Most Glaring Nickel-and-Dime Omission: A Dock
Charlie White: Opening Apple’s gorgeous packaging, we suddenly wondered, where is the dock for the glorious iPhone 3G? Maybe it’s under this false bottom. Nope, not here. That’s OK, we’ll just use the dock from our old iPhone. Nope, no luck. I guess that’s proof the iPhone 3G is bigger than its predecessor, since it doesn’t fit… at all. Cold comfort, though, so we surf to the Apple Store, and what do you know? There’s the dock, the new one, for a steep $29. Add that to the $18 “upgrade fee,” the extra $10/month for 3G, the extra $5/month for 200 SMS messages, and pretty soon we’re talking about some real money.

Most Unsettling Error Message: “No SIM Card Installed”
Peter Pachal: I finally got my iPhone 3G activated Friday night. Saturday morning it welcomed me with the message “No SIM Card Installed.” Unless someone broke into my apartment, tiptoed to my nightstand, removed the SIM card from my phone, and neatly replaced it (Batman is coming out on Friday), there was no way that message was accurate. A network-settings reset later, it was all good again … for about 3 hours. This time I actually checked to see if the SIM Card was in fact installed (it was), and gave it a good wipedown. Ever since, it’s been working OK, but the “No SIM” message will forever haunt me…

Most Under- and Over-Estimated Spec: Battery Life
CW: What is Apple doing to get these battery times? Some kind of super battery, the mother of all iPhone power sources achieves that “up to 5 hours” number for Internet browsing with 3G (we got a more-realistic 2:54 in our real-world tests), the most wishful thinking yet. But then the testers get all modest on us, saying you only get “up to 7 hours” of video playback, and we get 8:37 on our tests. That’s enough time to watch four Steve Jobs keynote speeches on your pilgrimage to Cupertino, flying from anywhere in the Western hemisphere.

Top Feature That Shows How Useless Technology Can Be: GPS
PP: On Sunday, as I walked to the corner of Vanderbilt Ave. and Prospect Pl. in Brooklyn, I held up my iPhone 3G and cued up the Google Maps application. “Look, we’re almost at the corner!” I said to my girlfriend walking beside me, pointing at the blinking blue dot that was, in fact, simultaneously coming up on the corner Vanderbilt Ave. and Prospect Pl. on the map. “That’s great,” she said. “What would we have done without that phone?” What, indeed?

Biggest Design Flaw: Edge of the Plastic Back
CW: The edge of the iPhone, where the black (or white) plastic back meets the shiny metal bezel, doesn’t quite fit right. On a couple of our phones here, the left side definitely has a plastic edge that sticks out. While black is supposed to be a slimming color, that concept must not apply to iPhones. No word on whether the white model does the same, but we’re told it’s gauche to wear white after Labor Day. And that’s a girlie color anyway. We preferred the aluminum three-quarter back of the old iPhone, which didn’t show fingerprints at all, except on the most important part: that shiny Apple logo.

Maximum Number of Waking Minutes Spent Without Playing Phonesaber Since I Installed It: 47
PP: As of 5:17 p.m. on Monday, there have been no less than five Phonesaber duels here in the SCI FI offices since this morning, all of them awesome. The speakers on the iPhone are just loud enough (at max volume) to turn this free app, which makes lightsaber sounds that correspond to how you swing the phone, into the simplest, funnest time-waster you can download. I can’t wait for the first Phonesaber duel that breaks out between random strangers on public transit.

Most Underreported Aspect of the iPhone 3G’s Performance: It’s Finnicky
CW: Something is strange here. Some Web pages have to reload all over again if you leave them for a few minutes. Then we start getting all interested in a site, and Safari crashes… three times. Then we notice the iPhone is slower to adapt from one position to the next, taking its sweet time to switch the screen orientation from portrait to landscape. Having a little trouble performing, or is it us? What do want us to do, iPhone? Talk dirty to you?

