From the moment Apple announced its iPhone at Macworld 2007, the tech world hasn’t stopped asking questions. Because Apple has kept many iPhone details under wraps until very recently, we’ve been forced to speculate. Until now. Is the iPhone pretty? Absolutely. Is it easy to use? Certainly. Does it live up to the stratospheric hype? Not so much. Don’t get us wrong, the iPhone is a lovely device with a sleek interface, top-notch music and video features, and innovative design touches. The touch screen is easier to use than we expected, and the multimedia performs well. But a host of missing features, a dependency on a sluggish EDGE network, and variable call quality–it is a phone after all–left us wanting more. For those reasons, the iPhone is noteworthy not for what it does, but how it does it. If you want an iPhone badly, you probably already have one. But because you’ll have to sign an iPhone-specific two-year contract with AT&T to activate your iPhone after you’ve already shelled out $499 for the 4GB iPhone or $599 for the 8GB model, we suggest you wait until the phone comes down in price and the network improves. Hopefully, both will happen soon.

Design
On with the review: the iPhone boasts a brilliant display, trim profile, and clean lines (no external antenna of course), and its lack of buttons puts it in a design class that even the LG Prada and the HTC Touch can’t match. You’ll win envious looks on the street toting the iPhone, and we’re sure that would be true even if the phone hadn’t received as much media attention as it has. We knew that it measures 4.5 inches tall by 2.4 inches wide by 0.46 inch deep, but it still felt smaller than we expected when we finally held it. In comparison, it’s about as tall and as wide as a Palm Treo 755p, but it manages to be thinner than even the trend-setting Motorola Razr. It fits comfortably in the hand and when held to the ear, and its 4.8 ounces give it a solid, if perhaps weighty, feel. We also like that the display is glass rather than plastic.

Display
The iPhone’s display is the handset’s design showpiece and is noteworthy for not only what it shows, but also how you use it. We’ll start off with its design. At a generous 3.5 inches, the display takes full advantage of the phone’s size, while its 480×320 pixel resolution (160 dots per inch) translates into brilliant colors, sharp graphics, and fluid movements.

Menus
In true Apple style, the iPhone’s menu interface is attractive, intuitive, and easy to use. In the main menu, a series of colored icons call out the main functions. Icons for the phone menu, the mail folder, the Safari Web browser, and the iPod player sit at the bottom of the screen, while other features such as the camera, the calendar, and the settings are displayed above. It’s easy to find all features, and we like that essential features aren’t buried under random menus. Fluid animation takes you between different functions, and you can zip around rather quickly.

Much has been made of the iPhone’s touch screen, and rightfully so. Though the Apple handset is not the first cell phone to rely solely on a touch screen, it is the first phone to get so much attention and come with so many expectations. Depending on what you’re doing, the touch screen serves as your dialpad, your keyboard, your Safari browser, and your music and video player. Like many others, we were skeptical of how effectively the touch screen would handle all those functions.

Touch screen
Fortunately, we can report that on the whole, the touch screen and software interface are easier to use than expected. What’s more, we didn’t miss a stylus in the least. Despite a lack of tactile feedback on the keypad, we had no trouble tapping our fingers to activate functions and interact with the main menu. As with any touch screen, the display attracts its share of smudges, but they never distracted us from what we were viewing. The onscreen dialpad took little acclimation, and even the onscreen keyboard fared rather well. Tapping out messages was relatively quick, and we could tap the correct letter, even with big fingers. The integrated correction software helped minimize errors by suggesting words ahead of time. It was accurate for the most part.

The Apple iPhone features a virtual QWERTY keyboard.

Still, the interface and keyboard have a long way to go to achieve greatness. For starters, when typing an e-mail or text message the keyboard is displayed only when you hold the iPhone vertically. As a result, we could only type comfortably with one finger, which cut down on our typing speed. Using two hands is possible, but we found it pretty crowded to type with both thumbs while holding the iPhone at the same time. What’s more, basic punctuation such as periods or commas lives in a secondary keyboard–annoying. If you’re a frequent texter or an e-mail maven, we suggest a test-drive first.

We also found it somewhat tedious to scroll through long lists, such as the phone book or music playlists. Flicking your finger in an up or down motion will move you partway through a list, but you can’t move directly to the bottom or top by swiping and holding your finger. On the other hand, the letters of the alphabet are displayed on the right side of the screen. By pressing a letter you can go directly to any songs or contacts beginning with that letter. But the lack of buttons requires a lot of tapping to move about the interface. For example, the Talk and End buttons are only displayed when the phone is in call mode. And since there are no dedicated Talk and End buttons, you must use a few taps to find these features. That also means you cannot just start dialing a number; you must open the dialpad first, which adds clicks to the process. The same goes for the music player: since there are no external buttons, you must call up the player interface to control your tunes. For some people, the switching back and forth may be a nonissue. But for mutlitaskers, it can grow wearisome.

