iPhone 3.0 Beta 3 - A user's perspective

This may be a little late to write something about iPhone 3.0 beta 3. But I would like to summarised my findings after a week of usage.

Beta 4 is expected to come out in coming week, hope it will be better and faster.

First impression of beta 3, the moment it is installed on my iPhone, that it is significantly faster than 2.2.1. However, I may be subjective as my iPhone 2.2.1 was jail broken and with all sorts of apps from the unofficial community, such as SwirlyMMS, MySMS, etc.

IPhone 3.0 beta 3 gives me a good reason why I need jailbreak no more. SMS and MMS are now a standard application in one, i.e. you send SMS and MMS from the same app, which is what I wanted all these while.

By typing an email address instead of a phone number, or clicking on camera icon on the left of your message input windows, iPhone knows that you wanted to send a MMS instead of SMS. This is quite a life saving as user need not go to a separate app to do either one messaging.

It will be good, if Apple were to integrate SMS, MMS, Twitter, Facebook, and other IM functionalities into one app, eliminating the need to flip back and fort relevant app for specific function, which essentially doing the same thing, i.e. messaging.

Another improvement is global search function, which again works well for me. I was relying on an app called SEARCH to perform similar function, search content within iPhone.

Global search does not only search messages, it does contacts, emails, podcasts, or rather all Apple bundled applications, including applications itself. This means if you have plenty of apps installed on your iPhone, one common problem is that you need to constantly swiping left or right to look for the app you wanted. Global search simplified the operation by just needed to type part of the app's name, viola, it will then listed, and you can launch the app by touching the icon.

Simplifying user interactions and enhancing functionality is not mutually exclusive and heading into opposite direction. Global search is a good example of such scenario.

I will write more later..

iPhone - my track on PDA to smartphone

Well, many was asking me why I favored iphone instead of phones running either Symbian or Windows Mobile.

I have been using a couple of phones, smartphones.

I was a tester for HTC series of Windows Mobile phones. To me, Windows Mobile is not even advancing since the day Windows CE launched.

The design philosophy is simply not right. It was taken from a PDA approach, and adding phone functionality. The worst is, it was trying to do what a desktop computer should, and of course with a lot of short comings.

I was first using Apple Newton MessagePad 120 which I bought from Singapore back in 1993. It was a truly amazing experience of having a PDA carrying around and it is surprisingly fast and accurate on handwriting recognition, much faster than my later HP iPAQ which I bought in year 2000.

I have never been impressed by Palm's PDA, even at the later date, I bought a Tungsten for my wife, and I still never like it.

Newton sets a high standard for me on PDAs and smartphones that I came across. Frankly, none so far beats Newton on its friendliness, even the iPhone.

I am still keeping an unit of Newton MessagePad 2100, except that the battery connector dropped out, the unit is still functioning well with AC.

After Apple discontinued Newton, I was looking for a replacement, or rather, an upgrade. There comes HP iPAQ which was first seen when one of my colleague bought it sometime year 2000.

I was impressed by the color screen, and bought 2 units, one for my wife, and one for myself.

There's little connectivity on iPAQ, I can slot in a wireless card, which requires a backpack, and the unit become almost 2 X as thick, and of course, heavy.

But both my wife and myself have been suffering from short battery life, typically lasted for 1 hour when actively using it; and often screwing up our contacts on both iPAQ and PC when ActiveSync don't work properly.

I started to admire the long battery life of Palm, and of course Newton.

My iPAQ was later flashed with Linux, seems to work pretty well with a number of Linux distributions available for iPAQ at that time.

After iPAQ, I have not been using PDA for quite some time. I truly believe that PDA must be connected to be useful, and battery life, extensibility, are all important aspect of PDA/smartphone.

Then came Nokia/Sony Ericsson's Symbian phone. I was attracted, and bought Nokia N70.

It was a horrible experience where my N70 is consistently running out of battery when I need most. Screen was too small for me to do anything meaningful except calling and accepting calls.

In 3 months' time, I traded the unit with Motorola Razor 3G, cheapest 3G phone at that point.

The Moto disappoint me with its short battery life and slow response. No choice, go look for an ordinary phone, Sony Ericsson K70, then SE T610i while waiting for iPhone 3G to be at our shore at reasonable price.

iPhone 3G is not perfect either, short battery life, i.e. my usage pattern of getting connected almost every moment requiring me to charge the phone atleast twice a day. I was later found out the short battery life is largely attributed to 3G/GPRS switching which forces the phone to scan for available 3G signal.

But iPhone design philosophy is very much different from Windows Mobile, where iphone is basically user centric, where WIndows Mobile is a shrink-Windows on a phone.

I will blog more on my findings on iPhone in the following days.

iPhone 3G with Body Guardz

Have my iphone 3G wrapped with Body Guardz. Quite badly done, and worst, the adhesive at the side of body Guardz is sticky and attracts furs and dust, which I was not able to avoid. However, it does serve its function to protect the phone well.

