I’m starting to think there is some sort of bad luck attached to my iTunes Store account, as tonight I experienced the third iTunes Store song that completely locked up an iPod - only this time it was my iPhone. While listening to ‘Again with the Subtleties’ from the Yppah album You Are Beautiful At All Times (US iTunes link) in my iPhone’s iPod app, the phone completely locked up at the end of the track with an almost-faded out display. What was worse, the iPhone became completely unresponsive - the display wouldn’t accept any of my taps, and even the external buttons were ignored. Momentarily wishing I could simply yank the battery to cut the power and reset the phone, I realized Apple must have some sort of a contingency in place for lock-ups like these.

Fortunately, I was right: The iPhone troubleshooting section of Apple’s main iPhone support site contains a walkthrough for situations like this, complete with instructions on how to restart the phone, force quit a frozen app or reset the phone in cases like mine where it has completely locked up. Here are these steps in a nutshell:

• Restart your iPhone: Most people probably already know how to do this, but just in case, you can simply hold the sleep/wake button on the top for a few seconds to bring up a red slider at the top of the display which allows you to power off the phone.
• Quit a frozen iPhone app: I know it’s a crazy thought, but it is entirely possible that Apple’s wondrous iPhone apps can lock up from time to time. In this case, simply hold the Home button when in the app for about 6 seconds to kill the app. You should be able to jump back into the app without restarting the phone itself.
• Reset your iPhone: Note that this is not Restoring your iPhone; that’s the button in iTunes that wipes the iPhone and all your information on it. Resetting an iPhone is nothing more than a hard reset or a forced reboot - you’re simply cutting the power and making it reboot. To do this, hold the sleep/wake button and Home buttons simultaneously for a few seconds; the display will quickly wipe itself and you should see the black background and white Apple logo, signifying a reset well done.

Fortunately, that reset fixed my problem and I’m jamming again with my iPhone as I write this. Still, you can be sure that I’ll ping iTunes support to find out what’s going on with these files, as this is the third one I’ve downloaded from the iTS that’s caused an iPod to stop dead in its tracks. Anyone else experience something like this? You know where to sound off.

From TUAW

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

If you’ve managed to get yourself an iPhone and haven’t smashed it yet, you’ve probably noticed that the iPhone isn’t preloaded with any games (to me that’s one good reason to smash it) so here are top 10 free iPhone games:

1- Shredder iPhone Chess
2- Diamenty which is basically Bejeweled, my favorite online game EVER!
3- Sudoku, the world’s favorite logic based number placement puzzle.
4- Checkrz aka Checkers!
5- i-Tiles: a memory game
6- Reversi: an abstract strategy game
7- Collapsing Blocks: falling blocks puzzle game.
8- Video Poker
9- iMineSweeper: the classic Minesweeper game.
10- iPhone Sokoban: a puzzle game where you have to push the boxes onto the target squares.

All of these games are web based as Apple still doesn’t offer any downloadable games.

Posted on July 18th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Game | No Comments »

At 9pm tonight I saw the sweetest shot, so I pulled out my iPhone and took an iPhone photo. I just held it atop of my car and got an amazing reflection off of the roof. If it were a 5+megapixel camera, it probably would have looked more amazing, but hey were talking a 2megapixel phone camera. What can your phone do?

If you haven’t been keeping track of the score it is iPhone 4, your phone 0

From TECH-GUY-TED

Posted on July 17th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Photos | No Comments »

This wasn’t on the iPhone Bingo card, but it should have been. Where there’s an extremely coveted gadget, there’ll be an extremely expensive luxury case for it. Louis Vuitton has announced a set of four iPhone cases: Monogram Canvas, Taiga Leather, Epi Leather and Alligator Skin. The Taiga Leather one has a belt attachment on it, but all of the cases are pretty inconvenient, because you’ve got to pull the iPhone all the way out to actually use it.

Oh, and we’ve saved the best for last. Want to guess prices? The Monogram Canvas case will only set you back a measly $225, while the Alligator Skin case is twice the price of the actual iPhone: $1120. All the cases will be available tomorrow at Louis Vuitton’s Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan.

Thanks TUAW

Posted on July 17th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Accessories, iPhone Cases | No Comments »

TUAW reader Jamie Phelps has possibly stumbled upon a nasty iPhone synching bug when keeping one’s iTunes library on an external hard drive. While tips like our how-tos for setting up iTunes with external drives or even an AirPort Disk work pretty well even when synching iPods with them, Jamie found that his iPhone gets the brainwash treatment when he’s away from the drive containing his external iTunes library. As the story goes, Jamie synched his iPhone with a few songs and playlists, made a couple new playlists and then synched again. Hitting the road, however, and getting away from his external iTunes library drive is when the bug rears its nasty head: plugging the iPhone in while on the go caused iTunes to wipe out the new playlists and songs from the second sync operation, basically reverting them to their state before the second sync. To verify, Jamie even got adventurous and tried this whole thing a second time, once again watching iTunes blow away changes from the previous iPhone sync when the external media library isn’t mounted.

