Apple Cards app for iPhone 4S hands-on photos

This is a bit of a strange one -- Apple is getting into the birthday and holiday card business. Yep, you heard us right -- cards. On 12 October, you'll be able to download a new app for your iPhone called, you guessed it, Cards.

The app will take pictures you've taken or stored on your iPhone and create a physical card you can customise, which is then sent to an address -- it's like using Moonpig, basically, but on your phone.

We had a very quick look at the app at Apple's iPhone 4S launch event last night, and it seemed as easy to use as you'd expect. Once you've selected the photo you want to use from the photo gallery on your phone, you can choose from 21 different templates. Themes such as birthdays, travel, Christmas and so on are available.

You can move and resize the photo to fit the card, and if appropriate, the app adds your location. Apple sees this being useful for a family holiday. Shoot a picture of your children on the beach, add the location and off it goes to Granny back home.

You can type out a custom message on the keyboard, and once you've finalised the design, you choose the person it's going to from your iPhone's address book.

After that, Apple takes care of everything for you, printing the card and sending it to the right address, for £3.99 a pop. The app itself will be free. You'll need an iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4GS, iPad or iPad 2 running iOS 5 to use it.

There's nothing revolutionary here, but we can see this catching on with families, simply because it's so easy to use. Have a click through our gallery above to see more on how the app will work.

Once you've picked your picture, you have 21 card templates to choose from.

The Card app will automatically put your location on to holiday designs.

You can move and resize photos in the app.

Choose the person you want your card to go to from your address book.

Confirm the address on this screen.

The address you've chosen will pop up on the envelope.

The finished envelope.