Criticisms aside, the iPhone display is remarkable for its multitouch technology, which allows you to move your finger in a variety of ways to manipulate what’s on the screen. When in a message, you can magnify the text by pressing and holding over a selected area. And as long as you don’t lift your finger, you can move your “magnifying glass” around the text. You can zoom in by pinching your fingers apart; to zoom out you just do the opposite. In the Web browser, you can move around the Web page by sliding your finger, or you can zoom in by a double tap. And when looking at your message list, you can delete items by swiping your finger from left to right across the message. At that point, a Delete button will appear.

Thanks to the handset’s accelerometer (a fancy word for motion sensor), the iPhone’s display orientation will adjust automatically when you flip the iPhone on its side while using the music and video players and the Internet browser. Also, a proximity sensor turns off the display automatically when you lift the iPhone to your ear for a conversation. All three are very cool.

Exterior features
The iPhone’s only hardware menu button is set directly below the display. It takes you instantly back to the home screen no matter what application you’re using. The single button is nice to have, since it saves you a series of menu taps if you’re buried in a secondary menu. On the top of the iPhone is a multifunction button for controlling calls and the phone’s power. If a call comes in at an inopportune time, just press the button once to silence the ringer, or press it twice to send the call to voice mail. Otherwise, you can use this top control to put the phone asleep and wake it up again. You can turn the iPhone off by pressing and holding the button.

The Apple iPhone speakers are located at the bottom of the phone.

Located on the left spine are a volume rocker and a nifty ringer mute switch, something all cell phones should have and which is a popular feature of Palm Treos. On the bottom end, you’ll find a pair of speakers and the jack for the syncing dock and the charger cord. Unfortunately, the headset jack on the top end is deeply recessed, which means you will need an adapter for any headphones with a chubby plug. Is this customer-friendly? No.

Unfortunately, the Phone does not have a battery that a user can replace. That means you have to send the iPhone to Apple to replace the battery after it’s spent (Apple is estimating one battery will keep its full strength for 400 charges–probably about three years’ worth of use). The cost of the replacement is $79 plus $6.95 shipping. No, you don’t really need a removable battery in a cell phone, but like many things missing on the iPhone, it would be nice to have, especially for such an expensive phone. And just what are you supposed to without a cell phone during the replacement period? Contrary to earlier reports, the SIM card is removable via a small drawer on the top of the iPhone, but other AT&T SIM cards will not work in the iPhone. That’s especially troubling, as it completely defeats the biggest advantage of using a GSM phone with a SIM card. Some people have multiple phones and like to change the SIM card between their different handsets. Also, you can’t use the SIM card to import contact information from another handset.

Features
The iPhone’s phone book is limited only by the phone’s available memory. Each contact holds eight phone numbers; e-mail, Web site, and street addresses; a job title and department; a nickname; a birthday; and notes. You can’t save callers to groups, but you can store your preferred friends to a favorites menu for easy access. You can assign contacts a photo for caller ID and assign them one of 25 polyphonic ringtones. We should note, however, that there’s no voice dialing and you can’t use MP3 files as ringtones. Other basic features include an alarm clock, a calculator, a world clock, a stopwatch, a timer and a notepad. There’s a vibrate mode but it’s a tad light.

The calendar offers day and month views, and you can use the calendar as an event reminder or a to-do list as well. The interface is clean and simple, though inputting new appointments involves a lot of tapping. There’s no Week view, however. We were able to sync our Outlook contacts and calendar and our Yahoo! e-mail address book with no problems.

Bluetooth and wireless
The iPhone offers a full range of wireless functionality with support for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. The Wi-Fi compatibility is especially welcome, and a feature that’s absent on far too many smart phones. When you’re browsing the Web, the iPhone automatically searches for the nearest Internet hot spot. Bluetooth 2.0 is also on board, which delivers faster transmission and a longer range than Bluetooth 1.2. You can use Bluetooth for voice calls, but you don’t get an A2dP stereo Bluetooth profile–another item that’s not necessary but would be nice to have.

Though Apple CEO Steve Jobs has explained the iPhone’s lack of 3G support by saying the chipsets take up too much room and drain too much battery, we’d like the option anyway. Yes, the Wi-Fi network is great when you can get it, but AT&T’s EDGE network just doesn’t cut it for all other surfing. EDGE Web browsing is so slow, it almost ruins the pretty Web interface. More on this in the Performance section.

Messaging and e-mail
For your messaging needs, the iPhone offers text messaging and e-mail. As on many smart phones, a text message thread is displayed as one long conversation–a useful arrangement that allows you to pick which messages you’d like to answer. If you use another function while messaging, you can return to pick up that message where you left off. We just don’t understand, however, why Apple doesn’t include multimedia messaging. Sure, you can use e-mail to send photos, but without multimedia messaging you can’t send photos to other cell phones–pretty much the entire point of a camera phone.

