If you bought an iPhone, odds are pretty decent that you replaced another cell phone with it. Odds are also decent that you kept the iPhone over the other cell phone. Maybe you did, maybe you didn't. Well, as it turns out, you can get a real-time price quote for your old cell phone. Just type in whatever cell phone you want to recycle at the website Second Rotation, describe the condition. If they're interested and you like the price, they'll send you a prepaid DHL label. Voila!

I have at least two cell phones sitting in a drawer. I don't use them anymore, they really just take up space. They're not even smartphones. Amount of money I'm wasting by keeping them: $150. If I sold my wife's smartphone I could almost buy her an iPhone... and it's the holiday season... hmmmm. And best of all, that's just the phones. I could be sitting on a gold mine of old junk. (via)

With the news of free ringtones from GarageBand comes excellent auxiliary news: if you coughed up dough for iToner for macs or iPhoneRingToneMaker for windows, they both have updates available that now work with iPhone v1.1.2, something previously not possible. (via)

The iPhone showed up at #1 on Consumer Reports' rating of all Smartphones. It's a slim margin of victory, but it's a margin nonetheless. They list it as the only chosen phone in the media category, and list the T-Mobile Wing, the Palm Treo 755p, and the Moto Q9m for office-type uses. For compact smartphones, they advise the Pearl and Centro. (via electronista)

W00t, and I've got a quote from Dieter of WMExperts to go along with it:

"... the idea that the Wing is more highly rated than the Q9m is proof positive that they don't get it. The Wing is severely underpowered and suffers from poor build quality."

The iPhone is on PC World's "15 Biggest Tech Disappointments of 2007" list. From the brouhaha I've been reading, you'd think that they think the iPhone is a piece of junk. Nothing could be farther from the truth -- they think it's "wildly innovative." What they're largely griping about is how Apple has handled the iPhone to this point:

"Memo to Apple: It's time to treat iPhones for what they really are--pocket computers with phone functions built in--and open them up the world. Just a thought."

They're also unhappy with the price tag bait and switch. I don't blame them for that either, I would have rather not spent the extra $100. What else, hmmm... they gripe about AT&T's network. I can't stay mad at anyone that doesn't love their carrier. I agree with their article. The iPhone is a masterwork, but it's a heavily locked-down device, and I'm not sure yet of the real reason.

Wired has an excellent multimedia interview with Thom Yorke, the singer in Radiohead. They cover a vast array of topics from the changing face of the record industry to Radiohead's experiment with In Rainbows, their recent album that they released online. It's a fine interview, well worth your ears and eyeballs.

Jobs and other Cupertino functionaries have apparently been flying to and fro in the hopes of securing a carrier for the iPhone in Japan. It sounds like NTT DoCoMo is their first choice, which is interesting as they don't really support a 2.5G network -- NTT DoCoMo's network is pretty much all 3G, so for the iPhone to work on their network, it would have to be 3G. Also apparently in the running is Japan's #3 carrier SoftBank Mobile, who also lacks a 2.5G network.

Wired has a quick look at some iPhone clones. Clones is probably an unfair statement, since some of these phones are given the clone moniker just by the fact that they share a similar form factor. They award black turtlenecks to each of the six phones based on how well they compete with the iPhone as a clone based on a weird array of subjective criteria that shifts with each clone.

It's true, I did find the linkbait. Whatever the charts mean, the iPhone is selling well in North America. Whether or not it's beating Windows Mobile (which it appears to be) or behind the BlackBerry (which it appears to be), the relevant bit is this: it's a close race, it's anyone's game, and the iPhone is doing spectacularly given the amount of time it has been available.

If you'd like to talk about the numbers, I'll recommend this thread over at WMExperts, where the community is actively defending and disputing the numbers. The iPhone is the purple one in the charts. If you'd prefer to comment that this is a nice looking graph or that there is enough purple on the chart to satisfy you or that you just like purple, you can comment here.

1. I know nothing about SIM hacking.
2. While I know nothing, I recall that some folks had luck reprogramming TurboSIM cards back in the day, which proved to be an efficient method of using the iPhone on a different carrier with a few caveats.
3. but the TurboSIM method involved actually programming a SIM card
4. They don't do themselves a favor by turning their instructional video into a demo of them playing SuperContra on the GameBoy emulator.
5. It kind of sounds like it might be one of the guys from Gabe and Max.

This is a nice speaker dock system. It was designed by a team of folks that includes former Apple design guru Robert Brunner, who was around during the Newton years. It's a nice-looking piece of kit. There's no price yet, as this is a mockup or prototype of some sort. If they make it affordable it will sell like hotcakes. It's apparently being unveiled at CES in a few weeks.

According to the answers to questions posed of 1175 people surveyed by Peanut Labs, a bunch of 'Generation Y' kids are hot to trot for the iPhone action. The most popular mobile on the holiday present list is the iPhone, and Apple is on the list of top brands (which were Apple, HP, Nintendo, and Amazon). Another interesting nugget is that those kids figured to spend $300 on gadgets this holiday season.

Here's a quick N95 vs. iPhone video feature showdown. As you can see above, Dieter of WMExperts confirms he's begun using the Nokia N95 as the little mini-extension to the Smartphone Round Robin. There were a lot of calls for us to try something with Symbian. I hope we give it a full turn the next time around.

(video via MobileWhack)

With the recent fake stirring up GPS news, who would have thought that real GPS news would be such a short hop away. It turns out that engineering design firm Partfoundry is working on making real GPS for the iPhone, and they figure that it will be available sometime in February, right about when the SDK comes out. As it stands, they say that you'll need a jailbroken iPhone, but who really knows what will happen once that SDK comes out, right? It's altogether possible that they'll be able to certify the GPS serial device if they decide to go the extra mile. Extra bonus: no jpeg compression artifacts and a reasonable-proof-that-it-actually-isn't-a-hoax video.

(via Surur and engadget)

Fortune Magazine's Top Ten Reasons That IT Departments Won't Support The iPhone. In other news, Wall Street Journal's Ten Point Rebuttal To That Stupid Fortune Article.

Some of the best news that I'll hear all day. If you're using the latest version of iLife and apply the GarageBand update (version 4.1.1), you get the ability to create and edit custom ringtones. They've posted up a set of instructions over at apple.com for anyone to peruse. The blurb you see in Software Update is terse but to the point:

"This update improves overall stability and addresses issues with file export to iPhone."

One has to presume that the issue with regards to file export to iPhone was that you couldn't do it beforehand.

This may well be the finest news that I read all morning. It forces me to spend a few hours playing around with GarageBand today, I want to wake up to something new tomorrow. (via iLounge)

With the original iPod, sales didn't take off until the iPod was made compatible with Windows. If you believe the stats from the polls from AppleInsider, sales for the iPhone won't take off until it's compatible with Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft's popular groupware server for small and medium businesses. And lo! Apple has posted a job listing for someone capable of adding Outlook and Exchange functionality to the iPhone.

App number one is by Drunknbass: it's a video capture app. Their proof-of-concept demo records 5 seconds of video at 10fps, but they expect the final version to record unlimited-except-for-free-storage-remaining video at 30fps. All that remains is for them to optimize their code. If they can hit 30fps, that will be a very nice capability added to the iPhone.

App number two is more for the proof of concept. It's hard enough to control directions without tactile feedback on the NES emulator with just a directional pad and four buttons. I can't imagine how tough it would be to try and do controls with double directional pads, 4 triggers, and 6 buttons. But, it can be done, and it is therefore awesome. The PS1 emulator will last as a timeless paean to developer ZodTTD's awesomeness. That and the GameBoy Advance emulator he wrote.

App number three is scummVM, which one can use to play a bevy of old Sierra LucasArts games of years past. Some of these games were the most highly acclaimed games of their time. They actually wear well with time, I'd say. If I ever get the hacking iPhone back from a certain Canadian editor, this one will actually be one of the first hacks installed. (image credit: Jesus Diaz of Gizmodo).

I saw this blurb on Daring Fireball, and I thought it was kind of funny.

"I will say that if you are impressed by the “touch features” in the iPhone, you’ll be blown away by what’s coming in Windows 7."

He puts "touch features" in quotes of course to drive the point home, a useful trick of rhetoric I suppose. The only time I ever read "blown away" is when it's being used as PR. I no longer trust the phrase, since no one says it organically. This has all the makings of a PR plant if you ask me.

The funny thing is, for all I know, the blurb is true. Maybe Windows 7 is awesome and stuff. Gruber of Daring Fireball notes that they're comparing their desktop OS to a phone, point for Gruber. PR deflated. The second bit that he doesn't address is this: Windows 7 is going to be released in the distant future. The iPhone is available now. It had damn well better be more impressive than what we see in the iPhone. If they couldn't beat the touch technology in half a decade, why would it be compelling for anyone to use it, right?

So David Bailey of Goldman Sachs, they do a report that says Apple will be making two iPhones next year. One of the iPhones will just be a storage bump, and it will be available in the first half of the year. The other iPhone supposedly will be a newer design, with maybe a new form factor and look and maybe not. He says the new iPhone design...

"have a similar form factor as the current version although it could have a different look and will probably include 3G capability."

An iPhone with a storage bump, that's some news. The fact that there's an iPhone 3G coming next year... not news. Not news at all, really. Both Steve Jobs and Randall Stephenson have confirmed it. Rumors of the 3G iPhone have been around since a few days after it was announced almost a year ago. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along. rolls dice. 32.

So yeah, there's some crud news. I wonder if we'll ever be able to safely unlock the device. I'd like to be able to give this iPhone to my wife someday, but she's not with AT&T.

The iPhone + TomTom GPS rumor from yesterday has been quashed. Eagle-eyed MacRumors reader thecreativ1 noted the resemblance to an earlier iPod Video fake that was hoaxed; the extra blurriness, and all.

"Don't you guys remember the big hoax about the "real" video iPod??? About how weeks later the guys showed a screencast about how he made the fake....

"Well I do, and the barcode sticker on the tomtom dongle looks an awful lot like the barcode sticker on this notorious fake..."

So it's not true. I wanted it to be real, but it's not. (via engadget).

I've got some store news real quick -- First off, we've mentioned it in the podcast before, but it bears mention again. All of the Smartphone Experts stores support gift certificates. In case you're wondering, that does include the Phone Different Store. Also, we've got a coupon for 10% off accessories in effect until midnight on Saturday. To utilize it, just use "iHOLIDAY" as your coupon code.

The Smartphone Round Robin contest is over. Here are our last thoughts and responses about the the iPhone. After the break are the winners of the contest and the bulk of the article.

I'd like to say that the Smartphone Round Robin was an excellent idea. It was a lot of work, too, but hopefully it ends up being something useful for those of you that followed it while it was going on, or to anyone that ends up here long after this moment has passed.

And if you're not ready to say goodbye to the round robin just yet, we'll all be chatting about the round robin for the Mobile Computing Authority podcast tomorrow, that podcast should be available next week.

First and foremost I'd like to congratulate our winners. I'd like to offer a W00t to grand prize winner RickMG, who wins the smartphone of his choice that exists now. W00ts as wel to our 3 runners up Antoine of MMM, Bla1ze, and LFD153, who win $100 of coupons at one of our Smartphone Experts stores. Dieter will be contacting you via your forum email address later today.

And now, to the last paragraphs and responses. I'd like to start by saying that all of the editors are smart about mobile devices. If they have something to say about the iPhone, good or bad, there's a kernel of truth to be found in what they said regardless of whether I agree with them or not. There are some warts with the iPhone, at least some of which can be attributed to the youth of the platform. The iPhone is honing features and functions at a much faster rate than the other smartphones, and firmware updates are coming relatively fast and furious.

We all agree that the media and browser functions (video iPod, Safari web browser, YouTube, iTunes wi-fi) are best-in-show. Everyone mentions the 3rd party apps that are due in February, around 2 months from now. The lack of 3rd party apps is clearly on everyone's mind, including mine. Probably more so for me, since I use the iPhone on a daily basis. Everyone mentioned the hardware keyboard: while it wasn't their preference, they all got used to it. Only Dieter mentioned the thin-ness of the form factor, which I found interesting.

Dieter of WMExperts

iPhone First Looks, iPhone Last Looks

Two Words: Media and Internet.  These are the iPhone's strengths and *boy oh boy* is the iPhone good at them.  The browser is the best you've ever seen and the best you're likely *to* see for quite awhile.  Sure, the lack of 3G data speeds stings a little, but the iPhone handles WiFi pretty well and that helps ease the pain.  Of course, it's a stupendous iPod.  The form factor is definitely impressive (and thin!), but still never feels comfortable as a phone to me.

As for the rest, well, I have to say it's a mixed bag.  Although I think the soft-keyboard on the iPhone does a reasonably good job, I still much prefer a physical keyboard if only because it enables better one-handed use.  The email is atrocious and the rest of the applications are nothing special -- which is pretty much why I turned the iPhone down.  Windows Mobile excels where the iPhone stumbles (and vice versa).  But if you have hope that will change (the iPhone is very young) or don't care too much about email and PIM apps, you'll love that browser and that iPod.

Dieter and I have talked about the pros and cons of the software keyboard. Speaking personally, I'll never go back to a hardware keyboard if I can help it. I have no issues using it one-handed, though I do prefer to type with two hands (right thumb and left index). The biggest gripe I've heard from Dieter about the keyboard is that he has to keep his eyes on it to use it. Though we disagree, it's a form factor preference for both of us.

He's also right about Mail being a mixed bag. I think 'atrocious' is an exaggeration, but checking email takes more swipes and keypresses on the iPhone than other smartphones. On the other hand, only the iPhone renders HTML email fully of all the smartphones in the round robin. If I had to guess, he doesn't like the five swipes it takes to go from one inbox to another and he wants a mass-delete.

Dieter is probably the biggest PIM user among us, and his PIM gripes are on target for a business user, though I think he'll be mollified in February. The big PIM problems (lack of Notes syncing, no To-Do lists at all) will be fixed with firmware updates and 3rd party software.

"Nothing special, huh? The Settings app is actually one of my favorite things about the iPhone, that I don't have to dig all over the place for settings. I'd argue that many of the remaining "nothing special" apps are rendered special just by the screen real estate available (Photo, Camera, and Maps). SMS gives threaded messages but lacks multiple recipients and MMS. Clocks has repeating alarms at least; Weather, Stocks, and Calculator... nothing special. These apps are all simple, functional and usable, as intended.

