|
|
Joined:
November 2003
Posts: 11039
Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | I felt the same way about Sprint. Tmobile didn't have great coverage but, they did have reasonably good customer service, though they always wanted you to resign on to yearly contracts any time you "upgraded your hardware.
Having been to Europe and especially Asia, one learns that both Internet/WiFi access and Mobile Phone service(s) in America SUCK. |
|
| |
|
Joined:
December 2003
Posts: 1889
Location: Central Massachusetts | Originally posted by willard:
Service must be a regional thing. AT$T has been the best I've found around here. I haven't done much traveling since I switched though. Was just going to say the same thing! Spent 2 years waiting out the contract with another crap provider to learn my lesson.
Love the iPhone, but don't have the scratch for now. Maybe someday. |
|
| |
|
Joined:
December 2001
Posts: 7232
Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | Same here. When it was Cingular I was getting coverage in places that no other provider was supporting, and now with AT&T again, very often I have service when others do not. However, that being the case as example, when I was on the East Coast, it was great that I had service in the hills of West Virginia where no one else did, and in several other place in Maryland and Virginia where others did not, however I barely had ANY service near my home!!!! Now my cell (AT&T) IS my primary phone. It definately depends on where you are. |
|
| |
|
Joined:
November 2006
Posts: 2241
Location: Simpsonville, SC | Had Sprint for 6 years before the change to AT&T. AT&T coverage here is better than Sprint's, especially in my office. Every PDA I have had has been expensive and required a two year contract, but without one I would be lost. iPhone suits me well, the Internet on it is Great! I am sure that in two years there will be another "Gotta Have" PDA. Until then the iPhone will do just fine (hopefully). ;) |
|
| |
|
Joined:
November 2005
Posts: 4832
Location: Campbell River, British Columbia | Luddite that I am, when my first cellphone contract expired 8-9 years ago I swore I'd never get another.
My major client complains regularly but as long as I outsell everyone else in the company and related companies in our industry, no one's really gonna make me get one.
Dayrunner is my weakness/strength. |
|
| |
|
Joined:
March 2002
Posts: 14842
Location: NJ | Typical Jersey Boy:
NEW YORK - Armed with a soldering iron and a large supply of energy drinks, a slight, curly haired teenager has developed a way to make the iPhone, arguably the gadget of the year, available to a much wider audience.
George Hotz of Glen Rock, N.J., spent his last summer before college figuring out how to "unlock" the iPhone, freeing it from being restricted to a single carrier, AT&T Inc.
The procedure, which the 17-year-old posted on his blog Thursday, raises the possibility of a cottage industry springing up to buy iPhones, unlocking them and then selling them to people who don't want AT&T service or can't get it, particularly overseas.
The phone, which combines an innovative touch-screen interface with the media-playing abilities of the iPod, is currently sold only in the U.S.
An AP reporter was able to verify that an iPhone Hotz brought to the AP's headquarters on Friday was unlocked. Hotz placed the reporter's T-Mobile SIM card, a small chip that identifies a phone to the network, in the iPhone. It then connected to T-Mobile's network and placed calls using the reporter's account.
T-Mobile is the only major U.S. carrier apart from AT&T that is compatible with the iPhone's cellular technology, but smaller carriers also use the technology, known as GSM. In Europe and Asia, GSM is the dominant network technology.
The hack is complicated and requires skill with both soldering and software, and missteps may result in the iPhone becoming useless, so few people will be able to follow the instructions.
"But that's the simplest I could make them," Hotz said.
Technology blog Engadget on Friday reported successfully unlocking an iPhone using a different method that required no tinkering with the hardware. The software was supplied by an anonymous group of hackers that apparently plans to charge for it.
AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel and Apple spokeswoman Jennifer Bowcock said their companies had no comment on Hotz' exploit. Hotz said the companies had not been in touch with him.
Apple shares rose $4.23, or 3.2 percent, to close at $135.30 on Friday. AT&T shares gained 26 cents, or 0.7 percent, to close at $40.36.
The iPhone has already been made to work on overseas networks using another method, which involves copying information from the SIM chip, or Subscriber Identity Module.
The SIM-chip method does not involve any soldering, but does require special equipment, and it doesn't unlock the phone — each new SIM chip has to be reprogrammed for use on a particular iPhone.
Both hacks leave intact the iPhone's many functions, including a built-in camera and the ability to access Wi-Fi networks. The only thing that won't work is the "visual voicemail" feature, which lists voice messages as if they were incoming e-mail.
Since the details of both hacks are public, Apple may be able to modify the iPhone production line to make new phones invulnerable.
Analysts said it's unlikely Apple would overhaul the iPhone's wiring to thwart the new hack because the difficulty of the procedure is likely to keep it confined to hardcore hobbyists.
"I'm having a hard time figuring out where the real pain is going to come from in this," said David Chamberlain, principal analyst with market researcher In-Stat who follows mobile devices and services. "Just selling the piece of hardware, they've made a nice profit off that."
Apple has said it plans to introduce the phone in Europe this year, but it hasn't set a date or identified carriers.
