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.