The iPhone is an amazing device, don’t get me wrong. In saying that, there is still room for improvement. That is why we have hacks for this device. A “jailbroken” iPhone can do much more than its virgin self. These include unlocking, unofficial third party apps, background applications, accessing the file system and theme modifications. The main reason my iPhone is jailbroken is because it is illegitimately on Vodafone, which required an unlock to do so. All the other reasons are secondary, but do offer so much more over an unjailbroken iPhone. There are 2 major pieces of software that jailbreaks your iPhone, or iPod Touch, PwnageTool for Mac OS X and WinPwn for Windows XP/Vista.

After receiving a 1.1.4 jailbroken and unlocked iPhone, I quickly wanted to update and jailbreak to 2.0. After over a month of waiting. Eventually it did finally arrive and I could happily get iPhone software 2.0. This method required me to get the WinPwn software, the official 2.0 restore image. WinPwn then creates a custom software image, with the jailbreak and Cydia (unofficial third-part app loader.) It then pwnd iTunes to allow me to restore this custom firmware onto the iPhone. From here, it’s all up to iTunes for updating the device.

First you need to backup your iPhone. This is so you can later restore your settings, messages and such back onto the device. From here, you put your iPhone into DFU, which an unusual process that you can find instructions to on the internet. This will get iTunes to prompt you to restore your device. Then you hold down the shift key while clicking restore and then you can now select the custom software you built earlier. Then it pretty much does its job updating the software. After this lengthy wait, you will then want to restore your setting and sync your music, videos and such back over to your iPhone. This whole process took me about an hour.

After that, you are left with a nice, jailbroken iPhone, ready with Cydia to get your fix of unofficial third party apps, along with the new App Store for your official applications. You also should have all your settings and files back from before the restore. Thankfully, this process has been made much easier. Shortly after Apple released the first 2.0 bug-fix version, the team behind PwnageTool released another jailbreaking tool, QuickPwn. What this does is jailbreak your iPhone or iPod Touch without having to do the full, lengthy restore each time. I used this process to update to 2.0.1 right through to the most recent 2.1 software.

To do a QuickPwn, you first get the QuickPwn software, and the official iPhone software. You then use iTunes to update your software. This will get rid of all your jailbroken apps, but all your other files and setting will stay in tack. Because this isn’t a full on restore, it takes a fifth of the time to update. After you have your upgraded iPhone, you then launch the QuickPwn software and follow the instructions. It will get you to point to the official firmware and then instruct you on how to DFU the iPhone. Then after a few minutes, the process will be complete and you can now re-download your unofficial third party apps.

It is amazing how they managed to change the way you jailbreak your iPhone device. No longer are they days where you spend over an hour to restore you iPhone with the custom jailbroken firmware, we are now in the quick jailbreaking days where there are no restores or restoring backups. The process takes a short 15 minutes, or less. The jailbreaking process couldn’t be so easy and friendly to do.

Over the past few years, there has been a whole lot of hype about a game created by Will Wright, the maker of The Sims. This game was Spore. It allows a player to control the evolution of a species from its beginnings as a unicellular organism, through development as an intelligent and social creature, to interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture. Well that’s what Wikipedia says, and yes, it is about that. As well as the big PC title, there was also a mini version, Spore Origins for mobile devices. This concentrates on just the first stage of the main game as a unicellular organism.

To start off, I played Spore Origins on the iPhone. The controls on this are very basic, using the accelerometer to control your little organism through the level on its objective to eat enough guppy creature things to collect enough DNA to move on. Most of the levels are this, except they start including unique creatures for you to attack or defend against. There are also special levels where you have to traverse a maze-like setting and your goal here is to get to the end without being killed by other creatures. This goes on for most of the 30 levels in the game, except for the 2 boss levels where you have to attack and kill huge creatures. This game is small, a little challenging at times but is worth checking out.

After getting to the end of that, I evolved onto the full PC title, Spore. At the start, it is much like the Spore Origins game, where you eat meat to grow and evolve. There is a fair bit more depth to the unicellular organism stage of Spore compared to its Origins counterpart. From here, you get to the stage where you grow legs and go onto land and either become friendly with another species or kill them. For me, this part of the game was the most interesting. It’s also where you get to customise your creature the most and turn it into your own unique creation.

Unfortunately for me, this is where the game all goes downhill for me. Then comes the Tribal stage where you either form friend a tribe, or again destroy them. Although the difference this time is that it is done in a RTS kinda way. The problem is it is not quite an RTS and is a bit weak. After this is the Civilisation stage. This is where it get completely ridiculous! It’s still the RTS type game but here you create the buildings yourself. that may be fun for some people, but I can’t be bothered with this. I couldn’t find any auto or random button so the game throws some random parts together to whip something up quickly in 5 seconds so I can get back to the actual game. Maybe I am missing something, but it’s still pretty annoying and ridiculous. I endured anyway and through the taking over of cities and silliness of creating building and vechiles.