Most Unwelcome Comeback: EDGE
PP: OK, I work in 30 Rockefeller Plaza — pretty much dead center of midtown Manhattan. Can someone explain to me why my 3G connection keeps wussing out on me and reverting to the crappy, slow-ass EDGE network? I didn’t pay $300 for an iPhone I already had, AT&T. The plastic back isn’t that nice to hold. Let’s get on making that 3G network more reliable, at least in the densest part of the Big Apple, shall we?

Quickest Firmware Flip-Flop: Apple Making the Screen Less Yellow
CW: The iPhone’s screen has a decidedly yellow tinge that Apple’s PR machine said was intentional. Not long after that, we find out you can restore your iPhone 3G in iTunes, which automatically installs a later build of the firmware that returns the iPhone’s screen to a hue that looks less like the jaundice of a drunken sailor and more like the blue my kid is going to turn as she holds her breath waiting for me to buy her a white iPhone 3G.

Most Perplexing Thing About the iPhone 3G Launch: AT&T Doesn’t Offer Apps for It
PP: I just spent the afternoon at an AT&T event where the company demo’d a few of the more notable wireless services it offers — everything from viewing of a webcam on your phone to automatic uploads from your phone’s camera — but none of them are offered as iPhone apps [Update: Okay, there's one AT&T iPhone app, YellowPages.com Mobile for the iPhone (YPMobile) that's free and actually works extremely well, but that's it thus far]. Apple sold a million iPhones 3G over the weekend, and there are many more first-gen iPhones already on the market. Does it strike anyone else as weird that the iPhone’s exclusive U.S. provider isn’t taking advantage of its hottest-selling platform?

Source: http://dvice.com/

The Build

The Flip Mino HD feels solid but is extremely lightweight for its size, and, therefore, one wants to think it is fragile. Having dropped it several times during my test, I can say that it’s pretty sturdy and nicely scratch resistant. Feathers rarely break when dropped. The Flip Mino HD isn’t featherlight of course, and doesn’t slowly float to the ground, but having dropped it several times from about four feet at the highest and about a foot at the lowest, I can tell it’s well enough built to survive the normal tumbles that cellphone-sized devices tend to take from time to time as they’re knocked off desks or dropped out of pockets.

The USB connection flips (Flip, get it?) open via a switch on the side like a mini-switchblade. I flipped it open and closed it repeatedly over a 100 times straight just to see if it would start to fail or break, but even this moving part is well designed and consistently springs nicely out with no difficulty. The only part of the entire device that feels a bit flimsy is the small black plastic facade that folds down over the USB when closed. When closed, it feels fine, but when it’s open and hanging loosely out from the device the light plastic-ness of it with no support structure is clearly the part of the device that would be prone to snap off under the right set of unfortunate, clumsy circumstances (something like knocking your laptop off the desk while the Flip Mino HD is plugged into a USB port). Thanks to the light weight of the Flip Mino HD, the device can hang from a laptop’s USB port nicely without any sort of give or noticeable pull that could damage the port over time.

The Body

The body of the Flip Mino HD is made from a very shiny plastic that is like a magnet for your fingerprints. You can most likely spot a few smudges in the pictures accompanying this review. These are both inevitable and unavoidable no matter how clean your hands, so if fingerprints are a pet peeve of yours, this alone may be a deal breaker for you. Despite it’s ultra-shininess, the device isn’t slippery in the least and has a nice grip. The plastic is also nicely resistant to water so some slights bit of moisture splashing on the device won’t hurt it, although getting the device really wet, as with most electronics will probably short it out and make it unusable.

The Flip Mino HD’s form-factor is like that of a small candybar cellphone, slightly thicker than an iPhone but not as wide or tall as the iPhone. The lens on the front of the device looks like a much bigger version of the kind seen on several camera phones. You could definitely manage to shoot some footage of someone without them knowing it, by holding the device up to your ear as if you were talking on it and pointing the lens in the person’s direction. It slips comfortably into nearly any pocket you may have, and I was able to slide it into my front left pant pocket next to my iPhone with no difficulty. It’s comfortable to hold in the palm of your hand. When filming, you end up holding the device like you would hold a cellphone while dialing. People accustomed to filming with “regularly shaped” camcorders will have to make some adjustments to get used to the Flip Mino HD, as the rectangular shape is a bit odd. It’s quite easy to move the camera about much more than you would if you were holding a regular camcorder with an eyepiece up to your eye and filming directly where you were looking.

