All Articles Tagged iPhone 3G

Beginning last Friday, it’s been an exciting time for the iPhone community and for all of us here at TiPB as we’ve witnessed and participated in the launch of the much-anticipated iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0, the App Store, and MobileMe. Although things didn’t go 100% according to plan for Apple, and even though there are numerous bugs to fix and ghosts in the machine to exorcize, there is quite a bit of “new” to be excited about!

With the release of iPhone 2.0 and the App Store, there are now tons of apps to choose from, with more being added each day. Our readers are getting in on the app action and excitement with the opportunity to earn TiPB Store discounts by reviewing apps via our iPhone App Lightning Reviews promotion.

I am now proud to announce the beginning of the iPhone App Avalanche, a brief overview of iPhone apps from the iTunes App Store that will be brought to you here at TiPB. Stop by often for frequent App Avalanche app overviews over the next couple of weeks, then settle in for a weekly overview. With the introductions out of the way, let’s jump into iPhone App Avalanche 1!

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This time last week Dieter was holding the line in Rhode Island, Chad was laying the video smack down in Ohio, Brian was too busy getting him some apps to even say where he was, and Casey was waiting for the lines to die down (good luck with that!)

Now it’s one week later and what’s going on? Well, thanks to Cherryhead25 (via Engadget) we know that the up-again/down-again FREE iPhone 3G AT&T WiFI access is currently up again.

That is, if you can find an iPhone 3G to buy! Seems Apple Insider has found yet another leaked AT&T memo that hints at major supply shortages in the US (welcome to the rest of the world!), leading to back-orders of 10 to 14 days.

Frequent Apple analyst Gene Munster, told Computerworld (via Ars Technica) the shortages might last a month!

“I bet we’ll see these problems for another two to four weeks. Early demand has been more than they expected [because] they knocked it out of the park on the first weekend. “There were outages last year, but not to this extent. This is a more sustained outage [than last year's], and the demand seems to be sustained.”

So the continued line ups would have us believe. And the hardest to find model? Nope, not the white one sported by Dieter or Chad! The 16GB iPhone Black… Wonder who got me one of those?

Surprise, surprise, the Free Software Foundation doesn’t want you to use an iPhone 3G. Less surprisingly, they don’t want to provide anything more than hyper-sensational, factually challenged reasons why you shouldn’t buy it:

Phone completely blocks free software. iPhone endorses and supports Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology. iPhone exposes your whereabouts and provides ways for others to track you without your knowledge. iPhone won’t play patent- and DRM-free formats like Ogg Vorbis and Theora. iPhone is not the only option.

Sigh. Why is it those who demand freedom the most are usually the same ones who respect freedom of choice the least?

They go on to call Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, a snake-oil salesman who uses good design to pied-piper the dull mundane consumers into buying his shiny little toy, thus abandoning themselves drone-like to his evil, conspiratorial prison. Patronizing? Hypocritical? Black and white just one option too many for the FSF?

DaringFireball gives it a sentence. Allow me to give it a retort! (After the break)

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Thanks to Will for the video!

I got to my local Rogers (corporate owned) store way early, and was immediately nervous upon seeing tons of cars. They were filled with senior citizens — strange iPhone demographic, I thought. When the doors to the mall opened at 7am, the seniors raced in. Near jog, no joke. I thought I’d end up behind a ton of angry, eager iPhone golden oldies, but a funny thing happened: they raced right on past Rogers. Turns out they jog/power walk/amble about there every morning. Who knew?

One week later, and how are things now? I just got my first bill (wow, that was faster than 3G!). $30/6GB data, $35 Mega My 5, $15 Visual Voice Mail Value Pack, $35 activation fee, plus crazy Canadian taxes. $124. (Plus the initial $299 for the 16GB handset…)

But what else is going on in my home and native land? Read on to find out!

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Yeah, we know that Apple has its own iPhone 3G finder but that one doesn’t work during store business hours. Plus this iPhone finder searches the Apple Stores closest to your location via Google Maps and is a little bit cooler than Apple’s. Location Based Services are all the rage right?

Some interesting tidbits on iPhone 3G availability as of July 16th is that it’s sold out in 23 of the 38 states that Apple has retail stores in. And the most difficult model to find is the 16 GB Black version which is only available in 12 of Apple’s 188 stores. Apple desperately needs to re-stock those puppies!

So if you didn’t get your hands on an iPhone 3G yet, feel free to use the tool to plan your purchase!

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“Will it Blend?” — harmless fun, senseless gadget murder, or… educational science experiment?

While the original iPhone 2G’s shiny metallic backing was powdered by the uber-chopper, the iPhone 3G’s plasticky backing, counter-intuitively, survived pretty much in one piece (one really thrashed piece, granted).

Macenstein claims their birdy pointed out “Apple never said it was plastic.”

However, Steve Jobs said just that during the WWDC 2008 Keynote (at roughly the 1:26:20 mark in the podcast version): “It’s got a full plastic back.”

