.

Importing and exporting files is excellent with cloud support (most of the major cloud services), it also supports editing files on the cloud.

It may not be the best app for documents, but still, there’s the $8 price tag (compared to Pages’s $10 cost). But even that price comparison is deceptive, since Office 2 HD actually combines not just a word processor, but also a spreadsheet editor, and a presentation editor, too. So this app is really worth your money.

You can download this app for 7.99$.

First look: A downloader manager and browser, integrated together in this nice app. At first, I had a little trouble downloading files, especially videos, but after a few days, I find it pretty easy and the download manager is very fast.

The browser may not be the best experience and some times I had trouble navigating through websites, but still I’d say this is the best download manager available in the app store. There are tons of features including pass code lock, wifi transfer and custom user agent. The app also supports zip files and can extract them very fast. You can even backup the files to iCloud!

iDownloader pro is capable of downloading files in the background and popes up a push notification banner when it is complete, that’s a neat feature!
Another wonderful part, is its file manager. It can play almost all kinds of videos and music, an it also supports playlists. You can transfer files via iTunes, or via wifi.

There is a similar version of this app, video downloader pro, I’d recommend that app for users who download lots of videos.

Conclusion: If you want to download files on the go, this is the app for you.

iDownloader Pro, currently available in the App Store for $1.99

The new update includes some buy fixes.

The home page consists of history, and most played, all the songs and albums are arranged a high res tiles. At the top we can change view, artists, albums or playlists. And at the bottom we have the music player controls. The artists and album view are arranged in alphabetic order.

You can also customise the app a lot, there are several options for the background picture and there are a variety of colour schemes.

It’s a great app for those who prefer a change from the boring default music interface.

You can download the app from app store from $1.99

AVPlayer HD

The best video player for iOS platform!
Rating : 4.8/5
Developer: ePLAYWORKs

First look: One of the most interesting thing about this app is its simple UI, you’ll get along with this app as soon as you get it. Menu has three options, The first option is Media Explorer where your videos are arranged in a library. Then comes Wifi transfer, where you’re able to receive videos from your PC. And, there’s the settings link.

You can transfer videos via iTunes, or via wifi. You have to be in the Wifi transfer section at all times while receiving video.

I have been testing this app, and I’m really amazed that this app is capable of playing almost all video format at it full resolution, there is no hassle of converting the video for the iPad.

Some other cool features are :

Pass code lock, either the entire library or particular folders.
You can swipe the video to fast forward or rewind the video.
Increase play speed.
Orientation lock inside the app itself.

The file format support is unparalleled, including:
xvid, avi, mkv, vob, mp4, mov, m4v, four of the most popular subtitling formats are also catered for.

One improvement I’d suggest is that, It’ll be nice if the media explorer supports icon/tile view also, instead of the only list view.

Conclusion: If you watch a lot of video on your iPad/iPhone, this is the app for you. At 2.99$, I’d it is worth the price.

Download it for your iPad (AVPlayerHD), for you iPhone/iPod (AVPlayer)

Download eBay for iPad for free from the app store.

“Designed from the ground up, our 2.0 app brings what you want right to the front. The first thing you’ll notice is a new “home” screen. At the top of the screen, we automatically include your eBay Buying, Watching, and Selling activity. Prefer something else on your home screen? Tap the “Edit” button and move your home screen options around, add new options or delete.”

The Samsung GALAXY S III features a large 4.8 inch HD Super AMOLED display, an 8MP camera and a 1.9MP front camera, and runs Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich.

Video review

Specs

The 4.8-inch display is a Super AMOLED panel with 720 x 1280 (306ppi) resolution, and inserted just above that display? Why, it’s a 1.9MP forward-facing camera which shoots 720p video. Over on the Galaxy S III’s backside, it’s got a simple 8MP camera that can shoot 1080p video. But don’t let that lowly sensor number put you off – Samsung’s got a few camera tricks in store this time, which I’ll touch on in a minute.

Running on one of Samsung’s beastly new 1.4GHz Exynos 4 Cortex-A9 quad-core chips, it comes with 1GB of RAM, and a choice of either 16, 32 or 64GB internal storage configurations (all of which also let you chuck a microSD card up to 64GB in, as well.)

