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:

For a more serious look at iPhone 3G check the reviews at testfreaks.co.uk

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.

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 hands on

I got a very welcome email from O2 advising the status of my iPhone order:
We’re pleased to inform you that your O2 upgrade order has now been dispatched.

Your delivery details are:
Option: STANDARD DELIVERY
Cost: £0.00
Date of Delivery: Next working day

I then got hands-on an actual iPhone 3G. It feels completely different in the hand - partly because it’s shape is different and also because the back is plastic and not metal. I can’t say whether it feels better or worse- just different. I’m definitely less likely to drop it as it fits in the curve of the hand better.

First port of call was to check out the GPS on google maps. I didn’t manage to get a blue GPS dot but it was quick to locate me based on my wifi connection. Found maps to be overall more responsive.

I next checked out the app store. This works like a combination of the jailbreak appTapp and the iPhone iTunes store. It was quick and had quite a few apps already available to download. Most were chargeable.

The camera was not mentioned during the iPhone 3G announcements and tour and for good reason. It is just as bad as before - no noticeable improvement except again response time is slightly better.

I only had a few minutes with it so didn’t get to test out 3G speeds but I’ve had 3G phones before so know what to expect there.

Not sure if improved responsiveness was because there is better hardware or because I’m comparing to my iPhone which I’ve jammed up with about 30 jailbreak apps.

Will write more when I have my own one tomorrow, then I can download Apps.

More reviews at testfreaks.co.uk

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.

Continue reading »

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.

iPhone 3G O2 upgrade update

After 5hrs of failed attempts and hearing rumours that the iPhone 3G 16gb sold out already I was getting rather angry and frustrated. I called up O2 who reassured me that they had not sold out and that they have sufficient stock to cover all existing iPhone users. However, the stats worry me.

She advised that 80k text messages were sent out this morning.
She also stated they had a total of 80k iPhones in stock.
She said that they have 9000 calls from users complaining about the website so far this morning.
I also said I had heard Carphone warehouses’ pre-orders had sold out which she said isn’t true - but checking their site it is still showing as sold out.

What worries me is
1) If they have 80k iPhones in stock this will mostly include 8GB models so the rumour that the 16GB is sold out is possibly true
2) If they have 80K instock how much of that is reservered for the launch day? They are not going to open stores with no stock are they? So is this figure reserved for upgraders - I doubt it
3) If 9000 users have called to complain are the other 71k getting their orders in?

It is looking less and less likely that I’ll be getting an iPhone on release day and it’s not for want of trying. Apple must be shaking their head.

O2 botch iPhone 3G upgrade release

O2 are anticipating long queues at stores this Friday as the iPhone 3G is launched in the UK. To help reduce congestion existing iPhone customers are being forced to place their order online rather than come into store on the day.

This morning O2 users that had signed up to be notified when they could order their upgrade received a text message advising orders could be made from 8am today. The problem is O2 upgrade site couldn’t handle the demand and soon fell over and now there is only a maintenance page.

O2’s response when questioned about it was that the site went down due to “high demand”. Where they not expecting high demand? There will be very few iPhone owners not looking to upgrade to the 3G so they have to have expected a large number of people ordering. However, despite this rather than set up a robust site to handle the many orders the site was hosted in the US and they used a flash interface with frames!

Many users will not even have seen the flash interface as it often timed out and failed over to a HTML form that could not be processed by the back end system. I personally tried the form 4-5 times and the Flash interface I managed to get 2- stages in before it failed too. O2 eventually put an end to users misery by putting up a maintenance page.

Did they offer telephone orders to compensate for their lack of a site? No - infact the upgrades option on their phone system has been disabled and their sales team have been told they cannot take iPhone upgrade orders over the phone.

It’s embarassing for O2 and for Apple that they do not have the infrastructure to handle a big launch like this. Lets hope that Friday’s new customer release will be handled better. I suspect the majority of the demand for the phones will come for Apple fans who will already have an iPhone rather from the new user but we will see by this time next week.