Mike’s Blog

Until today jailbreaking your iPhone running 2.0 or higher did not offer many exciting applications.
of course there was winterboard which allows you to use thems and personalize the look of your phone, which is really nice (like summerboard on the old software), and of course there is ssh, terminal, Bossprefs etc..but still noting the everage user would desperatly want.

Well, this has changed today!

Tunewiki is back! And I love it!

And, qik is finally available on the iPhone! Really cool! qik was the main reason why I was sometimes missing my old Nokia N95, but that has now come to an end!

qik on the iPhone

Read the Techcrunch article for more info on qik on the iPhone.

It isn’t really getting any better.

O2 informed their potential customers today about the latest status.

You can go to http://shop.o2.co.uk/info/ to read it for yourself, but it isn’t good news.

Read the following to get an idea:

we’re confident that everyone who wants an iPhone will be able to get one by the end of the summer.

O2 also indicates some numbers regarding the availability of the phones in the stores on Launch day:

On average, we will only have a few dozen iPhone 3Gs per store (some stores more, some stores less, dependant upon store size so we expect to sell out quickly). Sales of iPhone 3G will be limited to one per customer and two for business customers.

And finally also a confirmation that you will be able to buy teh phone inthe Apple stores, but only if you are a NEW customer, and do not want to upgrade your current contract!

Apple will be selling iPhone 3Gs in their stores, but please note that existing O2 customers can only upgrade in an O2 or CPW store.

Well, good luck to everybody who wants to get one tomorrow, or who is, like myself still waiting for some kind of a confirmation from O2 regarding the pre-ordered phone.

As a lot of you know, I was a happy owner of the first generation iPhone since summer last year and was looking forward to the new 3G iPhone!

Some time ago I “registered” my interest to pre-order the new iPhone from O2 here in the UK, and as rumours predicted it, on Monday morning I received an Email from O2 informing me that I can pre-order the phone at their online shop.
This is where the terrible experience starts!

The O2 online store was unusable! I took me 30 minutes to successfully put through the order! During that process I had to start from scratch several times, re-entering all of the information again and again!

Well, at least I managed to put an order through, which apparently wasn’t the case for many other people, so I kind of thought that I was lucky, but as mentioned, we are not done yet!

Shortly after placing the order, I received the first confirmation Email from O2:

Dear Mr Mike Hellers,

Thanks for placing your new order. We’re just currently processing your request and we’ll be in touch shortly to let you if it’s been accepted and when it will be dispatched.

Yet again, shortly after that, I received the second confirmation Email from O2:

Dear Mr Mike Hellers,

We just want to keep you updated on the progress of your order. Your order has now been passed to our warehouse for processing and we’ll let you know shortly if it’s been confirmed and when you can expect to receive it.

So far everything seems to be working fine, considering the tremendous amount of orders that O2 apparently received that day.

Later on Monday, I received the third update from O2:

Dear Mr Mike Hellers,

Your order is still being processed and, if accepted, should be despatched to you within the next 5 days. Any iPhone 3G orders will be delivered on or after 11th July.

We’ll email or send you an SMS to confirm when your order has been accepted and despatched so that you’ll know when to expect your delivery. You will need to sign for the delivery, but don’t worry if you’re not in, the courier will leave you details to rearrange delivery.

If you selected a chargeable delivery option a refund will be applied automatically to your credit/debit card within the next 10 days.

But, knowing O2, I kind of had my doubts that it would continue as easy, and guess what, I didn’t get disappointed.

On Tuesday evening I received yet another update from O2:

Dear Mike,

Thank you for your recent order with O2.

To process your order we require some additional information from you. It is important that you contact us within 2 working days of receiving this email, or we cannot guarantee delivery within your stated timescales. Therefore please can you contact us on 0870 4444713 between 8.30am and 4.30pm, Monday to Friday.

We need to check 1 proof of Identity and we need to check your residency. Please have the below with you, when you call. Proofs acceptable to O2 are listed below. Please make sure your proofs are for your address where you have applied for service and are in your name, and that all address details are complete.

This is where the trouble starts! (funny side note: Instead of addressing me using “Mr Mike Hellers”, the Email now simply starts with “Dear Mike”…)

I received the above Email of course after 4.30pm, so no chance in calling them them on Tuesday. I tried reaching them several times today, but it seems impossible to reach somebody at O2 under the mentionned phone number, and there is no other way to contact them!

Instead, they keep on sending me the same Email. I have received it two more times today! Not really funny!

Oh yes, of course, although they claim that these problems are caused by the fact that they have to handle an unprecedented amount of new orders, they obviously have now problem at all to collect the money! Already on Tuesday they cashed in the money from my debit card!
Pretty amazing to consider an order still as being processed, and waiting for additional information (among them a proof of address in the form of a Debit or Credit card), but at the same time they have no issues using the provided debit card information to cash in the money!

I will keep you updated on the progress…not really looking good so far: I am not amused!