Jennifer of TreoCentral

iPhone First Looks, iPhone Last Looks

The iPhone excels at media with its gorgeous, large screen and music and video playing capabilities.  The iPhone is tops out of the box and is so simple to set up and get going right away.  The graphics are beautiful and the multi-touch technology is mind blowing.  Safari is the coolest and most complete mobile web browser I've seen and it blows the rest out of the water without a doubt.  You can view webpages as they're supposed to be seen,  as opposed to the watered down versions out there. 

It has to be said that the iPhone is currently lacking 3rd party apps, but they are coming soon.  The keyboard experience wasn't the greatest but it's just something that people will have to get accustomed to since it's a flat surface and there's no tactile feedback.  Lots of practice really helps.  The non-user replaceable battery is a big minus.  It would be so much easier to be able to replace our own batteries rather than have to send them off to Apple.  The iPhone being locked in to AT&T probably doesn't make a lot of people happy since many don't want to have to switch carriers.  But the iPhone has a super web browser and will be getting 3rd party apps soon and the music and videos are wonderful, so if  don't mind switching carriers, and if you don't mind waiting for the 3rd party apps to start showing up, the iPhone might just be the device for you.

Jennifer is absolutely right about the out-of-box experience. The iPhone starts out being easy to use and never stops being easy to use. For some, that will always be a good thing. Some others may wish for more power later on.

Our opinions differ on the battery: I don't have any problems with the not-user-replaceable battery. The iPhone gets 8 hrs of talk time, compared to the Treo 680's 4.5 hrs. After 300 charges, the iPhone's battery will still charge to 80% of its original capacity. Also, due to the fact that the battery is built-in, the iPhone doesn't fly into a bunch of pieces when I drop it. Jennifer is absolutely right that there's a trade-off, however.

Jennifer's totally right that the iPhone being locked to AT&T is a big minus. AT&T isn't the worst carrier I've ever used, but it's not the best either. Visual voicemail is a big draw, but that's not enough to convince me that I wouldn't rather be back on T-Mobile. I don't have smartphone remorse; don't get me confused there, but I definitely have carrier remorse. If I could have spent another $100 or $200 for an unlocked iPhone when I purchased it, I would have. I don't think the world is too long from using MMS messages for a standards-based version of visual voicemail anyway.

Kevin of CrackBerry.com

iPhone First Looks, iPhone Last Looks




Of the three 'competitor' smartphones I tried in the Round Robin, to my surprise I found the iPhone to be my favorite. My conclusion is that you can achieve a great user experience by going either No Touch (BlackBerry) or Full Touch (iPhone) on the operating system. The iPhone's out of the box user experience was the best of the group – within 25 minutes I had my entire Round Robin Checklist crossed off: music added, PIM data synced, movies watched, etc., and the iPhone's web browsing and full out email viewing capabilities are second to none. And while it does take a lot more concentration to use the iPhone's soft keyboard compared to a physical keyboard, I became quite adept at tapping out my messages.

iPhone dislikes? I had a few. Compared to the BlackBerry the iPhone user experience is incredibly slow. What should be simple tasks like checking and responding to emails or placing calls take a lot of effort and time. The lack of push email is unacceptable to a BlackBerry user (they should really get BlackBerry Connect going on the iPhone) and the screen to screen transitions quickly got on my nerves. Considering this is Apple's first smartphone, I was really impressed by it. As they open up to 3rd party apps and further refine the device I only see it getting better... which says a lot as it's already pretty darn good. Just be sure to have a BIG data plan.

Another day, another excellent point of view. The BlackBerry interface is a lot faster than the iPhone. The iPhone uses visual cues to let you know what's going on, so you don't get lost as easily and think "what just happened?" It's one of the reasons that the out-of-box experience is so excellent and that the iPhone is easily the champ in the usability department -- if a feature is too hard to use, no one will use it. What good is a feature if no one will use it, or if someone requires extensive training to use it?

The iPhone does require more swipes and taps for calls, but that's because the iPhone doesn't really place the value of one app above the rest. The BlackBerry definitely does, and functions beyond phone and email on BlackBerry definitely suffer because of it. I think the iPhone manages more functions effectively than the BlackBerry does because of this approach (and you can always double-tap the home button to go to the phone screen).

I agree with him that push technology across the board would be nice. As it stands, only Yahoo! mail offers push technology with the iPhone, and it's not "true" push like the BlackBerry's push or Microsoft Exchange's push.

The default plan with AT&T is an unlimited data plan.

If the iPhone does work with TomTom and a GPS dongle, I'll be a happy, happy camper. TomTom's map setup is actually pretty excellent; I've used it for driving and stuff on the Treo. Their device activation was horrible with all the software keys you have to input, but once you got it working, it was excellent.

If you've hacked your iPhone, you may be aware of a positioning app called Navizon which maps your location via tower triangulation and the presence of known wi-fi hotspots. That version costs $25, but there's a new version of Navizon now available. It's called Navizon Lite, and it provides location awareness based only on tower triangulation. In short, it can tell where you are (roughly) based on what kind of signal your phone gets, and skips the database of wi-fi hotspots. It's tough to beat free, but you do have to hack your iPhone to get it to work in the first place.

I'm not sure how I missed this one as I do follow TUAW, but eagle-eyed Chris Davies of MYiTablet spotted this neat little bookmarklet called "Tabulate" to queue pages you want to read. It's like browsing with faux tabs, and you can select whether you want to open a link in the current window, a new window, or save it for later. It's a nice little bookmarklet hack. I've written some very simple bookmarklet hacks myself and researched some of the better ones (see here), but this one might be one of the best I've seen.

It sounds like the new Pepsi zillion song giveaway is going to be with Amazon MP3 instead of iTunes. You'll probably hear marketing speak say they're giving away $1 billion worth of songs, but the reality is a different situation:

"PepsiCo is planning to place tokens on five billion drink containers. Consumers will have to collect five tokens to qualify for free tracks. In theory, the campaign could flood the market with $1 billion of free music (Apple charges 99 cents per DRM-free track), but redemption rates on these types of offers are usually low, at about 2 per cent.

iPodObserver has a quick story about independent superstar band Radiohead, who made headlines by letting anyone choose the price they wanted to pay for the album. Rumor has it that Radiohead are working through a deal directly with iTunes, the first of its nature. If this happens, it upends the content distribution methods currently in place by bypassing the middleman. In other words, it screws the record companies.

Ars Technica has an interesting article about kids using podcasts to replace lectures and iPod-ready versions of Cliffs Notes for late-night cramming.

Om Malik has a little introductory article about Songbird, an open-source version of iTunes that's built on the Mozilla platform. The Mozilla platform is the basis of widely beloved internet browser FireFox, so if Songbird ends up like FireFox, it will be bloated and slow we'll have a nice alternative to iTunes. Songbird isn't anywhere near ready for release yet, as indicated by the current version available: Songbird 0.3 Developer Pre-release. Amazingly, device syncing is not one of the core functions yet, though they do have add-ons that allow syncing for iPods and other devices. There's a video interview there that's worth a look, and there's an interesting tirade against iTunes starting at about 9:45, calling iTunes a bottleneck in the value chain. Yup, he calls it that even as he compliments it for being the best out there as it stands. See below:

Eric Zeman of InformationWeek fame posted a quick list of the 6 lamest Apple lawsuits in recent memory, if you're having trouble keeping track of them. As to why you'd have to keep track fo the various dumb lawsuits that Apple has endured, I don't know. But I read the list and I'd have to say that it's accurate.

After a month without the iPhone, it's good to be back. I got used to a lot of things in the 6 months of use with the iPhone that just aren't possible with the other devices. In using the iPhone, I got used to having 7GB of music handy. I got used to carrying around headphones so I could slip into the world of music at a moment's notice. I got used to looking whatever I needed on the real web. I got used to checking voicemails individually whenever I needed. I got used to how I checked email. I got used to threaded SMS. I got used to viewing videos. I got used to not charging my phone religiously every night. I got used to the seamless syncing with iTunes. On my return to the iPhone, I was astounded how quickly I was spoiled with syncing information. It was downright nasty to get all of my information onto a lot of these other devices. After 6 months of using the iPhone, what would have pleased me now frankly shocked me.

That's not to say that the iPhone is perfect. No, there are a bunch of things that I realized I'd miss once I got back to the iPhone. I'd miss to-do lists, I'd miss installing programs, I'd miss the culture of openness that most of the other smartphones possess. I know that I'll have some, if not all, of the features I've been wanting in a few months once 3rd party applications arrive; I'm sure that others will arrive as carrots in the future whether they come from Apple or whether they come from the hacking community.

The future is really why I went for the iPhone in the first place. I wanted to use a device that has a future, not one that has a past. All of the other smartphones, they come with what is best described as baggage. There's a history to how they do things, and when they do something that's probably wrong in terms of how a smartphone ought to work, there's an excuse for it, or some obscure technical reason that was relevant years ago but isn't relevant now. They were designed to work around older technology, and all of that cruft builds up, and that cruft takes battery power. Why else would those thicker devices have worse battery life? In a lot of ways, the other smartphones pioneered the way, but it doesn't seem like they kept up. The iPhone, even with its shortcomings, is a fresher look on what it means to be a smartphone than any of the other devices out there, and I'm pretty sure that it will continue to be that way. Who is going to be able to keep up with what Apple has started?

I'm not trying to dig on anyone that uses these devices. I'm just trying to illuminate why they don't work for me, and see what I can take from the experience of using them.

RIM's BlackBerry

RIM? RIM is worried about Microsoft's Windows Mobile eating into their profit share to focus on the iPhone -- the BlackBerry and the iPhone are pretty much in different worlds. The BlackBerry is buried in this small email world. Sure, email is important, but what about the web? The web opens up an entirely new world, and BlackBerry seems poised to miss it. There's no touchscreen either, which is a real bummer for me. Their operating system is its own alien world too -- buried settings, multiple icons, carrier branding all over the place, their own special version of mobile Java that isn't fully compatible with other versions of Mobile Java... they require their own special data plan that goes through BlackBerry... I just don't get it.

There are some things that I like about BlackBerry, though. Even if it's not the greatest version of mobile Java (J2ME, MIDP2.0), it's still Java, and it provides a lot of access to the device. If you want an IM app, you can have an IM app. If you want to play a game, you can play a game. If you want FaceBook, you can have FaceBook. And the push factor is another great aspect to the device -- it saves on battery life, and notifies you when it has something for you. The unified inbox really allows you to schlorp the emails through.

Palm

With Palm, the software is good. It's just that I can't bring myself to invest money into it -- it's like betting on the oldest horse in a horse race. Put the horse out to stud -- it's not going to win any more races. Its offspring, maybe they can win. To mix metaphors, the phoenix first has to die before it can be born anew, and I'm not in a rush to wait almost 2 years for that to happen. I don't want to wait two years to see what my new smartphone can do. I want to see what my smartphone can do now. When I upgraded from the 680 to the iPhone back in June, I got what a lot of Palm users had been anguishing over for years: a modern looking user interface, a new launcher, a better web browser, wi-fi, better battery life, and a thin form factor. Palm OS shows its age -- it's tough to use with MP3 ringtones... or profiles... or wi-fi... it's web browser is pretty bad...

The fact that Palm is still around is testament that they did a bunch of stuff right. If one of their next-generation operating systems had panned out, they might be in a different situation than they're in, and it's unfortunate that they are where they are. Everything is easy to use, there's a bunch of apps out there, it's simple, quick, and easy to use whether you install extra apps or not, and everything is well thought out. There are tweaks that make things even easier, and for the methods that I'm aware of, they're less expensive than the tweaks for Windows Mobile.

Microsoft's Windows Mobile

Microsoft? Microsoft isn't going to worry so much about the high end of things. They have a platform to worry about, and they're going to slug it out with all of the other platforms out there. They're going to target the spacious middle. They don't care about the top 1%, they care about the middle 50% and up. They'd like to compete with the iPhone someday, but they can't even compete with the iPod yet. Microsoft is worried about Linux, about Google's Android, about Symbian -- they have enough to think about, and their software, though ridiculously powerful, requires a bunch of tweaking to get it to work right. And not only does Microsoft have to get it right, but the device manufacturer has to get it right too -- how many buttons is enough? How many is too much? What kind of navigational gimmick will it use to set itself apart? Who is going to build a car kit that's designed to integrate seamlessly with a no-name Chinese Windows Mobile OEM? When will Microsoft ship a decent mobile browser? When will Microsoft figure out their music and ringtone store and make them worthwhile for use? Not soon enough for me. Microsoft will be where I would want them to be when Palm's Linux OS comes out, and there's no way to tell if Palm will be worth the wait or not.

So what's okay about Windows Mobile? Well, the sky is the limit. The only thing it demands is your time. And that you be a super consumer, that you're willing to research the 100+ various models to see which one is right with you. Then you have to hope that the model that meets the stats you want has the same software updates you want, because Microsoft is essentially spineless in terms of how they set up the user interface -- they won't put their foot down and say "no, that goes too far." It's a lawless world of inconsistency, which serves to make it harder to use. The flip side of this coin is that some handset makers know how to get it right. You just have to do the research to get it right. It's going to take a lot of time. A whole lot of precious time. It will also take a lot of money.

And Windows Mobile is really the jack of all trades in this regard. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride, but bridesmaid is better than nothing. Windows Mobile has push technology, easy integration with Exchange, the weight of a zillion dollar monopoly behind it, Don't get me wrong, if I had to pick a 2nd horse in this race right now, it's Windows Mobile. If you're going to make a safe bet on the future right now (that isn't the iPhone), this is probably the one.

Apple's iPhone

So where will the iPhone go? What direction will it head? No one can say. The iPhone, just scant months after its release, is already ahead in so many categories. Web browsing, movies, entertainment, music, web videos. Apple has come so far in so little time, and it's only going to get better once the SDK comes out in February. Then the itches that remain will be scratched. It is a shame that the SDK wasn't done when the device came out, though. The first 7 months of the iPhone feels a lot like a pre-release or a beta period -- without third party apps, you really don't see the full picture of the platform's capabilities.

And since we don't have that SDK yet, there's no good way to scratch the 3rd-party app itch. To get 3rd party apps, you've got to hack your iPhone. And while that's not a barrier for some, it is a barrier for others, to be sure. If you can't get anyone to scratch the itch, the itch remains and drives you crazy. This is Apple's fault, and it's why you'll hear a lot of people say "the iPhone is amazing, but...." It's the lack of 3rd party apps that causes the "but," that forces the qualification.