The iPhone’s e-mail menu includes integrated support for Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, and Mac accounts. You can set up the phone to receive messages from other IMAP4 and POP3 systems, but you’ll need to sweet-talk your IT department into syncing with your corporate exchange server. It’s rumored that Apple will update the iPhone to support ActiveSync but Apple hasn’t confirmed that as of this writing. You can read–but not edit–PDF, JPEG, Word, and Excel documents. Worse: you can’t cut and paste text when composing messages.

iPhone’s iPod
Sandwiched between all the iPhone’s features lives Apple’s most amazing iPod yet. The display, interface, video quality, audio quality–all of it is meticulously refined and beautiful. Unfortunately, it’s trapped within a device that will cost you more than $1,000 a year just to own. CNET recently reviewed a Rolls-Royce that had a top-notch umbrella hidden inside its passenger door. Buying the iPhone for its iPod feature is a lot like buying that Rolls-Royce for its umbrella. Regardless, the iPhone is an exciting glimpse into what Apple hopefully has planned for its sixth-generation iPod. Apple has redeemed itself following the Motorola Rokr E1 debacle.

The Apple iPhone’s music player lets you view album art.

On paper, the iPhone’s iPod doesn’t offer any features not already on a fifth-generation iPod: podcasts, videos, music, and playlists are all here, and content management with iTunes is identical. The difference rests entirely in the iPhone’s interface. We’ve used other MP3 players that use touch interfaces, such as the Archos 704, iRiver Clix and Cowon D2, but the iPhone’s unique integration of multitouch technology and a graphic user interface put it in a category all its own.

From an iPod perspective, Apple’s biggest triumph with the iPhone is the fact that it has returned album artwork back into the music experience in a way that goes beyond a token thumbnail graphic. Physically flipping through your music collection in the iPhone’s Cover Flow mode really brings back the visceral feel of digging through a CD or record bin. It’s a tough feeling to quantify, but the real music lovers out there will appreciate how well the iPhone reconnects their digital music to a form that is both visually and physically more vivid. Even iTunes users who may already be jaded about using the Cover Flow mode on their personal computer will be surprised at how the experience is changed by using the iPhone’s intuitive touch screen.

Truth be told, there is one feature that is new to the iPhone’s iPod–the integrated speaker. While the iPhone’s speaker sounds thin and is prone to distortion, it works in a pinch for sharing a song with a friend. Apple was also smart enough to manage its speaker volume independent of the headphone volume, so if you’re listening to the speaker full-blast and then decide to plug in your headphones, you won’t be deafened.

The bad news is that the iPhone’s iPod leaves out the ability to manually manage the transfer of music and video content. Unlike any previous iPod, the iPhone does not allow an option for manually dragging and dropping content from an iTunes library directly to the iPhone device icon. Instead, the iPhone strictly uses defined library syncing options for collecting and syncing content from your iTunes library to the device. This should work out fine for most people, but for a device with limited memory the inability to manually manage content seems like a misstep. Our 8GB iPhone was already a quarter full after only a few hours of testing, giving us the impression that users will need to be vigilant at grooming their iPhone library. An external memory card slot is another one of those “nice to have” features.

The iPhone’s music sound quality seems right in line with our experience using the 5G iPod. All the same EQ presets are available, only now they are found on the iPhone’s main Settings tab. The included iPhone earbuds did a passable job for casual listening in a quiet environment. Unfortunately, the iPhone’s recessed headphone jack prevented us from using many of the test headphones we’re familiar with. We were just barely able to squeeze the plug of our Etymotic ER6i earphones into the jack to do the comparison.

Watching video on the iPhone is not quite as luxurious as a Creative Zen Vision: W or Archos 504, but its wide screen and bright contrast beat the fifth-generation iPod by a mile. As with previous iPods, video playback is automatically bookmarked so that playback resumes where you left off. And because the iPhone is a phone, it includes an airplane mode that will keep the music player activated while turning off the call transmitter.

The Apple iPhone’s video player really takes advantage of its wide screen.

Safari browser
The Safari browser really sets the iPhone apart from the cell phone crowd. Rather than trudging through stripped-down WAP pages with limited text and graphics, the browser displays Web pages in their true form. It’s a completely and surprisingly satisfying experience to see real Web pages on a screen of this size. Our only regret is that the browser does not support Flash or Java. To pan around a page, just swipe your finger across the display, and the page moves accordingly. Tap your finger on a link to open a new page and double-tap your finger to zoom in and zoom back out. You can use the arrows on the bottom of the display to move back and forth, while a multifunction button at the bottom of the display lets you open new pages and flick among them.

The Apple iPhone comes with the Safari Web browser.

