In an interesting development, the Hackers have been Hacked !!

www.iphone-dev.org, the iPhone Dev Team famous for their Jailbreak of the iPhone

has been hacked

You see a cartooned Steve Jobs in Russian (Can someone translate it ?)

Yes it’s possible now to unlock your iPhone version 1.1.2 or 1.1.3 out of the box

No PC or Mac required and very easy steps !

You must start with a jailbroken 1.1.2 or 1.1.3 phone (see tutorial in this site), connected

vi Wi-Fi to the Internet

1 - Add the Big Boss experimental sources to your installer

2 - Using installer, install the Geohots Gunlock Script

3 - You MUST have BSD Subsystem and Terminal vt100 installed (or install them now using the iphone Installer)

4 - Exit the Installer

5 - go to Settings : Set Autolock to Never

6 - Set Airplane mode to ON

7 - Open the Terminal

8 - Type the following commands

cd /usr/bin

geounlock

9 - it takes about 30 seconds to run . That’s it !!

Enjoy your unlocked iphone !!

Unlock was written by “Geohot”

feel free to donate to him !!

In case of loss of signal (bricked phone) under 1.1.3,
use the Iphone-Elite team unbricktool

download it here http://code.google.com/p/iphone-elite/downloads/detail?name=bricktool.zip&can=2&q=

Hi

By now most of you know the process for bypassing Activation and Jailbreaking the iPhone

For version 1.1.1 , proceed right away

For version 1.2.1, you need to restore it to 1.1.1 (downgrade)

But most important, a lot of people, including myself, keep trying and trying the “Install AppSnapp” from

http://jailbreakme.com (see below) and it doesn’t work

There is a trick ! (and it’s not given neither on iClarified nor in hackint0sh.org )

The trick is :

- You need to be connected to iTunes before having Safari go to the http://www.jailbreakme.com

without iTunes running on your PC(or Mac) and the iPhone detected, it will NEVER Work !!

Bypass activation and prepare phone for software installation

1. Make sure you have a SIM-card with PIN turned off, and power on your phone (the supplied AT&T card works fine).
2. On the activation screen, slide for emergency and dial: *#301# to make the phone call itself. (If the incoming call dialog quickly disappears but it keeps ringing, just dial 0 (remove *#301# first), and it will call itself)
3. Answer the call, and tap on Hold
4. Phone will call it self again, tap Decline. You will now be returned to the normal dialer.
5. Tap on contacts, and tap the + icon to add a new. The only info you are going to add to this contact are two URL’s. To add a URL, tap Add new URL. The first URL is prefs followed by a colon: prefs: and the second is jailbreakme.com. Tap Save.
6. Your contact now has two “web pages” - tap on the first one (prefs:). This will take you to the settings dialog. The reason you want this, is because you need to connect to a Wi-Fi network, so tap on Wi-Fi, and get connected to a network, and make sure the icon on top of the screen is indicating that you are connected. While you are in the settings dialog, you should also set: General → Auto-Lock → Never.
7. Now, press the home button, and again, slide for emergency dial 0, Answer the call, Hold and Decline the new call so that you get to the contacts. Tap on your contact (No Name), and this time tap on the other home page, jailbreakme.com
8. Safari will launch and show you a webpage. Read through the text, before you Install AppSnapp
9. Phone will return to activation screen, but don’t panic, just wait.
10. Phone should automaticly restart after almost a minute. . If it does not restart withing 2 minutes, click here.
11. When the phone starts again, it should no longer say slide for emergency, but rather Slide to unlock It means it was successfull! Activation is now bypassed, and phone prepared for software installation! (If you are going to use an AT&T SIM, you won’t need to do the next step.)

Hi

I recently bought an iPhone and want to share my experience in moving from my 18 months old Motorola L7 SLVR to the iPhone. Having done that, I still have theSLVR and actually my wife is using it now instead of her older Nokia

Migrating contacts

The first step for me was to migrate my address book. As slick as it is, the iPhone was useless unless it had my address book ! The 2 phone numbers I can remember are my wife’s and my mom’s ! I guess that makes me a lazy tech junkie but that’s the truth.

So I went on to install the “Motorola Phone Tools” software which came on a CD in the SLVR box on my new Vista Toshiba laptop, then  connected the USB cable to the SLVR and started “detecting device”. It didn’t work. I lost 2 hours trying to make it work, before  suspecting a “Vista” problem and switching back to my wife’s laptop which is (luckily) still running XP - and wham ! it worked like a snap..

(I really hate Vista for that… so many applications don’t support it..)