Even if they were able to ship with little widgets on the iPhone, that would have ameliorated the itch. It would have been a balm, if programmers could store some javascript on the phone so we could run little mini-apps that talked to the web.

But here's the rub of it all: even the gripes showcase why the iPhone is such a crazy awesome device. I'm griping about the lack of desktop widgets on my phone. That complaint isn't even possible on the other devices. Apple set the bar very, very high, and they made an entirely new set of rules common. If you're looking to buy an iPhone, the worst case scenario is that Apple stuff generally has a lot of resale value if you don't like it.

The Smartphone Round Robin has been extended to Sunday, Dec 9 at 12PM PST.

If you make a lot of international calls, the service promoted by Jajah may be of interest to you. You sign up with their service, and when you want to make an international call, you punch the number in on their made-for-iPhone website, and wait for them to call you.

• it's a web app, so you don't need to jailbreak or anything
• for folks based in the U.S. and Europe, but you can call to 122 countries
• it makes no sense to use for domestic calls, since it uses your minutes anyway
• they charge you starting at 2 or 3 cents per minute for international calls, rates are available
• you should verify that it is a lot cheaper than what AT&T would charge you
• they use VOIP, aka voice-over-IP, which is basically telephone calls that use the internet.

Ars Technica notes on some details about a patent, filed last year, about gaming on the iPhone. The patent details using a part of the screen to show the game. Another section of the screen functions as an input that can control both the game and other multitasking apps outside of the game, such as the iPod music app. The patent also details using the gaming control app alongside a game scene. The control area controls multiple apps at the same time depending on where you tap and flick? I think that's the gist of it.

I wouldn't get my hopes up for Apple releasing a game based on this anytime terribly soon; patents aren't reliable indicators of when a feature is forthcoming. Indeed, we might never see this, at least, not from Apple. It could also be the basis for multi-tasking on the iPhone when apps become available, you never know.

W00t! With your help this podcast reached #41 in iTunes gadget podcasts. Thanks to you! We chat a bit about the Smartphone Round Robin, iPhone launches in Europe, unlocked iPhones, supposed spat between AT&T and Apple, rumors of the SDK being seeded, Universal CEO mockery, and the usual looks from our community.

I'd also like to apologize for the lateness of this podcast -- we've been t roubled with some audio problems since we upgraded to Leopard. Okay, I've had some audio problems since we upgraded to Leopard. Dieter has been fine.



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Phone Different Podcast #10 for December 4, 2007

w00t, #41 on gadgets in iTunes! ahead of our other podcast somehow at 58. no review, though. hey, at least you know we're not astroturfing our own stuff, right?

News

Smartphone Round Robin

• iPhone reviewed by CrackBerry.com Kevin
• Treo 680 reviewed by iPhone Mike.

iPhone Section

• Europe
  • T-Mobile vs. Vodaphone. Turns out that Vodaphone won and T-Mobile makes their $1500 unlocked phones available. Spendy!
  • if you want an officially unlocked iPhone, france is your cheapest option so far.
  • random foreign 3G rumors always cropping up. May, or so they say. Don't believe it!
• iPhone as next major computing platform according to Inc.com.
• seemingly a confirmation of late 2008 for 2nd gen iPhone. ppl talk about this like it's a spat.

Apps Section

• Greg Joswiak talked about the SDK. It's mostly PR, but it's a good review of stuff.
• There are rumors the SDK has already been seeded to partners. Hopefully for this.

iTunes Section

• you always seem to be able to find stories of incompetence in the record industry if you want it. Today, the UMG CEO.

Apple Section

• weird Cringely rumor. I'm usually a fan; Dieter usually isn't.

Store

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Arkon CM910 Vehicle Mount Kit & Universal Holder for Apple iPhone
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Blueant T8 Micro Bluetooth Headset
The BlueAnt T8 micro is an affordable, lightweight and ergonomic Bluetooth headset that delivers comfort, excellent battery life and clear audio quality. The T8 micro is designed using the latest Bluetooth 2.0 technology which can enhance a faster connection between devices and runs on extremely low power consumption.

Community

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To contact us, dial 866 757 7752 extension 222. or you can email us at podcast at phonedifferent dot com, it goes directly to both of us.

Highlights from the community:

• AT&T confirms jobs, becomes good discussion. story comments, w00t
• web apps manifesto from supes2000 good time to mention palm's mobile portal.
• CrackBerry.com Kevin on the iPhone thread. official SPE RR.

ModMyiFone member suavphisticated figured out how to put together an picture messaging (aka MMS) app for hacked iPhones. It's probably a bit early for general consumption, but if you're feeling technically apt and are jonesing to prove it, here's your big chance. It can only send mms messages, as in it is not yet able to receive them, but receiving is apparently part of the long-term plan. Can I get a w00t?

The last iPhone review is up from Kevin of CrackBerry.com. It's a well-written review of the iPhone and he sides with me against Dieter that the iPhone is a smartphone, big ups there. It has some catching up to do, to be sure, but that's to be expected for a device that hasn't even been out 6 months yet. It sounds to me like he's been thinking about purchasing one. Kevin names the iPhone the champ of entertainment, and wonders why they didn't call it the iGadget -- the phone is treated as just another application of the phone. It's an interesting point, one I'll be addressing later with my triumphant "return to the iPhone" article.

CNet France reports that a new version of the firmware, version 1.1.3 is due for release at the end of this week. They claim that the update will bring a voice-recording app, as well as the use of disk mode so you can use your iPhone as a portable storage drive. Electronista notes that it's been about a month since the last update, and the last update happened at the end of the week. I hope that a considerable update is in the works; I'm still waiting for the Leopard-obvious features like notes syncing. Still, this is just a rumor; nothing real to get excited about.

Verizon recently announced a bunch of things -- that users would be able to use unlocked cell phones on their service, that they were doing a 180 and would be supporting Google's Android, and that they were going to start thinking of their network as an open network. Of course, the cynical (meaning John Paczkowski of AllThingsD) figure that Verizon will charge per-byte data charges to prevent their network from turning into "dumb pipe" (video link) just like how Verizon's parent company Vodafone does it in Europe.

Of course, that creates a new PR blurb for AT&T: their network has always been open and they don't monitor, notice, or care what phone you use. The cynical make a joke in the headline about being "most open to the U.S. government," zing, but that it wasn't a PR point until Verizon did their new open bit. It was just assumed as part of the open nature of GSM.

While those two wireless giants fight it out with themselves, the irony that remains is that the iPhone is actually a pretty closed device as it stands currently.

The BBC reports that of the 30,000 iPhones sold in France over the first 5 days, 20% of them were sold as the more expensive unlocked version. That's right, upwards of 7000 folks spent €750, or about $1000 US, to get an unlocked iPhone. How many of them were from other EU nations not willing to wait for the iPhone to arrive? It just goes to show that there's a demand for it; if I could spend the money to officially unlock my main iPhone, I definitely would. While I love visual voicemail, I do wish that Apple would've opted for multiple carriers instead of exclusivity.

image credit: Engadget

Google has made their main page and many of their other pages iPhone compatible. The main page gives web, image, local, and news searches, there are easy buttons for GMail, Calendar, Reader, and More -- More being Docs, GOOG-411, SMS, News, Photos, Blogger, and Notebook.

In other news, iPhone is the fastest-growing search term of 2007, which isn't too surprising. If you're a user of AOL's Instant Messenger and Google's GMail, Google has integrated AIM into GMail. W00t!

If you've hacked your iPhone, there are a few banner apps that popped up last night. The first app comes from a hacker by the name of Hachu, and it allows you to download files via MobileSafari on the iPhone directly. The initial release appears to support only zip and tar files, but if you're comfortable adding .plist files, the thread is chock full of different MIME declarations to allow the plugin to download many different files to your iPhone's /var/root/Downloads folder. One of the key things I've been missing about the iPhone! [image credit]

Foundation of Wi-Fi wireless sync for iPhone

The second app that is crazy useful if you've hacked your iPhone is iSync for iPhone by Francisios. If you've been hoping for wireless syncing with your iPhone, it's accomplished via rsync, a remote syncing protocol that's been around for quite a while and is very common and stable. The project is ambitious as evidenced by the project goals:

• Synchronize iTunes library over Wi-Fi
• Synchronize Photos over Wi-Fi
• Synchronize Bookmarks, Contacts etc over Wi-Fi

French mobile carrier Orange reported that they've sold about 30,000 iPhones in the first five days of the iPhone launch. Half of the buyers are new customers. Orange's target for the first month is 50,000 to 100,000 so it looks like they'll be fine there. For next year, they're hoping for around 500,000 iPhone customers.

When I say the King is dead, I don't mean that the 680 is a bad device, or that there's no reason to use Palm OS, or that anyone that uses it is dumb. Far from it, I think the 680 is pretty high up on my list. It's still a good phone. If I thought Palm OS was dumb or not relevant, I wouldn't do the TreoCentral TreoCast. It boils down to two things with Palm OS: the hardware and the software. The hardware will see updates. There will probably be more Palm OS GSM phones to come out. Better cameras, 3G, smaller form factors, the whole shebang. When it comes out, it will probably be a compelling upgrade for Palm OS users. But I don't think we'll see a significant software update for Palm OS in the next two years. While some may accuse that it's unfair to say "the king is dead" alluding to Palm OS, it's not accurate to say the king is alive, either. But still, there are always these persistent rumors about faked deaths and random sightings...

680 Hardware

It's a bit of a shame that the 680 was what we ended up reviewing; Palm, for unknown reasons, tends to do all of their innovation on CDMA before they do anything new for GSM. Palm's Centro is actually a pretty neat phone, ,and it bodes well for what they'll be introducing in the future. The 680, though only a year old, doesn't seem to age quite the way that one would like. Two of the other phones in the Smartphone Round Robin are very nice and svelte -- the iPhone and the BlackBerry Curve -- and the other, though brickish, is packed with features like 3G, wi-fi, and GPS. The 680 seems paltry by comparison in many areas.

Palm can do better than they did with the 680; the Centro is proof of that. But Palm only releases a couple of phones per year, and we probably won't see anything to replace the 680 on the GSM side of things for another few months at least. This leaves the Treo 680 dated in terms of features.

If you're on CDMA, there's at least the option of the Treo 755P and the Palm Centro. Those two phones are technologically advanced, at least moreso than the 680. The 680 shipped with a VGA camera, almost criminally obsolete for a smartphone. What makes it worse is that it fixed a color balance problem the preceding 650 had. A lot of people thought the 680 was what the 650 should have been. I don't agree with that assessment, I think Palm traditionally innovates along a path -- they've chosen a form factor, and they'll continue to refine it. You could even say that they started the form factor, or at least popularized it when they invented their Palm Pilot.

The thing about Palm is that they've been the market leader before. They know what it's like to be on top, and they probably have a good idea of what they have to do in terms of engineering to get back there. They'd probably like to engineer a few things away; they've been humbled a bit by other device makers -- for example, the iPhone really showed a lot of people what a smartphone could really be capable of doing. But Palm has to wrangle with some inherent limitations. The biggest one is their software, Palm OS.

Software-Constrained

Because of the way it was written back in the day, Palm OS doesn't allow more than 2 radios at the same time. There are a lot of useful radios that go into a feature-packed cell phone. Of course, the integral radio transmitter is the cell antenna, which handles such things like phone calls, GPRS, EDGE, 3G, 1xRTT, or EV-DO. The first choice is pretty much made.

The second choice, that gets tough. Bluetooth requires a separate radio. Wi-fi requires a separate radio. For all I know, GPS requires a separate radio (in terms of how Palm OS would deal with it). Wi-Max requires a separate radio. If the new 700MHz wireless block gets bought by Google and they unveil a new, cheap-as-in-free wireless network, that will require a separate radio. Everyone can pick as many radios as they can stuff into a little metal and plastic candybar/brick shape and go from there. Palm can pick two radios altogether, and the die is cast: they have to have a cell radio (1) and they chose bluetooth (2). End of story. They could fix it, but they're not going to.

680 Software

Okay, that transition was unnecessarily negative. Palm OS has a ton of strengths. In a lot of ways, Palm OS has more strengths than some of the other platforms out there -- their software is pretty easy to use, there are a ridiculous amount of 3rd party apps, and a large and vocal community dedicated to the platform. What good is integrated GPS if you have to dig into arcane COM ports before you can use it? But, there are some revolutions coming in the mobile phone world, and PalmOS, as it stands now, is equipped to miss them. Without wi-fi, the likelihood of using a PalmOS phone for VOIP calls is unlikely, for example. And Palm's mindshare and marketshare is slipping more and more with every passing year.

Once Palm finishes their next-generation Linux operating system the situation will be different. At that point, Palm may leapfrog everybody out there. Palm has licensed their operating system before, they may again. However, the last time they did license, they spun off their software division so the hardware and software sides of Palm didn't have any inherent advantage in working with each other. That led to a lot of hassles for Palm in the long run and they're probably not likely to repeat the same mistakes.

The bummer of it is that I think Palm is more constrained by their software than anyone else in the Smartphone Round Robin. Sure, the software on the Curve isn't all that advanced, but it's plenty stable and designed to do a much smaller subset of functions than the 680 -- people don't really expect as much, and RIM's OS gets better and better with each passing day. And since Palm wasn't able to sell the enterprise on the necessity of a touchscreen for smartphones, well... they lost a lot of customers.

The operating system on the 680 is both enabling and limiting -- once the software is on the device, there's a lot of things you can do. I have this feeling that it takes Palm a lot of work to get PalmOS on hardware in the first place. I could easily be wrong about this, but when I think about getting PalmOS on a device, I think about bolted-on compatibility libraries designed to run a bunch of code that was done in assembly for a different chip architecture. To give an analogy, the PalmOS is kind of like building something by hand. The iPhone, Curve, and Tilt operating systems would be more like building a something with robots on an assembly line.

Looking to the future?

Now I'll move on to what might be the toughest thing about the 680. Palm is done with the Palm OS. They don't want to put too much development effort into it as I stated in the earlier article. They probably wont' be buying some neato Palm OS widget and bolting it on as a cosmetic upgrade. It's not worth it to them; it's more important to get their Linux OS out the door faster. Unfortunately, that's probably the right thing to do in their case.

