Beware of iPhone Firmware 1.1.1
by Volker Weber
Apple has made good on their promise to break enhanced versions of the iPhone. Gizmodo reports:
Breaks 3rd-party Apps, Relocks iPhones and Sends Them to Semi-Brick Activation Limbo
Nice customer jail.
Comments
And you STILL want one?
I wont upgrade hackers found a way to activate this one (ah and this new release is encrypted as in the iPod Touch)
I forgot the word 'until' ...damn
Jörg, exactly that was my first thought as well.
I personally believe have decided for myself that my next music player which will replace my broken iPod sooner or later will not be an Apple. I have some candidates, but I am not decided net. The Archos 705 Wifi is featurewise all I'd be looking for, but simply a bit to heavy and bulky...
Another question: What actually happens to VisualVoicemail & EDGE data connectivity if an regular US-iPhone (using the original SIM, driven by AT&T, no hacks) travels to Europe?
M.
The phone is roaming, read: everything gets very expensive. Your phone number resides in the US, so you have to pay for incoming calls with international calling rates from the US to Europe. Data connectivity is provided by the local carrier, read: you pay outrageous GPRS/EDGE roaming fees. In Germany you would need to connect through T-Mobile to get EDGE speeds, otherwise you fall through to GPRS. I don't know how VisualVoicemail works, but I suspect it is an IP application, so it should work.
Despite this I still have an internal conflict. The Apple geek's desire to buy the cool looking device versus the phone geek's disdain for such a low functionality unit. I really do hope (in vain) that Apple will sell this sim free at some point (I doubt their contract with T-Mobile/O2/AT&T will allow it to be sold on other networks in the appropriate countries), and hopefully iPhone v2.0 will have 3G (Poor battery life? Who are they trying to kid?).
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Poor battery life? Who are they trying to kid?
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Same applies to the GPS chip. :-)
@Martin: Looks like you have to watch out when travelling. The phone appears to do some background network stuff even when "just used as a phone".
You can of course get charged like this with any mobile. But the iPhone makes it easier :-)
PS: I never found out which app on my E61 called home every 15min always getting 8k of data. But that only came to 85€ after two weeks in Spain...
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Poor battery life? Who are they trying to kid?
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I have upped the battery lifetime on my E61 from 1day to 4days by switching 3G off (only GPRS/Edge now)
So I don't think they are kidding
Ole, the only background network stuff the iPhone does is checking for new e-mail. It's disabled by default.
Regarding the drama of broken 3rd party apps, let me explain how 3rd party apps work. The platform provider publishes an applications programming interface (API). 3rd party developers use functions of this API to create their applications.
Why is the API necessary? Because the platform is never complete, and must be changed to fix bugs or introduce new features. The API serves as kind of a contract. The provider makes sure that the API doesn't change due to regular bug fixes, and that new features don't affect older features. 3rd party apps that use the API correctly will not break when the system is updated. The provider doesn't have to test each and every 3rd party application individually for each change to the system, only a test suite for the API.
Supporting an API doesn't come cheap, though. You basically have to set your design in stone once you publish it. You have to live with bad decisions and you can't make changes that require the API clients to change, even if the change would be a huge improvement overall.
Has Apple ever realeased an API for the iPhone? No.
Can 3rd party developers expect Apple to code around their apps for system updates? No.
Maybe iPhone users should simply refrain from buying iPhones until they really offer what they want, instead of buying them anyway and then complaining about it.
Apple is the new Sony
Jens-Christian, how many minutes per day are you talking on the E61? I get a much longer lifespan per charge than 1 day, with at least 80 minutes talktime per day, ActiveSync pushmail on, 3G on, WLAN scanning on, BT on.
-PS: I never found out which app on my E61 called home every 15min always getting 8k of data. But that only came to 85€ after two weeks in Spain...
Roaming here is between 5 and 12 euro pr MB and most roaming have a low charge limit on 5kb.
It will get costly very fast if you roam.
Haiko - Hmm good question. Around 60-90 minutes I'd guess.
I have WLAN scanning on (that I could turn off though, not using it), BT on, ProfiMail on. Maybe I should try to take some exact measurements...
I don't think Apple is trying to kid us on the power consumption. I am hearing the same story from RIM (and they do have a 3G device, the 8707v). I am running all of my 3G devices in GSM mode, unless I need 3G.
You're right with the customer jail. But everybody KNEW it would be one -- so nobody should complain.
