I stopped off at my local O2 shop at lunch time today.

I was told they had "loads" of 8Gb 3G iPhones left but sold out first thing of the 16Gb model. It looked like their systems were down and were doing everything on paper and telling people that their SIM's will come active over the weekend at some point.

Just wondering what people think of it.

I have to admit now it acts as a remote for my Apple TV I am quite tempted.

Cheers

Cris.

iPod touch will do this as well but you'll probably have to fork out some money to get the upgrade...

Drove past the O2 shop down the road on the way to work this morning at about 8:30 and was quite amazed that there was already a queue.

I really do want one, but still got 9 months until the end of my current contract... My original plan was to get a 1st gen one on eBay or something, but thinking about it I use the GPS on my phone a lot and its so useful to have in my pocket I'll just hold out until I can get the new one on a good deal.

Has anyone seen any screen shots of this yet?

Cheers

Cris.

Just making sure: you don't need turn-by-turn directions, do you? Because you can't get it on the iPhone.

There might be:
http://gizmodo.com/5024018/telenav-confirms-iphone-in+car-navigation-app

To Answer my own question....

http://www.apple.com/itunes/remote/

Looks pretty cool!

Cheers

Cris.

...and TomTom too.....

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSB46553120080609

Cheers

Cris.

Yeah needs turn by turn for me. I just got a WM6.0 based phone and it has serious issues. The hardware is all there - the software/firmware is total crap. I've come from all Nokias beforehand.

Anyway, I went and had a look and had a play with one in the store. They were opening at 7 and 8am here in Australia. The Optus system went down in the morning too. By the time I rocked up only 8GB were left or wait a week or two. Wasn't a total sell out like I thought it might be.

It just seemed a bit minimalist to me and I'm kind of glad I couldn't get one right now and I'll stick with the Windows POS for a while I guess. I will wait a few months and see what the applications are like that will come out.

Turn by turn is a biggy for me too. I really like having Tom Tom on the Windows Mobile and Nokia E series before that.

Well...I'm waiting for DHL monkey to deliver my 16GB...could be up to 9PM tonight

The apple remote is very cool, tried it on my iPod touch, really comes into it's own with the airport express!

Adrian

I tried to get one today. Line was around the building. I shall try again later.

There's going to be more variety of navigation software for the iPhone than any other portable platform in history.

The built-in Google Maps does turn by turn according to Apple's web pages. It just (supposedly) doesn't do route re-calculation. It's not meant to compete with something like TeleNav or Tom Tom's nav though. Both of which are also coming to the iPhone.

I'm just waiting until I can get a phone while screwing the operator selling it - ie. without contract or breaking contract while retaining price close to advertised "retail." Then it gets jailbroken and unlocked so I can use it with any SIM and subscribe to a Pay as You Go plan here in Canada - likely without a cellular data plan.

I'm still really wanting one with 200GB of storage though. Not to mention a 4 or 5mp camera that can also shoot video clips. Might as well double the battery life while we're at it. A way to connect it to a compact flash card or other camera to unload photos would also be cool.

Speaking of jailbreaks, engadget reports that the pwnage people have already done it.

Everyone is now hawking the new Pwnage tool with a lot of hot air. Mostly linking to a video that shows only that the new tool has a new interface, but shows that it's currently broken or that the producers of the video had no intentions of showing it working in the video. In other words it's pretty useless.

Jailbreak/Unlock has been mentioned by a few blogs but nothing has materialized yet except a single screenshot of the new iPhone with an icon for Installer.app on its screen.

I have no doubt everyone will have a jailbreak and unlocker in their hands soonish though. Additional opportunities are also clear, though I haven't heard about anone working on them yet. Getting arbitrary iPhone/iPod applications to install via iTunes without using the App Store - mainly how to get unsigned apps on there, maybe by fake signing them. Copying applications back off the iPhone and onto a computer. Wireless syncing. And of course the biggest hack of them all... How to get an iPhone without a contract in North America .

Hell, if the NemusSync guy started selling his work for $10, I'd pay for it via the app store in a snap.

Optus in Australia will officially unlock your iPhone for you A$729 outright + $80 to unlock if unlocked in the first six months.

Hopefully a lot more people will jump onto the App store now that it seems Apple is granting more approvals to publishers. I'm sure that some people would still like the opportunity to sell their wares without having to dish out 30% commission to Apple though.

I wonder how much Apple is wholesaling the iPhone to the carriers for. They have to be making at least 20 to 50% when reselling them without a contract. I'm also guessing Apple is charging them a greater premium than they do to consumers when selling their other gear direct.

Should be a very profitable year for Apple.

eBay selling prices for the new iPhone have climbed easily over $750 since earlier today when many auctions closed at $700. There are definitely some scammers mixed in with potentially legitimate sellers. It'll be interesting to see where the prices go over the next week.

With respect to turn by turn guidance there is this in the SDK agreement essentially forbidding it:

http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2008/06/11...idance-dancing/

How close Apple stick to it remains to be seen of course.

Apparently that real-time route guidance thing is a generic piece of text from ATT documentation as well. It was included with the very first revision of the SDK long before anyone even knew the new iPhone was coming this year, let alone would feature GPS.

Apple/ATT are protecting their arses with that item. Basically the phone is an entertainment platform and should not be relied upon for potentially life-affecting situations. No one wants to get sued by careless Brits and Americans driving into lakes or getting stuck under bridges.

We'll see proper GPS nav applications come out. Two have already been mentioned by their respective companies, though no release dates were given.

Where do you get this from? Unless they came out and said that, it seems unlikely to me that this is the reason.


Yeah, those were announced, and then promptly rejected by Apple. And apparently the SDK is not the reason, according to this.

Actually I haven't seen anyone else offer up any other reason for that mention in the SDK. Similar text can also be found in other documentation, including cell contracts according to some.



Apple hasn't said boo about any GPS related developments. The only thing "from Apple" is that small note in the SDK that I'm aware of.



Exactly. They're basically echoing the point I made about Apple covering their asses. Tom Tom isn't going to announce the product before its time. When they were interviewed they also had no way to make the software fully functional nor releasable.

There was no GPS in first gen iphones nor could one be paired with a BT external GPS that I know of. Then there was the fact that no legitimate way to distribute nor install applications existed at that time.

If Tom Tom had iPhone 3G hardware it would have been provided by Apple and under some heavy NDA. Another reason for them to try keeping the whole thing quiet.

The iPhone will likely become the most popular and widely distributed GPS in the world. Sales volume will eclipse all other GPS products handily.