They'll probably have some sort of compatibility layer that runs the compatibility layer that runs the old dragonball assembly so that most of the old Palm OS apps run on the new Linux OS. They have all the rights they could possibly need for this due to a licensing-rights and code-ownership settlement with the seemingly-incompetent software company that used to be part of Palm that Palm perhaps mistakenly spun off and maybe wanted to buy back but was bought by Access instead. Are you confused? Yes? Good, then you're halfway there. Actually, you've probably pretty much got it covered. It was a debacle; the important thing is that whatever it was, it happened and it's behind Palm now. They can focus on the future, and they're now essentially doing so now with steely-eyed determination.

The Foleo could've been a good indication of what they're planning except for the fact that they revealed that the Foleo wasn't based off their next-gen Linux system. Palm was tight-lipped about the Foleo before it was introduced; they'll probably be tight-lipped about their new Linux OS will be too. We don't know what it will look like; we don't know how much it will build off of the current Palm OS. We don't know if they'll keep the interface similar; we don't know if they're going to blow everyone away with how awesome it is, we don't know when it will be out. We don't know if they can keep it a secret. We don't know if they're going to copy Apple or leapfrog them. No one knows, but you ask me, Palm is definitely the wild card in this race.

Snapped Back to the Present

In the meantime, we have the Treo 680. It's a good phone. My wife uses my old 680, and will continue to use it until the next iPhone comes out. I'll probably buy that new iPhone because Palm's next-generation Linux OS won't be available yet and it'll be my duty as an iPhone blogger. She'll gripe about the money I'm spending but I'll ameliorate her disquietude by giving her my current iPhone and her orange 680 will be gifted to whomever in our family or friends is on GSM and needs something more advanced than their current featurephone. The 680 will still be perfectly functional, and there will be a bunch of software they can use with it as long as they're comfortable with having a HotSync ID of mike.

Klausner Technologies Inc. has filed a $360 million lawsuit against AT&T and Apple for allegedly violating two of Klausner's voicemail patents. Klausner has brought other people to task on the two patents in question before -- once for AOL, and once for Vonage. Klausner has also sued Apple before for patents pertaining to the long-gone Apple Newton; Apple ended up licensing the patents back then.

Everyone was talking about Burst's patents too and and the hundred bajillion dollar lawsuits there, but my guess is that Apple will be fighting this one tooth and nail -- it seems that Apple would rather pay their lawyers to get patent-holding companies' patents tossed than pay for patents. Klausner Tech is apparently website-less, leading me to believe that it's a patent-holdings troll company

The unlocked German iPhones are no more -- the Judge for the Vodafone vs. T-Mobile lawsuit reversed the injunction that required T-Mobile to sell unlocked iPhones. And now that they don't have to sell the iPhone unlocked, they're not going to -- the unlocked iPhone is gone from Germany. The officially unlocked iPhone is still available in France for much less than it was in Germany anyway. Vive le revolution!

The iPhone edged out the entirety of all Windows CE-based devices in web usage according to data provided by Market Share at Hitslink.com. The iPhone came in at #10 with 0.09%, whereas Windows CE weighed in at 0.06% for #11. You read that, Dieter? We're #10! We're #10! The iPod on their list, which I'm forced to assume is the iPod Touch, shows up at around 0.01%. We're #10 and #20! We're #10 and #20!

Of course, the list is dominated by the big desktop operating systems, but there are a few other interesting gems on the list: The Sidekick / Hiptop shows up at #13 with 0.02%, and Nokia's S60 Symbian OS shows up at #14 with 0.01%. The PSP just edges out the iPod Touch for #19 at 0.01%, and what appears to be a mobile version of Apple's WebCore shows up again at #24 with 0.00% -- possibly one of Nokia's internet tablet devices.

Raffi Krikorian of Synthesis Studios wrote to inform me that they've reverse-engineered how the Starbucks button works. Most of the Starbucks shops out there aren't going to get the hookup with wi-fi for about a year. I asked them about it, and they'll be disclosing the process soon.

"we managed to figure out how to get the starbucks button to show up on our iphones -- [if you happen to be in] Boston, MA -- then you can pop by our offices to check it out. we were too impatient to wait for the starbucks in boston to get the starbucks button our iphones, so we took matters into our own hands

It's always nice to see folks making their own fun. This fun was apparently done with a laptop, an iPhone, and a train ticket to NY, as you can see here. Thanks to Raffi for the tip!

Gizmodo reports that the creators of iPhone unlocking app AnySIM have considered open-sourcing their application to spread their code far and wide, hopefully picking up many new coders and eyeballs in the process. They've apparently floated the idea about for a while, and found that no one objected to the deal. They then put the idea to the community at hackint0sh, a popular iPhone hacking forum and AnySIM's main site. Reading from the threads on hackint0sh, it appears that initially most folks advocate keeping the source closed; if you'd rather read a more open-source friendly version of the same discussion there's always slashdot. [image credit Jesus Diaz of Gizmodo]

George Hotz, the eminent iPhone hacker that was part of the team that first unlocked their iPhones, continues to hack away at the security that prevents iPhone users from mucking around with activations, unlocks, and unofficial 3rd party applications. Specifically, he found a couple of errors in the bootloader that theoretically should allow folks to install custom firmware to their iPhone, or just re-flash earlier, less locked versions of their cell radio. One of the hacks uses hardware, the other uses software. It seems that he's doing well at RIT and I'm glad to see that he hasn't moved on to other devices.

Mark Sullivan of PC World compiled a list of five technology groups that frequently conspired to be anti-consumer. That, or they were really just a bunch of jerks. Well, AT&T makes the list twice, showing up in the list for various groups they belong to at #3 and #4. Well, they kind of show up in #5 too -- #5 is a critique of most wireless carrier parties involved in the 700 MHz auction that Google's part of. What kept AT&T from being at #1 and #2? Big pharma and the recording industry. Not too shabby!

I'll admit to liking Robert X. Cringely of PBS. Sure, his theories are wild sometimes. But they're wild in a fun way, and he'll revisit things that he got wrong. He doesn't resort to trolling like some writers of his generation who happen to be friends of his, and when he does troll, it's against something that we all hate anyway, like our mobile phone carrier. He's a uniter, not a divider.

Cringely's idea is that Stephenson's recent message of a 3G iPhone next year (covered recently here) will chill iPhone sales and cost AT&T about $1 billion in market cap. That, and that Apple will be parnering with Google to buy that 700MHz spectrum. If that charge was true, stockholders should oust Stephenson for neglecting is fiduciary duty: to make them a crapload of money. If I was a stockholder, I wouldn't forgive a billion-dollar mistake. I'm inclined to write off the spat as likely to be a rumor because Stephenson's line is pretty much the same line we were given from Jobs. However, there is a 'but' in this: the possibility of Apple working with Google for spectra, that's enough to give me pause. Like so many Cringely articles one has to file it away and see what happens in the distant future.

In other news, Apple has a $30 billion war chest. That's Microsoft scale money.

Kevin Michaluk of CrackBerry.com reviewed the iPhone and reviews it positively. He's got a thread going in our forums too. Someone may have asked if they could keep the 4GB iPhone until it became available on their carrier; I won't name any names, nor will I offer proof (because I forgot to take a !@#$ screenshot). No, I'll be content to insinuate. The other party would have accepted except that they have other immediate plans for said iPhone once the Smartphone Round Robin is over. Still, it's an interesting proposition, and if someone had a spare iPhone to give, someone would have taken someone else up on it. If someone could dole out iPhones to people that needed interface love, someone definitely would.

Steve Jobs mentioned the possibility of a 3G back in September, when he was announcing the iPhone on O2. He was asked a question about 3G and when we'd see it in the iPhone. His response back in September was telling:

"We've got to see the battery life for 3G get back up into the five-plus hour range, before it's really suitable for [the iPhone]. I think we'll see that hopefully late next year. But right now, you make a really big tradeoff to go to 3G, and that's really bad battery life."

Well, AT&T's Randall Stephenson had a big PR quotefest that you can read over at Bloomberg, and he mentions again that the iPhone would be coming out in 2008, but without the 'late' part. A lot of naysayers will use that to back up their crazy predictions of 3G iPhones arriving 'May 2008.' They may do well to note that Jobs is not so optimistic: he's thinking hopefully late next year, meaning there's a real possibility of 2009.

figure 1: UMG CEO Doug Morris as interpreted by artist Psillos

If you're looking read a sob story for the music industry, Wired has your ticket. They interviewed Universal CEO Doug Morris about his woes with iTunes and how to deal with the MP3 problem, and it's pretty revealing.

Universal in the process of starting a new subscription-based service called Total Music to replace iTunes (and Microsoft's Plays-For-Sure, and maybe Microsoft's other Zune marketplace too). The best part about that is he's looking to deliver yet another format. You have MP3s, you have iTunes' AACs, you have Windows Media's WMA, you have other myriad formats like OGG and FLAC, and then you'll have yet another choice.

figure 2: Mr. Non-Digital guy drinking with Mr. Internet Enabling Apple Board Member Digital Guy

Morris admits he's not a digital guy, but... wow. his response to the threat of iTunes doesn't make sense to me. He wants tech companies to foot the bill for at least the first few months, which I don't think will fly. They're just going to pass the added cost on to consumers, and after that the consumer is stuck with keeping things up. Would I need multiple subscriptions for multiple devices? If I do, that would suck. If I don't, it would still suck, since the tech companies would still build the cost of the unnecessary subscription into the retail price of their music player. And this is assuming they don't try to establish a 4th common format, mind you. Which they probably will, probably with the help of Microsoft (or worse, Real).

If they sell multiple versions with different music licensing -- one version more expensive and with a subscription, and one much less but without a subscription -- consumers get confused, have a negative experience with the platform, and return to iTunes (or Amazon MP3, or stealing music, or home taping, or whatever).

And if they get the tech makers to build in the cost a lifelong subscription into a device, what's to stop Apple from licensing that tech besides collusion? What would be my purpose to upgrade in music-playing hardware besides capacity? It doesn't look like it would be a good long-term deal for the tech giants either (let alone me), unless the tech giants have an elaborate plan for screwing over the record companies later.

Another part of his plan was to not renew the contract with iTunes, so they could reduce the number of songs and albums they'd sell on iTunes. Forcing customers to subscribe to a subscription service so he can escape the "golden handcuffs" of iTunes probably isn't going to fly especially well. The market has pretty much spoken for the iPod so far -- maybe something revolutionary will come along; maybe something won't. My best guess is that whatever replaces the iPod will still be made by Apple, but whatever. The music industry's next best hope is the Zune from Microsoft. Is that scary or what? Fleeing Apple for Microsoft is the very definition of "out of the frying pan, into the fire."

I dunno, it seems like this guy is dancing in quicksand. In other news, iTunes accounts for 22% of all music sold in the USA, and Amazon MP3 is also an excellent choice for online music. My line in the sand: if it's not iTunes or it's not MP3 or some similar open format, it's doomed. (photo via Getty, painting via Wired)

Google Maps for Mobile has unveiled a pretty sweet new feature -- on a bevy of mobile phones, Google Maps is smart enough to figure out approximately where you are. Google's system uses a method known as tower triangulation -- your phone keeps a list of nearby towers, and makes note of how strong your signal is. Google accesses their database of towers and compares your signal strength and correlates it to a likely location on the map. It's pretty slick, and has been common in parts of Europe for ages. Location-based features of mobile phones are a killer app, to be sure.

The iPhone launches in France tonight on the carrier Orange. One of the cool things about the French launch is that they're selling the unlocked iPhone for so much less than T-Mobile is selling it for. Maybe all the delays in launching a French iPhone were because Orange was a tougher negotiator... if that's true, the extra time was worth it: the uncontracted iPhone from Orange is a bargain at €649 (about $975); the standard locked iPhone with one of their four simplified plans is €399 (about $600),

The customer can unlock the iPhone for €100 (about $150), which drops to free after six months. If only we could have some straight answers from AT&T and Apple about unlocking in the U.S.A.

Zach Nelson of Inc.com declared the iPhone is ushering in the next major computing platform. I agree with him, really -- the ability to intelligently browse actual websites on the iPhone is a killer business feature. He's the CEO of NetSuite, and a bit of the article is him crowing that NetSuite worked perfectly with the iPhone out-of-box, but still... it's a good article with some fine insights:

"Not the humble cell phone, you say? It's too small, too weak, too underpowered for serious productivity? If history matters, new computing platforms have always emerged from the low-end of the marketplace. The Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) minicomputer supplanted the IBM mainframe, then Sun’s Unix Workstations replaced DEC, and the PC replaced Sun. Now, the phone is going to surpass the PC."

It briefly sounds like quackery, but he smartly refrains from predicting the death of the PC or the death of the internet.

"Just as there are still mainframes, mini-computers and workstations in use, the phone won’t eliminate the PC. But more and more work will get done on your phone. And the same transition we saw from keyboard-only mainframe applications to point-and-click mouse-driven interfaces is happening again, this time with designs that keep the needs of mobile users in mind. It is going to force software companies to think carefully about how they use that precious screen real-estate on the phone.

If you still aren't convinced, just wait, and the decision will be made for you by your best and brightest new hires. Never lose sight of what the college students of today are accustomed to. Living -- not just communicating -- on a small, handheld device is simply second-nature. They are so tied to these devices that their dedication, and the applications already being created for the latest vanguard of smart phones, is going to transform business five to ten years down the road." "

Electronista reports that some developers have already received an advance copy of the iPhone system development kit. Apparently the kit makes good on Jobs' earlier promise of code signing.

The kit is apparently not a full-access type of kit; it's more of an intermediating layer between the programmer and the actual operating system frameworks. That means that a lot of the iPhone's possible functionality won't be realized (at least as the SDK currently stands) as programmers won't be getting raw access to the iPhone. As Jobs said earlier, they want to be as open as possible while ensuring that iPhone owners' information is safe.

If that's true, it also means that a lot of apps that currently work on hacked iPhones via Installer.app probably won't be easy to port over to the official SDK.

The title doesn't give an exact quote, but if I was to say there's a gist to this interview, that would be it. CNN Money.com Fortune interviewed Apple's Greg Joswiak, who is in charge of marketing for iPhones and iPods. As is almost always the case with an interview like this, he doles out the money quotes like Michael Jordan sticks out his tongue. Some of it we've heard before -- they want to take time to make sure everything is going alright, and there isn't really any new news, just that it's presented in more detail than before:

"I think the software development kit (SDK) that’s going to be available for the iPhone is very interesting, because we think that with the revolutionary multi-touch interface and the phenomenal product that the iPhone is, and certainly having OS X underneath it, that it’s going to be an unbelievable platform for developers.

