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Looking for a better way to keep your iPhone/iPod touch running longer? Then check out the U2O iWalk external battery packs (800mAh and 5400mAh) from Ultimate Travel Gear.
Not only do the batteries provide extra power for the Apple devices, they're compact and stylish as well. Form and function sound great, but are they worth their £16.99 and £44.95 prices? Read my full review to find out.
This summer, two years after the first-generation iPhone was released, Apple will roll out a software update to add features the first handset should've always had in the first place. Free for iPhone and iPhone 3G users, the new iPhone OS 3.0 will continue the longstanding tradition of screwing iPod touch users, who will be charged $9.95 for an update that adds cut/copy-and-paste, landscape email and Notes, Bluetooth, and not a whole lot more.
iPhone 3G users, on the other hand, will get MMS, landscape messaging, more complete Bluetooth support, the ability to forward/delete multiple messages and send multiple photos (the touch will be able to do this, too, but it doesn't have a camera so it's not as useful), and voice memos for free.
Push notifications and universal search will also be added, and developers are being treated to 1,000 new APIs. Good news, yes, but the entire iPhone OS 3.0 preview, which will be viewable online later today, leaves me feeling a bit underwhelmed. Most of the "biggest" announcements for consumers should've shipped with the original iPhones in 2007.
Battery life may not be one of the top complaints about the iPhone 3G, but that doesn't mean it couldn't stand to be better. Considering its multimedia, gaming, and internet features, most people are obviously using it as much more than just a phone. And that, of course, eats up battery life more quickly. For example, my iPhone 3G isn't even a phone anymore (thanks, Xperia X1) and yet I still charge it daily because of how often I use it for other things.
That's why I couldn't refuse WirelessGround's offer to send me their 800mAh mobile power station for review. They even sent me an extra one to give away to one of you! Read my full review below and find out how you can be the one to get it.
I don't know what it is about HTC-built smartphones, but they keep commanding me to cripple my iPhones by giving their SIMs to another device, thus becoming WiFi-only glorified iPod touches. First it was the AT&T Tilt (HTC TyTN II), which drew me away from the first-gen iPhone last December.
And now it's the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 (made by HTC), almost exactly one year later, officially taking over the position my iPhone 3G has held since July.
HTC is literally my iPhone killer.
Stay tuned for a completely self-indulgent X1 unboxing. [Update: Here we go!]
In my Archos 5 first impressions piece, I said that the Internet Media Tablet's ARM Cortex A8 processor and Opera 9 browser create "the best ARM-based browsing experience around right now and [is] definitely the one to beat." To qualify that statement, I've put the Archos 5 against the iPhone 3G and Nokia N810 (both commonly regarded as the best ARM-powered devices on the market) in a round of website load time tests.
I'm sitting in the front row (lower box, 50-yard line!) at Candlestick Park right now waiting for the 49ers to hit the field and wishing my iPhone 3G (the only gadget I could fit into my front pocket) was really the true MID many consider it to be. If it really provided access to the "real internet," I wouldn't be using the TypePad blogging application from the App Store, deleting sentences letter by letter, making do without adding links because of the lack of cut-and-paste and the stripped down features of the app, understanding I can't make changes after publishing, accepting the default image placement, viewing only a few lines of text at a time because the virtual keyboard takes up half the screen, or pretending not to notice the extra space automatically added after photos (update: extra space now removed). No, I'd be logged into my real TypePad account, the one Safari on the iPhone renders impractical to use because of all the zooming/panning and inability to upload photos, doing everything I can do on a real browser here at the Park.
If the iPhone could tether to a Bluetooth-enabled device, I would have tried to stuff something like the Nokia N810 into my other pocket. Better yet, if I had the Gigabyte M528 MID, I wouldn't have brought the iPhone at all!
I guess using the iPhone 3G as a tombstone on launch day set a self-fulfilling prophecy into action because I'm pretty much on the verge of killing and burying mine. Even though I turned my first-gen iPhone into an iPod touch after 5 months of use (I gave its SIM to my AT&T Tilt) and only planned to use the iPhone 3G for a few months before replacing it with the XPERIA X1, I didn't expect to be counting down the days before it wasn't my daily-use handset anymore.
The iPhone's screen size and internet experience are definitely superior to the Tilt, but my god, the instability. Even the newest software update (2.0.2) is still the most unstable and unreliable OS I've ever used, not just on a phone but on any device. It crashes and freezes even more than Windows Me! Look at my home screen, for example: stuck between two pages in an unresponsive no man's land.
Excluding phone usage, I use my iPhone 3G throughout the day for maybe about 1 to 1.5 hours total. I don't use any of the multimedia capabilities (I like dedicated DAPs with better sound quality for that), so if I'm not using the iPhone as a phone, I'm either browsing the web, using the App Store, or playing a third-party game. At least one of these applications crashes every single day.
Since installing the full body invisibleSHIELD on my HTC Shift X9500 a few months ago, I've been on the lookout for new shields to buy for some of my looks-better-naked gadgets. As much as I love cases, some portable devices just look better in their unboxing suits. My new iPhone 3G, despite what I did to it, is one such gadget; covering it up with a frosty silicone skin or leather case is just not an option.
Fortunately, I received an email this afternoon reminding me that the invisibleSHIELD for the iPhone 3G that was available for preorder last month is now in stock and shipping. Well, it's actually already been out for a couple of weeks now, so I should say it's still in stock and shipping for $14.95 (front only), $18.95 (back only), and $24.95 (full body).
I'm really pleased with the military-grade film's "performance" on my Shift (it's so scratch-resistant that I took the SHIELD-ed Shift to the beach with no hesitation) and my husband has no complaints about it on his iPod touch, so I expect the iPhone 3G invisibleSHIELD to be just as good.
If you decide to buy one, don't forget to bring along one of these coupon codes (most are good for 20% off).
We already know that the iPhone 3G dock (sold separately) is only compatible with the iPhone 3G, and a few moments ago I discovered that the opposite is true across the board as well. I knew that the original iPhone dock and the universal dock (which supports everything from the third-gen iPod to the first-gen iPhone) weren't compatible with the iPhone 3G, but I had no idea that the pre-universal docks didn't work either. I guess I naively expected Apple to forget they ever made those.
If you've been wondering whether a deactivated first-gen iPhone's firmware can be upgraded to the newly released (and unreliably available) version 2.0, then wonder no more: it can't. UPDATE: Now it can! See comments for details.
Two weeks ago, when AT&T first announced that deactivated devices could be used as glorified iPod touches, AppleInsider recommended that users upgrade their old iPhones before getting the new phone because "it's unclear whether upgrades to non-active handsets will be possible" (reminder: activating the new iPhone automatically deactivates the old one). Though the advice was sound, it could obviously only be followed if the 2.0 software update was available before people left their houses to stand in line on launch day. And it wasn't.
