Fnord.

Yes, you can log in to your own phone. And it has top! And runs Unix! We really do live in amazing times.

(Yes, I’ve changed the root and mobile user passwords, thanks.)

First off. As previously complained about, the iPhone has a skinny little space for the headphone jack, so most ‘phones don’t fit. The adapter sold in Apple stores is a brain-dead design that sticks out like this:

(Picture from the iLounge review)

Bound to break the phone sooner or later, and bulky to boot. So, I searched iLounge for alternatives and found the Griffin version:

 

(Both pics from iLounge)

A bit pricy at ten bucks, but a superior solution. I will probably end up getting one so I can use existing headphones, car adapter, etc.
Second tip: eBay’s pages take forever to load on the iPhone, try http://www.iphonemyebay.com/ instead. Officially approved by eBay, for whatever that’s worth.

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.

Chris and I wandered over the Vermont Street bridge and had lunch at La Bacione. Decent food, really nice people, and free WiFi!
Nice.

Via Gizmodo, news of the Navizon application that locates your approximate location using cell towers, ESSIDs from Wi-Fi and user-contributed coordinates.

This is a workaround for the fact that the iPhone has no GPS or cell-tower localization, which reduces the usefulness of the Google Maps application. Navizon integrates with Maps, and is usually close enough to be useful. I’ve managed a fix or two and am super pleased to have it available. Nice!

Update 10/12/07: It’s commercial code. My copy just expired. I’m a little pissed that I had no warning it was demise-ware, this is very weak of them. Deleted.

1. Via AppTapp,
   1. Apollo IM. Very flaky, AIM only, deleted. UPDATE: see below
   2. MobileChat. AIM-only, and flaky.
2. Web-based. These run via Safari, but because of that I don’t think they can notify you if they’re in the background.
   1. Meebo - looks pretty good
   2. BeeJive - looks very good
   3. Mundu - looks pretty good, here is a recommend.

Of course, there are the main sites like http://webmessenger.yahoo.com/ and similar from other services. However, none of those are multi-protocol, which I really need to have.

I’m trying BeeJive now, I really have to sort out the pile of various IM logins I have these days!

If you go web-based, you can use iPhoneApper to make a launcher that goes directly to a given URL. Neat trick.

Page updates

• 9/21: Added Mundu review link.
• 9/23: Apollo v1.0 is out, now does AIM/ICQ/MSN. However, it also seems to burn battery.
• 9/28/07: Amazingly, the 1.1.1 firmware didn’t include an IM program, which surprised me. Anyway, currently using Apollo, which for all its faults can at least ping me when its in the background.
• 10/12/07: MobileChat is now multi-protocol, but seems to only allow one login at a time. I still get errors on my dot-mac account, but AIM and gtalk and MSN work for me.

One of the really useful applications on the Blackberry is a password manager. It’s part of the base OS as of version 4, storing passwords in an AES-encrypted database. Even if you lose the Blackberry, your passwords/PINS/sekrets are safe.

Oddly, the iPhone has no equivalent. Even the free software out so far doesn’t have one. I’m debating trying to code one up myself, which if I reuse code might not be too hard. Hmm.

Only thing I’ve found so far is jkPassword.com, which does a good job of looking native. No good if you’re offline, though. (Found via this thread)

Instant messenger apps are also a work in progress.

I had no idea this would be such a PITA.

Update: Setting blog-via-email-from-iPhone, using the Postie plugin for wordpress. Seriously painful.

We just replaced Chris’s ancient Palm V (actually a clone, the IBM version we got from woot.com) with a new Palm Z22. Here it sits, on its first charge, next to my iPhone box, and I had one of those ‘his and hers’ pictures to take.

Did spur a bit of thought, though. Chris is actually sane about gadgets, and they don’t do as much for her as they do for me. I still feel guilty about the cost difference, since the Z22 is about $80 on Amazon these days. It’s a great unit, though, and I wish they had shipped something like it years ago. Inexpensive, durable, plenty of memory, color screen, small and light.

For me, I’ll be curious to see how the iPhone fares as a PDA. I’ve been impressed so far with the calendar and addressbook, but am peeved that Notes don’t sync and there’s no built-in to-do list. We shall see!

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.