I got mine today. AT&T sent me an email this morning (dated 5am) saying that my "direct fulfillment" would take 5-7 days, maybe more. Screw that. I went out at 8am (store opening at 10am) and got 20th place in a line that grew to about 50 by 10am.

I was on my way home with a new iPhone at 10:30am. My old phone ceased working as I walked out the door, but my new phone was reporting "no signal" for hours thereafter. I went back to the store around 3pm and griped at them. It took 30 minutes of tweakage before everything started working. The store manager said "I sure how this doesn't happen to many other people, otherwise it's going to be really difficult for us."

So far, aside from all the usual coolness, my biggest observation squares with Walt Mossberg, namely that this thing eats battery like nobody's business. In six hours, I managed to consume 3/4 of the battery strength with occasional use, switching between my home WiFi and AT&T's 3G/Edge network (varying, depending on where I was, while we were doing errands).

Well, just about anything that uses WiFi is going to be hard on batteries, compared with the optmising power modes of a proper mobile network.

cheers

Looking at the review, it is 3G connectivity that kills the battery, not wifi. When Walt tested Internet usage using 3G he managed 6 hours using 3G compared to 9 hours on the 1st gen using Wifi. Which isn't really a surprise as 3G is well known for using a lot of juice.

Wasn't this the reason Apple gave for not putting 3G into the original iPhone?

Indeed it was. And it's still true today. To get a 3G iPhone, you've basically got to charge it every single night. Forget one night, and you're toast the next day.

In line for mine today. It's day 3 and there is still a significant line. Probably about 60-80 people. They are handing out bottled water and umbrellas but so far we are all still in the shade. They are out of 16 gig models so everyone today gets an 8.

(I haven't been in line for three days. Only about 40 minutes. I drove by on day one and said "fsck that", I'll wait.)

Strolled past the Apple store at the Trafford Centre this afternoon, no lines, just a bunch of people looking at them.

EDIT: Both models still in stock.

My accelerometer is broken

Although all I've got to do is take it to the apple store this week and they'll replace it for me....not bad as it came direct from O2.

I got one the day it came out. My nephew wanted to wait all day so I said what the hell and picked one up. Poor kid was waiting in line for like 8 hours.

I'm really enjoying the new features but I seem to be having a problem. It seems like I'm getting 3-4 bars less than I should be. At home with my old iphone I used to get 4-5 bars, now I get 1. In general it seems I'm getting way crappier reception. 3G still works though. Anyone else experience something similar?

3G probably doesn't have the same coverage as the old GSM. If you turn off 3G (if it's possible) then you should get the same signal strength (in theory).

Stig

I've similarly observed a lack of 3G coverage. It seems like the phone is preferring crappy 3G over good old-school GSM, which could explain part of the battery drain phenomenon.

It is. I believe it's Settings - General - Network.

Yeah, you should definitely check the coverage map before purchasing. On the data side, only 10% of the country is covered by ATT's HSDPA. EVDO currently has far more coverage. I'm sure ATT will expand pretty quickly, though. T-Mobile, OTH, is way behind.

Given my limited needs outside of my area, I'm curious to see what happens with WiMAX and what types of devices will come out of it. But that's pretty far down the road. It won't even be release until the end of the year, and I'm sure it'll take a while for manufacturers to catch up.

Meanwhile, on the battery drain front, 9to5mac was republishing this graph from PC World:

"Wow! Three times as good as a Treo 750!"

Except it's not, of course. Even if it's too much to ask for error bars on this sort of graph (the Iphone's lead over the Samsung appears to be about three minutes in five-and-a-half hours: is their testing really accurate to the nearest 1%?), surely it's not rocket science to start the graph at the origin?

I think statisticians are like Empegs: most of the people who direly need one, don't even know it...

Peter

Honestly, I still don't understand why an entire day isn't long enough for most people. Here's a simple idea: put a charger by your bed. I have a chord draped over my nightstand, and when I get into bed, I plug in my phone. It's pretty darn easy. My phone hasn't run out of juice since I got it in October. Between my car charger, a USB data cable, and that home charger, I don't see any way I could run out of power.

Also, I had the Treo 750w, and never thought the battery was a problem. Then again, I seem to be the only person on the planet who liked that phone...

Going away for a weekend without a car, forgetting your mains charger and finding no one else with you has a matching charger ? It has happened to me at least once.

I hear you. I was going to say exactly that before I read your email. That sorting of graphing is clearly misleading to people who don't recognise that kind of twisting of results.



Because it would be nice to go away for the weekend and not have to remember the charger - or go away for work (particularly with a business oriented phone) for just 2 days (i.e. one overnight stay) without having to remember the charger etc

At least a number of the newer ones can charge from USB allowing charging from laptop (another charger to remember)

I can do without 7 days standby (which I used to get on my 6230 sans 3G, sans email checking etc), but I'd like to see 2 to 3 days with some use as a target for battery life.

5 hours simply doesn't cut it although that is solid use. The problem is they cram so many features in you use them more and more resulting in less and less battery life.

I guess the question is: "Is the extra 3G speed inversely proportional to the battery life. i.e. you do more stuff in a shorter time so need less battery life..."

I suppose those graphs are all about talk time. What they should well have measured with the iPhone is talk time on GSM vs. 3G, since they're quite different. For that matter, if they truly wanted to do apples-to-apples, they'd have to make sure they were the same physical distance from the cellular towers.

Meanwhile, my iPhone is continuing to impress. It's nice that they got little details right (e.g., when I was listening to music and a call came in, the phone faded out the music before playing my ringtone). So far, the only problem I'm having is that it refuses to connect to our 802.1x wireless at work (i.e., I put in my username and password and it just sits and spins). The Enterprise Deployment Guide talks about an "iPhone Configuration Utility" that you can run (available here).

This is a fun little utility. For eample, you can read the syslogs on your iPhone and see all the access points that you've bumped into. It has a notion of "configuration profiles", which my employer would presumably configure for me. (The Help Desk responded saying "come on over and we'll get it working for you.")

So it's a decent little toy. Muchly like it. 3G network works good for me.

Not so much liking the real-time features of the mapping software. They really need to work on that. No *way* can it replace my GPS unit in its current state. It's funny, though, the mapping application is just on the hairy edge of being useful for navigation. Just a few tiny little things to fix up and it would be useful.

Once Garmin or Magellan or Nuvi or whoever comes out with nav software for this thing, though, I'm so *there*.

Does the new OS update (for the iPhone) allow you to disable password masking? I hated the fact that the WPA settings masked your password. I can't understand why you'd need the password masked on a device with with such a small screen. At least in Mac OS you can turn it off.