In certain territories (the US, Japan and Korea), the S III will be available in LTE, but we’ll have to make do with HSPA+ here in the UK.

Seven sensors, including an accelerometer; RGB light; digital compass; proximity; gryoscope; NFC, and barometer have been shoved in too.

All of this in a body that weighs 133grams, measures 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6mm, and houses a 2100mAh battery; Samsung’s first smartphone with a battery that size.

New features :

- Smart Stay, which uses the forward-facing camera to determine if you’re looking at the phone. You can set time intervals from as little as 15 seconds, which result in a small flashing eye logo in the Android notification bar. If it recognises that your eyes aren’t focused on the phone anymore, the screen dims.

- Direct Call, which will auto-dial a contact if you have their contact details or a message open. By moving the phone to your ear, the proximity sensor; accelerometer and gyroscope all kick into use, and automatically dial the contact’s number.

- Smart Alert, which will make the phone vibrate in your hand and flash an LED if you pick the phone up after a missed call.

- S Voice, which is a Siri-like voice recognition feature, that you can use to enquire about the weather; take a photo (“Hi Galaxy, please take a photo” to open the camera app, or “cheese” to snap it), and other tasks such as locking the phone, or controlling music. Each demand can be configured by the user.

- Social Tag, which links photos of friends in your photo gallery to their Facebook or Google+ accounts, using facial recognition.

- S Beam, which pairs other Galaxy S III phones (and only them, for now) via NFC, shares photos, videos, files or even albums of media over Wi-Fi. If your friend’s S III doesn’t have Wi-Fi enabled, S Beam will automatically turn that user’s Wi-Fi on, and then off.

- AllShare Cast, which pairs to TVs, laptops or tablets over Wi-Fi, mirroring whatever’s on the S III. You can also use the S III as a game controller.

- PopUp Play, which will literally pop a video out of its player, rendering it in a small thumbnail so you can continue watching while surfing the web or doing other functions on the phone. The thumbnail is movable around the display, even if it’s pretty small.

As reported by sites like AnandTech, the folks at Chipworks discovered that Apple is using a different production process for its A5 processors. The company switched from using Samsung Semiconductor’s 45nm process to Samsung’s 32nm process, reducing the size of the chip by 41 percent.

The new iPad 2, referring to the $399 iPad, features a new 32nm process for the chip design. This made the chip nearly half the size, and made room for Apple to increase the size of the internals. However, the big gain in switching from 45nm to 32nm is speed and efficiency. Though the 32nm chip found in the new iPad 2 is smaller, and more efficient, it still scores similarly to the 45nm chip found in the old iPad 2. Scoring roughly the same in web browsing, graphics, and the Geekbench tests, which were conducted by Macworld. Many people won’t even notice a speed difference in day to day usage, even with the new chip design.

They also put the devices through battery tests, but the difference was so minuscule, that it didn’t really prove that the new chip was more power efficient. In some of the speed tests, the old iPad’s 45nm design beat the new design.

Name: LSBrightSlider
Price: FREE
Repo: BigBoss
Developer: FreeManRepo

As illustrated by the screenshot above, a brightness slider is added to the lock screen under the volume slider. Pressing the home button twice while on the lock screen pulls up the slider – the iPod controls as well as the two sliders will become visible. Swiping to the right increases the brightness of the display and swiping to the left decreases the brightness of the display.

Made very evident from the screenshot, the design of the brightness slider is not consistent with the volume slider. You can tell almost immediately that the knob and the bar are not the same as the volume slider has a shinier appearance. However, when you theme your iOS device with WinterBoard themes and the theme includes a lock screen or knob theme, both knobs and bars will adopt the same theme. It would make a great future update for the appearance to be made consistent for those design sticklers out there.

Functionally, the tweak works perfectly and the brightness changes as advertised. There are no options to configure from the settings application and no icons are added to the home screen – you just install it and start using it from the lock screen, but you will have to uninstall it to get rid of it if you don’t like it. If you think adjusting the brightness from the lock screen will be useful for you, then give this free jailbreak tweak a try.

Sources: FreeManRepo