Brian Caulfield, Forbes.com

Apple’s new iPhone promises to be 4.7 ounces of awesome.

It will do everything the iPhone does well – surfing the Web, serving up music and movies, and letting you flick through your voicemail messages with a fingertip – only faster and cheaper.

Yet imperfections still lurk, in spite of Chairman Steve Jobs’ maniacal attention to detail. Even before its release, there are some niggling issues – some minor, others major – that make the iPhone a mere gadget, just like any other. Just ask those pesky bloggers:

The cost
Those crafty phone companies! Yes, at $US199, the new iPhone is cheaper up-front than the original, which first went on sale starting at $US499 last year. It is not, however, less expensive to own. Do the math and you find out the iPhone will cost $US160 more over two years than the original iPhone because AT&T put together a pricier data plan for the phone to help it subsidise the up-front cost of the handset. The gadget fiends at Gizmodo called that “a small price to play,” but Bits, the technology blog at The New York Times, called it “a step backwards for consumers.”

No Flash
The iPhone is a surprisingly capable Web browser. Its wide, high-resolution screen and the ability to bop around the Web by tapping links with a fingertip has turned mobile Web surfing from a chore into a pleasure. The biggest hitch: the iPhone still doesn’t support Adobe’s Flash technology, which means many multimedia-rich sites remain off limits. While Adobe is working hard to make its technology iPhone-friendly, don’t hold your breath.

No replaceable batteries
Hardcore road warriors don’t have time to stop and recharge their phones. Instead they carry their batteries with them, clicking them into their BlackBerrys in the backs of cabs, or, if they’re lucky, in a coffee shop. By contrast, there’s no easy way to crack open the new iPhone’s sleek case to pop in a battery, disappointing bloggers. And while kits are available for do-it-yourselfers, we wouldn’t recommend trying it in between bites of your bagel.

Video recording
Apple’s computers come preloaded with iMovie, a slick little application that makes video editing easy and fun. Apple’s iPods, with the exception of the Shuffle, have evolved into snappy little video viewing machines. But if you want to record video, you’d better talk to Sony. Despite its built-in two-megapixel camera, Apple isn’t building the ability to take video into its new phone, a feature even many low-end so-called “feature phones” include.

No cut-and-paste
The inability to copy a chunk of text and paste it into another application has baffled geeks since the iPhone’s introduction last year. It’s a simple tool that would make blogging and zapping bits of text to friends via e-mail a breeze. And, yes, it can be done without screwing up the phone’s interface.

No Multimedia Messaging Service
This might be the most interesting example of what makes the iPhone quirky: There are some things dirt-cheap phones cranked out by the tens of millions can do that the vaunted iPhone cannot. Forbes.com’s David Ewalt sees the lack of support for Multimedia Messaging Service as one of the most maddening. Want to open an image sent to you via MMS by a friend from her (dirt-cheap) mobile phone? No dice.

Bonus: No voice dialling
No blogger we’ve seen has complained about this yet. Maybe that’s because all the geeks who might whine about how tough it is to dial the iPhone died in fiery auto wrecks first, seeing as the iPhone doesn’t have the voice-recognition smarts to let users dial verbally – the one feature makes the BlackBerry, with its nubby little plastic keyboard, usable on the road.

pocketgamer.co.uk

When going through an airport security checkpoint, the startling buzz of a metal detector reminds you to slide off your belt or dig a set of forgotten keys from your pocket.

Leon Kennedy can empathise, because when he trots through security, the detectors go crazy for his gun belt too. It’s so easy to forget, you know, to put all the clips in the bin.

Loaded up with action, Resident Evil: Degeneration strips away the droll elements of survival-horror in order to make it through the iPhone gate. The game’s story and gunplay won’t grip you for long, though, as it’s over in less time that it takes to make it through most airport security checkpoints.

As Leon Kennedy, you’re called in to deal with an unexpected outbreak of the T-virus in the fictional Harvardville airport. The building has been locked down, all flights cancelled, and the few remaining survivors locked away in a VIP lounge deep inside the complex.

Locating the survivors and getting them to safety is your primary objective, though your mission warps into one of containment as the zombie menace threatens to escape.

Making sure that doesn’t happen is a matter of tapping to shoot zombies, and then asking questions later. A tap of the Aim button on the right side of the screen whips out your gun, cementing Leon in position for shots triggered with another tap of the button.

An analogue stick at the left allows you to aim with your weapon primed, or to move with your weapon holstered.

It’s a manageable system, though one that has clear flaws. Leon frequently moves when you attempt to aim with the analogue stick, sometimes doing so even when you’ve not touched it at all. Without the ability to control the camera, your view occasionally gets caught on the back of Leon’s head or jammed in a doorway.

These are but minor annoyances when considering the combat, which has you nailing shuffling zombies and feral dogs with a range of high-powered firearms.

