One of the major obstacles for potential iPhone buyers is that the iPhone is offered exclusively via select carriers. Even if users are willing to switch carriers, they may not be willing to eat the often multi-hundred dollar early-termination fee that they would incur.

Several websites are now available to help users avoid various cell carrier fees. Cellswapper.com and Celltradeusa.com both are geared towards helping users seeking to end their contracts early avoid early termination fees, while helping new customers avoid activation fees.

Both sites work on a similar principle in that service providers will typically allow the transfer of contracts without termination or activation fees. The sites therefore act as a meeting place for users to find each other.

Note that the service is not without any cost, as the sites do charge a fee for matchmaking, however the end result should be considerably less than termination and activation fees.

via http://www.macrumors.com/iphone/2007/11/29/getting-out-of-your-contract-without-a-termination-fee/

Posted on November 30th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: iPhone Plan | No Comments »

A while back AT&T enabled iPhone owners to edit their iphone service plans online to exclude EDGE data service from their plans, carving out a good $20 from their monthly fees. Unfortunately, AT&T recently removed their online editing of service plans for iPhone customers.

While it looks like no more customers will be able to remove EDGE from their wireless plans, it is unknown what AT&T will decide to do for those who have already removed the EDGE from their iPhone plans.

One reader of TUAW claims that this is not AT&T removing the feature, but a normal downtime screen. Have you tried to remove EDGE from your iPhone plan? If you try it out, let us know the results.

Posted on November 30th, 2007 by admin
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Erica Sadun released an app today that changes the iPhone’s carrier with ease. Previously you had to do a ton of command line stuff to change the carrier logo, but now all you have to do is type in the name after opening the app. After typing in the name, springboard will restart and show your new logo.

Make It Mine can be obtained in here.

Posted on November 30th, 2007 by admin
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TUAW reader Mauro writes that after running the 1.1.2 jailbreak, YouTube no longer works. He asks: “Any idea how to solve this problem?” Here is a simple guide from Ging of the South that will help.

The guide walks you through editing a particular property list to add a device certificate that authorizes your iPhone or iPod touch. The Ging page provides the certificate text for you to paste into Property List Editor. If you’re not on a Mac, you can use my plutil utility to convert the file to XML format and then edit it with your favorite text editor.

via http://www.tuaw.com/2007/11/29/fixing-youtube-on-your-jailbroken-iphone/

Posted on November 30th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: iPhone News, iPhone Tips | No Comments »

f vi and a bash shell are totally foreign to you, jump to this page
If you are command line (and vi) -friendly:

1. Jailbreak your iPhone, and install the following packages -

1 • BSD Subsystem
2 • Term-vt100
3 • Erica’s Utilities (be sure to edit your path to include /var/root/bin)

2. Fire up the terminal app on your phone and…

cd ~/Library/Preferences
plutil -c xml1 .GlobalPreferences.plist
vi .GlobalPreferences.plist

3. Find the following text:

<array>
<string>en US</string>
</array>
…and edit it to add a line so it looks like this:

<array>
<string>en US</string>
<string>ja</string>
</array>

4. Save and close the Terminal app.

When you visit any application that uses a keyboard now, there will be a globe next to the ‘123’ characters key. Selecting this will alternate between your US and Japanese keyboards. The Japanese keyboard is pretty easy to distinguish, because it is compressed to make room for a kanji/kana suggestion field, and has a long hyphen to the right of the ‘L’ key.

　頑張ってください！

Posted on November 29th, 2007 by admin
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Posted on November 29th, 2007 by admin
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Of course the 3G iPhone is coming, that’s clearly in the evolution plan. As Jobs said himself, it’s only a matter of time until improved batteries allow for it. Still, when AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson says, “You’ll have it next year,” well, our ears tend to perk up. The remark was made at a meeting of the Churchill Club in Santa Clara. He didn’t say how much it could cost admitting that Jobs and Apple “will dictate what the price of the phone is.” However, it wouldn’t surprise us if fits back into the $599 slot vacated by the 8GB iPhone while toting a full 16GB of flash like the iPod touch.

via  http://www.pqdvd.com/blog/iphone/wp-admin/post-new.php?posted=824

Posted on November 29th, 2007 by admin
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After speculation that France Telecom would offer an iPhone unlocking service for around €100, the official word from the carrier has confirmed that customers choosing to buy the handset after its launch this evening will have the option of either an iPhone-specific plan, a generic Orange plan or of buying the phone completely unlocked. As in other countries with the iPhone, the carrier has put together a number of special iPhone contracts each with a 2-year service agreement and unlimited data access; these are priced from €49 to €119 a month, with the iPhone itself costing €399 ($589). Alternatively, for €649 and a €100 unlocking fee, Orange will sell you a carrier-independent iPhone; that puts it comfortably into the predicted price range quoted by network CEO Didier Lombard.

Posted on November 29th, 2007 by admin
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Hum is the 29th application of the iApp-a-Day project by Sean Heber. Nearing the end of the month, it looks like Sean is running out of ideas as this little application does pretty much nothing. It’s apparently an application where you can make robot sounds or something of that sort. If you move the sliders fast, you can jam to some random 8-bit tunes that are being made.

Hum can be obtained in installer.app after adding the iApp-a-Day source to your source list.

Posted on November 29th, 2007 by admin
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Apple and O2 have been taking hits recently for poor sales performance of the iPhone in the UK, with would-be users complaining that the price is too high and those who have taken the plunge having problems with coverage. Nevertheless, O2 have been calling it the “fastest selling device [we’ve] ever seen” and the company estimated 100,000 handsets would be activated in the first fortnight of availability. Sources close to AppleInsider, however, cast a different light, claiming that the flagship Regent Street Apple store was still working from stock delivered prior to the 9th November launch.

New estimates peg the actual number of handsets activated at just 26,500, a quarter of what O2 predicted, with the Regent Street store selling less than 100 iPhones per day and making a relatively small dent in the several thousand-strong shipment they received.

While it’s dangerous to place too much stock in an unnamed source, the news joins a large body of existing criticism and reticence of the UK iPhone and points to a device that is suffering disappointing sales. It’s looking more and more likely that warnings prior to UK availability - that the user-base is significantly different to that in the US, and would be unwilling to pay a high price for a device that, on paper at least, lacks many features British users take for granted - should have been heeded when O2 and Apple made their sales predictions.

Posted on November 29th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: iPhone News | No Comments »