Early iPhone customers clamor for new colors, fingerprint sensor, better camera

September 20, 2013 11:52 AM ETComputerworld - Thousands of people waited in line to buy the new iPhone 5S or 5C at stores in cities around the globe on Friday.

Many arrived very early outside Apple stores in major cities like Paris, New York, Tokyo and the like.

Even in Harrisonburg, Va., a college town of about 60,000, there were lines to buy the new iPhones outside the AT&T and Verizon Wireless stores, which sit across the street from each other.

Instead of the hundreds of buyers waiting overnight in the big cities, these lines each had less than 30 people waiting for 8 a.m. openings, but the first people in line still did show up as early as 4 a.m. in the foggy darkness. One man even arrived even earlier but slept in his car.

For Darlene Perez, waiting in line meant she could buy both versions of the new iPhone immediately. She arrived well before the 8 a.m. opening at the AT&T store and was 15th in line to buy iPhone 5C's for each of her parents (in blue and floral pink) and an iPhone 5S for herself.

Why did she have to get the phones the very first day they were available and arrive so early to get in line? "I always upgrade my iPhones and I really love Apple products," she said.

She said the iPhone 5C's were ideal for her parents since each would cost only $100, plus a two-year contract. That's $100 less than she would spend on her iPhone 5S. "For only $100, it means less if I have to replace one," she said.

Perez, who works at one of the many poultry processing plants in the area, uses her older iPhone 5 mainly for Internet access and to get 100 to 200 work emails a day. AT&T has good LTE service in town, a big advantage, she noted.

Being one of the first to get new iPhones wasn't that difficult in a small town, since she would have been up early anyway, Perez said.

Even so, she admitted that she knows Apple has her firmly in its product marketing and upgrade grip. "Apple is just sitting back and making money," she said, smiling and pointing to the others in line.

The 19 early arrivals at the AT&T store were hoping the initial supply would last. Several said they had called all week and were promised that at least 20 would be on hand at the start of the day and more would be available before closing. The only iPhone 5S on hand at the start was a slate gray model and store managers wouldn't comment on the size of their supply.

Angela Rush, an intelligence analysis major at James Madison University, was among the first to buy one of the iPhone 5S's with the gray back, which she proudly showed off next to her beat-up and cracked iPhone 4.

"I wanted 32 GB up from my 16 GB iPhone 4 -- mainly for storing music," she said. "I like country."

Rush had dropped the iPhone 4 twice, resulting in many cracks on the display. Even so, it continued working for two years so she was eligible for the iPhone 5 upgrade. This time she made sure to buy a white protective case, and drop protection for $10 a month.

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D-Link Day/Night Network Cloud Camera 1150 (DCS-933L)

D-Link knows networking, so the company almost gets it right with the Day/Night Network Cloud Camera 1150. Setup is straightforward, and if your network is built with the latest D-Link products, no setup is required—just plug the camera into an AC outlet and your router and it's ready. Compared with the $200 Y-Cam HomeMonitor Indoor or even the $150 Dropcam HD the $99.99 (list) Cloud Camera 1150 is a good deal. It's a bit under-equipped with a standard-definition sensor, weak night vision mode, and a lack of online DVR service. While there is an online service for viewing the video feed, it doesn't include any cloud-based storage, putting it on par with the $120 Compro Cloud Network Camera (TN50W).

Design and Setup
The plain, white Cloud Camera 1150 has a soap-bar size and shape at 3.6 by 2.3 by 1.2 inches (HWD) without the stand. That stand is one of the few I've seen that's entirely plastic, but it's still wall- or ceiling-mountable with the included screws. It doesn't feel as sturdy as the metal stands that come with the Zmodo 720P HD Wireless Network IP Camera or Dropcam, though.

The camera has far fewer infrared LEDs than other models we've tested, with just four, instead of a nice ring array to nearly invisibly illuminate the area for the camera's IR-sensitive mode when it's dark. D-Link only guarantees night vision to about 15 feet while Y-Cam promises 50 feet. On the other hand, the Compro TN50W we tested has no LEDs at all, so D-Link is ahead of that one.

According to the company, setup is "zero configuration" if you already have a relatively recent D-Link Cloud Router and a mydlink account. My D-Link router is officially ancient at four years old, so I went through the full setup. This involves installing software on a Mac or Windows PC, rather than just a quick scan of a QR code with a mobile app (like that found on the Zmodo) or going to a website to enter a code from the camera (like with the Y-Cam HomeMonitor).

