Articles by Mike Overbo
Last week, there was press of unlocked iPhones as the result of the T-Mobile vs. Vodafone lawsuit. T-Mobile lost the suit and as a result have to sell an unlocked iPhone. To keep anyone from actually buying it, they set the price astronomically high, at €999, or $1500 American. There were really only two possibilities for how the $1500 iPhone would be unlocked: one, they would do it for you at the store. If they could unlock from the point of sale, hackers would figure out how Apple did it in the baseband radio and we’d all get unlocked phones. Apple clearly couldn’t do that, so they instead do it from iTunes. If someone purchases an unlocked iPhone from T-Mobile, their IMEI (kind of like a unique serial number for your iPhone) is put into a database. And when that iPhone is activated, it shows up as unlocked. Presto, that’s it!
And now that there’s official iTunes software to unlock, I think it’s pretty safe to assume that eventually we’ll get some iTunes hacks in there that will simulate the iTunes unlock.If you’re looking to translate the German from the image above: “Unlock Complete. Your iPhone has been successfully unlocked. Click continue to set [?] and sync your iPhone.”
It’s an increasingly rare day when a press release finds its way to my inbox that’s actually relevant to me or anyone that uses an iPhone. But, goosync.com has done it. They have a product that syncs your iPhone with Google’s online calendar. It’s a Windows-only app and it requires Outlook with a plugin, but if you were looking for a way to sync the Google to your iPhone, there’s a way to do it.
“A synchronisation application is not yet available for the Apple iPhone. However, it is still possible to synchronise the device with GooSync by using the Funambol Outlook Plugin. [....] A GooSync client for the Apple iPhone is planned for release in Q1 2008.”
I don’t know why you would, but if you need the press release, it’s after the break.
I think that I’ve been lucky with all of the phones that I’ve reviewed in the Smartphone Round Robin. I think there’s a proper order. I began with the device furthest away in mentality to the iPhone, the BlackBerry Curve, and it was a fine device. I missed having a touchscreen, but it was a good device. Then, I got to use the Tilt for a week, and that was actually another good device — very powerful with its touchscreen, and it has a form factor at least in parts reminiscent of the iPhone, though maybe without some of its ease of use. And last, I get to review the Treo, which is in many ways the closest of all of the phones we’ll review to the iPhone. Did you know that iPhone owners were 7 times more likely to have used a Treo (or Sidekick) than any other phone?
There are a lot of rumors floating around that various carriers will get the 3G iPhone. Telefonica is one of the carriers usually named, Vodafone is usually the other. The rumors lately indicate that the next generation of iPhone, the iPhone 3G, will be available in May.
This blog post is basically for the record — I don’t buy it. These posts are all referencing obscure foreign blogs while the more traditional scoop-based mac sites remain silent on the matter (like thinksecret.com, for example). I don’t think Apple will replace the iPhone hardware that soon, either — part of me thinks that Apple will unveil a new iPhone right about the time that original purchasers near the end of their contracts. You know, selling stuff to their already-captive audience. Apple has hinted that maybe we’d maybe see something iPhoney with 3G in late 2008, and that’s probably still true.
I had earlier decided to skip this story, since I’m not aware that we have many, if any German readers, and T-Mobile of Germany only sold 10,000 or so iPhones so far. UK-based Vodafone has been calling sour grapes on the iPhone for a while now. They’re the parent company of Verizon, they passed on the iPhone 1.0, they want 3G, they don’t want to give up their control and just become a data network, they’ve made a lot of noise throughout the iPhone’s launch and they’ve been very effective about staying in the press. Anyway, Vodafone sued T-Mobile for a stop of how they marketed the iPhone because it violated some German laws. They filed the lawsuit a few days ago, and it would appear that Vodafone just won their case.
The resolution of the lawsuit ended in an interesting outcome: it would seem that the iPhone is available unlocked for use with any carrier, with no contract, available from T-Mobile for €999. That’s right, an unlocked iPhone can be yours for the bargain price of about $1500 U.S. I don’t think they’ll have many takers, but my hope is that at least one hacker figures out how they activate these special $1500 iPhones and mimics the process so that any unlocked phone can skip or bypass the sometimes-very-difficult activation process and publishes it for the cred. Barring that, that a group of hackers figure it out and charge for a solution.
