It blows me away that the slightest fix on the iPhone yields huge results.  In my unscientific side by side speed test to see which version will load SlashGear and iPhone Buzz faster on WiFi and 3G, the result on WiFi isn’t that big of a deal, but on 3G - iPhone 2.01 blew 2.0 out of the water!

Loading up SlashGear on WiFi, iPhone 2.01 finished roughly 2-seconds faster than 2.0.  iPhone OS 2.01 literally obliterated 2.0 beating it by a massive lead of 26-seconds when loading up iPhoneBuzz.com!  If you don’t believe me, watch the side-by-side video below and see it for yourself.  Poking around in the about page of the new firmware, it looks like there’s a new modem firmware.  iPhone OS 2.01’s modem firmware is now 01.48.02 versus 01.45.00 on iPhone OS 2.0.

Other differences include call quality.  On 3G, I’m barely able to maintain a phone call (at home), while 2.01 “seem” to have better reception, allowing me to finish a full conversation with Ewdison.

Another notable improvement includes faster SMS.  By faster, you can say good-bye to the lagging keyboard.  I still need to test out the back up feature, which everyone on the net is swearing up and down the pole that it’s much faster now.

That’s all for now from me, but feel free to chime in and post your comments should you discover something new.

Update: NetShare still works, you need to delete and reconfigure your profile.  WiFi and Google maps is fixed, no more missed calculation even though without gps signal and assisted.

via http://www.iphonebuzz.com/iphone-os-201-vs-20-side-by-side-real-life-speed-test-043860.php

Posted on August 5th, 2008 by admin
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This might become the news of the month. iPhone might morph itself in a smaller form this Christmas. If this article on Daily Mail, from UK is to be believed “The Daily Mail claims the new device will retail at up to £150 for pay-as-you-go customers and will be available exclusively from O2 in the UK”. Here is what Daily Mail had to say:

Apple is about to launch a ‘nano’ version of the hugely successful iPhone. It is expected to be in the shops in time for Christmas. The product will be launched in the UK at up to £150 for pay-as-you-go customers by O2, the mobile phone group owned by Spain’s Telefonica. ‘This will be a big one,’ said an industry source.

Another report on MaCNN says - One claim hints that the iPhone nano will feature a touch wheel on the back and display on the front so that numbers will be dialed from behind. Sources also speculate that, “a cut down version, with the candy bar shape of iPod nano music players, would be a huge hit as a Christmas gift.”

If you are wondering how the nano might look. This picture from informationarchitects might ring some bell. There are tons of probable nano images floating around the web. This seems to be closest

Posted on August 4th, 2008 by admin
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Before, during, and after the introduction of the iPhone 3G, many people were hoping/asking/whining for a better camera in the iPhone. One with more than 2 megapixels, that is. Unfortunately, more megapixels wouldn’t have made the iPhone camera better. The extra pixels wouldn’t help with anything, in fact, and could even hurt under some circumstances.

 Here’s why. Obviously, there are many cameras with a higher megapixel count that shoot better pictures than the iPhone. But giving the iPhone more megapixels won’t make it shoot better snapshots any more than buying an expensive car will make you rich. It’s the other way around: because these cameras have better lenses, they can get good mileage out of better image sensors. The first problem with the iPhone’s camera lens is that it can’t focus. Unless Apple has been successful in hiding the iPhone’s autofocus capability from all of us for the past year, the iPhone’s camera has a fixed lens. The iPhone’s lens must be able to produce a (reasonably) sharp image regardless of the distance between the phone and the subject, because it can’t adjust its focus. There are two ways to do this: be more liberal in what’s accepted as “sharp” and make the lens opening (aperture) smaller.

Apple managed to strike a fairly reasonable balance here: the iPhone takes pictures that are within the sharpness range expected from a 2 megapixel camera, while the aperture is a respectable f/2.8. If Apple were to use a higher resolution image sensor with the same lens, the pictures wouldn’t be any sharper—and 2MP sharpness in a 5MP camera is just not acceptable. The other option would be to reduce the size of the lens opening, but that way, the amount of light that reaches the sensor is reduced and the iPhone would have an even harder time taking decent photos under dim lighting.

The other problem is that the more megapixels that are crammed in the same size sensor, the smaller those pixels get. Since individual pixels are gathering less light, many will be “underexposed” and produce a lot more noise (see long explanation and examples.). That’s the last thing that the iPhone’s camera needs. And, some would argue that the iPhone doesn’t have enough flash memory to store lots of high-megapixel photos. But I’d think that Apple would be happy to solve that particular problem by selling would-be iPhone photographers a higher-capacity camera phone.

So 2 megapixels is just fine, thank you—until such time that Apple manages to shoehorn an autofocus lens into the iPhone, thereby removing the need to control focus with the aperture. (Yes, the Nokia N95 has autofocus, but it’s also nearly twice as thick as the iPhone.) The software that determines the white balance, on the other hand, can use some work. )

via http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/06/18/more-iphone-camera-megapixels-would-be-worse-not-better

Posted on July 31st, 2008 by admin
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Just a few days after Pwnage Tool launched as a Mac-only first jailbreak application for the iPhone 3G and iPhone 2.0 software, there is now a Windows solution as well.