The setup leads you through connecting the camera, via Ethernet, to a router (D-Link includes a ribbon-thin 10baseT cable for this purpose), plugging in the power, then waiting for an LED on the back to turn solid green. The wizard auto-detects the camera's MAC and IP addresses. You can assign a password to the camera at this point, which is highly recommended. Switch the camera to wireless mode using either the simple Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS), or by finding an available Wi-Fi network SSID to connect to.

Finally, you have to sign up for the mydlink cloud service, if you don't have an account already. Download the mydlink Lite apps for your phone or tablet, and get ready for some surveiling.

Features and Performance
The D-Link Cloud Camera 1150 appears no-frills on the surface, but there's some power underneath if you bother to access it (more on that in a minute). Many won't, and will feel they've got their money's worth since that surface works just fine for the most part. I ran into some glitches, however.

To view the camera in a browser on mydlink.com, you need to install the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). I was also told by the wizard to perform a firmware upgrade. It's not exactly a fast setup, but it worked despite the constant Java errors I had with my Chrome browser. Thankfully, Java worked in IE 10.

Once in the mydlink.com interface, you can activate and adjust the motion detection and audio detection under the settings tab. Motion detection has a nice screen that lets you define an area of the image for detection (so the ceiling fan or dogs don't set it off, for example). A slider bar lets you increase or decrease the motion sensitivity. You can also schedule motion detection for individual days of the week. No matter how I set the sensitivity, I got far too many email alerts and false positives.

The audio detection settings are unique among the surveillance cameras I've tested. Mydlink displays a decibel level graph of what the camera currently hears up to 90db, so you can make an educated guess on what setting to use. This model supports listening to live audio with the video, but there's no two-way audio—you can't talk to the camera's subjects from a mobile app or remote computer, for instance.

Whenever a motion or audio event is detected, you get a time-stamped email with a still 640-by-480-pixel (VGA) image attached. The camera doesn't just support SMTP email; you can easily input settings for Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail, as well. It automatically sends the alerts to the email address you signed up with, so using a different address here can mean double the alerts.

Utterly unique to the Cloud Camera 1150 is a wireless extender mode. This lets you extend the range of your home wireless network, and could come in especially handy if you get multiple D-Link Cloud Cameras. Don't set it too far away, though; that could actually hurt wireless network performance.

Many of the above settings can also be modified from the mydlink Lite app on a phone or tablet. Generally, however, the apps are just for accessing the live camera feed, and perhaps taking a still image here or there.

Where's all this under-the-hood power I mentioned? In the mydlink settings, click the "Advanced Settings" button. You'll need the special password you assigned the camera (it may not be the same as your mydlink account password). This gives you access, via your browser, to the internal settings of the camera itself, everything from changing the password, to changing video quality, setting up dynamic DNS, creating mail accounts for alerts, or altering the extender mode to have its own SSID.

In Advanced Settings, you can set up alerts to email a video clip rather than a still image, and there are also options for sending video or stills to an FTP site. That's as close as the Cloud Camera comes to an online "DVR" service for surveillance footage, though the company claims it will work seamlessly with D-Link network-attached storage devices to store video.

The camera uses the H.264 codec, so the video looks good, but it only records up to 640 by 480 resolution, which just doesn't cut it compared with the 720p images on cameras from Zmodo and Dropcam.

Conclusion
We've yet to see a Wi-Fi surveillance camera that has just the right mix of performance, setup, and features to match the Logitech Alert 750n Indoor Master System. The 750n remains our Editors' Choice even though it's more expensive and isn't wireless (using HomePlug instead). D-Link's home surveillance solution needs to improve quality, remove the Java requirement for browser access, and consider some functional online storage (and not just a live feed or email/FTP uploads) to measure up.

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Zmodo 720P HD Wireless Network IP Camera (ZH-IXA15-WC)

Pros Easy QR code setup on smartphones. Excellent video quality. Inexpensive. Software supports multiple cameras.

Cons Clunky Windows desktop software required to record video. No MacOS support. No Web-based interface. No audio. No online "DVR" video storage. Bottom Line The Zmodo 720P HD Wi-Fi surveillance camera with night vision and motion detection has a great price, but that doesn't quite make up for what it lacks compared with the competition.

