IOS4.1 for iPhone. And what is HDR anyway?

As of Wednesday, the new iPhone operating system upgrade, IOS4.1, has something for everyone, apparently.

For those souls with the new iPhone 4, the operating system will bring new HDR features. Not that most people know what HDR means (but will by the end of this blog).

The operating system upgrade to IOS4.1 also features various fixes and speed improvements. See the Apple store if you want more info – no point in me repeating it here. Although the details on the site are a bit vague at the time of writing, strange considering they’ve now released the upgrade.

Apple won’t make a big deal about the fact that they’ve also taken the opportunity to plug another hole, which up to now allowed jail-breaking of the phone – which you may recall was recently made legitimate!

However, if you’re not planning on jail-breaking the iPhone, that won’t bother you. I could not see sufficient justification given the selection of apps in the Cydia store, so I went for the upgrade.

For those of you who’ve never updated their iPhone – I found it’s a doddle, just make sure the phone is charged, follow the instructions, be patient and you’ll soon be in new operating system heaven. Or you’ll own a brick if it doesn’t work.

In my case I plugged my iPhone into the PC, ignored the message about backing up etc… and pressed the update button…  I got a notice on the screen….  upgrading to IOS 4.1and 11 minutes later… and another glass of wine down the hatch… the iPhone insisted on doing a backup that I was convinced was going to take weeks given that I have hundreds of Apps installed – but no, it took only a few minutes.

As I was sitting praying for no power cuts, the software effortlessly backed up everything, then upgraded the phone with a few beeps here and there but very little else to indicate that the phone was having a lobotomy.

As I watched, the phone reset (always a worry) and a minute later the PC said “updating the phone software” as a little progress bar on the iPhone moved slowly from left to right assuring me I hadn’t converted my phone into a brick…I’m guessing five minutes in total during which I was more tense than during an episode of 24.

At the end of the upgrade my heart almost stopped when I heard the cheersome “beep beep”, which indicated that the iPhone was alive and well.
 
Oh, I should say I was updating from 4.01 to 4.1 – I missed out the intermediate update as it really didn’t offer much except plugging another leak. 

On power-up the only thing that was immediately obvious was… the new game centre (or center as some might say). Other than that, things looked pretty much like normal – it would be nice if they’d introduce a little pop-up guide to what’s new. Anyway… that’s it – job done!

OK, so what about the 3GS users left with no HDR and what on earth is HDR anyway? HDR is not hi-definition as someone suggested today but "high dynamic range".

Those of you with long memories may remember cassette tapes – which had low dynamic range (bear with me on this). 

At one end of the range, quiet sounds could be drowned out by hiss. At the other end if you recorded too loudly, the sound would distort.

Along came CDs and all of that became history. You could now hear from the quietest whisper to the loudest bang. Problem solved. No one even thinks about it any more.

But  the dynamic range of many phones' cameras is terrible. So what does this mean?

Look at any scene, say with buildings and the sun behind them, and your eyes can see all the building details – and with a little effort, the sun. Point your camera at the same scene and you will have an exposure choice of getting the sky detail with the buildings too dark, or the buildings with a whitened-out sky. This is one example, there are many. The fact is the camera just can’t handle the range of brilliance.

So how do you get around that? The best answer would be to have sensors that can handle everything from the dimmest light output to the brightest star – sadly the only ones that do that cost obscene amounts of money and usually sit in space telescopes. Getting this on our mobile phones? Not a chance, for now.

Another way - although it has its issues - is to take two or more photos of the same scene at different exposures, one exposed for the sky, the other set for the buildings, for example, then somehow merge the two images taking the best of both. Useless for fast-moving scenes but excellent for static shots – not entirely authentic but really good looking.

That is what the new iPhone will do – and you can get a pretty close approximation on the 3GS for the staggering price of less that £2. The app is called Pro HDR. It does the lot automatically.

I don’t work for them. I’ve tried the rest and they don’t seem as good. So if you want HDR pics on your “old” 3GS phone – there’s your answer.

I hope this is helpful; if you find anything better, do let me know. If you want to follow my interest in the iPhone and iPad, you could do worse than follow @scargill