From here, the game started getting better again, although not as good as the second stage of the game, in my opinion. Here you traverse through space, encountering other civilized planets. There are missions you have to do here to get through the game, and there are even missions to be done so you can form a good relationship with a civilization so you can form an alliance with them. Or you can annoy them and go to war with them, your choice. What you do through this stage, you collect badges for various objectives and such. This is by far the longest part of the game, and the rest of the game has literally been building up to this point.

To get a good feel of the game, you’d have to play it yourself, either by purchasing the game, or acquiring it by other methods. I did enjoy the game, but there was a lot I didn’t like about it. The game felt like a whole bunch of little mediocre games all thrown in a blender and released as some sort of huge game. For example, for anyone who has played a real RTS before, the RTS stages of this game will feel horrible to play and fairly weak. Although they definitely aren’t going for a full experience like you would from an actual game from that genre. This game is probably not going to give much to gamers, but for non-gamers or casual gamers, they might enjoy this a whole lot more because it offers a wide range of different things to do. This game was definitely not for me, but hey, it might just be the game for you.

Last week, Apple hosted an event to show off their new music stuff. This included a new version of iTunes, a range of new iPods, and new software for iPhone and iPod Touch. I didn’t get up a 5am like the last event to see what Apple was announcing, I could wait till later because I don’t need an iPod and also a lot of the announcements were already rumored around the internet, mainly due to a Kevin Rose inside source.

To sum up everything in a paragraph, new version of iTunes, 8.0. Adds grid album art view and Genius which makes playlists from songs similar to the one chosen. New iPod Nano, old slim design, accelerometer and Genius plus also a gimmicky (useless) feature, shake to shuffle. New iPod Touch, same as old one, slight design changes, Nike+ built in, volume on side. 2.1 software for iPhone/iPod Touch, fixes the bugs in 2.0 and adds Genius. The only things that interest me is the iTunes 8.0 update and the 2.1 software.

I installed iTunes straight away and I have noticed that it works better than 7.7 did in Vista. It still isn’t perfect but I guess the only way to make iTunes work perfectly is to get a Mac. As you know, I prefer to play my music by album so the album art grid view is great for me. It allows me to select an album to play pretty quickly. I also had a quick play with genius. I was happy with the selection it made, although it could probably have made better choices here and there, but I’m sure it’s playlist selections will get better as time goes on. I think Genius is a great way to find similar songs that go together in your library in a quick and easy way. It also allows to rediscover some of the music that has been buried in your library for a while. I think it is great alternative over Party Shuffle in iTunes and definitely the shuffle mode.

I have yet to upgrade my iPhone to 2.1 but I am really looking forward to being able to. Genius on it is going to be great, although I am a bit worried about how well it would work with only one third of my music collection on it. In saying that, it has most of the songs, well albums, I enjoy listening to anyway. Also the bug fixes to the keyboard lag, random app crashes and long sync/backup time will be greatly appreciated. I’m just waiting for QuickPwn for Windows to get released and I’m on the bandwagon. I need the unofficial third party apps as much as I need the official ones, that is why I haven’t gone through with the upgrade already.

So the event was prety dull. I think it would have been more exciting if the products hadn’t been rumored in such great detail beforehand. It kind of ruined the anticipation of the announcements. Although I wasn’t expecting any new computers (MacBook please!) to be announced, that will be the thing I am looking forward to the most. I think I am turning towards the Apple side!

I’ve had my iPhone now for well over a month now and I still think it is a great mobile phone, an amazing all round device. There are hundreds of reasons why this device is so phenomenal, but sometimes it’s those tiny, insignificant features that just blow you over the edge. Here I am going to tell you about some of those little features I have discovered on my iPhone.

Back in the days when I actually sent a lot of text messages, it was easy to lose track of what was said earlier on. If the person took a long time to reply, it was easy to forget what you even said to them in the first place. And sometimes its easy to forget what you just read, and are currently replying to. The iPhone’s chat like, threaded text messaging is a simple feature that I would have loved on earlier phones a few years ago. Now I can read past sent messages, read the message I am replying to, even go back and read conversations from a few days ago, without having to exit anything. It is all right there in front of me.

