iphone

After holding onto a dying iPhone 7 for as long as I could, I finally decided to trade it in and upgrade to the now-current iPhone XS early this summer. When I upgraded, I was mainly hoping for a better screen, camera, and battery life. Outside of those three features, I don't care much, as the iPhone 7 met my needs very well.

The XS does well on all three counts, but one new feature (I think in the iPhone 8/X generation) I didn't even remember existed was wireless charging. Qi wireless charging allows devices to be charged inductively, placed on top of a charging mat or pad. The standard has been around for a while, and other devices had it before Apple's iPhones, but I never thought much of it.

Well, a few months ago, someone at Choetech emailed me and asked me if I'd like to try out their T535-S Dual Wireless Qi Charger in exchange for an honest review (which you're now reading). I was about to respond I don't have any devices I could test it with, but then realized my new iPhone would actually do it!

tl;dr: If you need a long Lightning cable, this is one of the few reliable options. If you need the fastest charging possible for an iPad, stick to Apple's much shorter cable.

A year or so ago, the owner of NOYCE Labs sent me a sample iPhone-compatible microphone to test, and I really liked it—I still use it for impromptu recordings with my iPhone, in fact!

So when I got an email requesting I review NOYCE's latest product, the longest (at least that I know of) Lightning USB cable available on Amazon, I gladly accepted. NOYCE sent me their 13-foot-long (4 meters for the non-Imperial reader) Lightning cable, and I've used it for a couple months now, so I figured it was a good time for a review.

At this year's php[tek] conference, I decided to record my own sessions (one on a cluster of Raspberry Pis, and another on tips for successfully working from home). Over the years, I've tried a bunch of different methods of recording my own presentations, and I've settled on a pretty good method to get very clear audio and visuals, so I figured I'd document my method here in case you want to do the same.

2018 Update: Sadly, this is still the correct way to get syncing working.
2019 Update: Still true.
2020 Update: Sigh.
2021 Update: Yup, still relevant.
2022 Update: Another year, still relevant.
2023 Update: Still works
2024 Update: How is it possible Google still hasn't fixed this?

Someone shared a Google Calendar with me recently, and it showed up at calendar.google.com just fine. However, I could not see the shared events on my Mac (using Calendar) or on my iPhone or iPad (using the Calendar app).

To fix this, I had to visit https://www.google.com/calendar/syncselect directly, and check the shared calendar, then save the settings.

It was a great run! Now that I have the iPhone 5 (see my iPhone 5 review here), this trusty iPhone 4—which still looks and runs perfect—is going to be passed along to some other owner. What an iconic and well-crafted product:

Read my review of the iPhone 4, from 2010.

As I have done for my past three iPhones, I've put together a video that shows how well the iPhone 5 works with various wired and wireless microphones. You can watch the video below, and you can read through my comprehensive day-one review of the iPhone 5 in the Reviews section.

Under the video below, I've listed all the microphones and adapters I used in the video, with links to Amazon for each. (See my full article on iPhone and iPad microphones and audio inputs here).

Microphones and adapters used in this video: