iPhone calls with your favourite headphones

At last! No longer will you be tied to using the standard iPhone headphones to listen to your music while your fantastic headphones remain unused. While the iPhone 3G allows you to use regular headphones to listen to music - if you are interrupted by a call you have to pull them out to chat. Things are about to change now that Monster have brought out the iSoniTalk Microphone headphone adapter for iPhone.

There is already NewerTech Mic Extender Cable for iphone but to be honest it looked a bit naff. Now this new adapter from Monster is available I am not stuck with either paying for overpriced headsets designed for iPhone or poor audio quality standard iPhone headsets. Although there is a negative review for this item on Amazon UK, Monster have a good rep for quality Audio/video cables so will give them a try.
Technorati Tags: iPhone, headsets, Monster

iPhone: The Phone of Choice for Super Heros (and Villans)

This weekend I spoted the iPhone being used by various celebrity heroes and villains. Seems to be all the rage:

Lord Vader still can’t get used to working without a stylus

Supergirl calls up Superman and complains about him swapping costumes again:

Batgirl checks where she parked the Batmobile on google maps:

Captain America watches videos of Wonder Woman on YouTube:

Batman likes that it comes in black (matches his outfit) but still keeps his in his pocket:

The App store spells death to Jailbreaking the iPhone?

I’d love to say that the quality of Apps on the Apple App store is so superior to those made for jailbroken iPhones that no one would bother jailbreaking anymore. However, this is definitely not the case. While a few of the apps are quite polished a lot are on par with their jailbreak equivalents and many jailbreak apps will never make it to the Apps store as they will upset network providers or apple - e.g. the app that allows you to create multiple iTunes library’s on the phone so you can sync with more than one computer, or VoIP apps that allow you to make calls without getting charged a penny by your mobile provider.

Add to this the fact that most of the apps on via AppTapp on a jailbroken phone are free and it makes jailbreaking your new iPhone 3G very tempting. Some have already managed it as seen in this video:

So what are we waiting for - lets unlock our phones and get lots of free App goodness. BUT WAIT Jailbreaking was tolerated before and some of the jailbreak app developers have been welcomed on to the App store… however, before Apple had no competing service to rival the jailbreak apps and now they do. They will not want users to be able to choose between a free jailbreak app when they are trying to sell a similar App for $9.99 in the App Store.

So what will Apple do. Expect a lot tighter policing of iPhones. Regular updates closing loopholes that hackers have used to jailbreak, and even bricking of phones that it detects have been tampered with. While not illegal it will be a lot riskier jailbreaking your phone this time round.

Email - it’s the new SMS

With Mobile me up and running and Push working my iPhone 1 (the 3G just arrived and is syncing) Email is the new SMS/Text message. If your a heavy SMS user and burn through your free texts each month then having your most frequently texted buddies on Mobile me could save you. I know find it just as quick and easy to email my @me.com friends as texting them - plus I can add photo attachments. It’s not quite picture messaging but it’s getting there.

Not too impressed by the me.com site though. Some featurs appear to be broken in Firefox 3 such as the ability to add things to the calendar. Other browsers are greated with a message advising them to use Safari or Firefox as Apple can’t be bothered to support them. But rather than saying they can’t be bothered to make the effort that us web developers have to to support IE and others they simply say the features are too flashy for your browser and blame IE for not supporting modern web standards properly. I wish I could do that - if enough sites did do that rather than spend hours or days working to make IE happy or removing features because they cannot be supported in IE6 then maybe those users might upgrade to Firefox and save me having to support IE.

Anyway - back to enjoying 16gb of iPhone 3G goodness. If you haven’t managed to get hold of one yet don’t panic and pay mad fees for them on ebay - more are coming and their is no rush - their is hardly any decent apps on the App store yet.

iPhone disappointment continues - Delivery Fail

Looks like between O2 and DHL they have mis-routed my parcel. It’s in Dartford instead of Vauxhall and so I have been told I have to wait until Monday for it. Not impressed.

I will be trying to collect from the depo but I won’t hold my breath.

Apple Store Activation FAIL

It appears that UK iPhones require a PC to activate so the Apple store ran into trouble on today’s launch as all their systems were running on Mac and couldn’t activate the phones.
LMAO.

Full story here

O2 loses iPhone 3G order

After both my brother and I received a confirmation email from O2 for our iPhone order we were both happy and expecting delivery of our phones today.

