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Of all the smartphones we test during the Smartphone Round Robin, the constraints of our phone exchange is felt most with the Windows Mobile 6 AT&T Tilt. One week is just not enough to get a full grasp on what Windows Mobile can do. If you’ve read some of my other reviews, you’ll hopefully recognize that as a compliment-dig.

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For the past few days, I’ve been working with the AT&T Tilt, a Windows Mobile smartphone. I’ve used Windows Mobile before, so this isn’t quite the new experience that the BlackBerry Curve was, but I haven’t used the latest version of Windows Mobile (version 6) either. I used WM5 with a Treo 750 for a while, but I ended up dealing with a bad bug that prevented calls from ringing. That was pretty much a killer for the device, and I stopped using it.

And that would be the end of the story, but for the Smartphone Round Robin. And here we are again.

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Today’s podcast is a big one. We cover all of the new news with the upcoming O2 and T-Mobile launches, the Smartphone Round Robin sides of things, Google’s Android and whether it competes with Apple, plenty of iTunes news, and the final words from the community..



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Details of the iPhone’s launch in the UK is spilling out rapidly, and O2 are making some last changes in preparation for iPhone’s arrival. Their CEO granted an interview that gives a peek into Apple’s carrier selection process. O2 has changed the way that they deal with limited “unlimited” plans — they still limit them, but at least they will give users a warning before they punt people away. And lastly, UK gadget magazine tried out the iPhone for a while, and they have information about the 1.1.2, the upcoming firmware update and iTunes 7.5.

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So, my time with the Curve has come to a close. It’s a dirty little secret of the Smartphone Round Robin, but I’m glad that I got to use the iPhone again for a day. I airlifted the 8310 Curve off to Jennifer of TreoCentral, and Kevin is shipped me the Windows Mobile-based AT&T Tilt. I got to keep my SIM card firmly seated in the iPhone for a full day!

It’s been an interesting week with the Curve, but the limitations of it started to wear pretty thin on me as the week progressed. Once the newness of the curve wore off, I started eyeing my iPhone a lot more. I’ve been looking forward to shipping the Curve off so I could use my iPhone. Looking to the future, I began — shudder to think — looking forward to the Tilt. But there are some strong redemptive features to the platform.

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figure 1: Munir Kotadia of ZDNet Australia.

The good folks of MYiTablet found an article from ZDNet Australia where Munir Kotadia lambasts “greedy Apple users” for trusting anyone.

“There is no evidence to suggest that this particular jailbreak utility is at all malicious but how long will it be before copycat sites appear that have less honourable intentions?”

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The BlackBerry Curve (8310)

For the first week of Smartphone Experts’ Smartphone Round Robin, I was assigned the BlackBerry Curve 8310. As I’ve indicated in the Crackberry forums, I’ve said some nasty things about BB in the past. Some of that is going to have to be put behind me this week; this BlackBerry 8810 isn’t going to use itself.

And don’t forget – a comment on this post counts as an entry in the Round Robin Contest!

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We are now launching the cool project we were hinting at in the last podcast: the Smartphone Round Robin. For the next 2 or three weeks, all of the editors of the various Smartphone Experts sites will be using one of the “other” smartphones out there.

For me, this week, it means using a BlackBerry 8310. For Dieter of WMExperts, it means using a Treo 680. for Jennifer of TreoCentral, it means using her iPhone. And for Kevin of CrackBerry.com, it means using the AT&T Tilt. There are rules that we’ve all got to follow — we all have to give the device a full shakedown. I’ll be posting an article later today about my first few days with the Curve, and then a full article on Friday.

This week, I’ll be posting a few articles about the strengths and weaknesses of using a BlackBerry. I’ve already got a few posts in at CrackBerry.com.

So what’s in it for you? Well, there’s a chance to win a prize: a smartphone of your choice and plenty of coupons to spend at the store associated with it. Just leave a comment in any Round Robin thread in the forums. Four sites, four chances to win per day. Just head on over to the Smartphone Round Robin update page for the deets.

There’s now an instant method to get third party apps on your iPhone (firmware 1.1.1 only). The same methond works on iPod Touch. I have to say, this is by far the easiest method of hacking the iPhone that I’ve ever seen. This method, which relies on the iPhone TIFF vulnerability, is also incredibly simple to use; much more so than the previous AppTapp installer method for iPhone 1.0. Since it relies on a buffer overflow, I expect this method to stop working as soon as Firmware 1.1.2 is released, which could be any day now.