The Screen

Measuring only 1.5 inches corner to corner, the screen on the MinoHD is not just small, it’s tiny. Since the device records in 16:9 aspect ratio, the video doesn’t even take up the full height of the screen. The strips at the top and bottom of the video give you metadata like how much recording time is left, whether you’re recording or not, how far along in play back you are, and a battery indicator. The screen serves as live viewfinder on the device, showing you what you’re recording as you record it, and because of this, the Flip Mino HD is not designed for filming yourself. Turning the device towards oneself for filming is a bit of a guessing game without someone else around to tell you how the shot looks.

The Speakers

The speakers sit on either side of the screen and actually do a pretty decent job of playing back the audio recorded. Unfortunately, unless there is a TV around for attaching to the Mino HD via the included composite video cable, the internal speakers on the device are your only option, as there is no headphone jack for monitoring the audio.

The Controls

The controls are pretty basic. There is one switch on the left top side when holding the screen towards you that flips open the USB. There are two clickable buttons on the device, the power button on the top right side when holding the screen towards you and the red button, which is used for starting and stopping recording and for opening the settings menu by holding down this button when powering on the Flip Mino HD. The rest of the controls are touch sensitive controls: a pause / play button used for pausing and playing videos; a delete button for deleting videos; left and right arrow buttons for navigating forwards and backwards from one pre-recorded video to the next or for fast-forwarding or rewinding a video during playback by holding them down; and a plus sign and minus sign for turning the volume up and down during playback and for zooming in and out while recording or using the screen as a viewfinder when preparing to record.

Ports

On the bottom right corner of the Flip Mino HD (if you’re holding the screen facing you) there’s a place to attach the included wrist strap. On the bottom left corner of the Flip Mino HD (if you’re holding the screen facing you) there’s a plug for the included TV composite cable adapter. Unfortunately, the plug is a mini plug and not a standard-sized plug, so you won’t be able to pick up a replacement easily should you lose it. I was also disappointed that I couldn’t stick headphones in this jack to listen to video playback when you’re on the go. That being said, hooking the device up to a TV via the included cable worked well on my 32-inch Sony WEGA HDTV.

On the bottom of the device is a standard thread for attaching to a tripod.

Video Quality

The Flip Mino HD records in 720p 16:9 aspect ratio video, so it is capable of recording very highly detailed video. One of the best features of the Flip Mino HD, its diminutive size and ease of carrying, is also one of its greatest weaknesses. The Mino HD shot best when held completely still on a tripod. If you’re a star cinematographer in the making with a very steady hand or a tripod, you’ll no doubt shoot lots of great footage with the Mino HD. If you’re more the type to pull a camera out of your pocket and start filming while running, you’re going to experience some mixed results.

Because of the large amount of detail at the Mino HD’s disposal and the small size of the lens, even the slightest movements when filming can appear very jarring. Also, highly detailed views with lots of motion tend to create an imagined bit of noise. The picture is crystal clear, but it naturally should be more blurred and not as sharp as the picture produced by the Mino HD. This is evident in the first segment of the below video where my pet pug is running through a lot of leaves and I’m recording the action by simply holding the Mino HD.

Additionally, extremely vibrant and bright colors tend to wash out somewhat on the Mino HD, as can be seen in the video segment of my bright green and red Eclectus parrots, where some of the details of their feathers are lost due to their bright colors.