It’s pretty fun taking pop shots at zombies from the interior of a burning plane and running through the duty-free shopping wing mowing down infected with blasts from a shotgun. Which makes it all the more disappointing when the eleventh and final chapter of the story pulls the curtain little more than an hour from when you began playing.

A bonus Mercenaries mode unlocked after completing the game and the ability to play through the story again with all of your upgraded equipment hardly conjures replay value. Since the game doles out far too much, you need to play through a second time to unlock items and upgrade your arsenal.

Mercenaries mode, which has you racking up zombie kills as a clock ticks down, only adds a couple more minutes of play.

Resident Evil: Degeneration has the making of something much funner, though more than a tune up of the controls and upgrade system is needed to get it there.

It’s missing some firepower, for a start, as though Leon dropped his clips at the security checkpoint and forgot to pick them back up. A couple of extra rounds to lengthen and liven up the game would do much to fill out a neat but stingy package.

Associated Press Nintendo has owned the portable video-game market – first with the Game Boy, now with the DS – for so long that most of us gave up hope of ever seeing a viable competitor. But it’s become impossible to ignore the new kid on the block: Apple’s iPhone, whose game library has quickly overwhelmed Nintendo’s.

There are now more than 9,000 iPhone games available at Apple’s App Store. The quality varies widely, and the market is so flooded that it’s hard to sort the good from the bad. But since the prices are low, you can buy 10 or so games for the price of one Nintendo cartridge. None of them will have the depth of Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars but they may be better suited for on-the-go action.

My main problem with the iPhone is that its touch-screen controls aren’t as precise as those on dedicated game machines. I’m not about to replace my DS (or my PlayStation Portable, for that matter), but I do enjoy wading through the App Store’s offerings. Here are some recent standouts, based on a four-star rating system:

•Zen Bound (Chillingo, $4.99): The best iPhone games are those that seem as if they couldn’t have worked on any other device. Each level of this gem shows a 3-D sculpture with a string attached, and the idea is to rotate the object with your finger until most of its surface is wrapped by the string. Never has a game been more appropriately named; the challenging yet stress-free Zen Bound creates an eerie sense of calm. {star}{star}{star}{star}

•Flight Control (Firemint, $2.99): The most popular game at the App Store is as nerve-racking as Zen Bound is relaxing. You use your finger to guide aircraft safely onto runways, but it isn’t long before the skies are filled with planes waiting for you to bring them home. A crash is inevitable – but that only makes you want to try again to get a better score. {star}{star}{star}

•The Oregon Trail (Gameloft, $5.99): Sure, pioneer travel was awful, but this revamp of an ’80s classic brings it to life with vivid animation and wacky humor. Try not to let your kids get abducted by eagles. {star}{star}{star}

•Magnificent Gizmos & Gadgets (Publisher X, $1.99): This nifty physics-based puzzler will appeal to anyone who ever thought it would be fun to build a Rube Goldberg machine. {star}{star}1/2

•WordFu (ngmoco, 99 cents): Roll the lettered dice and find as many words as you can. It’s a lighter, faster version of Boggle , and not quite as satisfying. {star}{star}

•Metal Gear Solid Touch (Konami, $7.99): Konami turns its epic espionage saga into a drab shooting gallery. A blatant case of trying to squeeze a high-profile franchise onto the wrong platform. {star}

loot-ninja.com

Buying mobile games is often a tricky experience. You often get what you pay for and when games are only a few bucks, you get a game worth just that. TNA Wrestling is a very good buy for what they are asking, which is 5 bucks.  Any wrestling game fan knows the bevy of controls that are required and when the iPhone games only have really the screen to press, how would this ever work. TNA is not so much a wrestling game as it is a RPG. Yeah, it’s turn based and it is a good time.

In TNA, you do not choose who you wrestle as, you make your own wrestler at the onset. There are few clothing choices, but more will be revealed as you progress. The premise of the campaign is simple, rise through the ranks of TNA and take on the big stars. You will be given moves that need to be keyed in by following the directions on screen. This is all explained well and is easy to pick up. As you defeat opponents, you can now perform their finishing moves when prompted, so make sure you pause the game and select which stored move you would like.

A huge part of the game is the dialogue, which will give you face or heel points (face being the good guy and heel the villain). Based on your reply, you will be rewarded with various EXP. Remember, replies often have multiple choices so select the appropriate response by pressing the quote bubbles in the conversation box. It took me some time to figure this out. The conversations are lame, but funny lame. They take shots are people’s manhoods, New Jersey, girlfriends, whatever.  This is a great idea and it gives the game a ton of replayability.

TNA Wrestling is a very unique game that takes a new look at gaming on the iPhone.  The controls are simplified to single clicks and movements, but the game is very deep and very fun. The replayability is very high with the RPG elements and how you choose to interact with the other wrestlers. All the movesets are the same, but the finishers vary.  You will not find a deeper game on the mobile market for 5 bucks. All TNA fans should grab this right away and casual fans should consider this as well. Dr. Cock and Balls made a meteoric rise through the TNA ranks. Now it’s your turn.