This is the first time I’ve heard of iTunes handling this kind of setup in a poor way; for as long as I can remember, iTunes has been clever enough to realize what’s happening and and would either not sync anything to an iPod when away from the library drive, or it would actually sync any media downloaded or imported while away (as we’ve mentioned before, you can use the Advanced > Consolidate Library command to move all this new media once reconnected with the library drive). Since we don’t really have any evidence of Apple deliberately changing this behavior for their iPods or iPhones, it makes sense for this quirk to be classified as a bug that will hopefully be squashed with an inevitable iPhone software update. But what say you, TUAW readers? Anyone else get bit? Sound off.

From TUAW

Posted on July 16th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Bug | No Comments »

Randall from Wireless Info sent us the news that Apple has acknowledged the iPhone battery issue is in fact a bug that will be fixed in a future software update. A few days ago, WI noticed that even after sitting in the charger for 12 hours, their iPhone battery gauges didn’t show a full charge. After conducting an informal survey, they found that the problem was widespread, and now Apple has confirmed the bug.

And since Apple says it’s just a firmware problem, then the batteries should all be OK (although WI also says Apple is replacing faulty batteries anyway, so chances are that if you want to replace your iPhone, you can still do that). At first, WI said that the non-charge-showing phones were operating on a shorter battery life, but after a few cycles apparently they’re running just as well.

So that’s one fix Apple can throw in the iPhone’s first big patch. What’s next?

Posted on July 13th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Battery | No Comments »

As promised, thanks to the guys at Think Secret, I have started imaging the chips inside the Apple iPhone. I started out with the processor and can confirm that the chip contains both the ARM CPU and the RAM, three dies to be exact. Unfortunately, there was not much to look at under the microscope. The CPU had what looked to be a model number and the RAM chips had what looked to be part of a model number on the cut-away part of the die. No visible logos or slogans on these chips. It was also unfortunate that the chips had a layer of metal on top which prevented me from seeing most of the actual circuitry. The only marginally interesting part was that under 100x magnification, it seemed that some of the perforations in the metal on the CPU may have been letters instead of square holes. You can judge for yourself.

In any case, I removed all of the chips from the iPhone using a hot plate so feel free to suggest the next chip for imaging in the comments. The FLASH was removed separately using Chipquick and will be saved for potential reading. Below are scans (~4MB each) of the two logic boards to help you make the selection.

From μblog

μ

Posted on July 12th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: iPhone News, AT&T iPhone | No Comments »

Apple will introduce a cheaper version of its popular iPhone selling for about $300 by the end of the year, a stock analyst predicted today, citing a patent filed by the Cupertino technology company.

The current iPhone, which went on sale about two weeks ago and sold out quickly, costs between $500 and $600.

Kevin Chang, a Taiwan-based analyst with JP Morgan who follows the mobile phone industry in Asia, said he expects Apple to convert the iPod nano into an iPhone, pricing it at $300 or below. Unlike the current iPhone, it would use the iPod’s scroll wheel and would have fewer features and functions than the current version.

But, in a follow up note, another JP Morgan analyst cautioned investors that it could be “premature to assume” that Apple will introduce an iPhone nano in the immediate future.

“A lower-end iPhone is inevitable, in our view, but we believe a near-term launch would be unusual and highly risky,” said Bill Shope, the JP Morgan analyst who covers Apple.

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris said that the company does not comment on speculation.

One of the chief complaints about the iPhone has been the price, which also includes a two-year subscription requirement with cellular provider AT&T.

Added to that is a $79 fee plus a $6.95 shipping charge to replace the iPhone battery once it dies. The advocacy group Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights recently sent a letter to Apple accusing it of not disclosing that additional cost when it launched the phone.

What’s more, consumers who want to stay in touch while their battery is being replaced will have to pay $29 to rent a temporary iPhone, said Harvey Rosenfield, the foundation’s founder.

“In about a year or so when the battery begins to fail, there are going to be a lot of angry customers,” he said. Apple “should have discussed this when they started selling it.”

Kerris said that Apple disclosed the battery replacement cost on its Web site the day the iPhone was launched.

Posted on July 11th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: iPhone News | No Comments »

The gang on the #iphone-dev IRC channel have not wasted any time getting at the good stuff. With reported access to the iPhone’s filesystem, they now can create custom iPhone ringtones.

Posted on July 11th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Ringtone | No Comments »

Free Download iPhone Unlock Toolkit

As we all know, DVD Jon claimed he cracked Apple’s iPhone activation, His piece of codes can bypass iTunes’ subscription process and incidentally avoid signing AT&T’ s two year contract.His method does work but a little bit too complicated.

You have to install UltraEdit-32, PhoneActivationServerV1.0, iTunes and MS . NET Framework 2.0.You also need to modify hexadecimal values by yourself. It’s really difficult if you are not good at computer.

Now, PQ DVD launched an easy to use , one-click solution to activate iPhone.The iPhone Unlock Toolkit let you crack your iPhone in seconds.You needn’t download any extra programm and complete the tough process manually. Just plug in the iPhone and run iPhone Unlock Tool, Click “Unlock iPhone” button and your iPhone will be activated automatically.Then your iPhone will become a widescreeen iPod and Wi-Fi enabled device.

Notice: You need iTunes version 3.0.5 to activate. You can upgrade to any other future versions after that.

Posted on July 10th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Software, Unlock iPhone | No Comments »