The Flip Mino HD would not be a good camcorder for illegally making copies of a motion picture, even though it is quite easy to sneak into a movie theater, thanks to its small size. Granted it can only record an hour of video, so you would have to bring more than one Mino HD with you if you intended to capture an entire movie. Even if you were to do this, you would find too much flicker in the video you shot as can be seen in the movie theater segment from the video below.

The Flip Mino HD, like most cameras, loves light, and low-light shooting results in the colors veering towards red and some slight noise being added to the picture as can be seen in the dinner segment from the video below.

The bulbous casing around the lens on the Flip Mino HD would appear to have a slight wide angle lens effect that can manifest in certain situations. When filming the car test footage, you can see that shapes passing by lean, morph, and are distorted by a combination of the fast movement and the shape of the lens on the Flip Mino HD. This optic distortion is most likely happening to a lesser degree with any quick movements by the camera or any time things being filmed by the camera move quickly.

Despite these minor issues, the Flip Mino HD is a very versatile high definition video camera simply because of its small size. It was easy to stick the device on a tripod and hang it out the window of a moving car without worry about dropping it, simply because of how light the thing is, and, thankfully, the tripod thread on the bottom of the device is extremely sturdy. Near the end of the video below, I attempted three times to provide you with a “doggie eye view” by tucking the Mino HD into my dog’s collar. This was only mildly successful for a few seconds, as Thatcher inevitably shook her head and dislodged the device. The Mino HD wasn’t hurt or scratched by any of this and if I had actually spent some time constructing a way to attach the diminutive camcorder to my dog, it could be used to get this type of footage. At the very end of the video below, I added a warning, because I strapped the Mino HD to my GorillaPod tripod which has bendable legs that can be wrapped around things, and wrapped the tripod around the ceiling fan in my office. Then I turned the fan on. The result was some very motion-sickness inducing footage, but the light Mino HD held on with no difficulty. One thing I didn’t try that I think would work would be duct-taping the Mino HD to the front or rear bumper of a car to film some footage that way. I’m sure it would work fine, but didn’t get a chance to try it because of how rainy it was during the weekend I had the camcorder for testing.

Battery Life

I didn’t conduct any hard and fast testing of the battery life, but I did shoot quite a lot of footage, reviewing it on the camera, hooking it up to my television to see how it looked there, deleting bad shots, and recording new shots. In short, I used the camera much in the same way that any new owner of the device enamored with using it all the time would, and during that time, it never ran out of battery. I did run out of space for recording several times and was forced to plug the Flip Mino HD back into my computer so that I could copy files over and then delete all the files to begin shooting again. Of course, every time I plugged the device into my computer, it began charging again while I was copying files off of it.

Bundled Software

The Flip Mino HD mounts as a flash storage device on both PCs and Macs, so getting the MP4-formatted video files off of the device can be as simple as navigating to the 100VIDEO folder on the device and dragging it over to the computer to copy the files. You can even drag MP4 files back into this same folder on the device for watching on the go.

Both iMovie and iPhoto on OS X recognized the Flip Mino HD. iPhoto recognized the device but could not render thumbnail previews of the video files on the Mino HD. However, iPhoto did import the videos without any difficulty. iMovie, on the other hand, recognized the device, generated thumbnails for all the videos and then consistently failed to import any of the files at the very end of the import process. If you choose Import Movies from iMovie, however, and navigate to the 100VIDEO folder on the Flip Mino HD, the videos import to iMovie without any problems whatsoever.

If you’re not familiar with any of these tools and you’re totally new to the world of video recording then you’ll be pleased with the FlipShare software that comes on the device and works with both Windows and OS X. You can preview files, copy them to your computer, trim the beginnings and endings, and upload them directly to sites like YouTube via the software. You can also take snapshots from the videos to act as still pictures, play the videos at fullscreen, and burn DVDs of the videos directly from the easy to use FlipShare software.