Google search is the iPhone’s default search tool, but you can use Yahoo search as well. When searching for information or typing URLs, you use the onscreen keyboard. It’s just like typing an e-mail except that the spacebar is replaced with Web-appropriate language like “.com” and a slash. That’s a nice touch.

Thanks to the accelerometer, you can tip the phone on its side for a more comfortable landscape view. It doesn’t matter which direction you rotate the phone, as it will work either way. It’s also nice that the onscreen keyboard appears in landscape mode when using the browser. Most Web pages looked great on the screen, but visually busy pages like CNN.com can be too crowded. And because you can zoom in only a set amount, some text can still be too small to read clearly. You can store bookmarks and sync your favorite pages from your PC, but it works only for Internet Explorer and not Firefox.

YouTube
You can activate the iPhone’s integrated YouTube player straight from the main menu via a colored icon. Videos are organized using many of the same criteria as on the YouTube site, including Featured Clips, Most Viewed, Top Rated, and Most Recent. You can read the information attached to a video, such as the date posted and the poster’s name, but you can’t read comments. It doesn’t appear, however, that the YouTube connection updates in real time. We uploaded a video of our own, and it didn’t show up until a few hours later.

The Apple iPhone has a built-in Google Maps application.

Widgets
The iPhone doesn’t have integrated GPS, but it does have a widget for accessing Google Maps. You can get turn-by-turn directions between two points, with traffic information. We tried mapping routes from CNET’s offices to various places. The directions were accurate. But with no GPS, the iPhone can’t tell you where you are, so you’ll have to figure out that yourself. Also, the lack of audio instructions will limit its usability while driving. The map interacts well with the calling functions; you can find a point of interest and ring it in just a few taps. We also like that you can get the Google satellite view.

Additional widgets point to stock information and weather reports. You can program your own tickers and get information like a share gain or loss and see the chart of a share price over time. The weather function gives you a six-day forecast for your choice of cities. For more options, there is already a selection of third-party iPhone apps. No games are included on the handset

Visual voice mail
One of the most intriguing features on the iPhone is the much-touted visual voice mail. iPhone’s voice mail works much like a text-message folder in that it displays the caller’s name or phone number and the time. What’s even more fantastic, however, is that you can listen to the message instantly by pressing the individual message–you don’t have to call your voice mail first.

The Apple iPhone has a 2-megapixel camera on the back.

Camera
The iPhone’s 2-megapixel camera offers a spiffy interface with a graphic that resembles a camera shutter. You’re offered no camera editing options, which we didn’t expect. That means you can’t change the resolution, choose a color or quality setting, or select a night mode. There’s no flash either, and with no self-portrait mirror, those vanity shots are going to be tricky. The camera performed well in our tests, however. iPhone Photo quality was excellent with rich, bright colors and distinct object outlines. White looked a bit too soft, but we approve overall. On the downside, you can’t shoot your own video, which is disappointing on a phone at this price.

As we said earlier, the photo menu is attractive and easy to use, particularly due to the pinching motion. You can also flip between photos by swiping your finger across the display. When selecting a photo, you’re given the option of assigning it to a contact, using it as wallpaper, or e-mailing it to a friend.

Call quality
We tested the quadband (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) Apple iPhone in San Francisco using AT&T service. Call quality was good for the most part, but it wasn’t dependable. Though voices sounded natural, the volume was often too low, and the microphone has a sensitive sweet spot. When we moved the phone away from our ears ever so slightly, the volume diminished noticeably and we had to move the phone back to just the right place to hear clearly. The volume wasn’t so bad that we weren’t able to hear a friend who was in a crowded bar, but it just could be better. The speakerphone was also too quiet though conversations weren’t too muffled.

CNET users have also reported volume problems, and a few people we called said they heard a slight background hiss. We didn’t hear the hiss on our end, but more than one of our friends said they noticed it. Automated calling systems were able to understand us, but only if we were in a quiet room. On the whole, the call quality stayed the same in most environments.

Browser speed
Our first test with the Safari browser was over CNET’s internal Wi-Fi network. Web pages loaded in 5 to 10 seconds, though sites with heavy graphics took longer. It was a smooth experience overall, though it not quite as zippy as we had hoped. We thought that could be due to CNET’s network, but it seemed to be more or less the standard. Pages took about the same time to load on a home network and just a couple seconds longer in a cafe. When not using Wi-Fi, you’re stuck with AT&T’s EDGE network, which is just too slow to render the lovely Safari interface enjoyably. With speeds in the 50-to-90Kbps range, it reminded us of a dial-up browser. In other words, it’s pretty intolerable. CNET Labs tested the speed of the EDGE network against the Wi-Fi connection by comparing repeated results of the download time for a 9.4MB file. After two days of testing, EDGE resulted in an average download time of 15 minutes, 41 seconds for the file; Wi-Fi on average required a mere 1 minute, 11 seconds. In the end, our test results indicate that the iPhone’s Wi-Fi connection is 13 times faster than using EDGE, although results will vary depending on location. We can only hope Apple adds 3G soon, especially since AT&T has a robust UMTS/HSDPA network.

