Jon Adair Web dev, aspiring photographer, Mac & iOS tech support.

I was asked to review the UltraGlass Protective Screen Cover during a week of adventurous training with the Royal Navy in Scotland. I’m not normally a fan of screen protectors of any kind for several reasons: they inevitably leave bubbles on the display when you apply them, they never feel as good as the iPhone’s glass display and they are often more reflective or gather more fingerprints than the glass display. However, in an active lifestyle where your iPhone is being thrown into a kitbag with lots of other gear, it’s important to make sure that your investment is well protected.

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As promised before the weekend, here’s my current favourite iPhone wallpaper for you to download and enjoy.

I took this shot on the River Dart at Dartmouth (in the UK), the home of Officer training for the Royal Navy. The sun was just setting behind the hills and was reflecting on the water.

For the photography geeks, it was taken with a Canon 5D Mark II with 70-200mm f/2.8. I’ve found this kind of shot looks great if you focus on the water about one third of the way from the bottom of the frame. This leads the eye in nicely and you end up with the horizon, hills, sun and reflections being out of focus in the top two thirds of the frame. With a nice, fast lens like the 70-200mm you can get some nice bokeh and very subtle lens flare if you get the angles right.

Anyway, download and enjoy. It’s iPhone 4 (retina display) ready and looks great as a lock screen or home screen background.

Apple issued an uncharacteristic statement to All Things D today acknowledging that some iPhone 4S owners have been experiencing worse than expected battery life from their new devices. They stated that this was due to a few bugs in iOS5 that would be addressed with a software update ‘in the coming weeks’.

When I received my iPhone 4S, the battery life was noticeably worse than my iPhone 4, however I put this down to me using it more and messing around with Siri. Today, the battery life on my iPhone 4S is at least as good as on my iPhone 4, running the GM release of iOS5.

If you’re finding that you have reduced battery life on your iPhone 4S (or your iPhone 4/3GS running iOS5), these tips might help you. I don’t recommend turning off features that you’re likely to use, however there are a couple of things you can safely turn off that won’t impact your use of the device.

In Settings, tap Location Services and scroll to the bottom of the list. In System Services, turn off Location-Based iAds and Setting Time Zone. For me, this System Service was using the GPS constantly, presumably to monitor which time zone I was in. The disadvantage to turning these off is that you won’t get location-targeted ads and you’ll have to manually change your time zone (not a big deal for me here in the UK) – if you travel a lot, you’ll have to decide if it’s worth it for you.

It goes without saying that turning off Bluetooth and/or WiFi when you’re not using them will help, but for many people (myself included) this isn’t always practical.

Have you found anything else that improves battery life for you under iOS5?

The guys at Taptaptap just released version 2.2 of Camera+, the best iPhone camera app out there. The last update came after a conspicuous absence from the App Store after they violated one of Apple’s policies by mapping the volume buttons to the shutter release. A few months after being kicked out of the Store, they came back with some killer new features (the ability to set the focus point and the exposure point in different places) and some extra polish. Now, version 2.2 brings another new feature called Clarity. I’ve tried it with a few of the photos I had in my Camera+ lightbox and the results are nothing short of amazing. Seriously. You can see the results below for yourself.

There are lots more sample photos on the Camera+ Clarity page, along with a nice video starring Lisa Bettany. Check out the video after the break!

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I was in Scotland this weekend for a flying visit but managed to grab some time on the beach at Lunderston Bay. It was quite a hazy day and the sun was beginning to set over the Clyde. I was shooting straight into the sun which wasn’t ideal but these two swans were so beautiful and calm that I couldn’t let the opportunity pass.

I thought they made for good desktops for your desktop, iPhone or (if you’ve been lucky enough to get one) iPad 2. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Download the wallpapers

iPad/iPhone direct downloads: iPhone 1 | iPhone 2 | iPad 1 | iPad 2

I recently got an invite to join homescreen.me – a project designed to let people share their iPhone and iPad homescreens with the world.

My current iPhone homescreen is via Halu Kobayashi’s Flickr. I can’t remember where I found the iPad homescreen. There’s a (kind of) matching desktop wallpaper to go with it that I’ve had for a while. If anyone knows where it came from, please let me know in the comments so I can add a link. Follow the download links to get the full-size wallpapers.

iPhone / iPad / Desktop

You can see my homescreens here.

Please feel free to share your homescreens or iPhone/iPad wallpapers in the comments or @ me on Twitter (@jon_adair). I’ll include the best of them in a post next week.

Update: Looks like Halu Kobayashi removed the iPhone wallpaper from his Flickr so I’ve changed the link to a direct download.