"Of course what we want to make sure we’ve done is keep the phone safe and reliable, and that’s why it’s taken us a little while to get this SDK out. Especially now that we’ll have a real SDK which means legitimate developers are going to come into the space. There are all kinds of fantastic and great things that they’re going to do.

[....]

"We do our best to try to understand what customers are going to want down the road. I’m fond of the Wayne Gretzky quote — you skate to where the puck is going to be. We try to understand as we develop our product road map, what’s going to be exciting in the future. And that’s one of the advantages we have over our competitors. Our competitors tend to put the cross hairs on where we are now, and by the time they come up with a product that tries to match where we are now, we’re beyond them. We’re one or two generations beyond, moving faster than they are."

Last week, there was press of unlocked iPhones as the result of the T-Mobile vs. Vodafone lawsuit. T-Mobile lost the suit and as a result have to sell an unlocked iPhone. To keep anyone from actually buying it, they set the price astronomically high, at €999, or $1500 American. There were really only two possibilities for how the $1500 iPhone would be unlocked: one, they would do it for you at the store. If they could unlock from the point of sale, hackers would figure out how Apple did it in the baseband radio and we'd all get unlocked phones. Apple clearly couldn't do that, so they instead do it from iTunes. If someone purchases an unlocked iPhone from T-Mobile, their IMEI (kind of like a unique serial number for your iPhone) is put into a database. And when that iPhone is activated, it shows up as unlocked. Presto, that's it!

If you're looking to translate the German from the image above: "Unlock Complete. Your iPhone has been successfully unlocked. Click continue to set [?] and sync your iPhone."

It's an increasingly rare day when a press release finds its way to my inbox that's actually relevant to me or anyone that uses an iPhone. But, goosync.com has done it. They have a product that syncs your iPhone with Google's online calendar. It's a Windows-only app and it requires Outlook with a plugin, but if you were looking for a way to sync the Google to your iPhone, there's a way to do it.

"A synchronisation application is not yet available for the Apple iPhone. However, it is still possible to synchronise the device with GooSync by using the Funambol Outlook Plugin. [....] A GooSync client for the Apple iPhone is planned for release in Q1 2008."

I don't know why you would, but if you need the press release, it's after the break.

Google and iPhone Now in Sync

Toffa International adds iPhone support to its on-line GooSync service.

Wolverhampton, UK November 26, 2007 – A better, more efficient way of keeping Google calendars and contacts synced with your iPhone is now possible thanks to GooSync.

Toffa International Limited, a leading developer in the mobile computing market, is adding iPhone support, to its existing on-line service, GooSync, which synchronizes a user’s Google Calendar and Contacts with their mobile device.

Amongst the benefits of using Google Calendar and Contacts, information can be added and amended either on line or on your iPhone and then automatically synced comfortably so you’re always up-to-date. No more worries that iPhone failure or theft will lead to losing valuable information.

Toffa International’s Managing Director Chris Jukes, said, “Our users wanted a one-stop synchronization solution for vital Calendars and Contacts. Adding iPhone support strengthens our ongoing commitment to supporting the latest mobile technologies. Keeping Calendars and Contacts Synced and Safe is a priority for iPhone users.”

Toffa launched GooSync in January 2007, since then over 100,000 users have been synchronizing their appointments and events between their mobile device and their free on-line Google Calendar. Toffa’s latest addition to GooSync means that iPhone users will now be able to sync their Google data.

How it works

The GooSync service is based on the Toffa commercial synchronization engine, SyncWiseLive, which supports industry open standards (SyncML). GooSync is compliant with most of the latest mobile phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs). For further information on GooSync please visit: www.goosync.com.

I think that I've been lucky with all of the phones that I've reviewed in the Smartphone Round Robin. I think there's a proper order. I began with the device furthest away in mentality to the iPhone, the BlackBerry Curve, and it was a fine device. I missed having a touchscreen, but it was a good device. Then, I got to use the Tilt for a week, and that was actually another good device -- very powerful with its touchscreen, and it has a form factor at least in parts reminiscent of the iPhone, though maybe without some of its ease of use. And last, I get to review the Treo, which is in many ways the closest of all of the phones we'll review to the iPhone. Did you know that iPhone owners were 7 times more likely to have used a Treo (or Sidekick) than any other phone?

I reviewed the Treo 680 before as a writer for TreoCentral, and as far as I know, it's in the top five of the TreoCentral page views to this day. I reviewed the 680 (Graphite) and then promptly went out and bought one (orange). I then handed off the trusty 650 to my wife, and that was the way things were until I bought an iPhone. Some crafty thief broke into her car to get her 650, and I then handed my trusty orange 680 off to my wife and focused on the iPhone and our site for it, phonedifferent.com. I didn't intend to look back, but that's more or less what I've been doing for the past few days with the Treo 680: reminiscing.

I say reminiscing because the Palm OS look and feel hasn't really substantially changed in quite some time. It still looks and behaves more or less the same as it did when I got my first Palm, the Palm III. Now it has colors, of course, and it's a phone too (and a pretty handy one at that), it can browse the web, play media, sync with a computer, all sorts of stuff. I don't lose all of my data when the battery runs out anymore. The screen is a generous 320x320; considering the phone has been out for a year, it's still ahead of most of the rest. The icons, though unified in appearance, are different enough to easily differentiate. It's a testament to how well PalmOS was designed that it is not just sold, but that it's still relevant. When Palm messes up, you still hear about it. People still look to Palm as a smartphone savior, they still want Palm to succeed. If they didn't, we wouldn't get the occasional blog rant from wherever on the internet about how Palm is mussing up and Palm should do this and Palm should do that (think Engadget).

But that's not really the point of this review. My job is to review the 680 and to give it some first looks again, like I did almost exactly a year ago. I re-read my review, and I don't feel it was as good as it should have been. I talked about specs and what's included and how does this match up and how does that match up, to be sure, but the review seems incomplete: it was a review aimed at anyone that had already been using a Palm OS Treo and was technically proficient with a Palm OS Treo. I should have broadened the scope of my review to be sure. Part of that was a time constraint; Palm moved the release date forward a bunch of days and we decided to rush to get it done in time to publish. This review will hopefully not make those same mistakes.

First Looks, um, Second Looks

Palm OS is admirable in that Palm has consistently tried to make things easy and consistent for the person using it. Palm thinks of everything on the main "home" screen as an application, including the phone app. The home screen is the application launcher. Palm OS was initially built to do some very simple things: take care of To-Do lists, calendars, memos, and manage contacts. Everything else has been bolted on over the years.

the app "home" screen from the Centro is more or less the same as the 680

the app "home" screen from the iPhone

The application names and icons tend to give a good idea of what each application does, as opposed to function as branding. With the exception of HotSync and some of the branded apps like GetGood, XPressMail, and My Treo (which should probably have been called 'Help'), everything is straightforward. Not all of the apps are totally user-friendly in that a lot of not-always-useful stuff is loaded on the starting screen. I know for a fact that my wife has never used the Card Info app, or Security, or Sim Srvcs, or SIM Book, or Wired Car Kit, or what have you. I almost would prefer for Palm to hide some of the branded and advanced apps a bit more behind the scenes. Maybe there could be an advanced app that would hide them. Maybe Palm could make a seciton in 'Prefs' that would hide or unhide those apps. Maybe 'Quick Tour' could hide itself after you ran it for the first time. Or perhaps Palm could incorporate the notion of folders into their launcher program. For their talk of 'expanding the smartphone market' to featurephone users, there are still myriad options on Palm OS. I bet they could put the Wired Car Kit options into the 'Prefs' app if they really wanted. My favorite personal solution for the extra cruft here is 'Invisible.prc,' which uses Palm OS' own mechanism for hiding files from the Launcher.

But herein lies the rub: Palm OS is dying, seemingly not especially enamored by Palm themselves (but more on that later). Palm will probably never make those changes -- For all we know, the 680 represented the last great push of features into Palm OS. It got an updated version of Blazer, a new phone app, and the return of the voice memo app. Palm recently released an update to the 680, but only for Cingular AT&T customers, which means that they probably only released the patch because AT&T made them do it talked them into it.

the 5-tab 680 phone app

I was always fond of the 680's phone app, it represented one concept that I liked about Windows Mobile: the 'today' screen. It also brought wallpaper to Palm OS. Some liked the new phone app, some didn't, some thought the old method of lists on the phone app were better, etc. Palm claimed that the phone app may or may not have been tied to the GSM chipset and therefore we wouldn't ever see it on CDMA phones like the Centro, which I think is unfortunate -- it's a good update to their other phone app, which is a few years old now. It makes things more friendly. It's the right thing to do.

oh hey, the iPhone has a 5-tab phone app too

The Future of Palm OS

Palm will not invest any more time or money in Palm OS than they absolutely have to. And from the looks of things, they don't intend to invest any time or money into Palm OS. Palm OS is like Latin, except that it's not dead. Palm is going to make a Linux smartphone, and that's their software future. They haven't announced any plans to ship a linux phone with Android, they aren't likely to ever ship a linux phone based off the Access Linux Project, they are shipping THEIR OWN LINUX PHONE. They have a plan for the future, and it will probably be revealed to us in trickles along the next two years when they finally finish their new Linux Palm OS.

I really look forward to this, the OS that they created for PDAs was brilliant and ahead of its time. I love my iPhone. If you want it, you're welcome to pry it from my cold dead hands. That said, I'm really interested to see what Palm releases, as they have a significant opportunity in the present to start from scratch, unlike *all* of their competitors. With their other competitors, it seems that the die has been cast. If you listen to the TreoCentral TreoCast starring myself and Dieter, you've heard me voice this sentiment before. The Palm of now is the Apple of 1996 -- in the dumps with a faltering stock price with much of their product lineup fading into irrelevance, but newly reinvigorated by an influx of cash and management talent.

And so in the meantime, Palm OS is what we're left with.

Though They're Done With It, They Didn't Finish It

In a lot of ways, there's a bunch of stuff that Palm OS just doesn't do. Extended profiles, for example: Palm ships with two, and you switch between them with the vibrate switch up at the top. You can totally do custom ringtones, all you have to do is 1) find a decent MIDI file site or 2) convert your MP3s or WAVs to AMR files, further convert them to a .pdb file, and presto! You're done. Easy as pie, right? Everyone followed along there? Good! Now, we'll put some MP3s on your device to play with pTunes. First, copy the MP3 files you want on your SD card to /some/convoluted/path. If your software doesn't support copying playlists to arbitrary directories, you'll want to copy each song manually. This will be a bummer if you use iTunes with all of its nested directories. What's that? Most of you do use iTunes? Well, that's okay. You just spend as much time on this step as you want.

wi-fi was possible on the 650 by a valiant effort from Enfora, but not pretty. No one came forward for such a beast on the 680.

And if you want wi-fi, you're pretty much out of luck. When Palm added the code for multiple radios (bluetooth and cell radio), they did it in a way that it wouldn't be easy to put in a 3rd radio. Sure, Palm OS will do wi-fi, but it won't do it in conjunction with a cell radio. Enfora figured out how to add wi-fi with a sled, but it's a pretty sub-par solution compared to the SD card wi-fi bits you can get for Windows Mobile. That's too bad -- wi-fi on a cell phone at home changed my life. Every time I look at my cell phone, I think that someday I'll be making VOIP calls on my iPhone over wi-fi at home instead of dealing with my crummy cellular signal.

I'm being snarky here, but you get the idea: Palm effectively stopped development on PalmOS about a year ago, maybe more. As other smartphones and featurephones become more advanced, Palm OS abides. Slowly becoming irrelevant feature-wise. The checklist of powerful features that PalmOS once dominated has grown, and with each passing day, other smartphones add features that the current version of Palm OS (Garnet) will never see.

You Can Do Anything Except Multi-Task

Palm OS is a single-tasking operating system for most things -- you can listen to music in the background, but you can't download something while you watch a video or have multiple tabs or anything like that. The flip side to this is that everything you do (minus viewing the web) is pretty snappy.

The Treo's web browser, aka the itty-bitty kinda-sorta internet

The 680 is a lot like Windows Mobile, in that it has a bunch of programs available that you can install to do just about anything. There are some excellent media add-ons available with Palm OS, and if you have one of the Treos with 3G, there's a Sling player available for Slingboxes; there's the excellent Kinoma directory for plenty of content available for watching on Treos, it's a very video friendly device. You can install J2ME and use Opera; you can buy PocketTunes deluxe to get iTunes syncing (minus DRM protected AAC files bought from iTunes).

One of the unfortunate things about the 3rd party support for Treos is that some developers have left the fold. Since Treos don't grow at nearly the rate of other smartphones, some folks consider it "dead." For some reason, this also includes Palm -- we once interviewed the CEO of Opera and asked him why they didn't make a Palm native version of Opera, and he told us Palm told him not to bother, since their new OS would be coming. That was probably a few years ago. And though some of the heavy-hitting search apps do make their way to Palm OS, some of them don't. Some of the third party apps that I used to love using are gone -- my favorite alarm clock hasn't seen an update in quite some time; some of the apps that I used in earlier years aren't even available to download anymore. Some of that can be attributed to the length of time Palms have been available, but not all -- for a number of reasons, Palm just didn't capitalize on the success of their PDAs when it comes to smartphones.

But even though these developers have left the fold, that doesn't mean that there's not a bunch of fun tweaking to be had. If there's something that bugs you about Palm OS and you're technically inclined, it's possible to burn your own firmware if you like. There are many, many possibilities available on Palm OS. As is usual with all smartphones except for the one I've been using for the past few months, there's 3rd party software to take care of any shortcomings. I don't know what's popular for ringtones, and I don't know what people use to manage ringing profiles, but the software is out there, and there's plenty of it.

In Hindsight, iPhone 0.5 Beta

Using a Treo is a lot like using an iPhone, though. It looks to me like Apple borrowed pretty liberally from Palm OS, which was probably a smart idea since Palm OS is very usable, very easy to grasp, and still pretty easy on the eyes. I'm still surprised at how good it looks. Surely there are nits: there's no font smoothing out of the box, the browser is ancient, and the icons are somewhat blocky by modern standards. Minus the phone app home screen that the 680 Treo has, the iPhone seems almost a hit-for-hit evolution of the fundamental principles of Palm OS. For example, settings for most things are hidden within the Prefs app on Palm OS. On the iPhone, they're hidden within the 'Settings' app, though the iPhone does a better job of stowing everything inside of their respective settings app than Palm OS. It could be said that the iPhone is the logical conclusion of Palm OS, minus a few key omissions.