UPDATE:
After another 45 minutes calling O2 this morning, I was finally able to speak to somebody! And after a very efficient process to verify my address and identity (they were even able to check my identity using my non-UK passport over the phone) I received the confirmation that my order is now complete and they will send the iPhone to my address tomorrow.

We will see if it will actually happen. But things look at least a bit more positive again!

O2, who will still be the only carrier offering the iPhone in the UK has published the prices for the phone and the corresponding tariffs:

There is also an offer for existing iPhone customers to upgrade, and the phone will become available on PayAsYouGo, although there are no details about the price of the phone for PAYG yet.

In addition, Business deals are available.

No further comment needed. Enjoy.

Do you want to save yourself some time? Instead of watching the whole 90 minutes of Steve Jobs Keynote at this weeks MacWorld, have a look at what Mahalo Daily did with it. All the facts in 60 seconds

I am a happy user of an unlocked iPhone since mid last year. I own one since they came out in the us during late summer. Since at the time, I was unable to buy the iPhone here in the UK, my only option was to use an unlocked US phone. The method to unlock it I use is the TurboSim method.

It worked perfectly fine until yesterday, when I started to see problems. The phone reports that there is no Sim card installed in the phone. A reboot of the phone solves the problem, but only for a few minutes. You can see the signal disappear several times for a few seconds, just before it reports that there is no Sim card installed again. Removing/reinstalling the Sim/TurboSim cards also has the same effect.

After searching around in different forums, it is becoming more and more certain that the problem is actually not the iPhone or the TurboSIM card, but it seems to be somehow caused by a change on the t-Mobile network. Why do I think that? All of the users reporting the problem are also using T-Mobile. Too much of a coincidence. As one of the users mentions, the problem does seem to have started occurring over the past days, at different “start” times for different users, which could indicate that T-Mobile is actually performing some kind of update on their network which is causing the TurboSim to fail.

I remember that I saw a very similar problem when I was travelling in Europe. Depending on which network I was roaming, I would loose the signal and the phone would report the same “noSim card” error message. I thought at the time that it was just me throwing around the phone too much, causing bad contact between the TurboSIM, the real SIM and the actual phone connectors, but now, I kind of think that it might have been the same problem that we are now experiencing on T-Mobile UK.

Here are some links to forums posts of people reporting the same issue:

bladox.com (TurboSim manufacturers Website Forum)

MacRumours

Update: As mysteriously as the problem started, it has disappeared again. My iPhone is working fine again. Unfortunately that also means that i still have no real idea what caused the problem, although I still expect it to be caused by some change on the T-Mobile network.

One of the features missing on the iPhone is GPS. I was used to have it on the Nokia N95, and although I didn’t use it very often, it came in handy a few times. Well, the iPhone has Assisted GPS since today. Well, sort of.

When checking for new application within the installer, I noticed a new app called Navizon GPS. I have to say it is rather cool. Navizon calls its Virtual GPS service “Peer-to-Peer Wireless Positioning”. It is based on a database which is populated by users of the Navizon software on mobile phones with a real GPS receiver included. The geo-coded information is then combined with the information received from the cellular network and WIFI networks. This combined information is then available for users of the system without a GPS receiver included in their phone.

It will in most case never be as precise as real  GPS, or even the A-GPS on the N95, but it still allows you to locate yor position in a certain area, as long as the area is covered by users with GPS equipped phones in the past.

In my case, the location found by my iPhone was a few hundred meters away from my home here in London. Still very sweet!!!

It was only a matter of time, really. A few hours ago HaRRO, a member of the members (Daeken, Darkmen, guest184, gray, iZsh, pytey, roxfan, Sam, uns, Zappaz, and Zfhad) of the iPhone Dev Team have released an open source and FREE tool which allows you to set your iPhone free from the AT&T lock! Although the process is not yet as easy and automated as the commercial tool from iPhoneSimFree, well, it is free, as in beer! You can find it here.

I guess the guys at iPhoneSimFree and especially some of the their resellers might regret all of the delays that they had before releasing their tool to the market! The days over overpriced unlocking tools are over!

Well, my iPhone is unlocked since some time now (using the TurboSIM method) but anyway: Good for all the other people out there, especially over here in Europe!

The announcement of the $200 price drop on the 8Gig iPhone did not only cause positive reactions. A lot of the early adopters weren’t too happy to see such a huge drop in Price after only two months.

What made it worse, was a comment from Steve Jobs in an interview:

“Q: What do you say to customers who just bought a new iPhone for $599? Sorry?
A: That’s technology. If they bought it this morning, they should go back to where they bought it and talk to them. If they bought it a month ago, well, that’s what happens in technology.“

Well, looks like since he mad that statement, he changed his mind a little bit. in an open letter he announced that those early buyers will be able to get a $100 store credit (valid in the retail and online stores). Amazing reaction, which might cost Apple a small fortune, but then again, it shows why Apple has such a loyal customer base! Which other company would have reacted like this? I can’t name a single one.