I have also noticed that after wrapping up the iphone, I was not able to fully charge the phone when the weather is hot. 

I am using the iphone 3G almost every other minute, and something charging up to 4 times in a day as the battery goes off pretty fast.

Battery life is not due to the design of iphone, but rather my ISP, Celcom, whose 3G signal going limbo every now and then. This forces the iphone to keep scanning and re-attach to 3G when 3G signal dropped and come back at random, but pretty frequent both at my work place and at home.

I can opt to switch off 3G when not in use, but my problem is that I need to access to my mail box at certain intervals. Some users suggested that downloading mails are pretty fast even with EDGE network.

My problem with Celcom is: I do not sense any EDGE signal around my work place and my home. Yes, there are some spots, like PJ SS16, SS14 where I can get EDGE if 3G not available.

So if I do not get 3G or EDGE, the bigger problem comes: When iphone is picking up mails using GPRS, it is slow, and it will bar all my incoming SMSs and calls. This is a serious problem, not from Apple, but from my ISP Celcom who are not able to provide a stable 3G network, or atleast to have EDGE coverage at 3G blind spots.

Next problem. My 3G is 3.6Mbps unlimited data plan. I can only get to the max of approx. 2Mbps, and only in the middle of the night, around 4am to about 5am. After that, it falls back to 384Kbps or lesser. Sometime it is even slower than GPRS, Serious!!

I will seek clarification from Celcom, after their network upgrade ended 22 Feb 09. If the speed is not even up to 1/3 of the advertised speed, then Celcom is cheating me.

iPhone 3G - How to protect the precious housing from getting scratches

My iPhone 3G came with a silicon casing, courtesy of the retailer where I bought the phone from.

Seems good for only a few days, then I noticed that the casing seems getting bigger, and it is now about 2mm longer from top to bottom, the effect is scratches on the chrome ring surrounding the phone.

Tough not really visible since it is covered by the silicon case, but I do not feel happy. Well, what can I do when someone is giving me the casing for free?

Never mind, I told myself, should be able to solve this problem.

I was thinking of using Brasso, the well-known metal polisher solution to polish the scratched chrome ring. After googling the Internet, confirming that this is a viable solution, I started my hunt for Brasso.

At the same time, I wanted something transparent, strong, and very thin to protect the surface of the housing instead of having an "Oversized bra" for my iPhone.

This is pretty easy to spot on. After comparison with a few products, decided to try out Body Guardz.

Internet again, went to Low Yat Net forum where there's a buy/sell forum. Found a seller selling Body Guardz at a good price. Make a call, and bought from her. Here's the link.

Bought Brasso, tried polish the chrome ring, works well. But some scratches seems difficult to remove. Did a few times, and now barely visible for those once obvious.

Will keep doing for the next few days, until no more scratches, then I will apply Body Guardz.

Jailbreaking iPhone 3G firmware 2.2.1

Suddenly my iPhone 3G dialer failed to function. It quits after a few seconds.

I cannot figure out why and how to solve it. I had SIAX (SIP/IAX compatible softphone), which comes with a dialer for cellular network besides IAX and SIP calls.

I used SIAX to call cellular, got connected, but cannot put down the phone.

Apparently the dialer app is really having big problem!! Hell!! I got a phone which I cannot call properly!!!

Have no choice, need to decide whether I should upgrade from 2.2 to 2.2.1 which I was not so keen due to several reasons. One being fear of some jail broken apps may fail to function. Apps like MySMS and SwirlyMMS are a few that I have paid and I do not want my investment to go down to the drain after upgraded.

OK. It is not really a pain updating my iPhone 3G to 2.2.1. iTune did the job without complaint.

Now is the critical time, jailbreak iphone 3G with firmware 2.2.1.

Following the instruction here, I have managed to jailbreak using my Macbook.

Since my iPhone 3G is officially unlocked, I have no problem upgrading to 2.2.1 and then jailbreak.

Everything seems to work fine, and it seems to run faster as well.

My Computing World - Part 3

I took the Z80 development kit back to Melaka, was trying to figure out what to do with it.

Sad to say, I am too slow in catching up with machine language, or assembly coz I do not have patience entering the code one by one on the hexadecimal keypad. Unlike Apple II and ZX81, I was forced to use low level language to achieve what I wanted. Tiny BASIC is too primitive compared to Applesoft BASIC or ZX81 BASIC.

After playing around with the kit for a short moment of time, I managed to build a simple home security system, with numeric password for door locks and activate/deactivate various relays connected, and have written some management routines to perform maintenance.

During the period, I was enrolled to TARC for my Pre-U. I brought together with me the ZX81 and Z80 Development Kit. However, I was only found out that I need a TV to get connected to and I do not have one.