Sure, that might have been a simplification (after all, it looks like plastic), and surviving a blend and being remarkably tough and (hopefully) scratch resistant does raise some questions. So what are the the answers? Macenstein’s source theorizes that:

About 2 years ago apple had a patent for an indestructible ceramic housing for handheld devices that block no wireless frequencies.” That patent is patent #20060268528, and describes a zirconia/Yttrium hybrid that may have an additional silicon coating applied “on the exterior surface to prevent cracking and protect the ceramic shell from undesirable forces as for example when the ceramic shell is dropped.”

Either way, Apple VP of Design, Jonathan Ive is known for prototyping like a madman, and really revolutionizing materials (titanium Powerbooks and dual-injected iPods anyone?), so whether its a plastic-based hybrid or not, there’s probably a little magic in there somewhere.

(Just nothing fingerprint resistant… yet.)

So I ventured out to an Apple Store yesterday hoping that since the iPhone 3G was a couple days old that I could easily grab one. No, not for me. For the girlfriend and my sister. I could have gone to the AT&T store only a few blocks away but whenever Apple releases a new product I prefer the full Apple experience at an Apple Store (Brea, CA); it’s just more complete that way. Expecting to get some hands on time with the iPhone 3G and pick up the Macbook Air again, I was pretty excited to get to the store.

As I cheerily walked through the mall eagerly anticipating the iPhone 3G, I stopped dead in my tracks. There was at least a 100-person line that stretched multiple storefronts! The Apple Store Employee ‘in-charge’ estimated the line to be a 5-hour wait! This was a Monday afternoon, didn’t people have work to do?

But it gets better (read: worse).

Read on for the rest of this very weird Apple Store Experience!

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Given the general sluggishness and overall er… crashing issues many — including us — have raised about the new iPhone 2.0 update, it can’t come as any surprise that Apple is prepping a 2.0.1.

But could we already have confirmation? Intrepid Boy Genius Reporters scoured their server logs and came across:

[S]ome interesting build numbers for the iPhone and iPhone 3G. It appears that AT&T and Apple are testing iPhone device software version 2.0.1, builds 5B101 (iPhone) and 5B103 (iPhone 3G). Although we are not certain of much more information than this little bit, we do know that testing began prior to the launch of device software 2.0 and the iPhone 3G on July 11th. We have also narrowed down the known test users to the San Francisco (40 mins from Cupertino) and Atlanta (HQ of AT&T Mobility) areas. Hmm.

Doubtless it will include Apple’s usually opaque description along the lines of “Fixes compatibility and general stability”. Fortunately, this time around that’s just what we need!

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3 days. That’s how long it took Apple and their carrier-partners to sell one million iPhone 3Gs. Says Apple CEO Steve Jobs:

“iPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend. It took 74 days to sell the first one million original iPhones, so the new iPhone 3G is clearly off to a great start around the world.”

Almost 25 times faster. Server crash-induced delays not withstanding, other manufacturers — other carriers — must be having a sobering Monday morning. (Especially with it taking 6 months for Palm sell as many uber-cheap Centros…)

Read Via

We’ll be bringing your our iPhone 3G review in two parts.  Part one (the part you’re reading now) is where we’ll give you a full, in-depth review of the new iPhone 3G Hardware.  Here you’ll find details on GPS, 3G speeds, the feel of the actual physical device, etc. If you’re on the fence as to whether or not you should upgrade to the iPhone 3G, we’re here to help and here’s where we are, uh, helping.

Part two will focus on iPhone 2.0 software, where a lot of the real magic this week is happening and it’s available on both versions of the iPhone.  That review is coming soon, for now, let’s take a look at the iPhone 3G hardware with (much) more depth than we gave you in our iPhone 3G unboxing video and picture gallery

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UPDATE 2: Daring Fireball checked with source at Apple’s iPhone Engineering who confirmed that:

there were no changes regarding display color temperature between 5A345 and 5A347, and that there’s no practical reason why someone with an iPhone with 5A345 installed should go through a complete system restoration just to get 5A347.

And that, while there did appear to be differences in “yellowness” from iPhone 3G to iPhone 3G, it was not due to firmware (perhaps components?).

UPDATE: If your screen is really too yellow, like Simpson’s yellow, some users are posting that by hooking your iPhone 3G up to iTunes and doing a restore, the shipped firmware buld (5A345) gets replaced with the newer firmware build (5A347), which is less yellow. (Thanks Jack for the tip!) I can’t recommend it since I haven’t done it personally, but it’s always an option. Also, Daring Fireball is reporting that more recent iPhone 2G models also have the warmer yellow screens. He thinks this may indicate a hardware change, but I’m not sure if he checked all the firmware details yet?

Original Post:

The interwebs are literally a Twitter about the new iPhone 3G and it’s brighter, yet strangely yellower screen. While some people can’t seem to see a difference, or can only notice the difference when compared side-by-side with an original iPhone 2G’s darker, more blue-tinted screen, for others its annoyingly obvious.