I think this is the main reason that Palm OS users tend to flock to the iPhone -- the iPhone gave all of those Palm OS users the upgrade path they've been looking for. A lot of people didn't upgrade their 650s when the 680 came out, since the 680 wasn't a compelling upgrade in all cases. I think those same users flocked to the iPhone at 7x the rate of other phone owners. They might return to Palm OS once Palm's Linux OS comes out. Heck, I might go back once Palm's Linux OS comes out.

There are a lot of rumors floating around that various carriers will get the 3G iPhone. Telefonica is one of the carriers usually named, Vodafone is usually the other. The rumors lately indicate that the next generation of iPhone, the iPhone 3G, will be available in May.

This blog post is basically for the record -- I don't buy it. These posts are all referencing obscure foreign blogs while the more traditional scoop-based mac sites remain silent on the matter (like thinksecret.com, for example). I don't think Apple will replace the iPhone hardware that soon, either -- part of me thinks that Apple will unveil a new iPhone right about the time that original purchasers near the end of their contracts. You know, selling stuff to their already-captive audience. Apple has hinted that maybe we'd maybe see something iPhoney with 3G in late 2008, and that's probably still true.

I had earlier decided to skip this story, since I'm not aware that we have many, if any German readers, and T-Mobile of Germany only sold 10,000 or so iPhones so far. UK-based Vodafone has been calling sour grapes on the iPhone for a while now. They're the parent company of Verizon, they passed on the iPhone 1.0, they want 3G, they don't want to give up their control and just become a data network, they've made a lot of noise throughout the iPhone's launch and they've been very effective about staying in the press. Anyway, Vodafone sued T-Mobile for a stop of how they marketed the iPhone because it violated some German laws. They filed the lawsuit a few days ago, and it would appear that Vodafone just won their case.

The resolution of the lawsuit ended in an interesting outcome: it would seem that the iPhone is available unlocked for use with any carrier, with no contract, available from T-Mobile for €999. That's right, an unlocked iPhone can be yours for the bargain price of about $1500 U.S. I don't think they'll have many takers, but my hope is that at least one hacker figures out how they activate these special $1500 iPhones and mimics the process so that any unlocked phone can skip or bypass the sometimes-very-difficult activation process and publishes it for the cred. Barring that, that a group of hackers figure it out and charge for a solution.

How quickly we've reached our 9th podcast! Amazing, simply amazing. Plenty of stuff to talk about in this podcast, and yet somehow we hit our time target. I should be injured from a "light-hearted" and "fun" game of "touch" football and Dieter should quit smoking for every podcast. Wish him success and support by sending us an email at podcast at phonedifferent dot com. Or call us and leave a message, that secretly pleases us more.

We had to up the bitrate again; something is different in how Leopard encodes MP3s or maybe GarageBand is exporting additional noise in Leopard or something -- the 1411kbps AIFF file sounds great, the 48kbps/60kbps podcast sounds like garbage. Maybe we're both just being more finicky about how the podcast sounds, but we're getting some weird artifacts, both with LAME encoding and iTunes encoding. So, we're letting this one out at a 80kbps bitrate. We've also been storing the art inside the individual MP3s; let us know if it shows up.



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News

Phone Different Podcast #9 for Tuesday November 20, 2007

Happy Thanksgiving!

Smartphone Round Robin

• Mike does AT&T Tilt
• Adios Tilt
• Dieter bids adieu to iPhone
• Dieter says hi to iPhone
• and we're totally a week behind on the round robin. Here's to posting a 680 article today and wednesday.

• apple tracking imei via stocks and weather. weird, breaking
• mike's opinion: gphone not a threat to iphone and vice versa.
• iphone keyboard error rates are double of other smartphones.
• european launch quick links
• O2: fastest selling phone evar. 2/3rds of all iphone buyers new customers, vs. 40% for at&t.
• data prices plummeting in canada, blame iphone.

• 1.1.2 out. fixes bugs, updates radio, etc.
• bunch of other software updates too.
• doom/id creator john carmack thinks apple could do more for gaming. Compared to MS, he's def. right.
• enable push email on the iPhone. requires h4x0rz!

• double take on this one
• free ringtones are back

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Community

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Highlights from the community:

• it's really all at forum.phonedifferent.com
• and at crackberry.com
• fond farewell to iphone for example. classy!

PC Magazine readers fingered the iPhone as the top cell phone in the PC Magazine "Trustworthy Tech" yearly bit.

"iPhone owners passionately love their devices. In its first year on the survey, the Apple iPhone scored a stunning 9.1 out of 10 from our readers, beating the ratings that every other phone, from every carrier, in nearly every category, has received in the three years we've been including cell phones. The iPhone's 9.6 scores in music and video playback might have been expected, but its 8.2 for call quality (a score significantly better than average), another 8.2 for coverage, and an 8.0 for earpiece volume show that it's not just the i our readers like. They love the phone, too.

"In the case of other devices, our readers seem to have settled into slightly cranky resignation. Almost all brands on nearly every carrier rated scores between 7.0 and 7.5 overall, with differentiations coming feature by feature. Check out our online charts for full details."

Palm fared poorly, especially on Sprint and Verizon (700 series woes, I'd imagine), Windows Mobile does better on voice and PDA functions than BlackBerry but BlackBerry still has some insane satisfaction ratings -- they manage to grab an 8.0 overall satisfaction rating on AT&T, for example.

Some highlights from the XLS files:

• 1.1 points higher than next best overall rating.
• tops at text messaging
• tops at picture messaging (and MMS isn't even supported yet!)
• 1.9 points higher than next best web browsing
• 2.5 points higher than next best music player
• 2.5 points higher than next best video player
• lowest rate of required repair among smartphones

There is a dark side to the excel file: a black spot, a mote in God's eye with regards to the scores. When it comes to requiring technical support, the iPhone is merely average. It must be people asking IT for help on how to hack their iPhone.

I don't know why AT&T dropped the EDGE requirement from the iPhone, but they did. If you want to save $20/month ($240/yr, $480/2 yrs) and skip the EDGE data and go wi-fi only, that's now your option. Doing so removes your ability to use visual voicemail and your rights to 200 free messages, but you can add a different SMS plan once EDGE is dropped. If I was to drop EDGE, I'd probably drop AT&T too -- I'd spend some of that money I'd be saving on breaking my contract and unlocking my iPhone.

A story about iPhones on a plane, just like the commercial with the pilot, but without the happy ending. Any story that ends like this is not a happy story:

"If the passenger with the iPhone would be kind enough to use it to check the weather at our alternate, calculate our fuel burn due to being rerouted around the storms, call the dispatcher to arrange our release, and then make a phone call to the nearest Air Traffic Control center to arrange our timely departure amongst the other aircraft carrying passengers with IPhones, then we will be more than happy to depart. Please ring your call button to advise the Flight Attendant and your fellow passengers when you deem it ready and responsible for this multi-million dollar aircraft and its passengers to safely leave"

The pilot commercial seems to irk no small amount of people, as they can't tell if the commercial is legit or not. See here for more; here's the original ad from Apple about Bryce and his delay.

The jailbreak for 1.1.2 is still for the technically inclined and maybe not for the average Joe. But for those of you that are technically inclined, it now works on all platforms: Intel Mac, PowerPC Mac, and Windows. If you're running 1.1.2, you'll have to downgrade to 1.1.1 and then jailbreak with jailbreakme.com and perform some steps before you upgrade back to a jailbroken 1.1.2, but it's possible. You can find the update at conceited software.

Though neither O2 nor Carphone Warehouse have disclosed sales numbers beyond hundreds tens of thousands, O2 CEO Peter Erskine pronounced the iPhone their fastest-selling device ever. EVAR. On top of that, a full two-thirds of the iPhone customers came from other carriers, compared to 40% for AT&T in the U.S.

Okay, now this is a bit disturbing: XianLi of Hackint0sh.org proved that Apple tracks all stock and weather updates via your iPhone's IMEI. I have no idea why it would be necessary to track my weather habits, let alone the stocks I'm tracking.

"As I sit here applying a new layer of Reynolds tin foil to my international hat of conspiracy, its been proven that Apple tracks iPhone usage and tracks IEMI numbers of all their iPhones worldwide. Hidden in the code of the “Stocks” and “Weather” widgets is a string that sends the IMEI of your phone to a specialized URL that Apple collects."

You can't get stocks or weather information if you attempt to hide your IMEI. Very interesting; there's some discussion at slashdot.org as well.

figure 1: Industry heavyweight Philippe Kahn

Philippe Kahn, founder of Borland, inventor of the camera-phone and a bunch of other stuff, recently predicted the arrival of an iPhone Nano in an interview with Uberpulse during the 6sight conference.

"Kahn was also totally gaga about the iPhone and even predicted the coming launch of a smaller version of the iPhone, that he called the "nano". The Fullpower CEO also said his company was working with most of the CE manufacturing using sensor which I assumes include also Apple!"

I can't stress the point enough that this is just a rumor; idle speculation at its best. But as I've said in our podcast, I have a hard time believing that Apple won't make an iPhone Nano at some point. They tend to make hardware in two tiers: one for pros and one for ordinary folks.

Iain Grant of Seaboard, a Canadian Market Analyst group, figures that the iPhone has caused precipitous price drops in Canadian data plans. That's right -- the iPhone isn't out yet, and yet they finger it to be the cause. In June, 1GB worth of data would have cost in excess of $2300 Canadian per month. Then, a string of price cuts over several months occurs. Now the price for 1GB worth of data is $100 Canadian per month on Bell and Telus. Rogers doesn't have a 1GB plan, but their 1/2 GB plan is now $80 Canadian per month. Like the MacWorld article says: "This price plunge is almost entirely attributable to the expectation that the iPhone is coming." He also concludes that the delay of the iPhone in Canada is entirely attributable to Rogers' unwillingness to make their data as cheap as possible, or as Grant puts it, "plans that aren't ridiculous."

figure 1: John Carmack of Id Software

Gamedaily.com recently interviewed John Carmack about a good many things. One of the things that they ended up chatting about was iPhone games, or as one could say, lack thereof. It turns out that Carmack has an iPhone, and would love to write some games for it. Carmack talked to Steve Jobs about it at WWDC, and had followup meetings, and he's pretty frustrated with the current situation. It's a great read into one of the brilliant minds of gaming -- even if DOOM is a parody of itself nowadays, he's still one of the pre-eminent names of gaming.

"We've certainly been looking at it but Steve Jobs and I have not been seeing really eye to eye on a lot of important issues. We were in a fairly heated argument at the last WWDC [Worldwide Developers Conf.] and we've had a few follow-ups. I have an iPhone right now and it's a platform I would enjoy developing for but Apple is not taking progressive steps in regards to [gaming]. Their strategy seems to be working just fine from a business standpoint, so I'm not going to second guess them and tell them they're being fools or idiots for not focusing on this.

"The honest truth right now is that Apple's not exactly hugely supportive of this. When they finally allowed games to be put on the iPod... in many ways it's one of the worst environments to develop games for. You have to work on an emulator... just all these horrible decisions. I expressed my fears directly to Steve Jobs that some of these mistakes might be carried over to the iPhone, so they're at least aware of all of them, but they're not giving any spectacular signs that it's going to be a big deal for them in the next year."

February just can't come soon enough. There are a lot of mobile games that I'd like to be playing, a lot of interesting options available with the iPhone and iPod touch, the sensors, the touchscreen... I just can't wait. I think a lot of the big name companies will hop over to the iPhone pretty quickly. Even if they don't like how they have to work, they'll still be writing games for the iPhone.

Here's a sketch from Mad TV that parodies Feist's 1234 song and it's newfound connection to Apple iPods.

figure 1: Bronfman doing the evil fingers thing

Edgar Bronfman (ridiculed previously) actually had some positive things to say about iTunes recently, totally unbidden. He said that the music industry execs "used to fool themselves" and their dismissal of online markets put them "at war with consumers." I don't ever take it as a good sign when they refer to possible customers as consumers. But, my guess is that now that Warner is building their new online store, they've realized that it's not as easy as it looks. So here's my premonition: Warner is probably ripping off the iTunes look and feel left and right with their new music store. That, or they figured it was too hard and they're scrapping the thing, opting instead to dive wholeheartedly into the iTunes scheme.

Why, that would be the saddest thing in the whole wide world. C'mon folks, he says his XDA is better than the iPhone, and that Windows Mobile will surpass the iPhone's interface with the next release. Judging from all the typos and missed capitals, he even slipped it past his editor. C'mon, he just wants you to comment.

The Google mobile phone operating system known as Android has been getting a lot of press lately, and one of the more interesting angles I've seen in the past few days is that Android isn't meant to compete with the Apple iPhone. Gene Munster, an oft-quoted analyst at Piper Jaffray with plenty to say about the iPhone, thinks that the iPhone is aimed at a much higher market than any phones built with Google's Android.

"We believe Google is working with, not against, Apple in the mobile world."

It can tough to position a software product with the masses when it doesn't cost anything. In a lot of people's minds, this is true: no cost = worthless. But it's that same quality makes it attractive to handset makers, it allows them to push prices down. Multiple handset makers shipping multiple phones with one operating system (like Windows Mobile) tend to push prices down, since those handset makers compete with each other. If those same handset makers can shop a Google phone to carriers at less cost than they could make a Windows Mobile phone, it becomes attractive to them. It becomes attractive to carriers, since they don't have to do as much work to brand all of those featurephones with weird RTOS operating systems, they just have to brand Android once, and they don't have to share their intellectual property with anyone.

If you're running iTunes 7.5 with an iPhone running 1.1.2, making custom ringtones is drop-dead simple again. All you need to do is download a new copy of MakeiPhoneRingtone and you're pretty much back in business. The only catch is that you need to edit your AAC files to 40 seconds or less. For that, the makers of the freeware app MakeiPhoneRingtone hope you pick Fission, their not-as-free audio editor. Maybe this is the carrot I was talking about yesterday to get people to think about upgrading to 1.1.2.

