Tag: iPhone

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My Life Without My iPhone

iPhone 3G imageLast Saturday I decided to sell my 1st generation iPhone. Believe me this decision did not come easily.

Like most early adopters, I had been a user of the iPhone since it’s launch in June 2007.

This was not easy given I live in Hong Kong. Back in those days; sounds like a long time ago, but in technology timeline it is indeed. The iPhone unlocking/jailbreaking process took about an hour and a half with 24 steps that you cannot not miss or mess up.

Of course now this process of has been greatly improved, to a 15 minutes process with a single program and several clicks. Anyway you can read all about my iPhone exploits in my other posts.

Getting back to my decision to sell my iPhone. Ever since the first day after returning with the iPhone, purchased at the New York City, Fifth Avenue Apple Store, there had been a minor defect in the screen. This resulted in an area of discolouration. Unfortunately, I had hacked the phone and I was not about to fly back to NYC to bring it back to Apple. So I lived with it.

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7 Things You Love to Ask About iPhone Unlocking

Pwnage Tool logoOver the past year and a half I had assisted many people with the unlocking of their iPhones. Many more people ask me about unlocking.

So instead of answering each of these people over and over again, I thought I post an article in my blog, which I can refer them to for more details.

  1. What Does iPhone Unlock mean?
    Many carriers around the world will “carrier lock” a cell phone that they had subsidized for their customers. To ensure the purchaser of the cell phone stays as a customer of the carrier after the purchase, the carrier will normally do two things:

    • Make the purchaser commit to a contract that bounds them to the carrier for a number of years (2 years is common). Of course the purchaser can break the contract, but there is usually a penalty to compensate the carrier for the subsidizing the cell phone.
    • Carrier Lock the cell phone to the carrier’s network, meaning the cell phone cannot be used on any other cellular network in the world.

      • Continue reading “7 Things You Love to Ask About iPhone Unlocking”

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Taiwan iPhone 3G Unlocked Out-of-the-box

Chunghwa Telecom LogoWhen Apple made the iPhone 3G available on the little island, Taiwan, these phones sold through the official carrier partner, Chunghwa Telecom, are all carrier unlocked.

Just to remind readers that, ever since the availability of iPhone 3G back in June 2008, all iPhone sold here in Hong Kong, whether through the official carrier partner, Three (“3”), or through Apple Hong Kong’s Online Store, are also carrier unlocked.

The official price for iPhone 3G (8GB) and (16GB) from Apple HK Online Store are HKD5400.00 and HKD6200.00 respectively.

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Is Smartone-Vodafone’s IOM Value Pack Right for iPhone?

Smartone-Vodafone logoOver a month ago I decided to switch to the Smartone-Vodafone “IOM Value Pack“. You can read why I make this move in my previous post, New Tariff Plan from Smartone-Vodafone for iPhone.

I had shared my experience here on my blog with my experience of using the iPhone in Hong Kong since June 2007. You can follow all of these posts by using the iPhone category.

Today is the last day of my bill cycle at Smartone-Vodafone, so I am now able to report if this “IOM Value Pack” is suitable for iPhone users in Hong Kong.

First I will provide some statistics on my iPhone voice and data usage in the past 30 days.

Internet Browsing as they called it = 27.378MB
Data Usage = 4.373MB
RSS Usage = 13.579MB
POP Usage = 0.340MB

As the IOM Value Pack at HKD136/month includes 600MB/month (20MB/day) Internet Browsing, I am within the limit. The Data Usage, which is most likely the result of IMAP email and other application usage. The POP usage is from one of my email account that I grab mail from, and the RSS reader, these all total 18.292MB, Since the IOM Value Pack charges HKD15/15MB, the extra usage resulted in an additional charge of HKD30.00, giving me a final total of:

HKD136.00
HKD30.00 (extra data usage)
HKD12.00 (MTR fees)

Total = HKD178.00

This is still cheaper than what I was paying prior to switching to the IOM Value Pack.

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iPhone Firmware 2.2 NOT for Hacked iPhones

As rumored Apple has released the iPhone firmware 2.2 today.

This is a warning to all users who had either jailbroken or unlocked their iPhone or iPhone 3G, this warning even goes for anyone using the iPhone 3G who had not done either, but may want to unlock in the future.

I strongly advice these users not to upgrade their iPhone firmware to 2.2 until the iPhone Dev Team had released an updated version of their PwnageTool.

