Fnord.

Roughly following the vendor-linked instructions here…

1. Backup via iTunes
2. Download various ipsw firmware fils from here.
3. Looks like I need to ‘revirginize’, or undo the unlock that I did before. Hmm.
   1. Tool here from ipone dev elite, their FAQ re-virginize link is borked.
   2. Looks like the latest iNdependance can do some of this too… Let’s try that first, it’s the simplest. Trying the ‘prepare for upgrade’ option…
4. Using iTunes, ‘check for upgrade’, upgrade to 1.1.3, seems to work.
5. Using iNdependance, activate and jailbreak - OK, done.
6. Install trick SIM chip, using scissors to cut SIM card and tape to attach it. No work, no network shown, no error message. Hmm.
7. Try installing SSH/SCP/SFTP using iNdependance. Nope.
8. Try iNdependance’s SIM(software) unlock in desparation… Unlock succeeded, but with the ‘next sim’ in place the phone shows no network.
9. Re-flash 1.1.3 using iTunes, try with and without SIM present, before and after restoring data…nope.
10. Remove next sim, try old SIM card… same thing. Symptoms: IMEI 00 499901 064000 0, no signal on cell meter.

Time to RTFM, and according to this TurboSim doesn’t work with 1.1.3. Which means that my $20 ‘next sim’ probably doesn’t either. Damnation. The instructions claim 1.1.3 works, but a re-read of the poorly written paragraph seems to imply only that ‘works’ means ‘downgrade to 1.1.1 and unlock’ that works:

Safe unlock for OTB iphone 1.1.2 and 1.1.3. Just tested with 1.1.3 works great. Buy now and I will include free tech support, just call us. We will walk you through installation! Won’t void apple warranty. Works with boatloader 4.6 and 3.9. Guaranteed or 100 percent refund! No programming knowledge required. 3Easy steps to unlock the iphone 1.Downgrade your firmware from 1.1.2 to 1.1.1, follow the link for the Tutorial 2.Jailbreak and activate, install ok to prep and iworld if needed. 3.Cut your sim as shown in picture. Stick sim and next sim together and put back in sim tray and into iphone. Now your ready to use your unlocked iphone!

Hmm. From reading this page, maybe I should try iJailbreak instead. It WORKS!

What’s more, it installs the AppTapp installer for you; nice touch.

OK, verdict is this:

1. Use iNdependance to ‘prepare for upgrade’, not sure if this is necessary
2. Use iTunes to sync for a backup.
3. Use iTunes to update to 1.1.3
4. Use iJailbreak to activate and unlock.
5. There is no step five.

That’s it! And, what’s more, the GPS-lite WORKS!

It took all damn day, but I’m a delighted nerd. Off to donate to iJailbreak!

(And yes, the 20 bucks for the ‘next sim’ hardware was a waste. Save your money.)

One of the recurring gotchas with an unlocked iPhone is that the newer features re-lock the phone every time. Because of that, I’ve kept mine at version 1.0.2, which works pretty well but lacks some newer niceties. The poor-mans-GPS is the one I really want.

Anyway, I keep an eye on the hacking progress, and there are ways of updating to at least 1.1.2, but they’re hairy and kinda iffy. Getting old, I guess, and less time available to hack.

Yesterday I was reading an article in BusinessWeek about the iPhone grey market, and there was a URL that caught my eye. I knew that there was a hardware hack called TurboSim that would also work. The idea is different than a software hack: the SIM chips sits on a module that lies to the phone about what SIM it has. Clever, eh?

The TurboSim was $110, so I dismissed it. Now, however, the BizWeek article links to PDACable, which has the same chip, now made in China, for $19.99. Now that’s more like it. If it works as promised, you just have to jailbreak and not unlock, a much easier prospect without the issue of baseband firmware.

Mine’s on the way. I’ll let you know.

Update 2/19/08: Save your money and use iJailbreak instead.