All you have to do is point your iPhone browser at jailbreakme.com, confirm the wish to jailbreak, read some stuff, scroll down, select ‘Install AppSnapp’, wait for Safari to quit, and wait. Your iPhone or iPod Touch should restart automatically, and when it’s all done, you’ll have Installer.app ready and willing for you to install 3rd party apps!

This method of installing 3rd party apps doesn’t require any computer software, you just have to go to the website on your iPhone browser and follow the instructions. Again, the site makes efficacious use of the TIFF exploit that’s been talked about before, so if using a security vulnerability to install software freaks you out, don’t go to the site I’ve posted after the cut.

Conversely, f you think that using a buffer overflow to install software is awesome, 31337, or k-rad, there’s a link for you and your iPhone after the break.

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While I was gone at CTIA, there’s been a bunch of things that have happened that I didn’t get time to properly write about. So today, we’ll have a bit of an iPhone news smörgåsbord. There’s been a fair amount of news, a fair amount of not-news, and some of the things that I’ve been reading are just plain wrong.

Apple Dealing with Film-Makers Directly for iTunes
Apple has sidestepped some of the major studios for some films, opting instead to deal directly with film-makers. This could be a sign of things to come — it would be great to not have to report every major film-studio or TV channel contract tiff.

Apple iPhone Dev Center
Apple has created a web site devoted to developers that are interested in putting their programs on the iPhone. Apple is calling it the iPhone Dev Center, and it’s a repository of tips, tricks, and guidelines to follow should anyone want to make an iPhone web app. It’s also probably a list of instructions that one would have to follow to get listed as a featured application on Apple’s web app listing.

Molson Reveals iPhone on Rogers in January?
For any Canadian readers, Molson ran a contest that had an iPhone as the prize. They had a disclaimer on the iPhone prize, stating that it couldn’t be activated on the Rogers network until January. So, odds are pretty good that the iPhone will be out in Canada in January. Molson has since pulled the language for the contest, saying they have no idea when anything is coming out ever. And they never had any idea. (images below via Electronista)

Is the iPhone Running Leopard?
There’s an article at Wired that delves deeper into Jobs’ open letter about 3rd party applications on the iPhone and the connection to Leopard. One of the tidbits that Jobs talks about briefly is signing applications, and Wired has a good look into what that would mean for 3rd party iPhone apps. And, there’s some discussion whether the iPhone is based off of Leopard or not: “It’s not known for sure at this point, but all indications are that the iPhone is a Leopard-based device,” as stated by Carl Howe, analyst at Blackfriars. It clearly is. Witness the uname -a of my laptop on 10.4 vs. the uname -a of my iphone:

The important bit there is the kernel version. Apple releases the OSX frameworks to correspond with kernel versions of darwin for every version of OSX. The iPhone has been running Leopard (9.0) since it came out in June. My 10.4 laptop is running darwin 8.10.0, which corresponds to 10.4.10.

iPhone Security Faults
Meanwhile, there’s been a rash of complaints about the iPhone’s security. You may have seen headlines that compare the iPhone to Windows 95, for example. It’s of course, a loaded comparison, made for sensationalism. You could just as well compare the iPhone’s security to Windows 98, Windows ME, or Windows XP if you’re logged in as an administrator (which is everybody — you can barely run Office as a limited user). But, Windows 95 gets the headline. Since the iPhone is made of UNIX, user separation is built-in, expect apps to run as something other than administrator/root/super-user when the SDK update comes out. Perhaps earlier; we can’t know as Apple isn’t commenting. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that ‘run as root’ is a good security model. It’s so bad, it’s not even a security model.

iPhone de-bricking: re-virginizer tool available
The Elite team posted a re-virginizer tool that people can use to restore the ability to upgrade. This tool locks the iPhone with the proper bits in place on the iPhone radio; some of the free iPhone unlock tools wrote stuff to the iPhone baseband radio that was invalid; this led to bricked phones when it came time to update the firmware to 1.1.1.

AT&T Upgrading Core Network
Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T, was interviewed recently and he talked about many things concerning the iPhone and AT&T’s network. Their core should make for faster downloads for anything that uses AT&T’s networks, wired or wireless. That means us: anyone using an iPhone should see a smidgen of a benefit, but the real help comes when we’re using 3G fast internet iPhones.