Mobile Devices - Page 190

And all is well in the iPhone world again. At about 2:00AM GeoHot, the man with all the plans released purplera1n a jailbreak for all of the 3G S owners out there.

This means that all three of the mighty Apples have fallen to the Jailbreak community.

The new Jailbreak is not without its issues, as of right now it only works with Windows XP and Windows Vista. Windows 7 and OSX users have to wait a little longer.

You might also have to run it a couple of times before it works (I had to run it four times.) Once purplera1n is done you then have to run freeze to install Cydia. This is another one that might need to be run more than once.

Reboot after running freeze and you are good to go with your Jailbroken iPhone 3G S!

A word of caution, not all apps work on the 3G S as of right now installing winterboard may cause you to end up in safemode with no way to get out of it other than uninstalling winterboard.

Some are saying that you have to restore in DFU mode and run purplera1n again to get it working.

We told you yesterday that some 3G S iPhones are overheating and discoloring their white plastic back covers. While these reports have been going around the net Apple remained mysteriously quite.

Now thanks to sharp eyed people we find a new warning up on the Apple support site. The new warning (dated June 25 2009) says the operating temperature range for the iPhone 3G and 3G S.

To put it simply, unless you live in a idyllic part of the world that gets neither very hot nor very cold you should not use the iPhone 3G or 3G S. The operating range is quite simply ridiculous.

Here are the details from Apple's KB article:

Operate iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS in a place where the temperature is between 0º and 35º C (32º to 95º F). Low- or high-temperature conditions might temporarily shorten battery life or cause the device to temporarily stop working properly.

Store iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS in a place where the temperature is between -20º and 45º C (-4º to 113º F). Don't leave the device in your car, because temperatures in parked cars can exceed this range.

Yesterday in good old Orlando Florida it was 92F, just a mere three degrees away from hitting the upper range. It is not uncommon for it to hit much higher than that as the summer progresses. So it looks like I am in for poor battery life and bad reception as well.

On the opposite side I know of many places where the average temperature range far exceeds Apple's stated range at both the high and low ends.

I wonder how this coupled with the MMS and Tethering issues (AT&T only) will affect iPhone sales in the US and also why, if this is the stated range, was there no warning like this with the iPhone 3G last year?

Yesterday saw the release of the SDK (Software Development Kit) for the next iPhone OS Version 3.1. This release means that the new OS is in the beta stages; those lucky enough to have a paid Apple Developer Connection can download and use the OS now on their iPhones.

For the most part this is a "quick fix" release and it contains code to enable MMS for the AT&T network, patches to the copy and paste functions, a new baseband and some changes to the way the phone boots up. The majority of the new OS has been in development long before the release of the OS 3.0 and the iPhone 3G S this is why we are seeing such a major revision so soon.

For the jailbreaking community the new OS means a little more. With the release of 3.1 we will see the holes used for unlocking such as ultrasn0w fixed (and potentially removed). We could possibly see 24kpwn disappear, as well as the tethering and MMS hacks.

The Dev-Team held back their jailbreak due to this new OS update on the grounds that they did not want to give Apple the exploit they are using for the jailbreak. Meanwhile other jailbreakers such as the Chronic Dev Team and GeoHot are still working to crack open the 3G S and give users more freedom with their expensive new toys. It will mean more work once the 3G S is cracked to get 3.1 out of the pen for us all.

Calls to Apple about the date of release went unanswered; however AT&T reps stated that the new OS should be out around the 17th of July.

nVidia's Tegra is making all sorts of headlines in the past few weeks.

First we heard about the Zune HD, now we hear rumblings that Tegra will be in new SmartPhones by 2010.

If the rumors are true we will see Tegra driven smartphones from one of the "top five" manufacturers. There was no listing of who the tip five are, but I am betting that none of them are Apple.

The phones could have Android or Windows Mobile (with Win Mo more likely) and will be in the $199 range.

Read more here

Yesterday we told you that the first iPhone app with real nudity had been both published and then banned. Many people were covering the launch as it appeared to be a reversal of Apple's Morality Police tactics.