Personally, I’m in the second camp while Brian seems to be gravitating towards the latter, especially considering Apple in their usually hyper-controlling manner, has failed to provide a way for individuals to control their own screen settings and change the hue, brightness, and other display aspects themselves.

Turns out it’s not an accident either. Engadget tracked down Bob Borchers, senior director of product marketing for the iPhone, who shed some light on Apple’s thinking:

According to Bob (and Apple), the screen’s color temperature has been purposely altered on the new iPhone to produce warmer, more natural tones, sharper images, and deeper blacks. The company says that 1st gen iPhone screens appeared colder and less defined, and they made some adjustments for the new models. In our opinion, what he says is right on — the screens do look better on the iPhone 3G versus the older variety.

Apple rates the iPhone 3G’s talk time at 5 hours over the high-speed 3G network. While the call quality seems vastly improved due to more data being passed through the 3G pipe, some of the more chatty among us may find that 3G isn’t just fast — it’s non-user-replaceable-battery draining fast!

Don’t care as much about speed and clarity as you do sheer volume of talk time? Or what if you’re just in an area that’s not (yet?) covered by 3G? You’re in luck! Apple has provided a way to turn off the 3G — and blazing fast broadband-like HSPA speed that goes with it — and drop back down to 2.5/2.75G — and the dial-up-eque EDGE that is turtle to the 3G hare.

Boom! 10 hours of talk time! (And for those of you in countries with more restrictive/ridiculous data caps, a way to help pace yourself and starve your data-hungry iPhone).

Just remember: slow data transfer, not as good call quality, no simultaneous voice and data (you can’t talk and surf the web on EDGE at the same time).

Step-by-step instructions after the break!

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UPDATE: More confusion! Stylemonkey in the comments below says Rogers claims not to be doing this when he called in over the phone. However, I spoke to a couple more Rogers reps and they’re still insisting they’re being told Rogers will bill for WiFi use, perplexingly by using the EMEI number of you phone. While they say Rogers can’t tell data usage this way, they can tell WiFi is being used, and will bill based on time. Ridiculous? Sounds like it. But what’s even more ridiculous is Rogers telling this to (some of?) their stores and people in the field. Crazy!

ORIGINAL POST:

So I was waiting in line at a Rogers store yesterday when the staff came out and said that if we didn’t take the Rogers’ iPhone specific plans, anytime we used WiFi it would be counted towards our custom plans (like the newly announced $30/6GB promo). They said that even though the iPhone would show WiFi, it would still count down (crazy fast) 3G data, and we’d only find out come bill time when charges came in. One of them said they were waiting on clarification from Rogers. Another said this was what Apple wanted and implemented. (Yeah, I know… I’m just repeating the comments).

We didn’t run the story then because we couldn’t get any confirmation of the rumor, but now other reports of people being told the same thing at different Rogers stores has turned up.

Read on for more!

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Taking my cues from Dieter, I just ran my freshly (and thankfully) activated iPhone 3G through its http://inetworktest.com and this is what I got:

600kbps baby!

Okay, that was the 3rd and highest of 5 sequential attempts. Test 1 and 4 were 405kbps and tests 2 and 5 were 545kbps. Rogers does claim to invest heavily in their network (which they remind us every time we pay the monthly network improvement surcharge!), and 3G pretty much covers the greater Island of Montreal, where I am, so maybe they’re at least putting some of the massive amounts of money we fork over to good use!

Speaking of Rogers, please forgive me making a quick shout-out to everyone who was in the line at Fairview, Pointe-Claire (especially those who are readers of TiPb!), and to the staff who remained friendly, classy, and courteous through Rogers continual plan changes, server crashes, and iTunes activation all leading to me — who was first in line — finally getting out some 3 hours after the store opened! (Next time, tell head office to call up Google for some pipes, b’okay?)

Above, visual proof that I’ve managed to get my iPhone 3G activated, syncing, and restoring. How’d I do it? I followed the advice of our genius commenters, of course. Here’s the deal:

Short version: Nice people wait, mean people spam the refresh but get it done.

Long version: Hook your iPhone up to iTunes, watch iTunes try and fail to get to the iTunes Store for activation. At this point, you have a decision. The Yin in you will tell you that the reason that so many people are having problems is that so many people are doing exactly what you’re doing. So relax, go grab a coffee, and try later. The Yang in you will tell you that, screw those other people, you just need to keep trying until you get through. The fastest way to do that is not to unplug the iPhone but simply to just click OK on the error message, click on another section of iTunes (like a playlist) and then click on the iPhone in the sidebar again.

Or do a mix of the above, the Yin and the Yang, the spam refresh and the sit it out, with little dots of the other mixed into each. So Taoist of you, Steve Jobs would be proud.

Good luck everybody, let us know how it’s working for you in the comments! Namaste