Quick notes and impressions:

1. I wish that the 1.1.1 firmware didn’t break user code; the home button function would be handy. With hacked firmware, navigation is a bit indirect at times.
2. Videos/movies are just a bit small, noticeably smaller than the PSP. Unexpected, that. Especially widescreen content with black bars. Usable, but not ideal.
3. Battery life is excellent for a smartphone, from my point of view anything over a full day is a bonus. (Though Apollo IM seems to burn a lot of battery in v1.0.) On the minus side, charging is very slow, literally hours. By comparison, my N80 would charge in less than 20 minutes. USB current limit? Whatever the reason, fix it!
4. Pictures are good, they blog easily. (See this example) Not fabulous, not a camera replacement, but good enough.
5. Phone functions very well, especially with the headphone/microphone. Clear, comfortable, sounds great on both ends. Receiver sensitivity is better than my Blackberry 7290 and neck-and-neck with my Sony-Ericsson T637. Update: Chris says that clarity on the other end varies more than the other phones, andis sometimes awful.
6. The headphones are a mixed blessing. I adore the microphone/button, but
   1. Because of the recessed jack I can’t use my Etymotics
   2. The available adapter to fix this is a stupid design and will break the phone
   3. Third-party headphones don’t have microphones yet
   4. Apple earbuds slip out of my ears in a matter of seconds, which results in the nerdly dance of Continually Adjusting the Earbuds like a Fool.
7. Been trying Google Reader for RSS, great on the desktop and still getting used to it on Mobile Safari.
8. Email works well, but
   1. I wanna be able to delete >1 at once
   2. More than one active mailbox requires jumping back and forth - worthless!
9. iPod works great. The fade in/out on phone calls is worth the entire price of admission. I used to miss Chris calling me while on the bus, but now she’s right there. Sweet.
10. I have no need of ringtones, so no opinions on that mess.

Overall? Strong recommend. Superb device, easiest smartphone to use I’ve seen. As with Apple at their finest, it scales from geek to non-techie alike.

Briefly, this sums it up:

Yep, that’s an iPhone. Yep, it’s running on T-mobile, even though they don’t sell it. Yep, it’s activated, jailbroke and sim unlocked. Yep, I’m delighted.

And yep, that’s Chris and Anna in the background!

I actually got it Thursday, failed to successfully hack it that night, and only got it working today after Craig’s post started me down a different direction. Turns out that the GUI hack tools is both borrowed work and broken. No harm done, I guess.

The YouTube fix didn’t work, so I need to re-do that, (Update 10/5/07: This one worked.) and also this page of EDGE/GPRS login info didn’t work for me. I still have the data plan I bought for my Blackberry, so my APN is

 wap.voicestream.com

not

 internet2.voicestream.com

We went to the zoo today, and data worked!. In fact, here’s a scaled iphone camera picture of Chris:

Not bad, not great, nice to have a camera on my phone. Some quick impressions so far:

1. The Nike+iPod kit doesn’t work with the iPhone. This sucks. Here pretty soon I’ll remove the plugin and sidebar, as I sold my Nano along with the Nike bits to pay for the iPhone.
2. The recessed headphone jack means I’ll need an adapter for other headphones. Annoying but minor.
3. Wonderful hardware, amazing software, some minor annoyances here and there that I’ll blog about as I go along.
4. I have the 8G phone, which made sense to me, and now have bragging rights ’cause Chuck only has 4GB. Hah!
5. My ancient Jabra 200 bluetooth headset paired up and worked great. Wish the BT stack had more capabilities (iSync, anyone?) but works OK for headset anyway.
6. The AppTap installer is perfect; a GUI of apt-get for iPhone. Sweet!
7. The IM clients from AppTap don’t do AIM addresses from mac.com, so I had to create a new handle and now have no one on my friends list. Hmm.
8. Live traffic data on google maps on the gorgeous screen is a huge app for us. Since we carpool along a congested route, this is great for selecting plan B when the inevitable occurs.
9. Without the AT&T contract and 2-year commitment, the price is a lot more reasonable. (Though a very good Basic Instructions disagrees with me here!)
10. Since Wordpress supports it, I’m going to setup a mail account so that I can take pictures and blog them on the fly. I’m late to that concept, but hey! Should be cool.

Sweet toy. One less thing to carry, and I am delighted with how thin it is, really no pocket bulge at all. Me like.

Via I’m-not-sure-which-gadget-blog, the Blackberry 8300 aka ‘Curve’:

A large improvement indeed over my trusty 7290. Thinner, faster, 2 megapixel camera, MP3 player, finally sized to fit in a pocket instead of the geek holster.