However as people checked the developer's website and saw a message about server usage, there were more than a few retractions.

We did not think that was the case. After all why would Apple change now.

Well it turns out we were correct after all as an Official Apple statement released today shows.

Good thing we bought ours bfore the ban...

Read more here

I have said it before and I will say it again, an iPhone is good but a jailbroken iPhone is better and if this is the iPhone 3G S it is better still.

For those of you that have played around with a jailbroken iPhone you know that there are some pretty impressive games on Cydia, everything from the original Doom to a Pacman like game.

Well then the emulators started showing up and you would play even more games. With the more powerful graphics on the 3G S the third party emulator devs have dived in. One has even come up with an emulator for the Play Station 1 and GameBoy Advanced.

Read more here

The gang over at Engadget got to play around with the new HTC Hero and so far they are loving it.

The new Hero does feaure Android but it is not a Google branded product. This means you are not going to get loaded down with the Google logo, but it also means that you won't be getting over the air updates also.

There are going to be a host of new features but one of the ones they liked the best was the Teflon outer coating.

Flash was also shown off with mixed results, they were able to get YouTube to work but not Yahoo, but this is in line with what Adobe showed off as well.


Is it just me or does that keyboard look familiar?

Read more here

If you are disappointed by the looks of your new iPhone 3G S well then ColorWare has a solution for you.

They have announced a simple process where you can send in your iPhone 3G S and have the back cover dyed to a different color. But the fun does not stop there.

You can have them change the normally chrome bezel, the home button, your headphones, and the SIM-Card holder. You do have to send the phone to them (if you are in the US) to get these exciting new colors added.

You might want to do this while you are waiting for AT&T to activate MSS and tethering or while you wait for a jailbreak from the devteam.

Read more here

It is time for an iPhone 3G S update; after all it is the Monday after the big release. Here is how it all stands

For sheer numbers Apple managed to push over one million of these out the door. The 3G S remains un-jailbroken and cannot be unlocked just yet (although 2G and 3G phones can be jailbroke and the 2G can be unlocked with redsn0w).

The iPhone 3G S has received mix reviews that range from perfection to claims of it not being worth it. With all that Apple still managed to get a ton of these out to the public, which means that Apple still has it where the iPhone marketing it concerned.

Read more here

Analysts are saying that this weekend Apple could sell half a million iPhone 3G S handsets. This is a rather large number and is significantly less than either the 3G bought in with its launches.

Although some are saying it is due to the limit on the number of countries that are getting the 3G S, after all 21 countries had the 3G at its launch while the 3G S will only be released in 8.

The low number could also be due to the relatively minor improvements made to the new 3G S; including a complete lack of any outside improvements to the appearance of the phone.

Read more here

In the race for OpenCL/Cuda performance it looks like ATi is not doing so hot. In a good read over at Anandtech we are told that ATi's stream processor is just not there in terms of GP-GPU computing.

To test this Anandtech used ATi's new CyberLink's Espresso and ran it on an ATi GPU, an Nvidia GPU and a CPU.

The results were interesting. The ATi card was not only slower than the nVidia GPU (and in a couple of cases slower than CPU only) it also produced very poor quality video compared to the CPU and nVidia GPU.

It seems that ATi is just not there yet in terms of utilizing GPU computing, this will affect them as nVidia moves farther and farther ahead in the GP-GPU world.

Read more here

The new iPhone OS has made its way to many a happy iPhone user. This is a good thing as it means that iPhone users can now finally join the ranks of other smart phone owners with such exciting features as Copy and Paste, Tethering and Voice control.

But with these come some interesting extras. Aparrently hidden in the new update are 45 patches that cover vulnerabilities in the old iPhone OS. This would seem to fly in the face of Apple's normal stance of "our hardware and software is completely secure".

Do not get me wrong, I think the inclusion of fixes and security patches is great and Apple is doing the right thing by making sure they get out to iPhone owners. I just wish they would knock off the BS that OSX and iPhone OS are more secure than other operating systems out.

