For the accessory-curious such as myself, ogling at weird and bizarre objects is just as entertaining as searching for useful apps. Today’s top five list is an examination into the strange world of smartphone accessories that reveal just how many different types of users exists.

1. iPhone Cup Holder: If you are like me, putting down a coffee cup to send a text or make a call is no big deal, but perhaps others wish to text and sip simultaneously?

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T-Mobile’s UNcarrier event today has a lot of consumers rethinking the nature of mobile contracts, which typically hides the cost of expensive smartphones spread over the course of a few years. Most importantly, it changes the nature of how consumers pay for phones, if they so chooses.

With a minimum down payment of $99 dollars, consumers can pay $400 for the remainder of 2 years without signing a data contract. T-Mobile is also adding many more 4G devices with varying payment plans along with the popular iPhone: Samsung Galaxy S4, HTC One, Samsung Galaxy Note II, and Blackberry Z10. for example, the Nexus 4 is available for only $49.99 down with $17 per month for 24 months.

The carrier’s no contract data plan allows anyone to have an unlimited data plan for just $70 a month  without the fear of throttling or early termination fees. The company has also invested heavily in its 4G LTE network – a $4 Billion dollar technology upgrade that will launch later this year.

Last year we rounded up five apps for writers, but we want to update with new apps. What apps do you use when you write?

With the popularity of the new iA Writer app available for writers on the iPad, some of our readers wrote in asking for alternative apps that would be compatible with their iPhones. (iA is currently iPad only).

Here is our list of five iPhone apps for writers collected last year…

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Rumors are resurfacing about cheaper Apple phones – this time, the details are coming from Jeremy Horwitz of iLounge. Horwitz’s sources describes the new model as being a plastic hybrid of Iphone 5 front, iPod Classic sides, and iPod Touch rear surface designs. The new design will be targeted towards low income Chinese consumers:

One of our sources claims that Apple’s iPhone prices remain too high for most mainland Chinese customers—the iPhone 5 hardware alone starts at $849 there, versus the iPhone 4 at $500, in a country where the average annual salary is around $3,000 per person.

Apple’s Chinese workers can hardly afford to buy the products they create. Chinese Foxconn workers responsible for making iPhones in China makes about $290 a month – with deductions around $72 for housing.  Read more

If you are in the market for an iPhone 5, it’s worth going into a Walmart store. The big box retailer is selling the 16GB iPhone 5 at the highly discounted rate of $127. (The device normally retails for $199).

The discounted price is valid with a two-year contract from AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint. The deal, which began on Friday December 14th, is good for 30 days and is only available in stores, not online.

The store is also selling older generation iPads at a discount. The Huffington Post has more: “Wal-Mart is pricing the iPad starting at $399, down from $499. Beginning Dec. 17 the retailer said it will throw in a $30 iTunes card. Wal-Mart is selling the 16 GB iPhone 4S for $47, versus an original price of $89.97, it said.”

You can now update to iOS 6 because Google just launched its much awaited Google Maps for iOS devices with turn-by-turn navigation. The brand new app is a breeze to navigate and utilizes intuitive swiping features Apple users are accustomed to. You no longer have to click on those small red location pins – just swiping from the bottom of the screen will bring up the “info sheet”.

You’re not going to see any menu here, the map is the UI. The map is completely vector based, very fast, and we have the search box on top. Those are the two things Google is familiar with, speed and search. Panning around is super fast, labels appear quickly. You Zoom in, you can pan down with gestures for 3D.

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CNET made headlines around the tech community this week, deciding that the Samsung Galaxy S3 is the first device “to knock the iPhone off its pedestal.”

Samsung mocked Apple in an outdoor advertisement in Australia this week, mocking the company’s map app for some potentially dangerous errors. What do you think? Could Samsung climb to the top of the smartphone market in 2013?

Here’s more from CNET: “It took years of iPhone dominance and many months of Android market leadership for a phone with Google’s mobile operating system to knock the iPhone off its pedestal. The Samsung Galaxy S3 won that honor. The GS3 is a truly global phone, available on nearly every carrier, nearly everywhere. Its large, vibrant HD display represents a growing class of phones with broader form factors, and its delicate balance of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, a sharp 8-megapixel camera, 4G LTE or HSPA+ support, and an accessible price make the Galaxy S3 a worldwide hero.”

This photoshop tutorial has some great tips on how to make your app screenshots look more dynamic and engaging. There are also photoshop files for you to download and use.

Don’t worry if you are unfamiliar with the software – this uses very basic skills. The best part is that it takes just about five minutes to take your app from the boring straight-on view to something more visually appealing and professional.

Be sure to familiarize yourself with Apple’s App Store Marketing Guidelines for design criteria. (Via Blue Cloud Solutions)

The iPhone 5 accounted for 68 percent of total iPhone sales at launch, according to a new report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP). While this is a big number it is much less than Apple saw with the iPhone 4S, which grabbed 90 percent of all iPhone sales the first month that it was available for sale.

The report also found that Apple has sold less of the 64GB iPhone 5 models, the highest priced of the devices.The 64GB models represented only 9% of iPhone 5s sold during the first month at retail. The 64GB model of the iPhone 4S, on the other hand, made up 23% of those devices sold when that model was introduced.

iPhone 5 shoppers were more likely to buy from Apple than were those shoppers at the launch of the iPhone 4S. Twenty-nine percent of iPhone 5 shoppers bought from an Apple store or Apple.com at launch, while only 13 percent of shoppers bought their device directly from Apple at the launch of the iPhone 4S. (Via AllThingsD).

Do you have troubles meeting your daily writing quota? Are you among the thousands of writers taking the National Novel Writing Month challenge this November?

The free iPhone WriteChain app will help you keep track of your ongoing word count. Created by How Not To Write blogger Jamie Grove, the tool tracks your daily word count and monitors how close you are to your goals.

Check it out:

Created by a writer for other writers, WriteChain is a word count tracking tool designed to remind you to maintain your writing practice. If you’re serious about writing, you know that dedicated practice is the only way to improve and succeed. WriteChain helps you by storing word counts for each writing session and tracking your total word count. The app also goes a step further by counting consecutive daily sessions to measure your “writing chain”. If you skip a session, you break the chain and WriteChain lets you know about it.