Here’s a tip on how to save money on paid apps

Have you purchased an app only to find that it has gone on sale or free a few days later? It has happened to me many times, and it’s not a nice feeling.

So here’s a simple tip that I follow that has helped me save money on paid apps.


Developers very often put their apps on sale, either during the holiday season or some other time of the year in the hope that they sell more copies, leading to a growth in net revenue. So when you’ve set your mind on a certain app, it’s likely that it might be going on sale soon. Now how do you know that?

Price history

AppShopper.com has a neat feature where it keeps a track of the price history of all apps, so you can find out if there have been price changes for an app, and how likely is it that the price will fall in the near future.

You can check the price history on their website or using their AppShopper Social app (direct iTunes link). To check the price history on the AppShopper Social app, launch the app, tap on the Search tab, and search for the app you’re looking for, then scroll down and tap on App activity.

If there have been price changes then you may want to defer your decision to buy it, and wait for the developer to drop the price of the app again.

AppShopper Wishlist

Another AppShopper.com feature is wishlists, where you can add apps you want to the wish list by tapping on the I want it option in the AppShopper Social app, and AppShopper will send you price change alerts for it, either through push notifications or via email.

You can access the settings by tapping on the gear icon in the top left corner (available from the Stream, Friends, Wish List and My Apps tabs). Tap on Push Notifications, and ensure that the toggle for push notifications for price drops has been enabled (it is enabled by default). Alternatively, you can enable email notifications by taping on the Email Notifications option.

That’s it. So the next time you’re buying an app, make sure you go to AppShopper.com or to the AppShopper Social app, and search for the app. If you see that price changes are very frequent, it might be a good idea to delay your purchase and add the app to your wish list instead.

If you’re just looking for good deals, then there are quite a few apps in the App Store to keep track of top ranked apps that have gone free or discounted, which we will cover as a follow up to this post.

You can also bookmark our App deals page or join our Facebook Fan page, follow us on Twitter, add us to your circles on Google+, subscribe to our RSS feed as we have started covering deals on popular and top rated apps.

iPhone 5C photo leaked by Pegatron employee

A quality control employee at Pegatron, Apple’s manufacturing partner, has published a photo on here Weibo profile, which appears to be a large number of iPhone 5C units in testing mode.

When we saw the photo, we initially thought that it was a knock-off, but Engadget had done some digging, and discovered that the photo was posted by none other than an employee at Pegatron’s Shanghai plant.

Engadget reports that the employee appears to have joined the quality control department in mid-July. She posted the photo, as you can see above, along with the following caption:

“The low-end iPhone 5C to be launched for Chinese consumers in September doesn’t look much different than the Xiaomi Phone 2, right?”

It seems odd that new iPhone units would be kept in such as disorganized fashion, but Engadget notes that they’ve seen similar this kind of testing setup during factory tours.

The iPhone 5C units is very similar to the leaked components and mockups, with the plastic rear casing and front black panel.

Apple is widely expected to launch iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C at a media event on September 10, followed by the launch on September 20.

More Photos of iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C parts

Sonny Dickson continues to post photos of iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S parts on his website.

Earlier today he posted several photos, which he claims are of parts from Apple’s iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C directly from his sources within Apple’s supply chain.

He writes:

You’re looking at our most extensive iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C part leak yet, with a variety of ribbon cables and components, including the entire intact casings, vibration motor, audio jack, SIM trays, the front and rear cameras, the mounts to attach all of the components to the casing, and more. Nearly everything except the logic board – even the screens!

As you can see from the photo above, it appears that the rumored gold/champagne iPhone 5S will have white inlays at the top and bottom. It also seems to have the dual LED flash, which is also in line with rumors we’ve heard so far.

He has also posted side-by-side comparison photos of the black and gold iPhone 5S rear shell.

Apple is widely expected to unveil iPhone 5S and the rumored lower-cost iPhone 5C at a media event on September 10, followed by the launch on September 20.

Since iPhone 5S is going to look like the iPhone 5, we expect the gold color, which looks quite elegant, to be quite popular as it is going to be only way to tell people that you have the new iPhone. But the white inlays at the top and bottom looks quite ugly.

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

If you’re interested, head over to Sony Dickson’s website to see the entire photo gallery of iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C parts.

Surprise: iPhone people like their phones more than Android people like their phones

Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) surveyed an untold number of people between July of last year of June of this year and they’ve made quite a startling discovery. Roughly 81% of existing iPhone owners purchased a new new iPhone during those 12 months, whereas only 68% of Android owners bought a new Android phone.

Let’s think about why this is obvious. Most Android users buy an Android phone because it’s cheaper than the iPhone. So they get an Android phone, probably one that’s either $99 or free on a two year contract, find out it’s junk, and then swear that they’ll never buy another Android phone again, so they go ahead and buy an iPhone.