The Landlord where I rented a room is sharing his TV with his family, and I cannot possibly disconnect and connect his TV when I need to use ZX81.

Thus, I was scouting around for another personal computer. This time I have short listed a few, i.e.

1. Commodore 64

2. Commodore Amiga

3. Atari ST

4. Apple II clone

5. IBM PC clone

I was looking from the point of view of having something that will allow me to run multiple OSs at the same time. This is where I have started my journey on multiple OSs on a single machine.

I chose Atari 1040ST at that point, with an Atari Hi-res black and white monitor.

It was a hard decision, Apple II clone and PC clone have the most software ever wanted, from the point of development, Apple II has Applesoft BASIC, UCSD Pascal, Apple Logo, LISP, and a bunch of programming languages under CP/M-80.

PC on the other hand has similar offering, bunch of programming tools.

Amiga, somehow tuned towards graphics, and tools are more on the graphics presentation.

Atari ST is based on GEM Desktop, a GUI developed by Digital Research, the originator of CP/M-80, and have descent set of programming tools.

What attracted me most is the ability for Atari ST and Commodore Amiga to run Macintosh OS with either hardware of software emulation.

I fell in love with Mac since its introduction 1984. But the price point deter me from getting a Mac, in addition, the Mac runs on one floppy, with only 128K RAM, you need to keep swapping disks in and out to run say, Microsoft Excel.

Atari ST is cheaper than Amiga, and capable of running MacOS, PCDOS, etc. won the bid.

My Computing World - Part 2

After my secondary school, while waiting for my exam result to either eligible for further study, I went and look for a short term job.

I found a job in a computer teaching lab, where we deployed a number of Singapore made 6800 based CPU called pico-M. It is a small "pc" with tiny keyboard much like the shrink-down Macbook keyboard. It is connected to either a composite monitor or TV like ZX81. We conduct tuitions and we do sell the so-called computer as well.

Besides, we had been assigned one unit of Sharp MZ-80K, a CP/M based PC with integrated monitor, disk drives, and tape recorder (imagine storing data on conventional music cassette).

My boss, the person in charge for the local tuition centre, demonstrated to me WordStar, running on CP/M-80, the 8080 version of CP/M, of which Sharp's MZ80K processor Z80 is fully compatible with the Intel 8080.

He was then told me that it is unfortunate as the centre is not having enough cash to buy the legal copy of WordStar, and at that point of time, there's virtually no one pirate Sharp MZ80K software as it is so rare in the market, in addition, the tuition centre does not want to run into risk of using pirated copy. The centre have only the demonstration copy which does not allow saving of files. Thus we need to keep retyping the same thing if we need to reproduce/print later after we created a document.

Then he asked if I can look at how WordStar functions, and come out with something that work without paying to our nose.

I accepted the challenge, and started looking at how WordStar functions and what is really important feature to us, and what is not relevant at all for our use.

I have been tempted to use Applesoft BASIC, which is my favourate programming tools at that point. But we do not have Apple II in the centre. Pico-m on the other hand, is a primitive PC, even less feature than ZX81 that I have, although with 1K RAM like ZX81, it does not have good enough programming tools besides general purpose BASIC, a strip-down BASIC interpreter, and machine code.

Furthermore, none of the Pico-m is able to connect to a printer. the only printer, an Epson dot-matrix, was connected to Sharp MZ80K running, besides WordStar, our accounting system.

It took me a good 2 weeks to finish a WordStar clone entirely in CP/M BASIC, with code less than 20K in source, I was able to mimic functionality of WordStar with all formatting features, editing features, printing and load/save document features, less on-screen menu (the habit I have developed since then not to pay attention to user interface (UI) in any of my programs written later until now).

Best of all, documents generated by my application is compatible with WordStar. This allows my boss to submit his reports electronically via modem from Melaka to Kuala Lumpur, without needing to print and send by mail. A breakthrough at that time where computers are island by itself.

Sad to say I have lost the source code after a few shifting in KL. I have printed the source code as a record of my achievement that I was capable of writing commercially viable application albeit it is not my original idea. Ideas are brought in from WordStar. But how I did it in 20K of BASIC code that make me feel good.

This exercise taught me how to handle strings, characters, and user interactions. Since then, I have been very interested in writing string manipulation stuff for the fun of it.

During my tenure with the tuition centre, I visited KL, the capital city of Malaysia, a few times. Mostly wondering around at Imbi Plaza, which is at that moment, the centre of all computer shops in town.

I bumped into a shop selling an Z80 development kit. The kit comes with a hexadecimal keypad, 1K RAM, and LED hexadecimal displays. Primary development language is Z80 assembly, and it has its own BASIC call tiny BASIC, against far inferior than ZX81.

I use the money I earned from the tuition centre and bought the development kit without knowing what I want to get out from there.