With the masking in place I was unable on at least 10 attempts to get my brother's iPhone to join my secure network. I have a really long password phrase and we both found it impossible to type into the iPhone without seeing what characters we were typing.

The iPhone shows you the last character you typed and leaves it up, in cleartext, for a few seconds. It's tolerable.

I know. It wasn't enough help to get us onto my network. Without being able to see the whole pass phrase in clear text we couldn't determine if it was a typo or something else. There little to no need to visually mask a password on a hand-held device. I'd go so far as to say there's little to no use masking them on your personal computer either. I suppose if a particular field were to encrypt/hash as you type so that it never held the clear text even internally, there's some benefit to executable exploits.

Anyway, the whole "it's Mac OS" BS just kept getting on my nerves because nothing about the iPhone is anything like Mac OS from a UI or usability point of view.

I'm with you, Bruno.

These days, WEP and WPA keys can be pretty byzantine, and I'd really like to see them optionally show clear text. To answer your question directly: No, it's not an option in this version of the software. And the aforementioned 2.0 feature of the last character hanging around for a second or two is utterly useless.

The following things need to happen on this thing to make entering WPA keys more friendly:

1. Optionally show clear text characters when entering WPA keys.

2. Make the caps lock feature (double-clicking on the shift button) stay "sticky" when toggling back and forth between the numbers and letters panels. If you don't understand why this is needed, try entering the following as a WPA key: CD19DF45ABBA5B5CD5A1

3. When entering passwords or WPA keys, it needs a different keyboard entry panel that includes numbers and letters on the same screen so that you don't need #2 above.

Without these features, entering WPA keys is do-able, but a huge pain.

My pass phrase is 44 characters long and includes both lower and upper case, numerals and and a few non-alphanumeric characters. It's super easy for me to remember, but would be very hard for anyone else to guess or brute force attack.

The only error we received from the iPhone was that it couldn't connect and my best guess was something was mistyped in the pass phrase. If I could have verified it was typed correctly, then I could have gone onto other trouble-shooting steps.

With a clear text display it would then have also been possible to restore the form with the text that was just typed, making it easy to correct instead of having to try typing the whole thing again.

I can somewhat understand that scenario, but on the other hand I doubt any of these phones will last that long. Of course, we could get down to specifics, like "does this weekend start on Friday night or Saturday morning? Does it end on Sunday night or Monday morning or later?"

I can definitely commiserate on the forgotten charger part, though. That's happened to me before certainly. Fortunately my current phone has a really decent standby time, so I limited my usage, turned off the bluetooth, and got through. But it's not a smartphone

Out of interest (because I don't think we ever came up with a satisfactory answer to this, back when we were designing Sapphire), how secure is the WPA key once you've entered it? Do you have to enter a PIN, or similar, to decrypt the key each time you connect? What happens if you've got your work WPA key on your Iphone and then lose the device or get it nicked?

(On Sapphire we thought about having the WPA/WEP keys in a "safe" which you open using the rotary controller as a tumbler -- the "15 left, 34 right" and so on would be formed into a local key to decrypt the WPA key. But it's hard to come up with strong enough keys from the UI: there's little point having 256-bit WPA on the network if you only have 20 or 30 bits of variety in Sapphire's local key.)

Peter

I don't know how the WPA key is stored on the phone itself, i.e., I don't know if they save it in a clear text file in memory.

However there is currently no way from its normal user interface to view the key after it's been typed in. (You can't even view it WHILE you're typing it in, which was Bruno's complaint.)

If you wanted to prevent a nicked phone from being used on your WPA network, you can PIN-lock the phone's UI, but I think that an "awake" phone will still connect to a known WPA network in the background, with the anticipation that someone will want to start using it as soon as they enter the PIN.

Peter brings up a good point about device loss. You don't want people getting access to passwords when they find your device.

When I was mentioning clear text password fields, I didn't mean they should be pre-populated with the clear text password at a later date/time. Only while you're actually entering new text or making a correction on the password you just typed.

I'm fine with obfuscated password fields for times where the password is stored and recalled in the OS as a shortcut (hopefully it's stored in an encrypted state or the whole "security" thing is rather moot.

So I guess that means they haven't thought about the problem at all: if your Wifi is accessible from your Iphone, your 256-bit WPA2 encryption has just become (assuming a 6-digit PIN) more like 20-bit encryption.


With penny-plain mobile phones, a crack or firmware reload to the device that obviates PIN entry doesn't actually buy the criminal all that much: just a list of contacts, and phone service which can swiftly be revoked by the network based on IMEI number. With a smartphone (or other Wifi device; the problem isn't restricted to Iphones) a crack or jailbreak that can bypass the PIN and/or load software on the device, can confer considerable criminal advantage. It doesn't matter whether the WPA key is stored obfuscated, if the hooks that cause the OS to fetch, uncloak, and activate it are there for the calling by UI code.

I think advanced EAP-type WPA might be able to revoke access on an client-by-client basis, but normal PSK WPA certainly can't.

Peter

I don't see that as being any more or less of an issue than it would be for a stolen laptop. Other than the fact it's easier and more common to lose or steal a cell phone.

I also don't see much difference in the way that the iPhone handles that security than it would be on a laptop. The laptop is protected by a (usually weak) user name and password, not much better than a PIN.

It isn't secured in any particularly good way on the iPod touch or iPhone. Its just kept in the keyring.

If your iPhone is compromised, you also lose the passwords to log into your Gmail or whatever provider. WEP/WPA keys are the least of your worries.

One possible workaround for typing in huge WPA keys is to use Apple's iPhone Configuration Utility. You could create a profile for your local network, including all the key bits, and just email it to yourself. The mail client, when it sees those config files as attachments, does the right thing when you click on it, including a nasty warning message. (That's how our IT people set up my iPhone to use our 802.1x system.)

That's interesting. I wondered how the XML got into the iPhone after the configuration utility created it. I was skimming the dox on the utility earlier today after following the link to it. I missed the part about how it got onto the phone. Nifty.

You can also post it on a web site and set a mimetype to have the iPhone recognize it.

Yes, but with Gmail accounts and the like you presumably have to enter your password each time you connect -- or at least, presumably there's an option for setting it up like that. I'm just saying that, for the paranoid, there ought to be the option of similar security for WEP/WPA "accounts".

