Sébastien Page

Sebastien is the Founder and Editor in Chief of iDB. Once a BlackBerry user, Sebastien instantly fell in love with the iPhone when it was first announced in 2007. Shortly after, he decided to start sharing his knowledge of the iPhone and its nascent ecosystem, which led to the creation of this blog. Sebastien currently owns 14 iPhones, 4 iPads, a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, a MacBook Air, 2 Apple Watches, 3 Apple TVs, countless HomePods and AirTags as well as a few pairs of AirPods.

Spirit Jailbreak for Every iPhone iOS 4 on Its Way

Sébastien Page ∙ July 5, 2010

Yesterday I was telling you the Dev Team is working hard on an unlock for iPhone 4. Some of you may have wondered why the Dev Team would be working on an unlock when a jailbreak is not even ready yet, right?

That's because according to MuscleNerd, a jailbreak for all devices at iOS 4 is already taken care of by the upcoming release of Spirit by Comex.

Now the question is: when will Spirit for iOS 4 be available? With Apple supposed to release an update to iOS 4 in the upcoming weeks to supposedly fix the antenna issue, I doubt Comex will release Spirit beforehand and give Apple a chance to patch the exploit.

I bet you can't wait for Spirit for iOS 4, can you?

Yes, the Dev Team is Still Working on an iPhone 4 Unlock

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 29, 2016

For those of you wondering, yes, the Dev Team is still working on an iPhone 4 unlock. These 2 tweets from MuscleNerd and PlanetBeing just confirmed that they are actively working on the unlock, which doesn't seem to be an easy task.

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Having fun on iPhone4 baseband with @planetbeing...step 1: arbitrary code exec...done. (LOTS of steps left tho!)less than a minute ago via webMuscleNerdMuscleNerd

Even though Apple has been working hard on patching the holes, it's good to see that PlanetBeing has a whole "bag of tricks".

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Apple added an anti-blacksn0w trick this time around. ;) i have an ever-growing bag of tricks though, wrapped in a nice python script.less than a minute ago via webplanetbeingplanetbeing

There is no ETA for an iPhone 4 unlock, or even a jailbreak, which seems to be the priority.

The App Store Was Hacked

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 23, 2016

Two iPhone developers have uncovered what seems to be a massive hack of the App Store. After seeing the rating of their apps dramatically drop, Patrick Thomson and Alex Brie looked more into it and realized someone had been hacking into people's iTunes account to buy apps developed by someone called Thuat Nguyen.

By hacking into people's account and buying his own apps, he was able to rank 41 of his apps in the top 50 of the Books category, which seems to be the only category affected.

None of the apps contain legit reviews except for one app, which has 2 reviews from people complaining they had never purchased this app and that their App Store account had probably been hacked. Someone even mentioned his App Store account showed purchases he never made for $200.

By the time you read this, I'm sure Apple will have been alerted and removed these fraudulent apps from the App Store. I also assume Apple will give the money back to people who were hacked.

For the time being, a safe thing to do would be to change your iTunes Store password.

I think this is the first case of App Store hacking publicly revealed. Unfortunately, I also think this is just the beginning, and with the success of the App Store, we'll see more and more of these.

[via The Next Web]

Frash: Android Flash Ported to the iPad

Sébastien Page ∙ July 4, 2010

A few weeks ago, Comex, the developer of Spirit, shared with us a video of Flash running on the iPhone. Today, Comex introduces Frash, which is basically a port of Flash for Android on the iPad.

Frash can currently run most Flash programs natively in the iPad MobileSafari browser, but support for other devices (3GS and iPhone 4 only due to hardware requirements) is on the way, as well as support for iOS 4.

Comex won't release Frash until it is stable and that might take a while. If you're a developers and you want to join the effort at http://github.com/comex/frash.

Twelve New Ways To Hold Your iPhone 4

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated November 25, 2016

Until Apple figures out a way to fix the antenna issue, NPR came up with 12 new ways to hold your iPhone 4 to make sure you get the best signal without having to buy a case.

Check out NPR for 12 interesting ways to hold your iPhone 4.

How to Spice Up Your iPhone Keyboard With Symbols

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated March 27, 2018

If having emoji icons on your iPhone keyboard is not enough, maybe you can follow this little trick that will easily allow you to add symbols to your text entries.

To do so, go to http://mrgan.com/gb/ from your iPhone and follow the onscreen instructions. It will add a bookmark to your homescreen from which you will then be able to copy/paste various symbols.

There are 48 symbols right now but more will probably be added in the future.

Not Satisfied With Your iPhone 4? You Can Return It For Free

Sébastien Page ∙ July 2, 2010

Not satisfied with your iPhone? Apple's phoney fix for the antenna issue won't do it for you? Then you can return your iPhone at no cost as Apple dropped the 10% restocking fee in a move aimed at calming down angry iPhone customers, and possibly to try to avoid lawsuits.

