Teleport: iPhone Application Review

Subject: Teleport: iPhone Application Review August 14th 2008, 12:27 pm

Right now at this very moment I am watching my computer screen and typeing on it, with no keyboard. I successfully opened firefox and navigated to galaxygui.com, logged in, and then proceeded to create this topic, without ever using a keyboard or mouse. How did I do this? Well duh, you could say, you have an iPhone, your just using mobile safari, but your forgetting, I opened up windows firefox, I used a start menu, I even stopped a torrent download and put on some music on Pandora. How did you do this then Alex, your asking yourself. Well, I am using a relatively old software with a relatively new device to connect to my Windows computer using a VNC server. Today I downloaded "Teleport" and I have dubbed it just about my most favourite application that I have ever used, right after Cydia and x-term of course. I guarantee that I will use it every day. with VNC + teleport I am able to do virtually every thing that I could possibly want to do on my PC on my iPhone without ever touching my keyboard or mouse. Setting it up was relatively simple and easy. It even gives you instructions, pictures included. You can use any type of VCN server host, personally I have always used TightVNC. Its cross platform and works on Mac and Linux. (sadly teleport does not support a Linux VNC session at the moment, maybe a future update?) To get started all that you need is 30 dollars (to cover the cost of Teleport) a WiFi connection, and a host desktop or laptop computer. Once you install a VNC host the hardest part is typing in the password if you use long complicated passwords like me, other than that, I think that the makes of teleport have done an excellent job at providing an amazing tool. You'll see below that there are both landscape and portrait shots, Teleport supports rotation and also a lock of that feature. Offers support for three colour variaties, Hundreds, Thousands, Millions, I kept mine on Thousands so that it loads fast but also looks good. Millions loads slower, and hundreds loads very fast. A downside to Teleport is that it uses battery power very fast, but the developers have also added a solution to that, instead of refreshing every half second or something, you can tell it to refresh slowly and less often if you are just view pictures or moving files, or even sending instant messages through your favourite messaging client. Another great usability option that is not tied to Teleport, but is offered, is remote connection to your VNC client/computer. Setting that up is not an easy process, but they also give you a great guide to setting that up to, which simplifies the process a tremendous amount if you don't know how to set up a forwarded port, or get your router's IP (not 192.168.1.1) Right now im going to take some screenshots of the software running on my phone. (Note that I have changed the key board manually and that normally it loos lie any other keyboard.)

The keyboard is the same as when you send a text message or use safari

Unlike some other VNC clients for the iPhone (Jailbreaking required for the other ones) you have full control of the mouse.

Including right click. The view follows the mouse as u drag.

Being able to right click allows you to create new folders, shortcuts, copy, paste, move items, ect.

Another feature that makes Teleport unique is that you can use key combinations, (ctrl + alt + delete, ect)
which also adds another layer of usability.

The zoom works flawlessly (it zooms into the mouse, not where you pinch your fingers) and you dont have to wait for the whole screen to load, just the portion that you looking at, which speeds up the whole process

Just as a test, i decided to try to play a game, I was able to start Halo (tm) and change some options around, I have yet to try to start to play the game but i dont think that it will be very much fun seeing as u would not be able to move, just look. unless u were ok with just moving, then going back to mouse, looking, shooting, the going to keyboard, moving. Too tedious for my taste.

You've seen the normal keyboard but the other thing that Teleport has is a numpad, all of the function keys, and the arrows + Home, End, Page Up, Down.

I was able to SSH into my phone no problems to retrieve these screenshots. Before I did that I had to clean up the screenshots folder of a few old shots.

And to speed up the process i was able to use combination keys to shift + select all of them at once

Success! I copied all of the screenshots onto my computer from my phone instantaneous.

I had to rotate some of the landscape shots I took, easy job using paint.

Then I was able to upload the images to picsor.com and post them here.