Overall Convenience

The best thing about the Flip Mino HD is that it’s an HD camcorder that fits in your pocket and doesn’t need anything else. Sure it comes with a TV composite cable if you want to hook it up to your TV, but you don’t have to pack that cable. If you’re looking for a nice little on the go video studio, all you need is your laptop, the Flip Mino HD, and perhaps a small portable tripod for setting up your shot. There’s no AC adapter to keep track of, although if you love AC adapters, Pure Digital Technologies is coming out for one for the Flip Mino HD. There’s no specialized cable you need to connect the device to your computer. There’s no insanely difficult to learn bundled software.

What’s missing?

I think the two glaring things missing from this device are the lack of a headphone jack and the lack of a snapshot mode for taking still pictures. Sure, you can use the FlipShare software to take a still from a segment of video that you shot, but considering how streamlined for convenience the Flip Mino HD is, this added cumbersome measure looks like an oversight by the designers. I could also use an audio-only mode for taking voice notes, but this somewhat defeats the simplicity of this device.

What we hope to see in future models

A standard-sized port for the TV cable that also works with a standard set of headphones. A way to take a digital still photo with the device.

What would make this a truly killer device

If Pure Digital Technologies were to partner with Sprint to add a WhisperNet always-on EV-DO connection to the device, like Amazon added to the Kindle, so that it could be used for live streaming video online to services like Ustream and Qik, the Flip Mino HD would become a truly amazing device for broadcasting video. As is, the quick convenience of shooting, plugging into a computer, and quickly uploading to services like YouTube is still nothing to sneeze at.

Obsessable Recommendation

If you’re looking for a really small video camera that can fit in your pocket and handle high definition video, then for only $229 the Flip Mino HD won’t disappoint. If you’re looking for a device that can be used for unique shooting situations like duct-taping to the front of a car, then the Flip Mino HD may be the ideal camera for you. If, however, you’re just looking to upload videos to YouTube, then the high definition of the device won’t really be serving you well and you’d probably be better served by buying a less expensive camera from another manufacturer or the Flip Mino or Flip Video Ultra from Pure Digital Technologies.

by C.K. Sample III

Not to be outshone by certain other phone-related news from today, Samsung jumped into the mobile announcement fray with some initial specs for its planned first Android device also slated to hit the streets in 2009. Selecting a dealer show in Amsterdam to reveal the first details of the phone, a reported 0% of the audience was shocked to learn that it would be a large touchscreen candybar, with capacitive (like the original Android G1 or the iPhone) control, not resistive (like the Samsung Omnia or HTC Touch Diamond). The yet-as-unnamed phone will feature a 528 MHz processor, quad-band GSM, 3G via HSPA, stereo Bluetooth, microSD expansion slot, and an unspecified resolution camera, most likely 3.2 or 5-megapixels. As with such things there is no price or launch date information available yet, but we’ll be busy de-interlacing the frames of that insanely blurry image above hunting for the details sure to be hidden therein.

by Barb Dybwad

Another much-anticipated addition is the ability to copy, cut, and paste text from any field in any application to any other. For example, you could pull a website address from the Safari web browser and paste a link to it in a text message or an e-mail.

Push notifications have also been added, so some apps will be able to tell you when something happens that demands your attention even if you’ve already returned to the home screen or opened another application. IM apps (like Meebo, which was announced at the event) will benefit from this in particular, but the potential uses are broad.

Apple boasts that the update adds over 100 new features. An early version is available to app developers today, but the public won’t get it until sometime this summer. It will be free for all existing iPhone owners and $9.95 for iPod touch owners. It’s worth mentioning that while the update will be available for the first generation iPhone (the non-3G one), some features — such as MMS and stereo Bluetooth — will not be available.

Keep reading below to see our list of some of the other features 3.0 adds to the phone.