This applies to the new version of iTunes 8.0.2 also, as we currently do not know if the latest version of iTunes will be compatible with jailbroken or unlocked iPhone and iPhone 3G.

I will update here when it is safe to upgrade your iPhone or iPhone 3G, please stay tuned.

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New Tariff Plan from Smartone-Vodafone for iPhone

Smartone-Vodafone logoAs I still found my Smartone-Vodafone charges too high, I decided to look for alternatives, including those from competitors, like: PCCW, Three and People.

For those of you who’ve been following my ideal iPhone tariff plan search in Hong Kong, you will know that I had been using Smartone-Vodafone’s 3G voice plan (HKD128/month) + Internet Browsing (HKD38/month)+ Data plan (HKD118/month), giving me a total monthly bill of HKD296/month (including the MTR and administrative fees).

What did these combinations of plans gave me? I will only focus on the features that matters for an iPhone user.

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iPhone on Smartone-Vodafone Hong Kong [Nov. 1 Update]

I have now confirmed with Smartone-Vodafone that the Internet Browsing plan; now known as IOM plan, indeed only cover HTTP and the corresponding HTTPS traffic. So any web traffic through Mobile Safari on your iPhone and any applications; whether it is downloaded from the Apple AppStore or unauthorized 3rd party, that uses the HTTP Posts and Gets will be covered in the Internet Browsing plan.

Any POP3 traffic will be outside of the Internet Browsing plan allowance and Smartone-Vodafone has a separate POP3 Email monthly plan for HKD30/month. As a result any IMAP or Exchange Push traffic will be count as regular Data traffic. I think this omission of IMAP and Exchange traffic from the Email monthly plan is the wrong thing to do for Smartone-Vodafone. Why would anyone choose POP3 over IMAP or Exchange email is beyond me. Especially when the iPhone is only one of many devices most users will use to access their emails, and definitely not the primary device. I urge Smartone-Vodafone to listen to its customers and change their Email monthly plan.

Please see my original article, “iPhone Hacked in Hong Kong on Smartone-Vodafone” for details of my post and the feedbacks from various readers.

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Is Smartone-Vodafone Listening?

A few days ago I posted an article, Smartone-Vodafone’s Stubbornness, here about the decision of the local carrier, Smartone-Vodafone including a Task Bar on every browser page one visit while using their EDGE network. I will not go into details please, please read it in my previous article.

Today when I accessed these same web pages using the browser (MobileSafari) on my iPhone while on the Smartone-Vodafone EDGE network, this Task Bar is no longer there.

I do wish that I had some part in making this happen. I want to think that my blog is visited by employees of Smartine-Vodafone. Not just any employees, but someone high enough in their company to be able to execute a change in policy.

At the same time there is also a possibility that it was a coincident, and Smartone-Vodafone had always planned this change.

I will just think it is the former. If my assumption is true, this will further re-enforce my believe that Smartone-Vodafone is the only local carrier who make great efforts to serve it’s customers better. By first listening to what it’s customers need, which we all know is the first step in building a loyal customer base. Especially during this tough economic times.

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Smartone-Vodafone’s Stubbornness

Over the past year I had been trying to convince my current mobile carrier that their silly task bar; designed for WAP sites, on old generation mobile phones, is useless to me and should not be appearing on my phone, especially when I am using an iPhone.

They insist that this task bar is there to “enhance my surfing experience”, which I consider to be wasting valuable screen real estate for content of the web pages I visit. I told them that I did not signup to their service knowing that this task bar will be obscuring my surfing experience, and I believe that I should have the rights to remove this task bar from the web pages that I visit through their network (EDGE, HSDPA, etc.).

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Bringing Mobile Broadcast TV to the iPhone

PV’s (PacketVideo) Telly pocket device brings broadcast TV services into the hands of new subscribers and current users with WiFi-enabled devices that does not support the service provider’s Mobile Broadcast TV.

This device is suppose to support the world’s Mobile TV Broadcast standards: DVB-H and MediaFLO. Both of which I believe are used by Hong Kong mobile phone carriers.

Since PV is not selling this device to consumers but only to OEMs and ODMs. I wish my chosen mobile carrier, Smartone-Vodafone, will hear this call and adopts PV’s device instead of forcing their customers to purchase a specific mobile phone. At the moment the list of supported mobile phone are short and 2nd generation.

Although the problem may be with the DRM that the carriers wants to impose on the content rather than choosing the correct device for the consumer.

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