Apple appears to have upped the processing speed of the iPod Touch in order to help it go after the portable-game market.

The second-generation iPod Touch uses a slightly faster processor than the iPhone 3G. (Credit: Apple)

Touch Arcade reports that the applications processor inside the second-generation iPod Touch unveiled in September is actually running faster than the processor inside the iPhone 3G, which runs at the same speed that the original iPhone and iPod Touch used. The new iPod Touch’s ARM-based processor is running at 532MHz, while the iPhone 3G’s processor runs at 412MHz.

A game developer interviewed by Touch Arcade noticed a huge difference in 3D-rendering speed as a result of the speed bump. As we remember fondly from our “megahertz madness” days of the Intel-AMD competition in the PC, processor speed is not the only measure of performance, but it is an important one.

With the arrival of the App Store, Apple has been marketing the latest iPod Touch as a gaming device in its latest round of commercials, almost completely ignoring the fact that it’s a music and video player as well.

It seems that Apple has room to boost the clock speed of the processor to 620MHz, according to ARM’s specifications, but that requires striking a balance between performance and battery life.

Read more at http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10106891-37.html

Just because you had to cut down to one meal a day to buy your iPhone doesn’t mean you can’t afford cool apps for it.

You finally have that long-coveted iPhone. True, you had to sell all your worldly possessions to swing it, but you’re content—almost. It’s not that sleeping on park benches is so bad—the surroundings are pleasant enough—but being unable to afford nifty applications for your gleaming communicator has you sliding into existential crisis. Take heart—free apps abound, and we’ve brought together reviews of four to provide the reassurance you need.

The fact that you own an iPhone means you live to communicate, so being unable to access your Facebook account because you hocked your computer must cause unbearable stress. Your anguished cries have been heard. Now there’s Facebook for the iPhone. For the moment, the features are pretty basic, so it may not fully sate your social-networking craving, but it can keep you from going into wholesale withdrawal.

Likewise, you needn’t live without streaming audio—Pandora for the iPhone brings that capability to your shiny Apple phone. The mobile app includes many of the features you’ll find in its big brother, including the popular capability that lets it deliver tunes geared to your tastes based on what you’ve listened to previously.

You don’t have to sacrifice news of your favorite sports teams, either. Sportacular will keep you up to date on baseball, pro and college football, NBA and college basketball, the NHL, and Major League Soccer. Sadly, there’s no NASCAR, but you have to be willing to sacrifice to own an iPhone.

Yahoo! oneConnect, which integrates contact management for Yahoo! users and for those of other networks, officially makes the service’s IM facility available on the iPhone. The application still has a long way to go if it’s ever to meet its goal of being the hub for your social-networking services, but Yahoo! Mail users who want easy access to their address books may find it useful.

You can read the reviews of these products by clicking on the links in this article. Take a look to reaffirm your belief that, when compared with sleek high-tech gadgets, four walls and a roof are way overrated.

We’ve shown you a selection of free iPhone apps we’ve tested out. Now take a peek at some iPhone apps you actually might not mind paying for.

by Errol Pierre-Louis

The Apple AppStore is chock-full of free iPhone stuff to download. We’ve already shown you a few of the coolest free iPhone apps available, but what apps are actually worth paying for? To find out we took five premium iPhone apps for a test drive.

We've shown you a selection of free iPhone apps we've tested out. Now take a peek at some iPhone apps you actually might not mind paying for.

Our favorite of the bunch is Avatron’s Air Sharing app. Apple doesn’t make it easy to use your iPod to store non-media files, even though the device is perfectly capable of doing so. Air Sharing comes to the rescue with a handy app that turns your iPhone into a networked drive that can wirelessly transfer files to and from your computers, while also letting you view a wide variety of file types on your phone. It works with Mac, Microsoft, and Linux, and it gives you Web access to files on your iPhone. This handy app costs $6.99, but if you’re the type who needs access to files on the go, it’s well worth the cost.

One bewildering omission is the iPhone’s lack of cut-and-paste functionality. TextGuru rectifies this oversight by giving you the ability to cut, copy, and paste in documents you create with the program. In addition, it also lets you view PDF and Microsoft Word files. It’s a little rough around the edges, but for $4.99 you can cut and paste on your iPhone to your heart’s delight.

While SpeakEasy Voice Recorder isn’t the only app out there that can turn your iPhone into a voice recorder, its simple interface and its ability to download files to play in iTunes make it stand out among the crowd. Technical limitations, like the inability to record actual phone calls, detract from the otherwise-perfect SpeakEasy, but, for $1.99, you get a simple app that provides a more foolproof way of downloading your recordings to your computer for archiving or transcribing.

OneTap Movies is a prime example of an app that just isn’t worth the cost. It helps you locate a nearby flick when you’re on the go, but so can other apps that don’t charge you $1.99. Our advice: Save your money for the popcorn.

Another example of an overpriced app is BeejiveIM, which sells for a whopping $16. Of all the apps that let you use your favorite instant-messaging applications on your iPhone, Beejive, so far, is the only one that lets you stay connected to multiple IM services on your iPhone when you close the app. Might be worth the price for IM addicts until Apple finally lets third-party apps run IM apps in the background. Otherwise, we’ve gotta say it seems too expensive.

Read the full reviews by clicking on the links in this article or those in the short descriptions that follow and decide for yourself whether these premium apps are worth your investment. Also, be sure to check out the full range of phone and PDA apps we’ve reviewed in our product guide. More are on the way! If you’ve got a favorite iPhone app you’d like us to consider, tell us about it on this article’s discussion thread.