• In-App Purchase: Purchase and download expansions, extra levels, and more from within an application or game.
• Peer-to-Peer: Connect to other iPhones over Bluetooth to share information or to enjoy multi-user apps or games.
• App developers now have the ability to control hardware accessories with the iPhone software.
• Apple is making the wider, landscape-mode keyboard accessible in all its key apps, including Mail, SMS, and Notes.
• Spotlight search: All key apps are now searchable, both from within the apps and from a new app called Spotlight that searches the entire phone.
• Google Maps are now accessible within third party apps, making things much easier for developers who want to incorporate location-based services.
• Turn-by-turn directions are now possible for third party apps thanks to GPS and cell phone tower triangulation.
• Modest updates to the Stocks and Calendar apps
• A new key app called Voice Memos will let you record audio files using the built-in microphone or an external one.
• Stereo Bluetooth support
• “Shake to shuffle” for iPod
• “VPN on demand”
• YouTube enhancements, including user account support, video subscriptions, and ratings.
• In-app voice chat for games.
• Notes Sync
• Encrypted profiles
• EAS policies
• Revocation of certifications
• OTA profiles
• Media scrubber
• Parental controls
• Call log
• Auto-fill
• Create meeting invitations
• Anti-phising
• EAP SIM
• LDAP
• iTunes account creation
• Wi-Fi auto login
• Proxy support
• Audio and video tags

by Samuel Axon

Figures 1 & 2: Initial Registration Screen and How to Get Books screen

After first installing the Kindle for iPhone application on the iPhone or iPod touch, you’ll need to launch the application and register the iPhone or iPod touch with your Amazon account via the screen featured in Figure 1 above. After doing so, if you already have an active Kindle account, all your previously purchased books can be downloaded via the Archived Items folder that appears on the Home screen (See Figure 4 below).

If you have never had a Kindle before, then you will be returned to an empty menu screen with a button at the top left that reads “Get Books.” However, clicking on that link does little more than take you to the informational screen featured in Figure 2 above, which advises you to purchase books via your Mac or PC or to optionally use Safari Mobile on the iPhone or iPod touch. The word Safari here links directly to the Amazon Kindle Store and launches Mobile Safari, so that you can immediately purchase books to then be synced with your various Kindle-capable devices.

This is where we ran into our problems before when we were told that we didn’t have any devices registered. If this happens to you, you can access the Info screen (Figure 3 below) by clicking on the i in the bottom right corner of the Home screen (Figure 4 below), and try deregistering and then reregistering your device. If that fails to work, as it failed to work for us, you can also choose the Contact Support link to send an email to Amazon. We did this and shortly thereafter the problem was fixed, however, we’re not sure if this was because of contacting support or if it was just a coincidence as we have not yet received an email back from Amazon support.

One point you should keep in mind, however, is that magazine and newspaper subscriptions do not currently work with the Kindle for iPhone application. Every time we tried to subscribe to the New Yorker magazine, even after our initial problems with the service were resolved, we were met with the same message noting that we didn’t have a Kindle-compatible device registered. This is something that we hope Amazon will rectify with a future update of the software, and we’d love to hear from any Kindle owners with existing subscriptions to magazines or newspapers about what they think of the lack of this support on the iPhone and iPod touch.

Overall, the experience of having to leave the Kindle for iPhone application in order to shop for new items with no clear explanation on Amazon’s site itself for what is and what is not Kindle for iPhone compatible is one of the glaring problems with this application. Apple has both the iTunes Store and the App Store applications which make shopping for things to add to the iPhone or iPod touch a breeze, and considering how much the shopping experience on the Kindle itself is touted, we were surprised that there isn’t a similar store section to the application for browsing and purchasing titles. It’s especially odd given that Amazon offers an Amazon.com Application for the iPhone that allows one to purchase all kinds of Amazon products. Unfortunately, one cannot purchase books from the Amazon Kindle Store using this application either. Perhaps this is a limitation imposed by Apple themselves, but we hope that Amazon figures out a way to add a mobile Kindle Store to the next generation of this application, as the current shopping experience is cumbersome to say the least.