It's true in a way that the situation is no worse than for laptops, but laptops have keyboards and it's more acceptable to leave these things in "password required each time" mode. And if I was sysadmin somewhere which had an internal Wifi network, I'd be expecting to change the WPA codes and cause a flag day every time any laptop was stolen or lost. (In that situation I'd want to roll out a per-client-revokable version of WPA, but I've actually no idea how hard/impractical that is, e.g. whether there are Linux or Mac clients for any of the standards, or whether they need specific hardware support.)

IIRC (Mike) at Empeg we had WEP/WPA protection to get onto our external Wifi network and the Internet, and once there you had to use real SSH or VPN (which are, of course, per-client-revokable) to get in through the firewall to anywhere useful.

Peter

Most people at home using WPA are actually using WPA-Personal, which is just a simple password for authentication. Companies should be using WPA-Enterprise, which allows for a variety of authentication mechanisms, but regardless of the specifics, allows for per-user authentication.

While this is obviously useful for stolen laptops, it's more commonly useful for leaving employees. Just disable their account and you're done. No need to redistribute authentication parameters.

Most full-fledged computers do WPA-Enterprise just fine. Sometimes handheld devices don't. My PSP doesn't for example. But some do, like my (ugh) Blackberry.

Okay, so I just tried this today, and I can't find where in the configuration utility I'm supposed to actually type the WPA key itself. I find the screen that lets me tell it to connect to a specific named SSID, and it lets me spec the type of encryption (WPA/WPA2 is a pulldown list item) but no field ever appears asking me what the WPA preshared key is.

So, I called the local Apple store yesterday and was advised they had all 3 variants of iPhone. However, there was a 3 hour wait.

I ran down there expecting to blow the evening. Even though I was only about 20 people back from the front, the line moved incredibly slow. It even stopped dead for over 45 minutes at one point. The Apple store is still taking forever to get iPhones processed 2 weeks after iDay. Most of the problems are due to AT&T customers that don't qualify for an upgrade, and people that are mall-walking and just jump in line on a whim. In almost all those cases, the people were not prepared to pay a fee to cancel their current service (what did they expect?).

Once the store closed the line (so they can close around their normal hours), a staffer came out and started "pre-qualifying" people with his little handheld cash register thingy. I would say about 1/3 the people on line (not yet in the store) found out they would be paying "full retail price" for the phone which is $200 more than the upgrade price. Listening to my fellow line-mates bitch at AT&T to get their situation sorted out before getting through the doors provided much-needed entertainment.

I waited 4 hours on line before being served. Because I was an original iPhone owner, my transaction only took 10 minutes. When I left, the guy behind me was still in line! From what I could tell, they had 3 or 4 people doing iPhone activations. That would seem like enough, but obviously the system needs to be streamlined somehow.

Anyway, I got a 16GB Black and it's pretty nice. Feels lighter than the old one and also more secure in my hand. I was surprised to find that a dock wasn't included with the 3G. What a scam. Now I have to go back and buy one (for $30!). It will be satisfying just strolling through the door this time while more poor saps are standing in the iLine.

I got one on Wednesday in Boulder, I showed up early because they had them in stock (as shown on the Apple website) and they passed out tickets for the iPhones they had available - if you got a ticket you got to wait in line. They would pull you out of line if you were already with AT&T and pre-qualify you to make sure that you were eligible and then stick you back in line. I waited about 2 hours to get one, got a 16gb Black. I like it, it's my first real smartphone. I did notice a few people in line left the store without a phone and their tickets were returned to the line employee. They probably didn't pass the credit check or something. The thing is, a few people were walking by and they were able to snap up the tickets right away - they probably only waited 20 minutes tops!

I got mine yesterday.

I was in York walking back tot he train station, passed the O2 store on the off chance and they had "loads". It took about 15 minutes from walking in to walking out.

First impressions. The App store is great. Some of the edges are a little sharp somehow. Screen is amazing, so is the touch screen.

On the downside O2's 3G coverage is really really rubbish and quite slow in my area. If you are connected to a WiFi spot it doesn't drop to 3G if you haven't logged in, it just sits there.

Quite an amazing device, blows the socks off anything I have ever used before.

Cheers

Cris.

I noticed that too. It's like the fit and finish of the casing's edges are off a nanometer or something. Just enough so you can feel it with your finger, not enough to make it an issue.




That's something they really need to work on: automatically logging in to spots that give you a web sign-in page. For instance, in my company building, there is a free "guest" wifi hotspot that prompts you for a user name and password. Well, after I set up that user name and password, it works, but then I have to answer the prompt each time I reconnect. The iPhone should give me the option to remember that password and blast through that hotspot login for me, so I don't have to open up Safari and type in the username and password each time I want to check my mail or browse the app store.

It also needs to be smarter about joining wifi networks. It joins every network that has a common name. For instance, in my town, everywhere you go, there are wifi networks named "DLink" or "Actiontec" or "Linksys", because people are dumb and they never rename their wireless routers. Well, those are often open to the internet (for similar reasons), so I often join those networks if I find an open one when I'm sitting in a restaurant or whatnot.

But then let's say I'm driving down the street and using the mapping feature with 3G. As I drive by other routers named "DLink" or "Linksys", it keeps connecting to them, even though it can't see the internet through them, and it drops the perfectly good 3G network, and of course freezes up solid.

I wish that, before it automatically joins a wifi network, it could spawn off another background thread that makes sure it has an actual path to the internet and can retrieve something other than a hotspot logon page.

Yes, this is a very much needed feature. Already starting to annoy me. I have also noticed I have had to completely turn the thing off and on again for it to pick up an internet connection, it doesn't seem to retry very well, it just sits there waiting.

And why no copy and paste? Seems pretty basic to me.

I have downloaded a few games from the App Store now, and the free VNC really is impressive. I am amazed by some of the graphics it's something I really didn't expect. The game control is very very good, it picks up on the slightest movement and there really is no need for physical keys.

How the hell do they fir everything into it??? If I sit it next to my Karma (which is still very much in use!) it really is amazing what is now possible.

Another thing I like is the push email, I think this will be the killer app for me. The only reason I don't like my blackberry to be honest is because it gives me more work to do. The iPhone and .me are just what I have been looking for, I think I may even pay the £59 when my trial runs out! Shock! Horror!

In fact you can help me try it out email me at crismatthews @ me.com (take out the spaces!).

Thinking about it I haven't even tried it with music yet

Cheers

Cris.

I grabbed a new one yesterday before heading to Quakecon. Line for it wasn't too terrible, but still over an hour of waiting. The speed difference between Edge and 3G is definitely noticeable, and will be handy when needed, but my main benefits of upgrading are other features. The 16gb of space is already coming in handy and the GPS is working wonderfully to lead me around Dallas. True navigation software will be a welcome addition. The new phone also feels better in the hand, something I didn't expect.