And as for iPhone people buying more iPhones, well of course, if you spend tens of dollars, maybe even hundreds of dollars on apps and content for you iOS device, why would you “throw it away” to get an Android phone?

New iWatch Concept features flexible touchscreen display, runs iOS 7

It has been widely speculated that Apple is working on an iOS-based smartwatch, unofficially dubbed iWatch, which could be launched as soon as this year.

We’ve already seen patents and concepts that have given us a glimpse of what an iWatch may look like.


Folks at Ciccarese Design (via 9to5Mac) introduce us to a new iWatch concept created by a team of Italian designers and IT engineers.

Here’s our version of iWatch and the image you see we wanted to realize style and functions, in typical Apple design that so fascinates us.

In our shell from the futuristic design, we enclosed ideally, the latest version of the operating system for mobile devices iOS7.We have also started prototyping and we have already made the first two copies, one white and the other black, to verify the ergonomics as well as the attractiveness of the object when worn.

Apple’s cool new patent for a touchless gesture-based UI to control 3D objects

he U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today granted Apple a patent for a method to create and manipulate 3D objects using gestures made above a touchscreen’s surface.

The patent titled ”Working with 3D objects” covers methods to represent 3D objects on a touchscreen, and subsequently update an object’s representation based on user input, which can either be through touch or using air-gestures. A simplified claim from the patent says:

Detecting a gesture input that comprises a movement of a finger in proximity to a surface of the display, measuring a distance between the finger and the surface of the display; modifying the 3D object according to the gesture input; and displaying the updated representation of the 3D object on the touchscreen.

Normal touch screens can recognise 2D gestures made on the display, but a proximity sensor, in combination with the existing capacitive touch sensors, adds an extra dimension altogether, letting the user make gestures in 3D space.

Having all three dimensions to sense user input enables all sorts of interesting possibilities like creating 3D objects using 2D objects as the base:

A first user input identifying a 2D object presented in a user interface can be detected, and a second 3D gesture input that includes a movement in proximity to a surface can be detected. A 3D object can be generated based on the 2D object according to the first and second user inputs, and the 3D object can be presented in the user interface where the 3D object can be manipulated by the user.

The simplest example of the idea described here is the creation of a cylinder — users draw a 2D circle on the screen, and then pull their finger(s) away from the screen to give the circle a third dimension of height.

This idea can be taken forward to add more complexity and let users “sculpt” objects, as Apple describes in its patent:

A “sculpting” mode in which 3D objects have properties as if made of clay, and finger movements are interpreted as sculpting 3D clay objects. The user may adjust properties of the clay, such as softness, during the sculpting process.

Depending on the finger movements, indentations may be formed in the object and portions of the object may be squeezed smaller while other portions may be enlarged (as if the clay material were squeezed from one region to another). When the pinch-and-pull gesture input is applied to an object having clay-like properties, pulling a portion of the object for a distance beyond a threshold may cause the portion to break off from the main body, just like pulling a portion off a lump of clay. A “pinch-twist-and-pull” gesture input can also be used to twist and break off a portion from the main body of an object.

As Apple describes, 3D gestures could spawn a whole new category of content creation apps for artists, designers, architects etc.

The air-gesture idea described in the patent can already be seen in the Microsoft Kinect and the Leap Motion controller, though the inner workings of the two might be different than what’s described in the patent.

Tell us what you think about 3D gestures in the comments below. Samsung already has a few air gestures in its latest smartphone and they’ve been labelled “gimmicky.”

Also see: Demo of Kinect-like touchless gesture interface for iPad

iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C launch date: September 20?

Japanese business newspaper Nikkei (via CNET) reports that Apple will launch iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C exactly a month from today, on Friday, September 20 and ten days after the devices are unveiled at a media event on September 10.

New iPhones will arrive in Japan on September 20 with a gold iPhone 5S option in tow, Japan’s Nikkei reported Wednesday.

SoftBank and KDDI will handle sales of the iPhone 5S and 5C, according to Japan’s largest business daily. NTT Docomo is not expected to sell the new iPhones, Nikkei added. [..]

[..] In addition to the conventional black and white models, a new “champagne gold” will be offered, the newspaper said. This reinforces widely-reported rumors about that color option for the iPhone 5S. 

The 5S is expected to come with an upgraded processor and camera as well as fingerprint reader integrated into the home button, according to the report. Again, echoing recent reports. 

Apple usually launches the iPhone first in the U.S. and several other countries, so if September 20th is the launch date in Japan, then it will be launch date in U.S. as well. We had also predicted September 20th as the release date for iPhone 5S based on the release schedule followed by Apple for the last couple of years.

iPhone 5 was launched in 9 countries including US, Canada, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, France, Germany and UK. We expect Apple to launch iPhone 5S in more than 9 countries this year.

I can’t wait to get my hands on iPhone 5S. What about you? Do you plan to buy or upgrade to iPhone 5S? Or Will you buy iPhone 5C?