Me? I don't want to return my iPhone 4. I just want it to work. Sneakily incriminating AT&T and taking a cocky stance while telling me I can return my iPhone 4 if I'm not satisfied is not what I expect from a company like Apple.

What do you think?

[via Computer World]

Is This the Next iPad?

Sébastien Page ∙ July 2, 2010

Apple Finally Acknowledges iPhone 4 Antenna Issue, Offers Phoney Explanation

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated March 5, 2018

Apple hadn't officially talked about the iPhone antenna issue until today. Steve Jobs had had a few email exchanges with angry customer, but the company's position on the matter hadn't been made official, until this open letter was published on Apple's website this morning.

While I read this open letter for the first time, I couldn't help thinking an intern had written it. It's indeed poorly written and gives an explanation of the issue that is barely believable:

We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising. Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong.

Dude, the formula was "totally wrong"! That sure sounds like some surf bro from the North Shore typed this is. Besides, Apple seemed to have the formula totally right in the past, so why this sudden change?

The rest of the open letter reads:

Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.

To fix this, we are adopting AT&T’s recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone’s bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.

We will issue a free software update within a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula. Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G.

So let me decipher this for you. Apple is going to release a software update that will display the accurate number of bars on your iPhone. You might have never had any issue with the old iPhones (3GS, 3G amd 2G), but now, you will have even less problems.

When you do performance tests after the update, results will be the same, but at least your iPhone will display the correct amount of bars.

Like I foresaw last week, Apple will not fix the antenna issue, it will just hide it with a software update.

How to Sync Your iPhone Notes with Your Gmail Account

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated March 27, 2018

You probably already know you can sync your Google emails, calendars and contacts with your iPhone using Google Sync. But do you know you can also sync your iPhone notes with your Gmail account?

The only requirement for being able to sync your notes with Gmail is that your iPhone be updated to iOS 4. When you set up your Gmail account on your iPhone, you will now have the option to sync your notes.

If you have several Gmail account set up on your iPhone, you will be able to sync your notes to specific accounts. In the top left corner of the Notes.app, a new button will appear letting you choose what account you want to sync with.

One downside to this is that it's a one-way sync, which means that you can only sync your notes from your iPhone to your Gmail account. You can't sync from Gmail notes to your iPhone.

10 Things I Love About the iPhone 4 (and 4 I Hate)

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated November 12, 2019

I've had my iPhone 4 for just about a week now. The Engadget and other BGR have had access to the phone before all of us and they gave pretty extensive reviews of the iPhone 4 so I won't go too much into the details. I just want to tell you what I think sucks on the iPhone 4, and what I think should make you want to buy one.

What I Like About the iPhone 4 It's beautiful It's cool The screen resolution is amazing It's fast The camera is great The LED flash The front-facing camera FaceTime The battery Fast app switching What I Don't Like About the iPhone 4 The battery Fast app switching The same old UI The antenna issue

As you can see there are more pros than cons. You will also notice that the battery and the app switching appear in both pros and cons.

On my first iPhone 4, the battery was crap. I could barely go through one day on a full charge. I exchanged my iPhone 4 last weekend for these reasons and the battery on this new iPhone is much better. Same usage, same phone, but all iPhones are definitely not equal when it comes to battery.

As for app switching, I love how it works. It's just great to be able to quickly switch between apps without having to wait for them to load again (that is for apps optimized for iOS 4). However, it can get very messy really quick in the app switcher, often showing over 20 apps in the background for me. Sure Steve-o says not to worry about them, but I still like to be in control of my apps, just like I am with ProSwitcher. With Apple's app switching, I'm not, unless I manually kill those running in the background.

As for the UI, I think Apple could have done a little spring cleaning in there. The iPhone UI is great and simple, but after 3 years seeing the same stuff, I really get tired of it.

What do you think about your iPhone 4? What do you like about it? What do you dislike about it?

How to Export iPhone 4 Videos in Full Resolution

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 23, 2016

The iPhone 4 video camera can shoot movies in full HD at a resolution of 720p, but the problem is these videos are scaled down to a maximum resolution of 568 x 320 anytime you try to export them to YouTube or via email or MMS.

So far, the only way to get your video exported in full res is to transfer them off to your computer. Not very convenient for a mobile device...

Fortunately, there's an app for that.

Pixelpipe, a free application in the App Store, will export your mobile videos in full HD 720p up to 200 MB to YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, MobileMe, Viddler, Posterous and a bunch of other sites. You can also email or upload those videos via FTP.

Additionally, Pixelpipe has been updated for iOS 4 and allows full multitasking for background uploading, which might come in handy if you upload a 190 MB video over 3G.

[via TUAW]