How quickly we’ve reached our 9th podcast! Amazing, simply amazing. Plenty of stuff to talk about in this podcast, and yet somehow we hit our time target. I should be injured from a "light-hearted" and "fun" game of "touch" football and Dieter should quit smoking for every podcast. Wish him success and support by sending us an email at podcast at phonedifferent dot com. Or call us and leave a message, that secretly pleases us more.
We had to up the bitrate again; something is different in how Leopard encodes MP3s or maybe GarageBand is exporting additional noise in Leopard or something — the 1411kbps AIFF file sounds great, the 48kbps/60kbps podcast sounds like garbage. Maybe we’re both just being more finicky about how the podcast sounds, but we’re getting some weird artifacts, both with LAME encoding and iTunes encoding. So, we’re letting this one out at a 80kbps bitrate. We’ve also been storing the art inside the individual MP3s; let us know if it shows up.
PC Magazine readers fingered the iPhone as the top cell phone in the PC Magazine “Trustworthy Tech” yearly bit.
“iPhone owners passionately love their devices. In its first year on the survey, the Apple iPhone scored a stunning 9.1 out of 10 from our readers, beating the ratings that every other phone, from every carrier, in nearly every category, has received in the three years we’ve been including cell phones. The iPhone’s 9.6 scores in music and video playback might have been expected, but its 8.2 for call quality (a score significantly better than average), another 8.2 for coverage, and an 8.0 for earpiece volume show that it’s not just the i our readers like. They love the phone, too.
“In the case of other devices, our readers seem to have settled into slightly cranky resignation. Almost all brands on nearly every carrier rated scores between 7.0 and 7.5 overall, with differentiations coming feature by feature. Check out our online charts for full details.”
Palm fared poorly, especially on Sprint and Verizon (700 series woes, I’d imagine), Windows Mobile does better on voice and PDA functions than BlackBerry but BlackBerry still has some insane satisfaction ratings — they manage to grab an 8.0 overall satisfaction rating on AT&T, for example.
Some highlights from the XLS files:
- 1.1 points higher than next best overall rating.
- tops at text messaging
- tops at picture messaging (and MMS isn’t even supported yet!)
- 1.9 points higher than next best web browsing
- 2.5 points higher than next best music player
- 2.5 points higher than next best video player
- lowest rate of required repair among smartphones
There is a dark side to the excel file: a black spot, a mote in God’s eye with regards to the scores. When it comes to requiring technical support, the iPhone is merely average. It must be people asking IT for help on how to hack their iPhone.
I don’t know why AT&T dropped the EDGE requirement from the iPhone, but they did. If you want to save $20/month ($240/yr, $480/2 yrs) and skip the EDGE data and go wi-fi only, that’s now your option. Doing so removes your ability to use visual voicemail and your rights to 200 free messages, but you can add a different SMS plan once EDGE is dropped. If I was to drop EDGE, I’d probably drop AT&T too — I’d spend some of that money I’d be saving on breaking my contract and unlocking my iPhone.
A story about iPhones on a plane, just like the commercial with the pilot, but without the happy ending. Any story that ends like this is not a happy story:
“If the passenger with the iPhone would be kind enough to use it to check the weather at our alternate, calculate our fuel burn due to being rerouted around the storms, call the dispatcher to arrange our release, and then make a phone call to the nearest Air Traffic Control center to arrange our timely departure amongst the other aircraft carrying passengers with IPhones, then we will be more than happy to depart. Please ring your call button to advise the Flight Attendant and your fellow passengers when you deem it ready and responsible for this multi-million dollar aircraft and its passengers to safely leave”
The pilot commercial seems to irk no small amount of people, as they can’t tell if the commercial is legit or not. See here for more; here’s the original ad from Apple about Bryce and his delay.
The jailbreak for 1.1.2 is still for the technically inclined and maybe not for the average Joe. But for those of you that are technically inclined, it now works on all platforms: Intel Mac, PowerPC Mac, and Windows. If you’re running 1.1.2, you’ll have to downgrade to 1.1.1 and then jailbreak with jailbreakme.com and perform some steps before you upgrade back to a jailbroken 1.1.2, but it’s possible. You can find the update at conceited software.
