Month: July 2009

30 Excellent Reasons to Jailbreak Your iPhone

Sébastien Page ∙ July 23, 2009

Why jailbreak your iPhone? To me, every application available in Cydia is a good reason to jailbreak your iPhone. Simply said, jailbreaking your iPhone will allow you to use many applications that are not available (and will probably never be) in the App Store.

Here are 30 excellent reasons to jailbreak your iPhone:

It's risk-free. Worst case scenario, you can restore your iPhone to factory settings Install third-party applications with Cydia Get MMS with SwirlyMMS Add custom notification sounds and ringtones for free Use a free turn by turn GPS with xGPS Get video recording for your iPhone 2G or 3G with Cycorder Stream live videos with Qik Use Voice Over IP apps over 3G and Edge with VoIPover3G Enable Flash with iMobileCinema Download and save YouTube videos on your iPhone with MxTube Tether your iPhone with PDAnet View your iPhone on your TV with TVOut Play Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, NES and PlayStation games with emulators Watch every single episode of South Park, American Dad, Family Guy, the Simpsons, the Office, and Futurama for free Filter incoming calls with iBlackList Email your voicemails with Voicemail Forwarder Customize the look and feel of your iPhone with WinterBoard Quickly manage your settings preferences with BossPrefs Sort your apps into folders with Categories Run apps in the background with Backgrounder Quickly reply to SMS with iRealSMS Track your lost/stolen iPhone with iLocalis Display information such as emails, SMS, calendar and more directly on your lock screen with IntelliScreen Spoof your caller ID with 123Spoof Change your iPhone fonts with FontSwap Get haptic feedback for your keyboard with HapticPro Show a picture of your contacts in your contact list with Cyntact Transfer files via Bluetooh with iBluetooth Enable battery percentage on the 2G and 3G with Battery Percentage Unlock your iPhone

Can you think of more reasons to jailbreak? If so, please add them by leaving a comment below.

Dear AT&T, Where Are MMS and iPhone Tethering?

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 29, 2016

When Apple introduced the new iPhone 3GS in June, they unveiled two new features that had been long awaited: MMS and iPhone tethering. Unfortunately, AT&T was not one of the major carriers that were going to offer these features right away and said that they will be available "later this summer".

Later this summer, as part of the 3.0 software, AT&T will make multimedia messaging (MMS) available at no extra cost to customers with a text messaging bundle. And, in the future, AT&T will offer tethering capability for iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G.

Very well, but we're already one month into the summer and we haven't heard anything at all from AT&T. No one on the major tech websites or blogs seems to really care about it either.

Hey AT&T, where the hell are my MMS and iPhone tethering?

I think AT&T has been taking its customers for granted. Not only it has overcharged its iPhone customers since day 1, but it doesn't even provide a quality of service that would make it up for the high prices.

As MG Siegler wrote, AT&T is a big, steaming heap of failure and it is walking on thin ice right now. Its exclusive contract with Apple will expire next year and maybe it's time for Apple to reconsider their partnership.

What do you think of AT&T? Are you satisfied by their service?

19 Most Original iPhone Cases Ever

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated November 13, 2019

I'm not that much of an iPhone case guy because I think it is a device that is too beautiful to be hidden in a case or in a sleeve. However, I have to admit I have a thing for some of these. This article covers 19 extremely creative and original iPhone cases.

iPhone 3GS A Month Later. Still A Lot Missing

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated May 26, 2017

It seems it was yesterday that I unboxed my iPhone 3GS for the first time. Of course it was love at first sight. It is fast and elegant, but now that I've been using it for a month, I notice there is still a lot missing to make it the perfect phone.

Copy/Paste is Clunky

Woohoo, the iPhone finally has copy/paste. It only took Apple 2 years to implement this basic feature... The reality is that they did a terrible job. I think copy/paste on the iPhone is clunky and intrusive. Now everytime you touch your iPhone screen, you have this annoying popup asking you if you want to select/copy/paste. Apple products usually are about amazing user experience and copy/paste for the iPhone is a big fail.

Dev Team Gives UltraTips About Using UltraSn0w Unlock

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 29, 2016

The last version of UltraSn0w was supposed to fix a number of bugs and overall, it did a great job. However, some people are still having issues. The Dev Team posted an article with a few ultratips for those of you still having problems with your unlock.

Battery draining too fast? It's probably because you restored your iPhone from backup. You should restore your iPhone and set up as a new phone. Issues with T-Mobile? T-Mobile's 3G doesn't work on the iPhone. It's a frequency issue. Simply deactivate 3G in Settings > General > Network

I think these two are the most common issues after unlocking. For more information, I suggest you hop over the Dev Team's blog and read the full article.