It's an evolutionary jump, but a welcome one.

Interesting tidbits about the iPhone out of Carmack's keynote:

1. He's really disappointed he and id didn't have time to release a game for it yet. An evolved version of the DS copy of Orcs and Elves will likely be their first release.

2. He really likes the SDK. Easy to work with, great tools, and a nice professional fit and finish to it when compared against other mobile platforms.

3. The graphics capabilities are on par with the Dreamcast (1999 high end console), and due to the much higher memory, could probably outclass a PS2 or XBox.

I got mine at 9:01am in Pittsburgh, 24th in line, opening day. At 9:35 it finished activating and I left

Things I want:
-hwpen updated for 2.0
-bluetooth keyboard
-bluetooth a2dp (i have been poking at frameworks trying to figure out what might be done here; don't want a fob)
-bluetooth obex
-better tethering than socks.
-streaming wma (though i will probably work on that this week)

It's nice as a replacement for my old phone. It's not good as a replacement for my Treo, yet.

Also, I got a small scratch in my screen; I might learn about polishing glass

ahhh - have a look at dynolicious

might make an iphone almost worthwhile, as I'm still a luddite who doesn't really like them (very few of the features are benefits for me, and they don't have a lot of things I need/want in a phone)

That's kinda awesome.

I drive very little at all anymore, sadly...
Otherwise it'd be neat.

Determining the performance characteristics of locomotives could add a new element to your trainspotting.

Boarding one is probably not looked highly upon.

Somebody I know made something similar using the Wii paddle...

So after a week of use, here are the high a low lights...

A cool feature is that if you remove the headphone from the jack the player pauses. This means you don't have to unlock the screen to pause if you have finished listening.

The GPS and maps is a triumph! I used it today to find a post office in York, it will be a very useful feature in future!

The sound quality is pretty good, my ears are used to the Karma after many years but I think this will be the way I listen to music on the go from now. I don't find I need the eq, it sounds good and rounded as it is.

I love the apps store, amazing idea. Great mix of apps already.

The screen quality is amazing.

Unfortunately most of the negative points relate to email, the main reason I opted for the iPhone. No Spam filter on the phone as there is in Mail in OSX, I didn't realise just how much spam gets through my isp's filter. It doesn't update very well, the "push" features of me just don't work for me. The software seems to lock in "checking mail" and the only way I can get it to get new mail is a full power cycle, it feels like I am using windows mobile again! I assume these are just bugs.

Also all my apps stopped working all of a sudden, I had to wait until I got home and remove and re install them all. A blip I am sure.

The case is annoying me, the right hand side is fine, a smooth tactile finish, but the left side of the phone is not put together correctly, this is really annoying me now, I notice it every time I touch the device. I am thinking about returning it, but it feels a little petty doing that.

WiFi signal strength is just as good as any other device I have, but the mobile signal is shocking, I find it hard to use the phone in Leeds centre as it breaks up all the time. I also find o2 data throughput on 3G shockingly bad. I am assuming this is all an O2 problem?

I miss an led or something like on my blackberry, it would be great to have a pulse led that lets you know you have email etc... waiting.

Overall I think it is quite an amazing device, it all comes together in the apps store for me. I feel I have made a good choice in the iPhone, and I am sure that the bugs will be ironed out in future updates.

Cheers

Cris.

I don't know how the retail stores for the phones work in the UK, but here in the US, it's a very painless process. You make an appointment at the Genius Bar, walk in at the appointed time, and walk out 10 minutes later with a new phone.

If there is an obvious defect in the casing, I wouldn't have the slightest hesitation doing it. The company *expects* people to return items with defects. They know that they can't make 100 percent of them perfect. And when there *are* defects in the field, they want to know about them so they can make their assembly and quality control procedures better.

In other words, there's nothing petty about returning a product like that. Don't think twice.

You paid money for goods in what should be perfect condition. If its not then take it back. If it was advertised as "slightly damaged" and had a discount then you'd jsut have to deal with it but in this case it wasn't.

Besides, if you don't do it then you'll forever be slightly annoyed each time you use the phone.

Yes, this is the current feeling. I think I will drop in the Apple Store next time I am nearby.

Cheers

Cris.

Both versions of the iPhone seem to have appalling mobile reception for some reason. No idea why. Everybody else seems to have mastered the internal antenna for the last few years.

O2 data throughput isn't that great. To be honest, its not great on any of the UK carriers even if you have a HSDPA capable phone.

My observation is that the treble was far too high. Setting the EQ to "Bass Booster" mostly worked, but resulted in some really nasty clipping artifacts. I'm now using the "Treble Reducer" which works much better. I never felt a need to make any adjustment on my (1st-gen) iPod Nano.

Otherwise, the only thing that's annoying me is that there's no way to set the different alerts the way I want. I want new emails to vibrate with no sound, but I want a beep and vibration for SMS. (Email is arriving all the time, and it's rarely important enough to interrupt what I'm doing, but SMS is much more rare and thus worth generating an interrupt.) For now, I just have email alerts turned off altogether.

My iPhone seems to have trouble switching back and forth between EDGE and 3G seamlessly, sometimes I will get a very strong EDGE signal then it will drop to a 0 bar 3G signal. I just turned off 3G unless I really need it (am in a good area and need to do some heavy surfing) and that fixed a lot of my signal issues.

No current phone of any type has any sort of spam filter that I'm aware of. It's simply too much processing. This really should be done at the server or ISP level.

Are you using ActiveSync to push mail? I'd guess not since you mention your ISP and rarely do ISPs offer Exchange.

I have 2 accounts set up on the iPhone, a me.com set to push (which doesn't work) and my isp account set to fetch (which doesn't work). I really like my blackberry for work emails so I figured that I should get a similar service from me.com but I don't. It simply isn't working for me, it did but it's so up and down that it makes it hard to predict how long it takes for emails to turn up on my mobile, and often I miss them.

I think it is the fetch function that doesn't work the most, it is set to 30 mins refresh but it can go all day without even trying. And when it does it just sits there, logging onto my isp's webmail shows I have email waiting. It does this both over 3G and WiFi.

I am sure these are just bugs, but it really is annoying as everything else is pretty good.

Cheers

Cris.

Me.com failing to work might well be a bug (they had rollout troubles with me.com), but fetching regular mail from your ISP should work just fine unless there's authentication troubles. I'd investigate things like the server names, the settings, the password, etc., and call your ISP and ask them if other users have had trouble connecting with their iPhones.

I'm fetching from Gmail and it works great.