A study has been performed about the error rates of mobile keyboards. The three keyboards picked were the iPhone virtual software keyboard, QWERTY keyboards (like those on BlackBerries and Treos), and T9 numeric keypads. iPhone users erred at a rate of 5.6 errors per message, T9 users erred at a rate of 2.6 errors per message, and QWERTY users erred at a rate of 2.1 errors per message. The test was done with 20 folks in each group, and the iPhone owners had to have used their device for at least a month to qualify as eligible.

There are some doozies in the press release:

While the iPhone's corrective text feature helps, this data suggests that iPhone users who have owned the device for a month still make about the same number of errors as the day they got it," said Gavin Lew, Managing Director.

Compared to hard-key QWERTY devices, the iPhone may fall short for consumers who use on their mobile device heavily for email and text messaging. The iPhone was clearly associated with higher text entry error rates than a hard-key QWERTY phone. The finding that iPhone owners made more texting errors on iPhones than their hard-key QWERTY counterparts (on their own QWERTY phones) suggests that the iPhone may have a higher fundamental error rate. Specifically, the high rate of false alarms for iPhone keys adjacent to high frequency letters is troubling. The iPhone’s predictive and corrective text features do alleviate some of the errors users make while texting, but it does not catch them all.

"iPhone is a great switch from a numeric phone. But if you're switching from a hard-key QWERTY phone, try the iPhone in the store first."

There's a new Nintendo emulator for the iPhone. Beyond the venerable NES.app Nintendo emulator, there's now the GameBoy and GameBoy Advanced emulator named gpSPhone for the iPhone., made possible by some of the same folks that brought you NES.app. I'm guessing you can expect gpSPhone to mature fairly quickly.. There are limitations, you have to supply your own boot ROM, you have to hack your iPhone first, and sound support is iffy at best, and you definitely have to install it to /Applications, but those are meager gripes about a software emulator at version 0.0.5.

[via TUAW]

China Mobile revealed that they are having talks with Apple to bring the iPhone to China. The deal was revealed by China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou, but they have yet to really seal the deal. From an executive spokesperson at China Mobile:

"Of course, we hope to bring the iPhone to China. But for the time being we are only in preliminary contact with Apple, and we have not made any concrete progress yet."

UPDATE: iLounge found some more Wang quotes. He's apparently not excited to share any revenue with Apple, though he's excited to carry the iPhone itself:

Our customers like this kind of fashionable product. We still think we can maintain the operator-centric model because we have the customers, the end users.

Apple continues to grant interviews to pocket-lint.co.uk, and there are some good quotes in there. These money quotes sum up the essential approach to their work on the iPhone and how it's like a little zen garden. A walled zen garden, to be sure -- there are some things that you just can't do that don't make any sense, but a zen garden nonetheless. More on that later. Anyway, to the quotes:

"All the complaints and feature requests we've had can be fixed and added by software upgrades."

"We didn't want to include something for something's sake."

"For the average mobile phone most people only use around 10%, Apple didn't want that to happen with the iPhone."

image credit koi-z-are-us.com

Here I had thought that Apple released it on Friday, in conjunction with their european iPhone launch. No, they officially launched it Monday night, to little fanfare. Again, there isn't much to this update. It closes the TIFF vulnerability that allows people to easily hack their iPhones at jailbreakme.com, that's about it.

My understanding of feature updates is this: Apple has to dangle the carrot to make official firmwares more compelling than unofficial, hacked firmwares. Are iTunes charging icons and international keyboards going to cut it?

Of all the smartphones we test during the Smartphone Round Robin, the constraints of our phone exchange is felt most with the Windows Mobile 6 AT&T Tilt. One week is just not enough to get a full grasp on what Windows Mobile can do. If you've read some of my other reviews, you'll hopefully recognize that as a compliment-dig.

INFINITE POWER

The thing about Windows Mobile that I came to appreciate is that it's ridiculously powerful. If I want to check my mail, I can do it. If I want to browse the web, I can do it. If I don't like the default app that ships with Windows Mobile, I can replace it with a better one. The system is admittedly a tweaker's paradise. If you like getting gadgets and playing with them and they're like toys for you, than Windows Mobile is basically an infinite playground.

All of the user interface metaphors are pretty much the same as Windows, good or bad. If a person is familiar with Windows, they'll be fairly familiar with Windows Mobile.

I spent most of the week untethered to a desktop with the Tilt. I'm not sure there's really any huge need to sync it to a desktop, which is a real breath of fresh breath of air coming from the activate-jailbreak-unlock world of the iPhone. I installed programs online, I checked all of the email that I wanted to -- I can really see why Microsoft thinks that Windows Mobile could replace the computer in some parts of the world. If I could plug in a keyboard and add a decent sized-screen, there isn't much that it can't do in terms of simple computing tasks -- edit documents, spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations, play games, browse the web, work with calendars, to-do, shared calendars... the whole shebang, and you don't even really need to interact with a computer to do any of it. It's an obscenely powerful mobile platform, and that I respect.

The other thing that I respect is that Microsoft has made their system easy to expand upon -- if I don't like the Today screen, I can replace it with something better (and I did -- SPB Mobile Shell). If I don't like the default browser (and I don't), I can replace it with something better (usually Opera Mini, but I decided to give Opera Mobile a shot this time, since I could). If I don't like the default keyboards (and I didn't), I could replace them with myriad other keyboards, many of them iPhone-like. I think I've even got an old iPhone theme that I could install on Windows Mobile from way back in the day, before the lawyers dragged it off the internet. I didn't think of it until after I sent the Tilt on to Jennifer, which is a bummer.

ITTY BITTY LIVING SPACE

It would probably take me a few weeks to get used to Windows Mobile. Maybe more, maybe a few months. But I could get used to it. It would probably be second nature after a while, I wouldn't have to think about it. But you definitely have to think about it at first: the out-of-box experience on the Tilt isn't so great. I had to install a bunch of programs to get to the point where I wasn't constantly snarling at it. Some other Windows Mobile might ship with those programs pre-installed. Or maybe someone works at a business where they pre-install those applications for you.

It would be better if it wouldn't take a few weeks, though -- one of the things that I really like about using the iPhone is that I never had to figure "the platform" out. I could just start using it. I didn't have to dig through a new style of control panel, I didn't have to try all of the different screen input methods to figure out if there was one that was usable.

what you get with 240x240. Not to scale. Not representative. Not from Windows Mobile 6. Windows Mobile 5. Not ideal

There are reasons that I was hoping to skip over Windows Mobile 6. I've heard a lot about Photon, the successor to Windows Mobile 6. It supposedly is a drastic rewrite of the general interface to Windows Mobile. I'm glad that the Tilt had a 320x240 screen, because using WM6 on the Treo 750 with its 240x240 always bugged me. And those omnipresent menu bars at the top and bottom of the screen, I was never sure that they were necessary. And the scroll bar on the right, it eats up so much space. I wish they were some of the theme-able bits of Windows Mobile, because I hate wasting that much screen space. It's one of the reasons that I purchased a 680 instead of a 750, honestly. One thing that I've learned from using the Tilt is this: the more pixels Windows Mobile has, the less it bugs me. One other thing: the Windows Mobile Start Menu is too dang small for my fingers.

Though I wasn't especially a fan of the Tilt's form factor, it's pretty close to my current ideal: a flat brick with a full touchscreen. The tilting screen and slider form factor felt kind of gimmicky after a while. I'd be happier if it was a full touchscreen device with no hardware keyboard, but still: it's close to what I like best, and that definitely made my week with the Tilt more pleasant. I am fond of the iPhone form factor (and I'll admit that I've made fun of the LG KS720, also called the LG Prada 2), and the Tilt was close enough that the odd stylings of the device didn't bug me. The Tilt is a big device, which is probably why Dieter shipped it out with a belt holster. It's almost too big to be pocketable -- almost.

And Windows Mobile could ship with a better software keyboard. Something my fingers could use would be awesome, the iPhone really opened up that world to me. I didn't know how much I hated styluses until I didn't have to use one anymore, and if they were able to tune Windows Mobile to the point where it didn't need a stylus, they'd be able to ship devices that were thinner. Ditto for that sliding keyboard gimmick, but that's not Windows Mobile's fault. There are so many Windows Mobile phones of different shapes, sizes, and functionalities, odds are good that I could find one that fit me better.

WINDOWS ALL OVER AGAIN

The developer community around Windows Mobile is immense and vibrant -- there's so many different apps out there, it's practically bewildering. I didn't know where to start. Not only does Windows Mobile ship with an office suite, but if it doesn't cut the mustard for you, there's a better one available. If you miss having a BlackBerry around, you can get their BlackBerry Connect software installed, which I'm pretty sure saved Kevin's life.

It's a great mobile gadget platform, and there are a lot of things to like about it. It might be the most advanced smartphone OS that I've ever used (I won't be able to say definitively until there are 3rd party apps for the iPhone), but there are downsides to using it.

Interoperability

The biggest downside to using Windows Mobile is that, well, it's Windows all over again. You take the good, you take the bad, right?. If you're already using Windows and Office and Outlook and Exchange, Windows Mobile is (or should be) a no-brainer for you. You're already sucked in 80% of the way, you might as well collect all 5. That's the way Microsoft designs their software, to keep you inside the ecosystem. The more you stray outside of the Microsoft ecosystem, the more isolated Windows Mobile seems to be.

As it ships, Windows Mobile doesn't have any way to sync information over from a Macintosh. There is software available that does it: Mark/Space's Missing Sync for Windows Mobile ($40). Usually though, Mark/Space's deal has been to add extra features to syncing, so you get more than what the generic handset sync software will give you, instead of being the only possible solution.

I'm used to living in a Windows world, though -- I tend to keep all of my contacts and calendars online if I can, in Google or Yahoo! or .Mac or whatever so I can keep my data portable; I don't like putting all of my eggs in one basket in case of some sort of computer catastrophe. I figured I could import some contacts from one of those very popular online services. I was wrong.

As it turns out, the recommended way to really move data over into Windows Mobile would be to Outlook or Outlook Express... via a CSV file. If you don't know what a CSV file is, it's an ancient primitive text spreadsheet. The copy of Outlook Express on my Windows box doesn't have a field for Mobile phones, which -- as you might well assume -- is a dealbreaker in terms of categorization. The situation might be different with Outlook, but that's another $110. Even then, I'm probably still looking at hacking my way through a CSV file.

There's an easy answer to this: provide iSync conduits for the Mac, or some software to sync with the big online services. I have no idea why Microsoft doesn't do this anyway. They'd be able to sell Windows Mobile phones to a lot more customers if they did that one simple thing. Another option would be to sync with one of the online services. It's frustrating to see all of my contacts in the Yahoo! Go app on the Tilt, knowing that there's no simple way to get them into the Tilt's contact system. If they fix that, everybody wins! It's not like someone is going to pick an email address or a computer based on what mobile phone they can sync it with. I don't think it will threaten their monopoly on the desktop. It's all pretty simple: you put the horse in front of the cart.

HAVE YOU BEEN DOING THE MATH?

If you've been adding up the cost of software that I'd need to buy to use the Tilt as my permanent main brain, you realize that there's a real cost of acquisition to Windows Mobile. It takes time to get it to work in a way that makes sense, it costs a lot of money to get software for some basic functionality, and if you're on a Mac or not using one of the Microsoft services for anything you're in a special world of hurt.

If you're running a standard Microsoft shop though, there's less cost involved.

TECHNOLOGY RISEN FROM THE GRAVE

It seems that Windows Mobile is still very much a work in progress, like they haven't fully figured out how to make it friendly for use, and occasionally the curse of MS-DOS pokes its head out. They're trying, you can tell they're trying to remove the cruft. That's why they gave me the choice of "Intermediate GPS Driver" and my choice of 20 or so COM ports. COM Ports! What is this, the eighties?

Did I mention CSV spreadsheet files already? Why yes, I did. Let's see, did I use the words "ancient" and "primitive?" Yes on both counts. I believed I mentioned them just 4 paragraphs ago. And here they are again.

Some of the experiences in using Windows Mobile are really jarring. Here is this incredibly advanced mobile operating system, but due to these weird compatibility or interoperability decisions that Microsoft has made, you get lurched back in time to do some things that should be very easy and simple. It really doesn't make sense to me. I'm sure they'll update Pocket IE one of these days. Maybe this stuff will be less transparent in Photon. Maybe then I won't be able to see the old man behind the curtain.

LAST THOUGHTS

It's powerful. I spent many hours customizing everything. I was able to do anything that I could do on the other platforms and more. "Where do you want to go tomorrow" and stuff. It's still not friendly to use. It required a lot of tweakery and extra apps to get it to work in a decent way. The user interface, though I think it's better than the BlackBerry's cluttered featurephone interface, is still kind of a mess. It's a powerful mess, but I'd rather not have to memorize all of these arcane things just to do some simple things on my mobile phone. There's a real complexity problem with Windows Mobile, much more so than with the other smartphones. In a lot of senses, the crown of "most powerful smartphone is a pyrrhic victory, achieved at great cost.

I saw this Neonode N2 phone cross by in my RSS reader, and it looks like it could practically be the iPhone Nano. After reading the review at pencomputing.com it's clearly not, but the N2 is absolutely tiny. It's also built off a touchscreen interface, though the N2's is built off infrared instead of multitouch. The weirdest thing is that the Neonode N2 and N1 have been using iphone touch, tap, and swipe interfaces since 2002 -- they've been around a while.

The other weirdest thing about the N2 is that it's built off Windows CE, just like Windows Mobile, except the N2 doesn't add all of the Windows Mobile interface, they just use the bare guts of CE and add their own pretty. I have to say, it looks pretty decent from the few screenshots.

I'm not going to say that it's going to sell like hotcakes, because it probably won't. It costs about $645 US, doesn't do 3rd party apps, doesn't even do EDGE, and does only 1 GB of storage. They use a mobile processor I've never heard of on its own boffo architecture, so converting apps over isn't necessarily going to be a slice of pie or a walk in the park. I just figured it's kind of interesting. I wonder how well they patented their stuff and if we'll see yet another iPhone lawsuit.

After a full weekend of the iPhone in Europe, how well has the iPhone been doing? Well, T-Mobile reported that they sold 10,000 iPhones on the first day. That's not too shabby; it's not an incredibly high number either, but it's not bad either.

O2 hasn't published any numbers yet, so there's a bunch of hemming and hawing about whether the UK launch was a success or failure -- and same with the German launch, actually. My guess is that since possibly 250,000 iPhones have been unlocked and sent overseas and Apple has had to limit purchases to 2 and require a credit card for purchase, that the iPhone launch must have been pretty good over there when it started a few months ago.