Weekly iPhone Wrapup: Twitter Apps, Jailbreak, Battery issues, And More…

Sébastien Page ∙ July 19, 2009

Sometimes I don't know what to write about on this blog so I just do a wrapup of recent articles or articles that I think deserve more attention. In this edition of the weekly wrapup, we talk about 2 new Twitter applications, iPhone security and battery tips, a stupid iPhone ad, and iPhone 3GS unlock methods.

Twitter Apps

Send Videos to Twitter With Twitvid

TwitVid is a new application that allows you to send videos from your iPhone 3GS to your Twitter account. TwitVid is very simple to use. Launch the app, select a video to upload or record a new one, tap “choose”, add your tweet’s text and that’s it. It will send the tweet with a short link to your video. Read more...

Get Twitter Push Notifications With Boxcar

iPhone Security

Protect Your iPhone With An Alphanumeric Password

If you’re a security freak and want to add an extra layer of protection to your iPhone, there is a simple hack that will let you create an alphanumeric password of as many characters as you want. Read more...

Unlock Methods for iPhone 3GS

PurpleSn0w, the iPhone 3GS Unlock By GeoHot

A few days after releasing PurpleRa1n, the first iPhone 3GS jailbreak, GeoHot has now created his own iPhone 3GS unlock called PurpleSn0w. Read more...

Is UltraSn0w Better Than PurpleSn0w?

The friendly fight between the Dev Team and GeoHot keeps going as the Dev Team posted a blog post this morning highlighting how much better than PurpleSn0w UltraSn0w is. Read more...

iPhone Battery

Rant About the Poor iPhone 3GS Battery and Poor Customer Support

When Apple introduced the iPhone 3GS last month, they announced that the battery life would be improved. Like many other iPhone 3GS owners, I am very disappointed in the actual battery life. Read more...

16 Tips to Maximize Your iPhone Battery Life

The iPhone battery sucks. Here are a few tips that can help you go through the day on one charge. Read more...

New TV Ad for the iPhone 3GS

Stupid "Copy and Paste" TV Ad

Does Apple think we're morons? Apparently yes! Read more...

16 Tips To Maximize Your iPhone Battery Life

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 27, 2016

As I wrote a few days ago, my iPhone's battery life is terrible. I did everything I could think of to maximize it but it's still not enough to get me through a full day without charging it.

The only good thing that comes out of that is it helped me put up together a list of 16 things you can do to increase your iPhone battery life.

Apply all or some of these tips and your battery life should get better. Note that this article is inspired by Apple's website.

Keep your iPhone off the heat. It works best from 32° to 95° F Update your iPhone with the latest firmware (unless you're a jailbreaker) Turn off wifi if you're not using it (Settings > Wi-Fi and set Wi-Fi to Off) Turn off 3G if you don't need it (Settings > General > Network and set Enable 3G to Off) Turn off song EQualizer (Settings > iPod > EQ and tap Off) Turn off Bluetooth (Settings > General > Bluetooth and set Bluetooth to Off) Turn off Push Notifications (Settings > Notifications and set Notifications to Off) Turn off Location Services (Settings > General > and Location Services to Off) Turn off Push Email (Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data and set Push to Off) Fetch new data manually (Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data and tap Manually) Don't check too many email accounts (Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, choose an email account, and set Account to Off) Auto-adjust Brightness (Settings > Brightness and set Auto-Brightness to On) Don't play too much games Go through a full charge cycle each month (charge the battery to 100% and completely run it down) Set Auto-Lock for the screen to 1 minute (Settings > General > Auto-Lock > 1 minute) Turn off Vibrate (Settings > Sounds and set Vibrate to off)

I understand it's quite impossible to follow all these tips at once but depending on the situation, you can make these simple adjustments to your iPhone and it will undoubtedly increase its battery life.

If you have more tips on how to improve the iPhone battery life, feel free to share in the comments or in the forum.

iPhone 3GS TV Ad “Copy and Paste” Is Stupid

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated May 11, 2018

I was watching TV yesterday night when I saw the Copy and Paste TV ad for the new iPhone 3GS. I had seen this ad many times before but it was the first time it stroke me how laughable this ad really is.

This is the new iPhone, and it lets you do some pretty incredible things... You can copy a phone number, and paste it in a text. You can copy an article, and paste it in an email...

What made me laugh is that they are using the copy/paste feature as a selling point. Of course this is a brand new feature for the iPhone, but you have to keep in mind that copy/paste has been available on all other smartphones forever. Besides, the copy/paste feature on the iPhone has nothing of revolutionary. If anything I think it is very clunky and intrusive. Yet Apple sells it as a technology breakthrough.

Then at the end of the ad comes the catchy phrase:

Copy and paste on the iPhone 3GS, the most powerful iPhone yet.