Read more here

There is very good news for some people that pre-ordered the new iPhone 3G S (S is for silly). It looks like there are a few that will actually get delivered tomorrow on the 17th as opposed to the 19th when the rest of the world will fight for the new Apple toy.

Tomorrow is iPhone OS 3.0 day and will (if I am not wrong) be another day of down AT&T servers, iTunes activation servers and other fun for those wanting the new OS on the first day out. For those that are getting the phone tomorrow, I have a feeling that you won't be able to use it before the 19th anyway.

Read more here.

AT&T and Apple have detailed how the launch of the iPhone 3G S will work come June 19, and it looks like those who don't preorder the phone will be getting the shaft.

Apple will be opening their stores a little early at 8AM. This will all those who preorder the phone to come in early and grab their new overpriced paperweight.

In the world of hardware it is often hard to keep track of changing standards and practices. Usually this happens across different platforms and hardware. However when it happens to Apple on their own products it is sort of funny.

According to a very detailed breakdown of features between the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3G S one stands out. OpenGL ES support. In the iPhone 3G you have OpenGL ES 1.1 only. In the new iPhone 3G S you have OpenGL ES 2.0 and 1.1, this is thanks to the new PowerVR SGX graphics chip in the cover.

Application developers are now faced with the problem of designing applications that can take advantage of the newer standard or making them available to more iPhone users.

Read more here.

Of course the big news that everyone has been waiting for is the new iPhone. But is not being called the iPhone 3.0 but the iPhone 3G S (maybe the S is for Speed).

They have taken the base iPhone and thrown something new under the hood. Almost everything is faster, roughly twice as fast. Of course not all applications will enjoy this. Maybe there is some truth to the rumors that Apple is using OpenCL and a more powerful GPU to accelerate the iPhone.

Apple has dropped in a new camera 3MP to be exact with auto focus and tap to focus as well as macro. 7.2Mbps HSDPA, video recording (complete with built in editing), voice control (not only for dialing but for iTunes control, a compass application (should be great for hikers),hardware encryption and of course all of the new features of the iPhone OS 3.0.

Apple has worked on the batter quite a bit too; they have improved the 3G Talk time to 5 hours and the WiFi Internet time to 9 hours.

Granted most of this should have been on the 3G, but hey it is finally here. If you are just getting an iPhone (or are eligible for an upgrade) you can pick up the 3GS for $199 for the 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB. If you are like me and are outside this you are looking at about $500 for the 16GB and 600-700 for the 32GB.

Availability should be in a little over a week and a half from today in the USA. And after that even more countries, over 80 countries will have it by August.

Get ready it is going to be a busy summer. Read more here.

Nokia opened its very own App store on Tuesday and already it is feeling the same pinch that got Apple at the launch of the iPhone. According to an article at usatoday.com the Ovi store is having some technical difficulties and is not being accepted as well as would be hoped.

Users are complaining that to access the store they have to login on their phones browser as there is no direct application to allow them access just yet.

But the worst issue came as the servers were overloaded and could not fill all the requests that were coming in from Nokia owners. At the time of this writing Nokia has added additional serves to handle the extra load but the damage may already have been done.

Read more here.

Apple is warning users of the iPhone and iPod that they might get a shocking experience when they go to use their earbuds.

It has been a little while since we have heard new iPhone rumors so I was not shocked when a couple popped up today.

The one that caught my attention was this little bit over at Wired. It seems that the rumor mill went into overtime churning out this one.

The rumor says that the next Gen iPhone will hit the streets on July 17th. But there is more than that, if the "source" is correct the new iPhone will have an OLED,a 3.2 MP camera (and can capture video), 1.5 times the battery life, and will have a 32GB version.

Of course it will have all the goodies from iPhone OS 3.0 as well.

Read more here.

The iPhone OS 3.0 has entered the BETA 4 stage. But according to people that have the new OS there is not much new to see.

One thing they do talk about is that the formerly empty store settings pane now has some information in it. The problem is there is nothing exciting there and only seems to link you to a bland web page that allows you to edit your account information.

To get OS 3.0 working you will also need to upgrade to the new iTunes, 8.2 (which is not out just yet.)

Read more here