Miscellaneous annoyances, in no particular order:

- There's no way, from the iPhone, to forge my From: address, as I do from Gmail itself. That means that any message I send from my iPhone has my @gmail.com address rather than my preferred @cs.rice.edu address (which forwards to Gmail and keeps a copy locally).

- There's less fine-grained control over how alerts work (I've griped about this here before).

And, while I'm at it, I've got a small gripe about the calendar support:

- I'm now using Google Calendar's CalDAV support to hook my Google Calendar to iCal. That part works great, and my remote calendars sync perfectly to the iPhone. The problem is that I can't specify which calendar receives a new entry on the iPhone. They all go to the local "Calendar" calendar. You can't specify a different calendar to receive a new event.

I also have the problem where it will not fetch for some reason even though it it is set to check every 15 minutes. It doesn't sit around when it tries, it just doesn't try. So when I initiate a manual fetch I will sometimes have e-mails hours old.

I also find it very frustrating that I cannot send/receive files to and from via bluetooth.

Stu

Does that mean you can't stuff multiple addresses into the account prefs like you can in the full Mac OS version of Mail?

In Mail what you do is supply multiple addresses, comma separated, in the "Email Address" field of your account prefs. You can do this for every account and when composing an email you will see a pop-up menu next to the From: header where you can pick what address to use.

I bounce between EDGE and 3G routinely in certain (weak 3G) places and I've noticed no real issue with it. I do get data on the 0-bar 3G until it gets too weak and goes back to EDGE.

The crippled Bluetooth stack is a bummer. BTManager has support for everything it does on a laptop; The MobileBluetooth framework is useless. I haven't looked at the kernel yet but I bet someone can eventually add what's needed. I have a full toolchain now, but no time.

And for the techy who doesn't have an EEE:

iSSH

I know you can set up multiple accounts. What it won't let me do (and I've tried several ways) is set up my account at gmail.com with an email address other than my @gmail.com address.

I do this with my GMail account. I can send and receive messages with my cushman.net e-mail address completely from gmail.com and my iPhone with my setup like this:

I believe the key is stored as it is on a Mac, in your keychain, which is encrypted - so you don't get it in plaintext if you steal/hack the phone.

Beyond that, it'd be nice if the phone would erase itself if someone kept trying to crack your PIN, but I don't believe it does that... I should file a bug really!

Hugo

Bear in mind that "bars" are a very arbitrary indicator. Unlike zero-bar 2G when you'd be lucky to get a single byte of data to/from the network, I still get very passable 3G data speeds with zero-bar 3G. Also, camping on 3G networks is pretty much the same power as camping on 2G - it's just when you actively use the network that 3G starts sucking power.

Hugo

I second this; the product should not have cosmetic imperfections. Take it to an Apple store and ensure you examine the replacement before you accept it - I've had preproduction units with sharp bezel edges on one side and they're not nice to use.

I know it's not very english to complain about small cosmetic details, but do it. I'm getting better at it now I've been here a couple of years

Hugo

If you set it up manually, instead of selecting GMail, you can. The GMail setting ends up using your address as the login name as well, but manually will let you set them independently. Google offers help on this here.

Also, if you sync mail settings to the phone from OS X Mail, the multiple addresses trick Bruno was speaking of will work. While the phone won't let you insert a comma in the address field, it does get synced over. You then can click on "From" when composing, and select any one of the valid From addresses you have on the phone.

This is possible, but not exposed as a setting on the iPhone directly. Instead, you need to create a configuration profile with the iPhone Configuration Utility, and deploy it to the phone. It allows PIN requirements to be set, along with when to wipe the device if the wrong PIN is put in too many times.

*edit* Nevermind, it looks like it will allow the device to be locked out, but it doesn't wipe the phone. I couldn't find any specifics on how this works, so no idea what has to happen to unlock the phone if the wrong PIN is given too many times.

Excellent! That's what I was missing.

Unless I missed it somehow that still gives but one email address (and potentially one more for each other account, in the from/cc/bcc thing); the , separated syntax even when sync'd over from a mac seems to have no effect.

This is how it shows up on mine. First picture is the e-mail settings, showing a comma separating two addresses. Then when composing an e-mail, I can tap From, and up comes a selector showing 4 addresses (2 from my miniinfo account, and 2 others from 2 more accounts). This is with iPhone firmware 2.0.1, syncing from an OS X 10.5.4 machine.

Thanks Hugo. I don't think advice gets better than that

I am on the road at the moment, and I am loving the iPhone, email seem to be better now I have turned fetch to manual me.com seems to be doing it's job and push it working again. Again the maps function proved useful in finding a good place to eat.

Still pretty happy, battery life seems good but I am not so sure it is going to be good enough to last a day in a year or so time.

Cheers

Cris.

My co-worker got his last week, and the battery drains from full to dead in just under two hours, with NO use. He went to ATT to get it changed out, and they refused. He got the manager, who apologized, and said they'd take care of it. Two days later a box from Apple arrived. An empty box. They want him to ship it back to them so they can repair it. He went back to ATT today and the only way they would let him out of the store with an Iphone in his hand is if he BOUGHT ANOTHER ONE. Once Apple received the original, they'd refund the Original price.

That, my friends, is shitty customer service.

Yeah, I had the exact opposite experience when I needed to get my iTouch exchanged at the Apple store. It was a completely painless procedure and was some of the best customer service I've ever received.

Hope that AT&T's terrible service doesn't reflect badly on Apple.

Apple won't let you leave with an unactivated iPhone. The old iPhone 2G they'd let you leave with it and activate it at home but a significant portion were hacked instead. They didn't want that to happen this time.

Went to a At&T store today, will get an iPhone in 7 to 10 days. I went to an Apple store last week and could have walked out that day with a phone. My AT&T account is tied into my company's account so I get a 5% discount on my monthly bill, therefore for some reason I must by the phone from a AT&T store.

The AT&T manager there wasn't happy with the arrangement. I wonder how many sales he's lost because he doesn't get any phones.

I bought my 3G at the Apple store. It had an odd problem where the home button would be very difficult to press when the dock connector was attached. After 3 weeks of ownership, I decided it bothered me enough to make an appointment at the Genius Bar. The tatted-up pierced dude behind the counter verified my complaint and swapped my phone for a new one on the spot without my asking.

That, my friends, is excellent customer service.

Sadly, thats about what I'd expect out of AT&T. While I don't get along with the people at the Genius bars much, they at least do their job and replace hardware when needed. Apple corporate seems to keep a very tight leash on the stores and their policies, unlike AT&T and their stores.