Well of course it's the most powerful iPhone yet; it's the latest one and there has only been 2 before that.

I think this ad is really deceiving.

What do you think of the latest iPhone ads? If you didn't have an iPhone yet, would they make you want to get one?

Dev Team Says UltraSn0w Is Better Than PurpleSn0w

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated November 12, 2018

The friendly fight between the Dev Team and GeoHot keeps going as the Dev Team posted a blog post this morning highlighting how much better than PurpleSn0w UltraSn0w is.

Works on both 3G and 3GS Works on hacktivated devices Works regardless of how you jailbroke your device Doesn’t patch any mach-o binary whatsoever. (Doesn’t require a separate patch as each new firmware comes out). Doesn’t install any additional daemon Has no race conditions, no popups about “Missing SIM”, no network issues Is almost 7000 times smaller than its nearest competition :) Is available now via Cydia. Source repo is http://repo666.ultrasn0w.com (that last “0” in ultrasn0w is a zero!)

That was the short version... If you want to full geeky version of this, head over the Dev Team's blog. Although PurpleSn0w might not be perfect, the Dev Team used parts and pieces of GeoHot's findings and included them in the latest UltraSn0w 0.9 update (available through Cydia).

What's really better? UltraSn0w or PurpleSn0w?

Honestly, I don't know. I don't need to unlock my iPhone right now so I haven't even tried any of these. If I had to pick one though, I'd choose UltraSn0w. I trust the Dev Team is doing what's best for your iPhone now but also takes into account future updates that might render the unlock impossible. GeoHot on the other hand, seems to be a burning head.

Have you tried UltraSn0w and PurpleSn0w? If so, what do you think?

On iPhone 3GS Poor Battery Life And Apple’s Poor Customer Support

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 29, 2016

When Apple introduced the iPhone 3GS last month, they announced that the battery life would be improved. Given the poor battery life of my iPhone 3G, I took that as a great news and was very excited about being able to get more from my iPhone.

Like many other iPhone 3GS owners, I am very disappointed in the actual battery life. It is nothing like Apple had claimed but since the phone was brand new, I figured that I'd need to give it a few full charges and run downs to optimize the battery. I was wrong as it didn't change anything. I also tried all the tricks as turning off push notifications, location services, etc...

So I decided I'd give a call to Apple to see what they suggested. It started pretty bad as I had to wait a solid 15 minutes to get someone on the phone. Oh well, they must be busy, I thought. Finally someone picks up the phone and mumbles what I believe is a name and some type of welcoming message for me. Eww, bad first impression!

Get Twitter Push Notifications With Boxcar

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated May 26, 2017

Boxcar is a new iPhone application that sends push notifications for Twitter. When someone DMs or @replies you, you will get a push notification in the form of a a text box and a sound notification. Tweets pushed to you can be opened in Tweetie or Twitterrific for now, with support for more apps coming soon.

It's not real time push as notifications take about a minute to be pushed to your iPhone but it still works great. The only downside I see in this app is that these push notifications can quickly become overwhelming if you have many people @replying or DMing you. For someone like me, Twitter push notifications make my ADD even worse...

I really like how the app works but it's not for me. Do you really need to be notified of every new tweet you receive?

You can download Boxcar from iTunes for $1.99.

GeoHot Releases PurlpleSn0w iPhone 3GS Unlock

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 29, 2016

A few days after releasing PurpleRa1n, the first iPhone 3GS jailbreak, GeoHot has now created his own iPhone 3GS unlock called PurpleSn0w.

Wifi fails? Battery fails? Unlock fails? You need purplesn0w, the geohot 3GS unlock solution. Now I know you here a lot about different colors of sn0w, but I'm here to tell you why purplesn0w is the best. First off, what is purplesn0w? It's a soft unlock for your 3GS that I'd actually use day to day. It's not a daemon that takes any resources, and it doesn't add a task to your baseband. It's very close to a true unlock. All it does is patch three files, CommCenter, lockdownd, and your wildcard activation plist(which you need, activate w at&t sim first, no hacktivation support yet).

Many users reported losing wifi connection and not being able to get any signal after unlocking their iPhone with UltraSn0w, so hopefully PurpleSn0w will get better feedback.

Follow these steps to install PurpleSn0w:

First your iPhone has to be jailbroken (see jailbreak guides) Launch Cydia and add this source: http://apt.geohot.com Install the com.geohot.purplesn0w package Reboot your iPhone Done!

If you want to unlock your iPhone for T-Mobile, make sure you disable 3G in the settings.

GeoHot also posted technical information about PurpleSn0w. If you're into dissecting lines of codes, GeotHot made the source code available for you to play with.