Figures 3 & 4: Information screen and main menu screen

After we finally managed to get some titles on our iPhone, we discovered Kindle for iPhone relatively easy to navigate. Titles purchased are synced to the device readily enough by hitting the refresh button in the bottom left corner of the main menu screen (pictured in Figure 4 above). Also, as previously noted, if you’ve previously purchased items on the Kindle Store for your Kindle or Kindle 2, you can access those items via the Archived Items folder. Touching on a book’s title opens that book in the application at the last page you had the book opened in Kindle for iPhone. If you happen to have read more of the book on another Kindle-compatible device since the last time you opened it on your Apple device, simply tapping the middle of the screen to bring up the bottom menu bar (Figure 5 below) and tapping on the Whispersync icon on the far right of the bar will sync Kindle for iPhone with the last page you were reading according to Amazon’s servers.

Along the bottom of the screen there is a drag-able button that can help you skip forwards and backwards through the book. Both pictures and text show up clearly in Kindle for iPhone and you can hit the Aa text size button in the menu to adjust the font size of the text between five different sizes. In the middle of the menu bar is a book icon that brings up all the bookmarks in the book (whether your own or ones that are default to the book), and just to the left of that icon is a plus sign that will add a bookmark for the page you are currently reading. HItting the bookmark button adds a dog-ear to the upper right hand corner of the page you are currently reading, and you can remove the bookmark by simply tapping the dog-ear at which point it will disappear.

Figures 5 & 6: Menu bar and active link in text

In order to turn pages, you don’t have to access the menu bar at the bottom at all. You simply use your finger to drag pages to the left to move forward page by page and to drag pages to the right to move backwards page by page. For some reason, although paging forward is rather swift and easy, paging backwards results in a temporarily blank screen from time to time, so it disrupts the reading experience somewhat. Also, as you can see in Figure 6 above, certain parts of the book can show up as links and link to different sections of the book. Here, for example, PRELUDE links to PRELUDE in the table of contents, so you can quickly jump back to the table of contents and then to another section.

Figures 7 & 8: Cannot resize image pages and a possible error

The biggest disappointment regarding the Kindle for iPhone application is how it avoids taking advantage of many of the features of the iPod and the iPhone touch that all iPhone and iPod touch users have become very used to. The font size menu is nice to have, but the application should also support zooming in and zooming out the text size by a simple multi-touch pinch and squeeze movements that we’re all already familiarized with. This becomes vitally important in image-heavy texts like the City of Glass graphic novel pictured in Figures 7 and 8 above. The pages of the graphic novel do not zoom or respond to changing the text display size and since there is no multi-touch zoom support the money I spent on the graphic novel was entirely wasted as it is too small to be read. For a moment, I thought that I would be able to simply turn the iPhone on its side and switch to landscape view, but unfortunately, that’s when I discovered that the Kindle for iPhone application only supports portrait mode. Since this is the case, Obsessable warns strongly against purchasing any Manga or Graphic Novels for reading on the Kindler for iPhone until Amazon updates the software. Also, as you can see above in Figure 7, there is an empty thought bubble, and I’m not sure if that is intentional or a Kindle-conversion error.

What’s missing / what do we hope to see in future versions?

There are a few glaring errors or omissions that we hope to see rectified very soon:

• An integrated method for purchasing titles from the Kindle Store.
• Support for purchasing subscriptions or at the very least some warning on the store that they are not compatible with the Kindle for iPhone application.
• Support for the iPhone and iPod touches multi-touch zoom in and zoom out functions or an alternate zoom function for image-based titles. At the very least, they should warn people purchasing Graphic Novels or Manga on the Kindle Store that these titles won’t play nicely with the Kindle for iPhone application.
• Support for landscape view.
• Improved page turning when flipping back through pages.

Obsessable Recommendation

Despite the multiple problems that we encountered while testing this application, it is free and it does open up a whole world of content for the iPhone and iPod touch that wasn’t there before. Those two reasons should convince everyone who enjoys reading to install the application, although keep in mind the caveats listed above, and please contact Amazon and let them know what of the features mentioned above you’d like to see in the application (simply use the Provide Feedback link on the Info screen pictured in Figure 3 above). Obsessable hopes that this application is the first step in some good things from Amazon for the iPhone and iPod touch.

by C.K. Sample III

This tutorial applies to Iphone 2G with firmware 2.0

The original tutorial can be found here PLEASE pay attention to all steps, and don’t rush through the process, otherwise you will end up with a screwed up Iphone. The tutorial works perfectly on Windows XP, and according the some people, does not work that good all the time on Windows vista.