I walked out the door with my iPhone still in the shrinkwrap, though I did go through the AT&T upgrade procedure at the store on their little PDA checkout devices. Came home, plugged in the phone, and was presented with the same iTunes activation system as my iPhone last year.

Ditto.

I ordered my 3G the day they were available to order online from O2, it (should have) arrived on launch day (but the delivery bloke couldn't be bothered to, so he took it back to the depot without even attempting to deliver - so I collected the next day). After a couple of days the accelerometer failed, I phone O2, spoke to the monkeys who told me to try everything that I'd already tried before speaking to them, they then transferred me to Apple.

Apple told me to make an appointment with the genius bar at my local store (luckily Cambridge has just got an Apple store due to the posh new shopping arcade), took it in, they verified that the phone was faulty and replaced it there and then, the phone hadn't even come from them!

Adrian

Is that a prerequisite for the job? It's the same over here.

I can't get it to do it for Gmail, but you're right otherwise. Hm.

The bluetooth tethering is disappointing. I am working on getting the kernel so I can look at loadable modules. After poking at ffmpeg I discovered that vlc4iphone does windows media audio streams, so I don't need to worry about that: I can have CD101 on the iPhone.

The device must have got pretty hot for that to happen - 1150mAh battery = 4.255Wh = about 2 watts per hour or maybe a 30C rise above ambient. Did he complain of it getting hot? Did it operate normally in those 2 hours?

Still, the ATT customer service sounds very sucky... I don't think the same would have happened if he'd got it from an Apple store, but I realize this isn't exactly convenient for a lot of people.

Hugo

Is anyone getting connection issues?

It seems to come and go, I think on local signal strength. Sometimes the phone just isn't useable and several times this weekend I was unable to hold a conversation as the phone would just drop the call over and over again. My other o2 phone seemed to be ok.

I have seen a couple of reports in other places of this, but it's really hard to get it to repeat. Sometimes it's fine ???

I am assuming this could also be the source of my email problems. Would I be right in thinking a break in the 3G network could cause the email app to hang, or at least take a while to pick the connection back up?

Battery life also truly sucks, even with WiFi, bluetooth and 3G turned off I only got half a weekend of standby time out of it this last weekend (no access to a charger) and this is with very little use. I am beginning to think I have got the runt of the litter here, there just seems to be too many things not quite right with this unit. I must get myself down to that Apple Store!

Still love it though, when it works the email is great, and having Safari in my pocket is just great I find myself using it for all sorts.

New niggle - The person who decided to put that switch at the top left of the phone needs a smack It's just too easy to knock the phone into silent mode in your pocket. Can I disable it's use anywhere ???

Another niggle - When you update your apps (when it prompts you) it rearranges your icons on your home screen. Annoying!

Also, who decided an iPhone case has to cost £30 ??? (I know there are cheaper options, but the ones you can buy in the shops all seem to be about that).

Cheers

Cris.

I've also heard reports of people complaining about connection problems. Interestingly, have a look at this.

Battery life: I also think it's reasonable to expect that with all those features turned off, you should get a weekend's worth of standby time out of the thing. Assuming you weren't using it to surf and talk the whole time, of course. I don't know what its specs actually are, though.

Agreed that repositioning the software icons after an update is a pain. I'm sure that's something that everyone complains about and that they're going to fix eventually.

Switch: I happen to really like that switch. I like being able to check it for its silent-mode without having to pull it out of my pocket and punch buttons, like I would have needed to do with my old phone. If you get one of those rubberized sleeves for the thing, the switch will be recessed more and will be less likely to accidentally get moved. But like you said, that's another £30.

I think DealExtreme has the rubber covers for a just couple of bucks.

http://www.dealextreme.com/products.dx/category.500

I like the switch as well, as it's been the easiest phone I have owned to quickly throw into silent mode. The one downside that I can see to it is the inability to have a location/time aware ringer though. A friend of mine had this on his old Symbian phone, where he could have it go to silent automatically at specific times, or in specific locations. His phone didn't have GPS, but it could keep track of the cell towers and signal strength to estimate where he was. If he went to the movies, his phone switched to silent automatically.

I suppose this might be possible still on the iPhone where the software overrides what the switch says, but it would also require running an app in the background. Thats still a nono in iPhone land sadly. It would be nice if they could open it up a little bit, like offering crontab like functions when the phone is not actively being used.

Hmmmmm, yes I think I may be one of the 2% then. At least I hope so

It is a very strange problem as it doesn't do it all the time in the same locations. Our building at work is a good example, generally 3G is very bad in the building and it's about 50/50 that I can take a call without being cut off and that's right in the centre of Leeds! I am not big user of the phone part of the iPhone but I still notice issues, where as with other phones I have it's never been an issue and I never gave it a second thought.

I wonder if there is a link between my case issues and the cutting out problem? ie something inside not quite right by a tiny fraction?

I can see the advantage of a switch for that function, just not so keen on it's positioning. I really like the idea of GPS position or time sensitive ringer settings!

Cheers

Cris.

The switch is brilliant.

I would love the ability to automatically switch alerts to silent during specific time periods, like monday to friday 10pm till 8pm I want emails to be silent so I don't get woken at 3am by the latest viagra offer and maybe 10pm till 11 am on the weekends.

Adrian

Try turning push off - wifi doesn't suck power unless the phone is awake (ie, it doesn't affect standby time), but push can, depending on network conditions etc.

With a minimal config you should get weeks of standby...

Minimum meaning 3G off ?

Yes, the device DID get quite hot. I also agree about the apple store, but the closest one is an hour drive away. At any rate, it's now sorted. We have a friend who is a rep at another store, and she told him the names to ask for when dealing with the PITA rep. The guys eyes got a little wider when he asked for the rep's supervisor by name. After he said his supervisor wasn't available his eyes got yet wider when my friend asked for his supervisor's supervisor by name.

After that, the whole attitude changed.

So does the 2.0.2 update from yesterday fix your connection issues?

Not sure yet. Email updates are still buggy, for example it hasn't updated the ISP inbox since 9:57 this morning despite me trying muliple times to get it to refresh, I will have to do a full shutdown and restart of the phone to get it to work, so that's one issue 2.02 doesn't fix

The singal bar is as low as it ever has been, there doesn't seem to be any improvement there, but I haven't had enough time to see if phone calls are better or not. It has been pointed out before (by Hugo I think) that the bars don't mean too much.

For me I can't see many changes in 2.02 yet, everything seems much the same.

Edit - Yep just did a full restart of the phone and my inbox refreshed straight away (10 new mails waiting on my ISP account), phone hasn't moved, it's on my desk at work. I think that's a bug!