I’ve been waiting for this, particularly the form factor plus camera. Nearly jumped on the 8100 ‘Pearl’. However, I’m glad I waited, because I really like a full QWERTY keyboard.

It’s not out yet on T-mobile, and the iPhone is due this summer too, along with the a-bit-thick Helio Ocean, so we’ll see what I end up with. It’ll be really cool to have email + camera + phone, that’s for sure. Finally, I’ll be able to blog like Chuck.

One way or the other, just like the song says.

Reviews I’ve found so far:

1. Wired
2. Engadget
3. Airtimemanager
4. cnet
5. Laptop Magazine

More info:

1. RIM press release
2. High-res image gallery

I really need to write this up better, but so I can find them this page is for now a collection of links and notes about the Nokia N80, a slider smartphone based around the Symbian series 60 OS.

Nokia factory reset:

http://discussions.nokia.co.uk/discussions/board/message?board.id=smartphones&message.id=8812

Software: http://my-symbian.com/s60v3/software/toprated.php

iSync 2.3 and SSH: http://five.nocrew.org/n80/index.html

You have to edit one XML file before iSync will recognize the model, but since it knows other series 60 phones it’s pretty simple to do:

http://wiki.siftah.com/Apple_iSync_and_the_N80

or
http://niquimerret.com/?p=15

Phone review:
http://www.mobiletechreview.com/phones/Nokia-N80.htm

For internet access, had to change the tmobile server from internet2.voicestream.com to wap.voicestream.com.

goSkip works - press 0 to sync:

http://www.goskip.com/site/install/other.html

VOIP/SIP with Asterisk (not yet working for me):

http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Nokia

http://newlc.com/Using-SIP-with-Nokia-Series60-and.html

Free themes:
http://www.mmcforums.net/theme/nokia-N80-themes.html

GPRS dialup scripts:
http://www.taniwha.org.uk/

http://homepage.mac.com/jrc/contrib/tzones/

Not too bad for a cell phone camera, fuzzy with saturation problems but convenient. The originals are ‘3 megapixels’ but that’s a bit disengenuous.

This was from a short drive to Oakoasis Park outside San Diego. We wanted to hike the one across the road, El Capitan, but it was basically closed.

More on the N80 as time permits…

In posting the previous story, I searched to see if I had posted this before. Surprisingly, I hadn’t.

T-mobile has a website where you can see detailed coverage information, right down to cell tower placement and street-level detail. They are the only cell carrier to do so, and it’s one of the reasons they still have my business.

The website is compass.t-mobile.com. You’ll quickly find that T-mobile is pretty urban, but if you can live with that I’ve been reasonably happy with them. They’ve also got the cheapest data plans ($20/month, vs $70 for Verizon).

Via Farber’s IP list, the news that the FCC has a complete database of cell outages going back for years. This would be an excellent source of information for consumers deciding who to patronize, wouldn’t you think?

Well, you can’t have it. Why? Because telling you when Verizon, say, lost east bay coverage would help the terrorists.

We can’t have that! How, precisely, this helps terrorists is a trifle unclear to this humble blogger, but maybe I just don’t have the big picture.

MSNBC explains:

“The same outage data that can be so useful … to identify and remedy critical vulnerabilities and make the network infrastructure stronger can, in hostile hands, be used to exploit those vulnerabilities to undermine or attack networks,” DHS said.

and

What use would wireless outage reports have to would-be terrorists? Not much, said NBC terrorism analyst Roger Cressey, the former chief of staff of the President’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board.

“There is nothing mysterious behind it, it is corporate competition protection,” said Cressey, now a partner in Good Harbor Consulting. “The only reason for the government to not let these records get out is then one telco provider could run a full-page ad saying ‘the government says we’re more reliable.’”

Cressey added that he couldn’t imagine a scenario where the reports would be valuable to terrorists.

In October, MSNBC.com filed an administrative appeal of the FCC’s rejection of its FOIA request. The FCC has not yet responded to the appeal.

In its initial answer to MSNBC.com’s FOIA request, FCC officials cited only one reason for the denial: “competitive harm” to companies involved.

I believe this matches criterion #9, Power of corporations protected.

I recommend reading the entire story on MSNBC, it’s very well done if more than a little outrageous.