Apple released the iPhone 3G on July 11th, 2008, which gives you early adopters just a few weeks before your one-year warranty runs out.
What does this mean? It means you should give your iPhone a good hard look to determine if it’s in your best interest to take your iPhone to your local Apple Store to try to obtain a replacement.
There are at least 18 well-known defects with the iPhone, all of which oblige Apple to replace the handset for free. All are detailed are over the next few pages, including ways to test your iPhone to make sure everything is functioning properly.
Issues that Apple considers grounds for replacement include hairline cracks, discolored screens, dead pixels, flakey WiFi, dodgy GPS and crackly speakers.
If your precious iPhone is suffering from any of these problems, read on to make sure you’re properly prepared before you head down to your local Apple store and get a replacement. Hurry, before it’s too late.
Of course Apple thinks of these users as criminals, but, really, how long can the company deny the rest of its smartphone ecosystem the number three functionality its users believe is still missing?
Just Tuesday we reported on the sad news that Apple decided a South Park iPhone app that allowed downloading of episode clips would be “potentially offensive,” and so barred it from distribution in the AppStore.
Here’s a how-to video for all the jailbreaking criminals out there who just can’t live without South Park on the iPhone.
Dude has pretty good taste in music and a very easy-going instructional manner. If you’re willing to flaunt “the law” he shows you how to download South Park episodes to your iPhone and even how to put ’em on your PC.
Apple approved Ustream’s AppStore live video streaming app on iTunes Monday evening, just in time for what is likely to be the most photographed, videoed and broadcast US Presidential Inauguration ever, on Tuesday in Washington, DC.
Get Ustream’s free app on your iPhone, and if you can find yourself an open WiFi connection between 10am and 3pm (EST) Tuesday, you’ll be able to catch live footage of Barack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th president of the US.
Ustream’s TV-in only breakthrough may seem small potatoes to legions of iPhone jailbreakers, who’ll be able to use iPhone’s TV-out capabilities to broadcast Obama’s historic inauguration from their iPhones; it’s also quite something for mainstream iPhone users to now be able to receive live video on their mobile devices.
It figures, then, with up to 5 million people in Washington DC for Tuesday’s pomp and circumstance, a few jailbroken live feeds ought to be accessible to those who know the right people.
Even if you don’t jailbreak, step on or otherwise open up your iPhone you can wear the innards on your chest.
No further details about who came up with the idea on the dedicated Exploded Phone site, but the café press page describes the T-shirt as “an exploded view of my brother’s taken-apart phone. He’s going to kill me!”
If you just can’t live without emoticon functionality on your iPhone, you may have cell phone users in Japan to thank. Perhaps with a nod to the centrality of “emoji” on all mobile devices in Japan, Apple has apparently enabled their use with iPhone 2.2 firmware, according to one report, but only through the Japanese virtual keyboard.
You must be willing to enter the brave world of jailbreaking your phone using cydia.app, but once there, you’ll be able to enable “emoji” right from the phone’s settings for International keyboard functionality: settings -> general -> international -> keyboards -> japanese -> emoji
Apple released the 10.5.6 update to Leopard on Monday with a feature that makes it impossible to jailbreak and/or unlock an iPhone or iPod Touch using PwnageTool or QuickPwn, according to a report at iPhoneAlley.
Blogger Erica Sadun explains in more detail that engineers at Apple propagated to all 10.5.6 loaded Mac systems USB kexts (kernel extensions) that prevent a Mac from recognizing an iPhone or iPod in Device Firmware Update mode, a high level communication protocol used for firmware restores among other things.
The battle between Cupertino and a dedicated band of Apple users who believe the company’s mobile platform should be opened for general use and development outside the limitations of the AppStore has been going on since the original iPhone was unlocked weeks after its initial release in June 2007. Subsequent updates to the mobile firmware have ben decoded within days of their release.
Many, though not all users who jailbreak/unlock their iPhones do so to enable them to operate on cellular telephone networks other than AT&T, the exclusive authorized service provider in the US. Others see the advantage of an unlocked phone that can run software developed for it that has not otherwise been approved by Apple for sale and distribution in the iTunes AppStore.
Sadun confirmed with sources inside Apple that the current roadblock to unlocking efforts was deliberate and both she and iPhoneAlley suggested those wanting to operate jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches ought to wait to install the 10.5.6 update on their Macs until developers working to maintain the open mobile platform have devised a workaround.
One possible avenue around the DFU mode restriction has been suggested by Phone developer Steven Troughton-Smith, who told Sadun the problem relates to devices plugged directly to Macs. He relates that DFU mode can be used with a unit connected via a hub and can be pwned as normal, even with the 10.5.6 update.
The iPhone DevTeam took another brick out of Apple’s walled garden on Friday, successfully booting the Linux operating system on the iPhone, iPhone 3g and the original iPod Touch, according to a report at AppleInsider.
The “draft version” of the first alternative OS to run on Apple’s mobile devices includes the main Linux 2.6 kernel as well as “rudimentary graphics, serial, and other functional drivers that are enough to get a command line running when input is sent over the USB interface; the accelerometer, audio, networking and even the touchscreen have yet to receive any kind of software support,” according to the report.
Having led the way from the very beginning with efforts to jailbreak and unlock the iPhone, the Dev Team is working to enable Google’s equally Linux-based but more complete Android mobile operating system on the iPhone and is searching for programmers to help with the project.
The iPhone Dev Team released its Pwnage jailbreak tool for iPhone over the weekend. Despite the tool’s inability to unlock iPhones for use with unapproved phone carriers and decreased demand for “illegal” apps in the light of Apple’s own AppStore, enough curious parties overwhelmed Dev Team servers and forced mirror sites into service to satisfy iPhone’s teeming masses still yearning to break free.
The tool jailbreaks and unlocks older iPhones, and jailbreaks iPhone 3Gs and iPod Touches but “We only support the 2.0 firmwares,” according to the Dev Team’s blog.