Activation
Activation was easy using iTunes 7.3. Our computer recognized the iPhone right away, and the activation system started automatically. After a few prompts, it asked us if we wanted to automatically sync contacts from Yahoo and Windows mail and contacts from Outlook. It also asked us to if we wanted to sync Internet bookmarks but, as we said earlier, it won’t import Firefox bookmarks. The integration with AT&T’s account service is also seamless. We were able to select a plan and indicate whether we were a current AT&T customer. It even asked us if we wanted to port a current cell phone number. In all, it’s much better experience than dealing with AT&T.

It’s important to note that the iPhone is little more than an expensive paperweight until it’s activated. You can make emergency calls, but you can’t use any other functions, including the iPod music player. What’s worse, if you cancel your AT&T contract, the iPhone becomes a paperweight again.

Battery life
The Apple has a rated iPhone battery life of 8 hours talk time, 24 hours of music playback, 7 hours of video playback, and 6 hours on Internet use. The promised standby time is 10.4 days. When we tested the iPhone with the Wi-Fi function turned off, we got about 7 hours, 45 minutes of talk time. When we tested it with the Wi-Fi activated, we came away with 4 hours less. Video time, however, clocked in at an impressive 7.3 hours. Music-only time was also satisfactory. We got 28.4 hours of music playback time on a single charge. Just keep in mind that it’s rare you’ll be using just one feature for hours on end. As such, your battery life will vary widely as you switch between functions. Large color screens such as the one on the iPhone tend to be battery drainers, so you’ll most likely need to charge your handset every couple of days. According to the FCC, the iPhone has a digital SAR rating of 0.974 watts per kilogram.

Posted on July 31st, 2007 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Reviews | 1 Comment »

Today’s iPhone hack-du-jour uses iTunes preview files for ringtones. As you probably know, iTunes freely offers short audio samples of its entire library. You can easily download these samples from iTunes and install them onto your iPhone as custom ringtones. Since your iPhone is authorized to your account, you’ll be able to play back these otherwise protected audio snippets as ringtones. Here are the steps to take to make this work for you:

1. Create a new playlist. Drag unpurchased songs from the iTunes store into your playlist. The songs will retain their “Add Song” buttons and their price within the playlist.

2. Export your playlist. Select the playlist in the sources column. Control-click/Right-click the playlist name and choose Export Song List from the pop-up menu.

3. Save the playlist as plain text. Select Plain Text from the Format pop-up and save the playlist file to your desktop.

4. Open the playlist file. It is a tab-delimited file of columns, so you can open it up in Excel (my preference, make sure to option-drag the text file onto the Excel icon) or a text editor like TextEdit.

5. Locate the file URLs. Each file URL appears in the final Location column for each line. Copy the URL.

6. Download the files. In Safari 3.0, open the Downloads window (Windows->Downloads). Paste the URL into the Download window and allow the file to transfer. Your computer must be authorized to your iTunes account. You may want to try playing back the file in QuickTime Player just to be sure it downloaded correctly. If you’re not a Safari 3.0 user, use your favorite alternate such as curl, wget, or so forth.

7. Rename. Give the file a more meaningful name than, for example, “mzi.rwgtaash.aac.p.m4p”. Retain the .m4p extension.

8. Upload to the iPhone. Use your favorite method (iphoneinterface, sshfs, sftp, whatever) to copy the file to /Library/Ringtones on your iPhone.

9. Select the ringtone. On the iPhone, navigate to Settings -> Sound > Ringtone and select the new file. The iPhone ringtone will play back as you select it. Please note that some newer releases (including Nicole Scherzinger’s Whatever U Like–thanks Drunk Dwarf) do not work as ringtones. I’m not sure why.

Congratulations, not only have you added a new 30-second custom ringtone to your iPhone, but iTunes usually picks the best 30 seconds of any song for its preview. Enjoy.

GeekNote: If you’ve got curl installed on your iPhone, you can curl the URLs directly to /Library/Ringtones.

From TUAW

Posted on July 30th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Ringtone | 1 Comment »

A very talented designer M.A.E from DeviantART is offering a free download of 199 iPhone wallpapers offering countless ways to customize your iPhone wallpaper. You can download at here.

If you have found beatuiful iPhone wallpapers, iPhone background and iPhone ringtones, please feel free to tell us. We will share it with more iPhone users.

Posted on July 30th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: iphone wallpaper | No Comments »

Apple is on a roll, and the company shows no sign of slowing down.

After the close of the stock market Wednesday, Apple reported profits of $818 million, or 92 cents a share, for its fiscal third quarter. That’s a 73 percent jump compared with last year, when third-quarter profit was $472 million. It’s 9 cents higher than Wall Street was expecting and 26 cents better than the company’s own projections. Strong Mac and iPod sales led the charge, but Apple also has a third business these days.