All of the phones I have used in the past, you have a very limited contacts manager. You are limited by the number of contacts you can store, and the number of phone numbers and other details you can associate with a contact. Most of the newer mobile phones probably aren’t as restrictive as ones from a few years ago but the iPhone being my first “modern phone” I wouldn’t really know. Anyway, being virtually limitless to the number of contacts and the number of numbers associated with them is great. I myself can include all 3 of my mobile phone numbers along with all my other contact details. This makes a perfect contact book!

One day I went plugged in the headphones to listen to some music (the iPhone is a music player as well :D) but then I remembered that the last time I use the phone, I had the volume up full so I could hear through the external speaker. I quickly went to pause the music so I wouldn’t break my eardrums and then went to change the volume down. To my surprise, the volume was down. I thought this was weird and unplugged them and the volume bar change. I really love how the iPhone has two different volume meters for the headphones and the speaker. It may not seem like much, but it is greatly appreciated feature!

Coverflow. The best way of listening to music the way it was intended! I have always been an album person, choosing to listen to an album over a single song. Coverflow allows me to do this is a visually pleasing way, which resembled how you would find an album in your CD collection, except its automatically put in alphabetical order. Flicking through looking at all the album art makes choosing what to listen to more enjoyable, and easy.

Sometimes when I am feeling adventurous and just want to dive into my music collection on my iPhone, the improved way shuffle is handled, in comparison to the way it is handled on other devices (iPod Nano/Classic.) On those devices I would be required to either go through a bunch of menus, or play the first song and select shuffle mode afterwards. Being able to choose to shuffle in any of the lists, whether it is by album, artist, or even all song, just one tap of a button starts the playlist playing in a random order. So much more friendly!

And that is my little list of features that I have found in the iPhone that are useful and really make me that much more happier that I own this revolutionary device. I know some of these features aren’t necessarily iPhone specific (well not for long anyway :D) and some are on other phones or media players, but having them in my iPhone makes me a happy camper. It’s amazing how something so little and somewhat insignificant can make a fair bit of difference.

Last Friday afternoon, a package arrived to my home. In this, contained Peppery’s old iPhone. I wasn’t that eager to open it and start playing with it, so I eventually got round to having a look, and taking pictures of the re-unboxing. The first thing you notice about the iPhone, is that the box is gorgeous! Then when you get inside, you have in front of you, a shiny device. You wouldn’t know the device is a phone, if it wasn’t called the iPhone.

Now that I have had a play with it for a week, you would think I’d have something to say about it. Yes, I do, but the thing is, everything has already been said, over the past year of its release. The iPhone is an amazing device. It does everything well. I could go into detail about what I love about this phone, but go Google “iPhone Reviews” and pretty much everything is covered in there.

I could go on and get into specifics, but I don’t want to, I don’t need to. If you haven’t already experienced an iPhone, you are really missing out on something. This device offers so much, and every iPhone owner wouldn’t be disappointed by their investment. I got this for a more than reasonable price and I absolutely love this phone. I’m sorry if you expected a review or something, but you really have to use this product, instead of reading about all of it’s features. Now I’m going off to play with it, my precious!

…for now.

Yesterday at 10am, Vodafone New Zealand announce their plans for the new Apple iPhone they are releasing on the 11th of July. We had been waiting for weeks to get this information and a couple of days before launch, they finally gave it to us. I can see why they waited till the last minute (look at what happened in Canada.) The prices are really expensive for the average mobile user and New Zealanders were not pleased at all with what Vodafone had to offer.

At 10am, on the dot, the Vodafone New Zealand site was hit by many users that wanted to see the plan. But to everyones surprise, the site went down immediately due to the huge amount of traffic. You would think Vodafone would have foreseen this happening and done something to prevent it, but no, they were pretty useless so we had to get the information from other sources until the Vodafone site was back up, which was over an hour later.

Anyway, the price of the iPhone plans start at $80 and go right up to $250 with 1GB of data. This is insane. From the tables below, you can see the full details of the plans as well as the total cost of ownership over the 2 year contract period. The most expensive plan costs $6000 over 2 years. You also have to option to get the phone by itself for $1100 to use on a YouChoose plan.

The plans are pathetic and the prices of them are outrageous, especially when compared to the rest of the world. Vodafone New Zealand is doing the exact same thing Rogers in Canada are doing, taking advantage of the monopoly. In saying that, New Zealands mobile costs are expensive, even before the iPhone, so when you look at it like that and compare the iPhone plans to the current plans, you get a reasonable deal, in New Zealand.

I hope something happens soon to lower mobile prices in New Zealand, not just for the iPhone, but in general. This will probably never happen, especially since there is only one GSM carrier and two in total. With little competition, there is no reason, or incentive to lower prices. I wanted to get an iPhone from Vodafone, but it doesn’t look like I will be able to. I will still get an iPhone somehow, sometime soon, you mark my words!