It seems a confirmation email is not enough. Concerned that I had received a follow up email confirming dispatch of my phone and he had not he called O2 today. Despite his confirmation email they explained they had no record of his order and they were out of stock so couldn’t help him! He now joining the queues outside an O2 store somewhere.

I double checked tracking on my order and it still shows my phone has been dispatched and picked up by DHL at 12:15 yesterday and it has reached Dartford at 6:21 this morning so fingers crossed.

iPhone 3G out of stock in UK

First Carphone Warehouse Pre-orders went out of stock. Then there were rumours that O2 had gone out of stock. Now 2 mins after I got my order in the O2 site is confirming that they have sold out of online stock. This means that any remaining stock is reserved for launch day and is likely to be in high demand. Looks like those out camping aren’t so crazy after all.

There are also rumours that some stock intended for Canada may find it’s way over to Europe. Whether this is true, or if it has anything to do with the backlash against Canadian phone operators excessive rates or just because of higher demand in Europe no one knows.

As my pervious post indicates - as to whether my order or others went through successfully remains to be seen.

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O2 remove validation to spare customers continued iPhone 3G upgrade misery

If you are a UK iPhone user looking to upgrade or if you have been following the story on this blog you no doubt know the problems O2 have been having taking orders from their customers wanting to upgrade.

Now rather than trying to validate each order against their existing accounts and/or taking payments/credit checks at the time of order it seems the order form has been changed. Now all visitors to https://upgrades.o2.co.uk are pushed onto the failover form and the details are taken without processing and the user is greeted with this message: Thank you for your order. We are processing this and will contact you if there are any complications with the details you have provided.

While not a fix this is an improvement that spares users continually re-trying the site and allows O2 to process the information off-line at their leisure and contact users that have entered erroneous data or could not be validated.

Fingers crossed my details are not lost.

Review: Gelaskins - protection for iPhone

As gorgeous and slick as the iPhone looks it can very easily have it’s looks tarnished by scratches and marks. That’s why one of the best selling accessories for the iPhone is the screen protector. The thin sheet of plastic protexts the screen from scratches but what about the rear of the phone. Often the phone is lying on it’s back on a desk getting scuffed while the protected screen is face up and unharmed.

I have tried several leather cases but always end up discarding them and going back to an unprotected phone. This is because one of the main attractions of the iPhone is it’s compactness and sleek curves which are lost when a chunky cases is added. No one likes the unsightly bulge in a suit pocket from a chunky phone or wallet.

So when GelaSkins contacted me about their protective skins for iPhone I was very interested to see if this could be a good solution. I must admit that when I first saw the skins they appeared to simply be colourful stickers, I was a little sceptical as to their value. However, after using it I would definitely recommend them.

Firstly the initial attaching of the protective sticker couldn’t be easier. I am not the most skilled at applying stickers correctly as I ruined several screen protectors in the past trying to get it to line up with the iPhone screen without bubbles, so was surprised with how easy it was to apply. The GelaSkins uses 3Ms special adhesive that allows you to remove and re-stick the skin without leaving a residue or losing stickiness. It also doesn’t bubble and I got it in just the right spot first time. My Brother-in-law had less success as he claimed there was some bubbling for him but when he tried to show me the bumps had worked themselves out so he had a perfect finish to.

GelaSkins offer a range of designs from over 50 artists. They really do look eye catching on the phone and make your phone stand out from other plain iPhones. You can also download a matching graphic from the GelaSkins website to use as your phone background image. Then the design appears on both sides of the phone. As several of my friends have the iPhone it’s great to be able to pick mine out from the bunch when they are all lying on the coffee table.

The skin is thicker than a screen protector and has a nice feel to it. It definitely feels touch and despite my best efforts I was unable to scratch it, let alone the iphone underneath. The skins add very little thickness to the iPhone, infact I was still able to use the same leather cases with the skin on.

I was a little worried that the skin would cause the iPhone to overheat as it already gets very hot when using wifi/edge for extended periods. While the iPhone got very warm no more so than usual.

Although the skin is great for protecting the iPhone from scratches they do little to protect the phone from being dropped. If you are looking for protection from dropping the phone then I recommend getting a padded case and phone insurance.

One downside with the skin is that it covers over the most expesive component on the iPhone - the Apple logo. For me this is not a problem - for hard-core Apple fans that might be put off by this they’ll be pleased to know that it is easy enough to remove the skin and show off that Apple logo again without leaving a nasty stick residue.

Gelaskins also make skins for the Sony Playstation Portable (PSP), Nintendo DS, iPods and laptops. The 15inch laptop skins look fantastic.