There is apparently no U.S. law against unlocking cell phones. Last year, the Library of Congress specifically excluded cell-phone unlocking from coverage under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Among other things, the law has been used to prosecute people who modify game consoles to play a wider variety of games.
Hotz collaborated online with a large number of people to develop the unlocking process. Of smaller core group, two were in Russia.
"Then there are two guys who I think are somewhere U.S.-side," Hotz said. He knows them only by their online handles.
Hotz himself spent about 500 hours on the project since the iPhone went on sale. On Thursday, he put the unlocked iPhone up for sale on eBay, where the high bid was at $12,600 late Friday. The model, with 4 gigabytes of memory, sells for $499 new.
"Some of my friends think I wasted my summer but I think it was worth it," he told The Record of Bergen County, which reported Hotz's hack Friday.
Hotz heads for college on Saturday. He plans to major in neuroscience — or "hacking the brain" as he puts it — at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
___ |
|
| |
|
Joined:
November 2003
Posts: 11039
Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | Clifford,
I just finished reading that article not 10 minutes before you posted it. |
|
| |
|
Joined:
March 2005
Posts: 5567
Location: Blue Ridge Mountains | Ditto; And I copied the steps to do the same from his website; I'll email 'em to anyone who wants to save some time!
:cool: |
|
| |
|
Joined:
March 2002
Posts: 14842
Location: NJ | It was on the TV at the bar before we went on last night, and then I saw it first thing this morn . . . |
|
| |
|
Joined:
December 2001
Posts: 7232
Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | I have been seeing the "unlocked" iPhones on eBay for a little while already. Was kindof surprised, but then again not.
The jury is still out for me on the iPhone. It's expensive, but certainly no more expensive than a phone + PDA is now, but is the iPhone really a PDA?
On my PDA (iPaq) I run PocketPC applications, everything from Chess to ListPro to project time/management software. I also can stick any size memory card in it I want with music, data, whatever. Altogether, I guesss the phone and PDA take up the same space as an iPhone, but the iPhone itself doesn't really fit in a pocket.
Then there's the fact that it's version one of technology that is already at least 5-years old elsewhere in the world.
But it's still pretty cool I think. |
|
| |
|
Joined:
November 2003
Posts: 11039
Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | I have come to really enjoy it. The real leap in the iPhone, other than the interface is that, it recognizes that many of the things one now uses on-board apps for will more and more become web-based.
This is a paradigm change for most people, who rely on all that stuff being located onboard the device. |
|
| |
|
Joined:
August 2005
Posts: 3736
Location: Sunshine State, Australia | Jeff, what's the battery life like? D'ya gotta recharge it every night, or twice a day? |
|
| |
|
Joined:
December 2001
Posts: 7232
Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | Originally posted by Jeff W.:
I have come to really enjoy it. The real leap in the iPhone, other than the interface is that, it recognizes that many of the things one now uses on-board apps for will more and more become web-based.
This is a paradigm change for most people, who rely on all that stuff being located onboard the device. Good point. However, data rates are just ridiculous still. |
|
| |
|
Joined:
August 2002
Posts: 8307
Location: Tennessee | I'm going to pull the pin and get an iPhone this week. My CTO has been test driving one for about a month now. He's not eating up too much on the data rate side since in the office and at home it uses the wifi for hitting the net. It works great with our Exchange Server for catching email. It is smaller and thinner than I had expected. Chris just plugs it into the charger every night and he's had no battery issues. The only issues he has had is that it doesn't work right with his iPod adapter in the car, and the headphone jack is slightly recessed so it doesn't seat the plug on some third-party headphones. That, and he wishes it was GPS-enabled so he could do real-time driving directions. |
|
| |
|
Joined:
November 2003
Posts: 11039
Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | Originally posted by muzza:
Jeff, what's the battery life like? D'ya gotta recharge it every night, or twice a day? I'm not a "cell/pda/crackberry" addict....
When I am at home/office, I rarely have it on.
On the road..with [my] heavy use- i.e. Phone/Email/ Web/Tunes/Text- I have to charge it every other day. |
|
| |
|
Joined:
October 2006
Posts: 5575
Location: big island | jeff,
well, if its any consolation of not winning the prize for stephen's guitar quiz, steve jobs just announced that due to the iphone price drop all current owners of one will get a $100 apple store credit and if you bought one using an amex card, you will get a $200 plus taxes credit. hurray for you and any other iphone owners here! |
|
| |
|
Joined:
March 2002
Posts: 14842
Location: NJ | you'll need the $100 t'get another phone t'use when you send the i one in for a battery change . . . |
|
| |
|
Joined:
October 2005
Posts: 5331
Location: Cicero, NY | I knew there was a silver lining there somewhere... |
|
| |
|
Joined:
March 2002
Posts: 14842
Location: NJ | Update on the 17-year-old Jersey kid who "hacked" into one:
I'd heard that he sold it to the owner of some computer consulting business for:
A brand new Nissan 350Z.
3 new (unhacked) iPhones.
A paid consulting position with the company.
Guess all his friends who said he "wasted his Summer" on it will be be calling him "Boss" in a few years . . . |
|
| |
OT- iPhone