By Eric Griffith

Zmodo's 720P HD Wireless Network IP Camera (model ZH-IXA15-WC) is a decidedly mixed bag of a home surveillance camera. It sports great video—full 720p support at 1,280 by 720 pixels, which we haven't seen since the Dropcam HD) and fast setup on smartphones using QR codes (like the Compro Cloud Network Camera). But it is hampered by what it lacks: no support for Macs, mediocre Windows desktop software, no access to the camera via a Web site, no audio, and no online video storage like the majority of the competition. Still, you might overlook all of that considering the price: The Zmodo 720P HD now has an MSRP of only $79.99, making it the least expensive home video surveillance cam we've seen.

Design and Setup
The Zmodo 720P HD doesn't veer far from the typical home camera look: It's white and about the size of a bar of soap, measuring 4.0 by 2.6 by 1.3 (HWD). The metal stand adds to the height and depth, attaching to the back with ball into a socket and requiring use of a small Philips head screwdriver. I tested two of these cameras (more on that in a moment) and found the stand attachment worked great on one and terribly on the other; the latter camera would not stop drooping, no matter how much I tightened the screw.

The camera itself has a green LED in front to indicate that it's working, 10 infrared LEDs that come on in low light to provide night vision illumination, and a constantly flashing blue light, probably to indicate network activity, that's visible through the vent grids. The camera isn't in-the-dark stealthy, even if you cover the green LED.

You have three options for watching video on the Zmodo 720P HD: using the Zviewer Windows software, or either of the free Zsight mobile apps for Android or iOS. The mobile apps are a breeze to setup, because Zmodo puts a QR code on the back of the camera. Scan the code with Zsight and the camera's unique ID number is instantly registered to the app. Once the Ethernet-attached cam is visible on your Wi-Fi-connected phone, you can configure the camera's own Wi-Fi settings instantly, and then unplug it and go wireless (except for the always-necessary power, of course).

The Wi-Fi didn't work at all on the first camera I tested. Talking with Zmodo tech support finally led us all to the conclusion that it was defective and I returned the camera for a new one. The second unit worked right out of the box as advertised. It also came with a 16GB microSD card included, part of a current promotion—there's no guarantee you'll also get one. The card goes into a slot on the side that can accept up to a 64GB card.

Setup on the Windows side using Zviewer is more involved. You need to let the Zviewer search for the camera, and if it doesn't find it you have to manually type in the camera ID. The software is, frankly, about as unintuitive as it gets. Zmodo gets no points for catering to consumers with this interface. It may not hamper gearheads much, but I wouldn't recommend it for anyone less than a networking expert. Zviewer can handle video feeds from up to nine Zmodo cameras at a time. 

Performance
There's no denying that the video feed from the Zmodo 720P HD camera, whether viewed on phone or PC, is pretty great. You can set the camera quality to 30 frames per second at 720P if you have the bandwidth. Naturally, when viewing remotely with a mobile phone, frame rate suffers but the picture is still pretty good.

The camera time stamp is displayed by default on the stream, but you can turn it off or add a name for the camera (which is handy if you have multiple Zmodo cams). The time-stamp out of the box was off by a full day and 10 minutes, but syncing it to my PC's clock corrected this.

The lack of audio means you probably won't be using Zmodo 720P HD as a baby monitor (Zmodo PR says a new version with audio is imminent). The night vision works as well as any, and maybe a little too well; the camera likes to default to using the infrared LEDs when it doesn't seem very dark in the room.

Capturing video or stills is another area where the Zmodo falls short. You can capture video locally to your Windows PC hard drive while running Zviewer. There's no online storage. You can supposedly capture video to the microSD card, but the only setting I could find was for stills, by clicking the camera icon on a video feed. The mobile Zsight apps cannot help you capture any images or video, period; they're just for viewing the live stream.

Video capture is best done by setting alerts using motion controls, which can be scheduled to activate at specific times. Again, Zviewer falls short here with a bad interface for setting the schedule—you have to single click in a grid on each quarter of an hour you'd want—and a worse interface for setting the motion detection areas, with even more single right-clicking. You can have alerts sent via email if you know all your SMTP settings; forget about notification via SMS text. None of the capture works without Zviewer running; the camera has no smarts of its own, so it's reliant on a Windows system on the network taking care of business.

Conclusion
The price on the Zmodo is fantastic, without any extras like a DVR service there are no hidden monthly fees, and the direct video streaming quality is great. But Zmodo is marketing the camera for consumers without giving the software the polish it needs. It's nowhere close to unseating our Editors' Choice, the Logitech Alert 750n, and can't hold a candle to other four-star wireless options like Dropcam HD or Y-Cam HomeMonitor. Both shine because of the extras they include. Consider Zmodo 720P HD only if you have the tech and networking expertise to overlook its shortcomings.

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