I moved the contacts back to my laptop using the SLVR as a  USB flash drive  (that’s one of its best features) and imported into iTunes, synced back to my iPhone …

Using the iPhone as a Phone

Using the iPhone as a phone was a bit unnatural at first.. Apple made some unique choices in the way the address book is presented, but I really liked the “Favorites” tab. However the Groups thing was a bit disappointing since you have to do it on the PC first and sync via iTunes.

in the Call history list, the incoming calls, outgoing calls and missed calls are all listed in the same list, sorted by date & time. Missed calls are luckily highlighted in red. However it is a bit unusual vs the Motos & Nokias where received calls are distinguished clearly from outgoing calls..

The iPhone’s SMS handling is very neat. It uses a “Gmail”ish way of handling SMS’s as “conversations”. Its on-screen keyboard is really great and easy to use with the forefinger, so you can type quite fast on it. However there is no “forwarding” of SMS’s and also it doesn’t support Unicode encoded messages, meaning your relatives abroad’s messages or some Web to SMS messages can come scrambled

Add to that, the iPhone’s does have a very handy “silence” mode using a left hand side outside button, so you can easily switch to silent mode and back in a snap ! However I found that the ringtones are not loud enough, therefore when you’re in a mall or a crowded place it makes it hard to hear the phone ringing

upcoming in part 2 :  Using the iPhone as an Internet tablet 

Friday Sept 14, 2007

Apple reduced the price of the 8Gb iPhone 200$ to 399$ last week in a bid

to boost sales and market share. This move has upset the early buyers so much Apple is offering them a 100$ rebate..

nice move by Apple.. I remember my first Nokia 2110 I bought for 699$ which dropped the next year to 399$… Nokia and Ericsson ignored early customers’ hurt feelings in these early days

At the same time, the 4Gb model is being dropped..

But users in Europe and the Middle East are waiting for the real news .. When will the 3G model be available ?

“I would be very surprised to see the first iPhones in Europe not be 3G,” Mark Donovan, senior analyst at mobile industry research firm M:Metrics, told Macworld. “Having 3G will be very important for them [Apple] out of the gate.”.

When Apple released the iPhone domestically in June on AT&T’s network, the two companies used Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) or Enhanced GPRS (EGPRS). The decision to use the slower 2G standard caused complaints among users, but U.S. customers have the option to use Wi-Fi where available.

However, Wi-Fi networks are not as plentiful in Europe and those customers will be less forgiving of a 2G phone, according to Donovan. According to M:Metrics research, 80 to 90 percent of Europeans use smartphones for things like text messaging on a regular basis.

What M:Metrics fails to evaluate is that users in Paris, London or Dubai are now watching TV on their cell, making video calls and downloading files on the fast UMTS 3g networks.. No can do without for iPhone …

Walt Mossberg wrote a very complete review on the iPhone

based on two weeks of use.

I also loved his video review of the iPhone (below)

The full review is here

So what do you think of the iPhone and will it live up to its incredible Hype ?

Interesting development : will we see Google apps running on iPhone ?

ZDNet: Apple’s much-vaunted iPhone received a ringing endorsement from the chief executive of Google, Eric Schmidt, after he claimed that the handset was a perfect platform for the search specialist’s hosted applications.

Speaking at an event in Paris on Tuesday, Schmidt was questioned on whether, as Google’s boss and an Apple board member, he had any insights into future collaboration between the two companies. “What you are really asking is to see my iPhone,” he quipped before producing a handset from his pocket. “iPhone is a powerful new device and is going to be particularly good for the apps that Google is building. You should expect other announcements from the two companies over time,” he said.

The iPhone fully incorporates Google’s search and mapping services. Users can make phone calls directly from Google Maps.

Key to Google’s belief in the potential of the iPhone is Apple’s decision to integrate support for the Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) web-development technique.

Apple released a comparison chart between it’s upcoming iPhone and leading competitors, including

Nokia N95, BlackBerry Curve, the Treo 750 and the Black Jack

Apple is to release the iPhone on June 29th , as everybody knows by now

Here are some Pros and Cons of the iPhone:

Pros:

• It’s Smaller Than You Realize and it’s Got Style to Spare
• Multi-touch Tech and Sleek, Simple Interface
• Music-player, Movie-player, Internet Browser and Phone in One
• It Plays YouTube Movies

Cons:

• It Doesn’t Ship with an Instant Messenger Program
• The Keyboard is Unproven
• Its Storage Capacity Rivals iPod Nano, not iPod

As expected, Apple used WWDC as the stage to announce a third-party development solution for the iPhone, putting to rest fears that the handset would be a closed (read: non-smartphone) platform. Calling it a “sweet solution” for allowing devs to get their wares onto iPhones across the globe without sacrificing stability or security, Apple is using its full Safari-based browser to let folks code up true, Web 2.0-compatible apps that can be accessed and updated on developers’ own servers. Though any apps that third-party developers put together will run under Safari, they’ll be totally customizable and maintain the platform’s unique look and feel. Better yet, they won’t require any special SDK — Jobs claims that a working knowledge of modern web standards is all we’ll need to code up custom iPhone goodies to our hearts’ content.