Winpwn 2.0 is the answer for Windows users looking to jailbreak iPhone 2.0 / 3G models.  Among its features are:

• Support for both 1.1.4 and 2.0
• Custom Image Support
• Custom Payload Support
• 3g iPhone support

More details and Winpwn download are at:

http://www.winpwn.com/index.php/Main_Page

Posted on July 28th, 2008 by admin
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looks like a Cocoa framework will come out during the fall for the iPhone that allows developers to work with Facebook Connect. This will most likely be in SDK form, and iPhone app developers will be able to use it. What’s neat about this is developers will be able to use the Facebook platform and integrate users right into the applications.

t will be interesting to see what sort of applications are born out of this. And since founder Mark Zuckerberg calls Facebook Connect “Facebook for the rest of the web,” I think we will be in for a real treat with this added iPhone compatibility. With all of that Facebook user information at their fingertips, developers will no doubt have a field day with the possibilities. 

It’s an exciting time for watching technology change and grow into these newer platforms. 

via http://www.iphonebuzz.com/iphone-will-get-facebook-connect-in-the-fall-253468.php

Posted on July 28th, 2008 by admin
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GearLive reports that Apple has seeded a beta version of iPhone 2.1 Firmware (Beta 1, Build 5F90) to developers.

According to the site, Apple has included new Core Location features that might suggest that turn-by-turn GPS could become a reality. Core Location can reportedly track your direction and the speed at which you are traveling.

Along with the new firmware, Apple has also seeded a new version of the iPhone SDK but the new SDK can not be used to submit Apps to the current App Store. There have been earlier reports that Firmware 2.0.1 had been spotted in the wild, but a 2.1 upgrade would presumably introduce more than just bug fixes.

Posted on July 25th, 2008 by admin
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We can all expect another feature to hit the iPhone 3G soon–speech recognition.

Now as exciting as that sounds, don’t get too excited yet. This is not speech recognition in the normal sense of the term. No, you can’t say “Mom” and the iPhone will automatically dial your mother’s number. Not going to happen. And the reason why is AT&T is developing the feature to run as a web feature. So when you speak, the data is sent to a remote server, then comes back to perform an action on your handset.

The service, called Speech Mashups, is web-based, so iPhone first gen users will probably be out of luck if stuck with using the EDGE network.

And even though voice dialing won’t work with this brand of speech recognition, it will work for a few other nifty things. There’s a video online showing a man dictating a city and type of business in YellowPages and how Speech Mashups does all of the footwork for you. Pretty cool, but voice dialing would be even nicer!

via http://www.iphonebuzz.com/speech-recognition-coming-to-the-iphone-233285.php

Posted on July 24th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: iPhone News, 3G iPhone | No Comments »

Those of you who haven’t installed the 2.0 firmware on your iPod touch or first-gen iPhone will be interested to know that 3G connectivity isn’t the only thing making the iPhone 3G faster than before. Despite being pretty buggy and prone to random crashes, the iPhone 2.0 software’s new version of the Safari browser is significantly faster than 1.1.4 or 1.1.5.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball has compared an iPhone running software version 2.0 with the same tests from 1.0.1 and 1.1.4. Here are his results (the smaller the bar, the faster it was):
According to his tests, it was no less than 1.7 times as fast in most cases. You can get more of the nitty-gritty at Daring Fireball.

Posted on July 22nd, 2008 by admin
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The iPhone Dev Team has released version 2.0 of the Pwnage tool. This tool allows you Jailbreak (add unofficial 3rd party applications) the original iPhone, the iPod Touch and now the iPhone 3G. The tool also allows you to SIM unlock the original iPhone, which allows it to be used on any GSM network. Owners of the iPhone 3G will have to wait for a future release before they are able to unlock their devices with the tool.

In summary, this release supports:

iPhone (1st Gen) with 2.0 - Activated, Unlocked & Jailbroken, (with support for third party applications).
iPod Touch with 2.0 - Activated & Jailbroken, (with support for third party applications).
iPhone (3G) with 2.0 - Activated, Jailbroken (with support for third party applications).

Posted on July 21st, 2008 by admin
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iPhoneAlley notes that AT&T has once again posted information on their website indicating that all iPhone customers have free access to their more than 17,000 Wi-Fi hotspots access across the U.S., including Starbucks locations:

AT&T knows Wi-Fi is hot, and free Wi-Fi even hotter, which is why we are proud to offer iPhone customers free access to the nation’s largest Wi-Fi hotspot network with more than 17,000 hotspots, including Starbucks*. Now users can relax and access music, e-mail and web browsing services with their favorite blend in hand from the comfort of their favorite location.

AT&T provides an online tool to find a Wi-Fi spot near you.

We had first reported on this topic back in April when AT&T had turned the feature on at hotspot locations across the U.S. This was quickly disabled just a few days later. Another week after that, AT&T advertised the new feature on their iPhone website, and again quickly removed it. When the service was active, AT&T simply required you to enter your current iPhone phone number as authentication.

There was some speculation that the delay was due to the fact that they had not yet completed their Wi-Fi deployment at Starbucks. AT&T had won the Starbucks contract from T-Mobile in February and is already offering free Wi-Fi access for their DSL and business customers.

via http://www.macrumors.com/2008/07/18/atandts-free-wi-fi-hotspot-access-for-iphones-finally-announced/

Posted on July 18th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: iPhone News, iPhone Tips | No Comments »