Well, in iTunes 7.5, free ringtones are back. It turns out that you can do the old trick of renaming an AAC music file to turn it into a ringtone. To get it to work, take any 30 second m4a file in finder, rename the extension to be m4r, and drag it in to iTunes. Voila!

For the iPhone, folks figured out how to downgrade the iPhone firmware to the older 1.1.1 firmware to get all the fun goodies if you decide that 1.1.2 isn't all that great, or you miss the ease of the jailbreakme.com installer.

It seems that the iPhone modem firmware has been unlocked as well, meaning that they've figured out how to unlock 1.1.2 iPhones once the jailbreak is easy enough. A simpler GUI app will probably show up in the next few days.

Hackers have figured out how to re-flash the radio in 1.1.2 so it is now safe to unlock the iPhone, as you can "revirginize" the iPhone after unlocking it to avoid any bricking with the next update.

The 1.1.2 iPhone software has already been jailbroken. The software isn't quite out of beta yet, it works only with Intel machines, and you'll have to read a readme.txt file to figure it out, but it's available for download if you need it. If you want to jailbreak 1.1.2, you'll have to do most of the work from 1.1.1, so keep that downgrade link handy.

And for the last little tidbits, if you have an iPhone with 1.1.2 firmware connected to iTunes 7.5, it gives you the battery status in a little icon next to the eject button in iTunes. And, if you put your computer with iTunes 7.5 to sleep, it will still charge the iPhone. Oh, and you can sync entire events from iPhoto '07 to the iPhone instead of just photo albums.

This guy Core of wickedpsyched.net coded a version of AFP, the Apple Filesharing Protocol, for the iPhone and iPod Touch. This means that you could enable filesharing on your iPhone and copy some files over directly from your desktop over wi-fi. If you ask me, this is better than disk mode, where you can plug in your iPhone and it shows up as a removable disk. It apparently doesn't show up in Installer.app yet, but give it a few days and I'm sure it will be there.

There's also great news if you're more of a windows person. Say you just prefer the Samba/SMB/Windows Filesharing so you can share with windows and mac, well he's got you covered there too.

There's a big line at the mothership Regent Street Apple Store in London. The line started forming yesterday, and though there hasn't been torrents of rain pouring down on the line waiters like there was in Germany, it's been fairly cold -- about 45° F. Still, the mood is chipper, and everyone is looking forward to getting their iPhone, and they'll only have to wait about 2.5 hours before the official launch at 6:02 London time.

Well, the iPhone has officially launched in Germany with T-Mobile, and with fanfare at that. Heise.de reports that there was a bunch of hooting and hollering, which reminds me of the Mall of America launch -- they did a good job of making people feel like they were part of something big. Even if it was just for waiting for the release of a smartphone in a collapsible chair for 11 hours.

The CEO of T-Mobile is pleased with the demand for the iPhone, and is not sure that supplies will keep up with demand over the holiday season:

We're not giving out precise forecasts, but registrations on our Web site lead me to believe (the Christmas sales period) will be a strong sales period.

iPhone: Bei mir, bist du schön.

Apple has released the 1.1.2 firmware for the iPhone out into the wild a little early, probably so that folks in Europe can download it directly when they get home. The 1.1.2 update weighs in at about 160MB, and it does update the baseband radio as well, bringing the radio software to 04.02.13G (from 04.01.13G in case you were wondering, and you probably weren't). You can download the update directly from Apple.

As we've reported before, the 1.1.2 update closes the TIFF vulnerability that allows for the easy jailbreak from jailbreakme.com -- I just used that site again yesterday to prepare an iPhone with 1.1.2 for Kevin of CrackBerry.com to use on his Rogers SIM card, and it just amazes me how easy it all is.

figure 1: It is with a heavy heart that Pogue informs us that the latest Windows Mobile phone from T-Mobile blows.

David Pogue has an excellent article on how the iPhone really broke down a bunch of barriers in the smartphone world, the best he claims, is "the way Apple took veto power away from the cellphone carriers."

So yeah, that's just the first sentence. The unfortunate part of the article is that most of the rest of it is a review for a T-Mobile Windows Mobile device. The good news is this: if you want to think about how awesome your iPhone is compared to a poorly-implemented Windows Mobile device, the second half of his article will really interest you. There's a silver lining in every cloud, right?

There's a neat way to enable push email on your iPhone so you can be notified of emails when they arrive, just like a BlackBerry. Push email has long been available with the IMAP idle command, though not many clients seem to support it. Getting the new push program on your iPhone requires that you jailbreak your phone, so if you need push email, you may want to hold of on tomorrow's firmware update. The software is still in beta but apparently still works as advertised.

Apple has confirmed to pocket-lint.co.uk that the next firmware update, version 1.1.2, will be available tomorrow. The update brings several internationally-themed updates like international keyboards. UK users also get access to free wi-fi via The Cloud.

This update will fix the TIFF vulnerability, meaning that users can browse a bit safer. However, the closing of this security vulnerability means that the extremely easy AppSnapp method of installing 3rd party apps found at jailbreakme.com will cease to work.

Mr. Fired-From-Disney Himself

First on the list is Michael Eisner, who blames Jobs and iTunes for the Writer's strike, of all things. He claims that Apple has ruined the download model for everybody, and that only Apple makes any money. Everyone else is begging for crackers at lunch. Yeah, right.

The studios make deals with Steve Jobs, who takes them to the cleaners," Eisner said.

"They make all these kinds of things, and who's making money? Apple! They should get a piece of Apple. If I was a union, I'd be striking up wherever he is.

Eisner further predicts that online media won't make any money for another three years. Unless you're Apple, that is. If you're Apple, online media is making money now.

LG Introduces the QZ-6%7g#!

I tend to avoid posting news of "iPhone killers" because it's just not going to be true. There are some companies that have a shot at making an iPhone killer, but they're years away. I think Palm could do it for example, but we won't find out for another year or two. Apple probably doesn't have to worry about that one for a while.

And in the "don't have to worry about it now" category, LG introduced a phone that looks like an iPhone in Europe. I hate to say it, but no one will be excited about the Prada-esque outer stylings of the LG phones until LG can drink in some user interface design mojo. Can you remember to get excited about something called the LG-KS20? I doubt it, though I bet its existence makes Dieter happy.

A Coalition of the Aimless

I know that Google's new linux smartphone operating system Android is supposed to be big news, but I can't help it: I don't think it is, and I don't think it will be. There are already a bunch of linux smartphone systems where all the driver work is done and all you have to worry about is the user interface customization. I checked out the websites of the companies that are part of the Android consortium, and I hate to say it but their UI work appears to be featurephone-based and pretty busy. Not that I'm a UI expert, but still, I know that a clean interface is better than a cluttered one.

There's already a bunch of people doing this, and some of them have a phone out now that does everything already: OpenMoko, QTopia, Access Linux Project, and Palm will probably join this list perhaps a year after Android is actually released. But look at the list of companies in their press release: none of them have shipped their own mainstream user interface before except for Nokia. And I don't think that it's in Nokia's best interests to succeed too much in this venture at the cost of their Symbian S60. I wish them all success, but I think success is a tall order.

No One is Panicking

I'm glad to see that all of the other smartphone makers are all confident that they'll be able to beat the iPhone, or that they're at least not panicking about it. If you want a list of how other companies are mimicking the iPhone form factor, the BBC has put together a list of the heavyweights.

For the past few days, I've been working with the AT&T Tilt, a Windows Mobile smartphone. I've used Windows Mobile before, so this isn't quite the new experience that the BlackBerry Curve was, but I haven't used the latest version of Windows Mobile (version 6) either. I used WM5 with a Treo 750 for a while, but I ended up dealing with a bad bug that prevented calls from ringing. That was pretty much a killer for the device, and I stopped using it.

And that would be the end of the story, but for the Smartphone Round Robin. And here we are again.

First, Some History

When I last used Windows Mobile, I was frustrated at the lack of real estate -- I was used to a 320x320 screen from the Treo 680 (which I'll be using again next week), and the 750's 240x240 screen felt really small. When the pixels are limited like that, the seemingly glaring excesses of the Windows Mobile interface... the bars across the bottom and top of the screen, plus the right scroll bar: I was not a happy camper with how the real estate was divided. Dieter of WMExperts told me that WM6 was basically WM5, but with less bugs. The user interface, the way that Windows Mobile presents itself to people using it, was pretty much unchanged, and I figured that maybe I'd check out Windows Mobile again once their new version, Photon, was available. This was all pre-iPhone, so my options of escape were a bit limited.

But, that was a different device, a different Windows Mobile, and a different time. Which leads us, finally, to the Tilt.

About the Tilt

The tilt is a Windows Mobile slider, meaning that it has an iPhone-like front, except that it slides up along the middle to reveal a full-sized keyboard along the front. The form factor, except for the sliding part, is a lot like the iPhone. Oh, and the double-thickness. The iPhone is perhaps a centimeter longer, but half the depth.

The Tilt is huge -- not a device that you can use with just one hand. And there are buttons all over the place -- one for the camera, one for power/sleep, one for push-to-talk, two OK buttons, and a scroll wheel. Then there are phone, hangup, mail, browser, start, left menu, right menu, and (another) OK key. Then there's the 5-way directional pad. Many, though not all, of these keys are present yet again in the slider keyboard.

The Size is Deceptive

The battery life on the Tilt is a bit of a disappointment. With the iPhone, I'm used to leaving wi-fi on pretty much all of the time. I recharge the phone about every two or three days. With the Tilt, battery life is great -- as long as that Wi-Fi is off, and I don't have any programs chewing up bandwidth in the background. I suppose this could be said of any phone, but given the size of the Tilt, I kind of expect more battery life out of it.

Given the size, I also kind of expect more speed... response on the Tilt is a bit sluggish, which kind of surprised me. I don't know if it's a RAM issue or a processor speed thing, all I know is that the Tilt is kind of pokey. Windows Mobile ships with its own special version of the spinny beach ball that indicates that something is going on. You can't do anything while the ball spins, the mobile is pretty much locked.

Those are the bad things about the Tilt, off the bat. I'm still not a fan of Windows Mobile, I still find myself lamenting that the UI is bad. The start menu is too small to be thumbable accurately, for example.

Redemptions

But there are good things about Windows Mobile, there always have been. One thing that I do like about Windows Mobile is the power of it all. Real multi-tasking is a boon. Of all of the smartphones that everyone has been using over the Smartphone Round Robin, the Tilt is the only one that really has it. If you want to have GPS mapping going while you browse the web whilst music plays in the background, have at it. The Tilt may not be especially responsive during that time, but it will work.

Windows Mobile also has "a real file system." With that real filesystem come a lot of benefits. For most things, it means "real apps." If you want to download something to your phone, have at it. If you want Outlook on your phone, it's there. If you want to make powerpoint documents or spreadsheets or word documents, it's all there, ready for you to use. It's a very powerful system.

For Every Gripe, an Equal and Opposite 3rd Party App

And though there are a lot of things that I don't like about the way Windows Mobile looks and behaves, there's a slew of programs out there that attempt to fix it.

I don't like the Today screen, for example. I miss having a useful background image, and I don't like the way that the standard information is presented to me. There are programs out there that fix that -- the most notable one is probably SPB Mobile Shell, which I use to replace the default 'Today' screen.

The browser is really bad, too. Pocket IE is pretty much a joke -- it's incredibly slow and absolutely offsets any speed gains you get from using the Tilt with a 3G network. Opera Mobile to the rescue! It's not as good as MobileSafari on the iPhone, but it's a sight better than Pocket IE. You can use it to replace pretty much everything that PIE does -- download files, the whole shebang. Opera Mobile is one of the reasons that I've been looking forward to using the Tilt.

I also think that the software keyboard on the Tilt is very bad -- it's tiny and requires frequent use of the stylus. I'm pretty certain that there's an iPhone-like keyboard available. One of the times that I tapped the keyboard with the stylus, though, I got a menu where I could pick and choose from several less-bad software keyboards. The keys are still infintesimal on most of them, but there's a choice. And some of the helpful forum users have pointed me to other software keyboards that might be better, and I'm pretty sure that there's an iPhone software keyboard clone floating around on the itnernet somewhere.

Nothing to Reference

One of the things that sets Windows Mobile apart from the other smartphones we're all testing is that Microsoft doesn't actually make the device -- they just make the software. The rest is all up to HTC, or Palm, or Motorola, or anyone who decides to ship a Windows Mobile smartphone.

This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It's a good thing because it's a platform -- it means that anyone that wants to build a smartphone and has the hardware know-how can build one, because they don't need nearly as many people to get the software side of things working. Since all of these hardware companies are using the same software platform, it means that it's a lot easier to get better apps to use and games to play with -- it gives Windows Mobile a lot of legs, in terms of what you can do with it.

The downside to all of this is that you don't necessarily get a strong design edge out of this method of doing things. It's a lot like Microsoft in the computer world -- maybe your average beige computer box is kind of ugly, but that's not Microsoft's fault, they just did the software.

And HTC's Tilt, though not by any means a bad-looking device, shows all the symptoms of this problem. There are huge buttons all over the place, but the hardest one to find and activate is the sleep button. The red phone button, which we've all been taught with countless featurephone designs, should turn the device on, or at least wake it up from sleep. Looks like someone missed that, as the red phone button does nothing. It may be that there's a way to swap those buttons in software -- if there is, please post.

Endless Customizability

One of the other things about Windows Mobile that struck me is that there's endless customizability. I'm willing to bet that many if not all of the things that I can find that I don't like, there's an app or tweak or registry edit that fixes it. All that matters is that you have the time, knowledge, and/or money to throw at the things you don't like about Windows Mobile. And that you have a parachute for the learning cliff.

An employee of Asus -- the company that builds many of Apple's laptops -- told CNET that they are making a tablet PC from Apple. It's apparently a brand new tablet design, not one that Asus has used before. The device could be introduced as early as January, at Mac World Expo 2008. Crave at CNET surmises that the tablet will take many OS cues from the iPhone, incorporating finger flicking, cover flow, and other gesture-based movements.

Apple generally doesn't enter a market unless nowadays unless they can clean house -- there's no real market leader in tablets, maybe some pent-up demand for them, but no single tablet model that 'rules the roost.' If Apple can make that device, and make it compelling, I could be aboard with that. The idea of replacing my laptop with a tablet and maybe a bluetooth keyboard, I could get along with that.