The company reported selling 270,000 iPhones during the 30 hours before the quarter ended on June 30. That’s at the upper end of what estimates were going into iPhone weekend, though far below some of the extremely high estimates that surfaced following the launch. Still, some were anticipating a smaller number after AT&T reported activating 146,000 iPhones during the same period.

Apple shares were up $12.26, or nearly 9 percent, to $149.52 in after-hours trading.

Revenue for the quarter was up 24 percent to $5.4 billion, as compared with $4.37 billion for the same period a year ago. That tops Wall Street’s expectations of $5.2 billion and Apple’s own projections of $5.1 billion.

As predicted, however, the iPhone stole the show. Oppenheimer said Apple now expects to ship its 1 millionth iPhone by the end of September, setting a target for the back-to-school shopping season.

He acknowledged the activation problems experienced by some iPhone customers during the early days of iPhone sales. “We would like to apologize to those customers for a less than perfect experience,” Oppenheimer said, noting that most of the problems were fixed during the first week of sales.

Oppenheimer confirmed that Apple is receiving payments from AT&T related to the sale of iPhones, but he didn’t want to discuss the specifics of the agreement between the two companies. Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, believes AT&T is paying Apple about $11 a month per new iPhone customer, or about $3 a month for existing AT&T customers who switched to the iPhone.

Apple will recognize revenue related to its agreement with AT&T in the company’s fourth quarter, which ends in September, Oppenheimer said.

Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, reiterated the company’s goal of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008. He also confirmed that the company would have an iPhone for the European market by the end of the year, though he did not specify where it would appear beyond “a few major countries.”

“It will not be easy to build in this business, our competitors are large and entrenched,” Cook said.

Thanks CNET

Posted on July 26th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: iPhone News | No Comments »

Let me preface this by saying I haven’t tested this myself and you should read the warnings before you try this.

Some rather complicated instructions for installing custom iPhone ringtones on the iPhone have been floating around the net of late. Unfortunately they required some pretty involved under-the-hood tinkering. The newly released iFuntastic is designed to simply this process immensely. This little program allows you to install and manage custom ringtones just by selecting them in a GUI. There is a warning that after using this iTunes won’t automatically launch when you dock your iPhone, but you can still sync manually.

iFuntastic is a free download, but you will have to register at modmyiphone.com

Posted on July 25th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Ringtone | No Comments »

  A Flickr user has posted some unboxing photos of Apple’s iPhone Bluetooth headset, some of which are mirrored here.

Apple claims the $129 accessory can provide up to 72 hours of standby time and up to 5.5 hours of talk time on a single charge. While the Online Apple Store shows a 2-4 week lag time, it would appear that there is at least limited retail store availability.

Posted on July 24th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Accessories, iPhone bluetooth headset | No Comments »

While the iPhone’s sleek, imageless design helps to keep things simple for everyone, I can understand some people’s desire to customize their surroundings. While Apple isn’t making this easy on anyone, keeping the iPhone locked up for themselves and all, that doesn’t mean determined hackers aren’t trying to pick the locks. For anyone interested in changing their iPhone’s background from (arguably) boring black to something of their choosing, ModMyiPhone has just the how-to for you. Adventurer be warned, however: this is not for the light-hearted. This is a 15-step tutorial involving some ugly hacking with the Terminal app and digging around in your iPhone’s guts. On the upside though, if something goes wrong I imagine you can easily get your iPhone back to square one with iTunes’ Restore button, but I obviously am in no position to make any guarantees, so proceed with caution

.

That said, it sure would be nice to see Apple officially open up the iPhone to this kind of customization with a future software update. It totally makes sense that they themselves are using caution with their first foray into mobile phones though, so I wouldn’t hold my breath for a feature update like this anytime soon.

From TUAW

Posted on July 23rd, 2007 by admin
Filed under: iPhone News, iPhone Background | No Comments »

Another Free iPhone checkpoint has been reached. It has been reported but unconfirmed that the first 3rd party, non-safari iPhone app was run today in the wild. Developer “Nightwatch” did the compilation and execution of the program using his ARM/Mach-O Toolchain. Check their progress report after the jump.

After many, many hours of intense work from “Nightwatch”, the first independent “Hello World”* application has been compiled and launched on the iPhone. This was made possible using the “ARM/Mach-O Toolchain”, Nightwatch’s “special project”, that he has been working on so carefully over the past few weeks. Certain parts of the toolchain (such as the assembler) are being refined and tested and these will be released as soon as possible. It should be noted that Nightwatch has been instrumental in creating these tools, working in near isolation to get them finished. Nightwatch was also responsible for the “jail exploit” that he developed from information he and other members of the the dev team discovered.