Now if you want to skip all the steps on the tutorial above and only do a restore of the firmware 2.0 Using the Custom-iPhone1,1_2.0_5A347_Restore software I used to break my Iphone, you can download the custom software from the following link:

The software worked perfectly on my A1203 Model Iphone.

To do a restore of this software to your Iphone you need to make sure you have the latest Itunes 7.7.0.43 software, then put your Iphone in DFU mode. to put your   Iphone in DFU mode, make sure the Iphone is connected to your Itunes then press the Power button and HOME button at the same time, then after about 10 minutes release the power button while still pressing the home button until you get the message in Itunes that it has detected and iphone in recovery mode. ( your iphone will not have any image on the screen, it should be all black)

After the Iphone shows up on your Itunes, click on the Restore button while holding the Shift key:

Browse to the custom iphone software you just downloaded:

Click on the Open button, and the restoration should start. after the restoration finishes, your iphone should be unlock and jailbreak.

Source: http://helpdeskgeek.com/

Source: http://www.engadget.com/

Samsung Instinct

Samsung Glyde

LG enV2

LG Glimmer

LG Secret

RIM BlackBerry Bold 9000

HTC Touch Diamond

Nokia N96

Sony Ericsson Xperia X1

Sony Ericsson W980i

Source: http://rangit.com/

A couple of days ago new firmware for iphone version 2.2 was released and bring a couple of changes a couple of bug fixes (still there are too many bugs so dont get surprised) some more eye candy, some new icons and 2 new features Google Street View and Podcasts.

One of my friend was able to unlock/jailbreak this new version of firmware and successfully got it working on his iphone 2G so I’ll today enlighten you with the method he described on his blog.

So here we go

1. Download this Pwned / Jailbreaked iphone 2.2 firmware from following links

http://tinyurl.com/unlock-iphone-22-sizlo-1
http://tinyurl.com/unlock-iphone-22-sizlo-2
http://tinyurl.com/unlock-iphone-22-sizlo-3b

2. Extract first part with 7zip, winrar or any compression software and you get a single file named iPhone1,1_2.2_5G77_Custom_Restore.ipsw (245mb)

3. Connect iphone to your PC and open iTunes 8 (cancel if it ask you to update your firmware to new version)

4. Back all your iPhone data like contacts, music, video and other media.

5. Hold shift and click Restore and locate the Pwned iPhone 2.2 Firmware.

6. Now wait for the process to be done.

7. Enjoy using pwned / jailbreaked iPhone 2G with firmware 2.2

This method works on PC and MAC both without any extra tools such as WuickPwn and Pwnage tool and works flawlessly without any problem. So happy jailbreaking new firmware iPhone 2.2

Source: http://www.techiesouls.com/

Yellowsn0w can unlock iPhone 3G firmware 2.2, which means you can now use the iPhone 3G with any carrier you want! Yellowsn0w download was supposed to be released right on New Year’s Eve, but got late due to some reasons.

Remember, this tool will only work with iPhone 3G firmware 2.2 baseband 02.28.0 and not with any previous ones. So it is recommended to all iPhone jailbreakers to upgrade to the latest baseband first!

Download iPhone 3G Firmware 2.2
You can download iPhone 3G firmware 2.2 from here.

Download Yellowsn0w to Unlock iPhone 3G Firmware 2.2 with Baseband 02.28.0
You can download Yellowsn0w from the following two sources.

Cyndia Source: http://apt9.yellowsn0w.com/

Installer repo: http://i.yellowsn0w.com/

There are several things you need to note and take care of, before unlocking your iPhone 3G. You can read them all in detail at the Dev Team Blog.