Cheers

Cris.

I learned yesterday that you can dial and call *3001#12345#* on the keypad to access the field test menu. My signal meter turns to a dB meter in this mode. Most other readings are pretty cryptic (to me).

For the win.

Okay, so your message got me looking at http://www.macosxhints.com today, searching on "iphone" in their database of hints. Some gems in there. Example, how to take a screenshot:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080710074630863&query=iphone

With all the problems people have been having, it sounds like the usual adage of don't buy first revision Apple hardware seems to be holding true.

Well, this is the second revision (depending on how you look at it), but I know what you're saying.

Personally I'm quite happy with my iPhone and I haven't been having any major connection problems. Occasionally (rarely) I need to reboot it to get internet surfing to work, and I think this might be related to that problem. But I've had no overall connection issues like some folks have been reporting.

Cool! Not terribly informative to somebody who doesn't know what it all means. Somebody should build an iPhone app to capture all this information along with GPS coordinates, and let you build signal maps and so forth.

One of the EricaUtils will grab your current coordinates. I bet CoreTelephony has a signal strength variable. Hm.

Not the iPhone antenna that gives bad reception.

Maybe the iPhone reception issue is actually a power issue?

Has everyone tried the new firmware?

I have noticed the charge is holding longer on standby, I don't need to charge it every night now, but I think all they have done is replace the signal meter with a fixed graphic

Mine now shows full signal where ever I go.

Cheers

Cris.

I'm extremely happy with the new firmware. It's solved a few annoyances. When I do an update to one of the App Store applications, it no longer rearranges my icons. It installs apps faster, and synchs/backups are faster.

I'm curious what they did to improve the unit's battery life. I haven't really put that one to the test yet.

Nor me, I just noticed that this morning when I picked it up I still had 50% battery after forgetting to charge it last night, and I was able to use the phone for the day without leaving it home to charge up.

Cheers

Cris

Is there any way to get an iPhone 3G with only a 1 year contract and pay $399 or something? I'm only planning on being in the states for about a year and don't want to pay for the phone for another year after I leave...

Wasn't planning to get one at all, but the wife dropped the Treo two times too many and now the screen is permanently damaged.

The longer battery life is nice. I noticed.

I got streaming WMA working well on my jailbroke unit today, too.

I'm looking for a way to get a fully warrantied, supported iPhone in the UK without dealing with the shower of sh*t that is O2. I'm way too happy with the service I get from Orange to even think about leaving them.

From speaking to Hugo it appears there a couple of EU countries that are selling unbundled phones (Belgium was the only one he could think of at the time).

Has anyone else tried this?

I believe they're sold "without contract" but still locked to the network - same situation as the O2 pay and go phone that is available from today I would guess (although historically O2 haven't locked pay and go phones, but I suspect the iPhone will be!)

I think you can get unlocked ones in Hong Kong...a cow-orker said that's what she did and just popped her SIM in once she got back here. She isn't around to ask for details right now, but it seems reasonably plausible.

I would guess that would be a 2G iPhone though, the 3G (afaik) remains unhacked with regards to network unlocking.

In Australia you can buy a phone outright for around A$729 and have it network unlocked for just A$80 if I remember correctly.

Hmmm: Looks like they canned that idea:
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2008/09/what_happened_to_optus_pre-paid_iphone_3g_offer.html

And this link isn't available from anywhere on the normal Optus site it would seem:
http://personal.optus.com.au/web/ocaport...p;site=personal

I have been thinking about the same thing, but the price is keeping me back (and invested in upgrades for my games pc too) €615 for the 16G in belgium:

http://iphoneprijzen.nl/ (the little opened padlock means unlocked, so italy and belgium)

The iphone is different with warranty then other apple hardware too:



http://www.apple.com/support/iphone/service/faq/#repair3

iPhones in Belgium and Italy are really unlocked. It's against the law overthere to lock phones to networks.

In Holland, Vodafone has special offer for buyers of Italian and Belgian iPhones, just to annoy exclusive seller T-Mobile.

Pim

Am I reading that right? 200m plus unlimited Internet for €13.50? Or maybe €23?

Picked up my 16GB black in the Apple store at Bluewater today. I have to say the actual purchase experience was very un-Apple. It involved:

- booting XP in VMWare on an iMac (because O2's registration websites don't work on Safari/FF)
- reading my credit card details to the sales assistant in the middle of the store
- multiple websites that have to be filled in (with the same details each time)
- the assistant running off repeatedly to a backroom to collect the printed out contracts etc
- the assistant having to run around finding out the passwords for the O2 websites, because they change regularly
- having young kids wander up and nearly close down the registration pages while the sales assistant was off trying to find another password
- having the O2 site say my credit check had been "referred" only for the sales assistant to ring O2, give my name/order number and then wait silently for 5 minutes before someone at the other end said it was approved

Thankfully my experience once I got the phone in my hands has been exactly the opposite, it works even better than expected. That isn't to say that it doesn't need a few extra features in some areas, but what it does do it does almost magically well. To me the UI is far better thought out than any other device (including PCs, Macs and assorted phones) out there.

That's a cracker that one.

It's getting so difficult to not to just pull the trigger on this one. The problem is remembering the nightmares I had when my work phone was on O2, not that Vodaphone is any better.

I just signed up for Three here (Sydney) and it was... interesting. The sales process was conducted on a web browser on PCs in the middle of the (small) shop, all the name/address/bank stuff was typed up, with the same rushing around to printers, stapling, signing etc. A lengthy credit check on screen, and I was approved despite having nothing other than a bank account which was opened the same day. Amusingly I needed to open the bank account first because the same documentation I gave to the bank wasn't good enough for Three!

I got an HTC Hermes/TyTN off ebay back in the UK (in the shape of an Orange SPV M3100), unlocked it and upgraded to WM6. I had previously realised that Three's "Mobile Broadband" service (designed for use in a USB stick/modem) was enabled for voice, at their standard PAYG type price, and the data pricing was less than adding a data pack to a standard voice contract.

I took advantage of the still mildly weak US dollar and bought a 2nd Gen 32GB Touch in LA. I've downloaded the free SDK and compiled and run a few of the demo projects inside the emulator. But now I've reached a snag. Am I right in thinking that if I actually want to run the code on the actual hardware I have to sign up for the development programme and therefore cough up $99?

I'd still love to get an iPhone. I'm thinking I'll probably wait until someone figures out how to undo the SIM lock then I'll get a Pay as You Go iPhone and throw the O2 SIM away.