Please join us to thank Nightwatch, Tmiw, Darkten and Daeken for making this happen.
- the dev team

From http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/checkpoint/hello-world-3rd+party-iphone-app-compiled-loaded-run-280558.php

Posted on July 20th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: iPhone News | No Comments »

PQ DVD to iPhone Video Converter Suite is a One-Click, All-In-One solution to convert DVD movies, Tivo, Xvid/DivX, WMV, MPEG, AVI, RealMedia videos and many other video fomats to iPhone and iPod.

The following tutorials teach you how to convert DVD to your iPhone step by step.
1.Download. Download the latest version of PQ DVD to iPhone Video Converter. Set up and run.
2.Configure. Click“Set Output Filename & Location” and set the save path. “Show Output Folder” will you to the save folder directly.

3.Load DVD.Insert the DVD you’d like to convert to your computer’s DVD drive.Then click“Open DVD”and select the DVD drive to load the DVD.

4.Load Video.If you want to convert other videos ,click “Open Video File” and select the video files you want to convert. PQ DVD to iPhone video converter supports AVI, MPEG, WMV, DAT, MPGFLV and almost all the video formats.

5.Convert configuration

A.Set Resolution

B.Set the quality of video and audio.It’s very intelligent. The file size will be displayed based on the selected quality.Higher quality makes larger video file. Generally speaking,the default settings is enough.

C. Open the “More Options”You could adjust the video and audio with more advanced parameters.

D.Set the start point and the end point. It’s easy for you to convert any period of the video.

E. Crop the screen size. There are already five prepared screen size for you to choose.

6.Convert.When you are satisfied with all settings,Click “Record it”to convert DVD or Video. There is no sound during the ripping process,it doesn’t matter.

7.Batch Conversion
A.Select“Batch Convert Video Files”

B.Enter the new interface Click“ADD”button to select all the video files you want to convert.

C.Set the video quality and the output folder.

D.Adjust other video conversion profile in the right window.

E.At last,click“Convert”to start“Status” will show you the progress.

F.The convert process is finished.

Posted on July 19th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Software, How to convert DVD to iPhone | No Comments »

First I must say all thanks go to the amazing people in the iPhone development team (they don’t like links to their site because of bandwidth issues). I especially want to thank “iZsh”, “nightwatch”, “daeken” and “roxfan” and the rest of the hard working programmers for providing to everyone, the code needed to use other SIMs in the iPhone. I also want to thank a couple of my fellow chatters in the room “Dionisis” for sharing his walkthrough with me when he figured out how to do this and “aPPlewEEd” for catching an obvious error of mine that stumped me somewhere around 2 a.m. and kept me from getting this working.

This does NOT unlock the iPhone after doing this, it still remains carrier dependent. But you can now use any existing AT&T or Cingular pre-paid account (mine is from a contract that ran out) or any virtual operator’s SIM card that uses the AT&T and Cingular network. This also works for corporate accounts.

Ok, so grab your iPhone, shut it down and remove the AT&T SIM that it came with. Now get the SIM that you want to use in the iPhone and write down the 19 or 20 digit number that is on the card. This number will be referred to later as the ICCID. If your number is illegible, you may be able to determine what this number is by using it in your old phone. When you get it, put the SIM into the iPhone.

Note: If you’ve successfully modified the iPhone before, then skip to Step 10.

Step 1.

Make sure your iPhone is docked and charged.

Step 2.

From iTunes, make sure you have a backup of your phone and all settings (if you want to keep them). Simply connect the iPhone to your computer and iTunes will sync your iPhone. Automatically backed-up information includes text messages, notes, call history,contact favorites, sound settings, widget settings, certain network settings, and other preferences.

Step 3.

Quit iTunes. Don’t just minimize it, shut it down. If you have the iTunes Helper open, you must quit that as well. To determine if they are running, open the Activity Monitor program found in the Utilities folder inside of the Applications folder. If it is running, highlight it in the list and click the Quit Process button.

Step 4.

Make sure the iPhone is on.

Step 5.

Download the software restore file from Apple. Click here. Once the file is downloaded, most browsers may automatically decompress the file and leave a folder called iPhone1,1_1 on your desktop. If your browser did not do this, and you have an .ipsw file instead, then rename the extension to .zip and decompress it yourself.

Step 6.

Create a folder called phonedmg in your home folder.

Step 7.

Place the software restore files you downloaded from Apple (the iPhone1,1_1 folder) into the phonedmg folder. Do not place the whole folder in here, just what’s in the folder.

Step 8.

Download the “jailbreak” program here you can also get it here. Put these files into the phonedmg folder.

Step 9.

Download the iPhoneInterface (v 0.3.3) program here you can also get it here. Put these files into the phonedmg folder.

Step 10.

Go to your Applications folder and then go into the Utilities folder and find the program called Terminal. You should move this to your dock for easier access. Note that when typing in the terminal, everything is case sensitive. So watch your capital letters and lower case letters. Do not interchange them, they won’t work.

Step 11.

Start Terminal and type: cd phonedmg Then press the enter key. You’ll see you are now in the phonedmg directory where all of your files that you downloaded earlier should be.

Step 12.

Type: ./jailbreak Then press the enter key. You should see the text “Looking for iPhone…” If you don’t, then you did something wrong. When you run jailbreak with the iPhone on you’ll get this:

It will next say:

Step 13.

Press and hold the Home button and the Sleep/Wake button for a full 25 seconds.

The iPhone will restart in recovery mode. At this point the iTunes program may open, so close it.

Note: If you have iTunes 7.3.1 it won’t launch automatically when you go into recovery mode. Continue to Step 14.

Note: If you have iTunes 7.3.054 go back to the Terminal window running jailbreak and press and hold the CTRL key while pressing the C key. You have to do this because jailbreak tells you to go into recovery mode, and doesn’t give you a prompt to kill the shell process.

At the new prompt type ./jailbreak Then press the enter key. A few additional lines of text will appear as the iPhone is modified. This process may take up to one minute and it won’t look like anything is happening, but trust me, jailbreak is busy. What until you get a screen similar to the one below.

Step 14.

Open a Finder window and navigate to ~/Library/Lockdown There should be a .plist file there. It will have a long alphanumeric name. You’ll need to grab that name (except for the .plist part) later. That alphanumeric string is the iPhone’s device ID. The number here is a dummy string.

Step 15.

Download the iASign program here. Unzip the file and copy the file iPhoneActivation.pem, which is in the bin folder, to your phonedmg folder.

Step 16.

Go back to the Terminal and type: ./iPhoneInterface Then press the enter key.

Now type: cd /System/Library/Lockdown Then press the enter key.

Then type: putfile iPhoneActivation.pem Then press the enter key.

Step 17.

Open another Terminal. I think the less you have to cd around the less chance there is for error.

Type: cd desktop Then press the enter key.

Type: cd iASign Then press the enter key.

Type: cd bin Then press the enter key.

You now need to enter a very long command into the Terminal. Here it is without any data yet:
./iASign.mac <private key file> <device ID> <IMEI> <ICCID> <output_filename>

Here’s an example of what this command will look like with the data entered.

./iASign.mac iPhoneActivation_private.pem 899f76df3vgbvnmp2693333330f3wq49258d636y3 33245888222222999 8888839339393213333322 whateveryouwant.plist

It’s not as hard as it looks. Hey do you wanna do this or not? Most of it is cut and paste.

So now we need to get the information for everything that goes within the brackets. The first item is the private key file. The value for this is iPhoneActivation_private.pem which you should recognize from the iASign/bin folder.

Next is the device ID which you found earlier in Step 14.

Now you need the iPhone’s IMEI which you can get off the back of the retail box.

Next you need the ICCID from the SIM card you want to put into the iPhone. You can get this number by looking VERY closely at the SIM. It’s a 19 or 20 digit string printed on the logo side of the SIM.

The final thing is the output_filename which is what the iASign program will create when you enter the very long command in the Terminal. Call it whateveryourwant.plist It really doesn’t matter.

You might want to type all this information into a text editor to get it just so. Then just copy and paste the whole thing into the terminal. Double check everything you type before you enter it! Here’s what it all looks like when you enter the command and press enter.

The program should generate your plist file instantly and place it with the other iASign files in the bin folder.

Step 18.

Now you need to get the program called iPhone Tool which you can get here.

Unzip the download. There is a file called “tool” in it. Copy that into your iASign/bin folder where the whateveryouwant.plist file is.

If you’ve already bypassed activation with your iPhone you’ll need to deactivate it with the tool before proceeding.

Open a new Terminal window. Type: cd desktop Then press the enter key.

Then type: cd iASign Then press the enter key.

And type: cd bin Then press the enter key.

If you need to deactivate your iPhone because you bypassed it earlier then type: ./tool –deactivate If you are unable to deactivate, try unplugging the iPhone and plugging it back in again, also try rebooting the computer and the phone. As a list resort the restore option in iTunes may be necessary.

For everyone else out there type: ./tool –activate whateveryouwant.plist

You should still have another Terminal open that is still running iPhoneInterface. Go to it and confirm that you are still at /System/library/Lockdown If not, cd there.

Download the original Services.plist file from here or from here. You can also get this from the decrypted 39.dmg file, but I won’t explain this here.

Now type: putfile Services.plist

Then type: exit

Power down the iPhone, disconnect the cable, and turn it back on. Your phone should now recognize your SIM and confirm that the iPhone is activated now.

From

From http://www.hacktheiphone.com/iphone_using_cingular_sim.html

Posted on July 19th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: Unlock iPhone | No Comments »