Apparently, this video. Enjoy!
Personally, I would like a little more Singaporean references.
Posts Tagged ‘iphone’
What Does Hitler, iPhone 3GS And The Singapore Launch Have In Common?
Friday, July 17th, 2009No iPhone 3GS For Me At Launch
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009Dear SingTel,
First and foremost, I would like to thank you, SingTel, for the willingness showed to screw with the people who have bought the iPhone 3G with you. As we all know that the date was August 22 2008 when it was first made available here, there is no way that anyone who purchased the original iPhone has finished even the first year of their 2 year contract.
I do not remember the actual penalty that one must pay for breaking the contract, but I do know that it is a pretty large amount for the first year. That is pretty much common knowledge. I have heard and read about many horror stories of people who has to pay hefty penalties for breaking their contract.
Imagine my dismay when I read this particular line in the advertisement for the iPhone 3GS launch:
We know you have an iPhone 3G contract with SingTel and are keen to upgrade to an iPhone 3GS. As you are a valued SingTel customer, we have introduced an early upgrade fee just for this launch at $600 (in addition to the handset prices above) if you take a 24-month contract with the pricing above. This offer is only available at the launch event at Comcentre between 10 – 12 July 09.
How can you even dare call that an offer? To call it that is simply to mock my intelligence. That is the worst piece of marketing I have heard. So much for subtlety. This is simply the same, or similar, price for breaking one’s 2-year contract with SingTel within the first 12 months.
Is this the value that SingTel place on existing iPhone 3G owners? Sure, I have a passion for gadgets. I love getting my hands on any new piece of hardware, and rest assured, I will get the iPhone 3GS, one way or another. However, I am still a rational human being. Asking me to pay $600 as an “early upgrade fee” is horrendous, which sad to say, supersedes my love for gadgetry. I am not one with unlimited resources. And don’t you even dare suggest that the trade-in value of my current iPhone can cover that. I might as well use the credit from a trade-in to cover the cost of the new phone!
Sorry SingTel, I’m sure you will make a sh*tload of money on Friday. Too bad, you won’t get my $600.
Regards,
Mart
PS: All you fanboys of faceless corporations (Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, etc), this is why it is stupid to be one. I always wondered why you love to troll forums with such junk threads and posts when all they want is your money.
Update: I received another promotional email for the iPhone 3GS the next day, saying that SingTel is willing to slash the “fee” to $300. Hahahaha. Sorry, it’s still too high and the damage is done. Besides, I’ve used up part of my savings for a new toy. 
MMS on iPhone OS 3.0
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009For reasons beyond my control (and laziness), I only managed to update my iPhone to OS 3.0 last weekend. However, I found out that I was still unable to MMS, so I turned to Singtel’s haphazard website to dig around. Although the default setting seems to be correct, I could not send or receive pictures.
I managed to find a PDF guide to configure the iPhone manually when I went to Singtel’s page, clicked on IDEAS, then Configure your phone. The catch here is that the settings are meant for internet access, not MMS, but somehow it seems to work.
The username/password of the default setting was incorrectly set, it seems, to 65ideas for some reason. I removed them, or essentially setting them to blank. The other details should be auto-filled. Now I can finally send/receive pictures!
However, I still feel that Apple do not fully grasp the meaning of MMS, or Multimedia Messaging Service. Not Picture or Image, but Multimedia. Why can’t I send someone video or sound? Maybe the 3GS can send/receive video, but I doubt that. Hopefully, Apple will extend the application.
Trying Out Copy-Paste On The iPhone
Thursday, January 22nd, 2009Clippy has been mentioned in popular sites now that I just had to try it out. It is currently in beta, only version 0.9 now, so it may not be properly stable. It adds two additional buttons to the virtual keyboard in the “numbers” section. You highlight the text to be copied by dragging your finger along the text, select “copy” (the copied text will be displayed beside the additional buttons), then locate the place where you would like to copy it to. It could be in another application, of course (except Safari Mobile as reported by lifehacker).
This gif image is created by yours truly using glickr.
I find that it is a very seamless implementation. I really like it. However, the highlighting seems to be permanently on for me. If I need to correct the middle part of a word (yes, I do make mistakes despite the excellent spell check), I would have to drag my finger to place the cursor there. Now, it automatically highlights the dragged portion, from where the cursor was to the destination. I am not sure if this is an intended design or a bug, so I have sent an email to the author of the app. According to him, this is an intended design.
Another minor annoyance I have with this is that in the SMS app, if you switch to the number mode in the keyboard, the placeholder where you write your message will be replaced by the copy and paste buttons. Not a super high priority flaw, but still an annoyance nonetheless.
For those of you with jailbroken iPhones, this is a worthy addition to your list of jailbroken apps. Right up there with SSH, PdaNet and BossPrefs. Install it via the iSpazio source in Cydia now!
Revamping The iPhone
Friday, January 2nd, 2009This is an amazing mock up of one man’s dream iPhone.
What Mat Brady has wanted was to give the iPhone 60GB memory size, a slide-out keyboard, a 16:9 640×360 screen, a front-facing camera and a rear 5MP camera with 3x optical zoom. All in a pretty slick package.
I have my own reservations on the improvements he wanted. Firstly, I think he forgot one very, very important aspect: battery life! It is pretty depressing to read that in a CPU-GPU intensive game like SimCity, the battery can still be drained even though it is plugged in.
The upcoming Nokia N97 was stated to have 1.5 days of continuous music playback. Of course, the phone would have to be in airplane mode, no bluetooth and no other services running. But even with those services on, I would expect the phone to have about 15-20 hours of playback. Which is un-freaking-believeable. My iPhone, while listening to music and surfing google reader on 3G in the morning for about 2 hours, will drain its batt life by mid-afternoon. Sucks. Apple really needs to work on its battery. I don’t really mind adding a bit of thickness to accommodate a larger battery pack, which is why the Morphie Battery Extender for the iPhone 3G looks mighty appealing, but I just can’t bring myself to pay an additional US$100 to get the same battery life as other 3G phones.
I don’t agree with his need for 60GB worth of storage space. The only cost effective way to get such a high storage is for the iPhone to use HDDs instead of flash storage, and a HDD means moving parts. It’s ok for a media player to have moving parts, because half the time, it’s kept safely on my bag, not jiggling about in my pocket. Flash memory is of course, more expensive, but since it has no moving parts, I would think that it is more durable. And your music won’t skip no matter how violent your phone is vibrating. My previous Creative Zen Vision M used to skip if I were to run with it in my bag. Flash memory also has way better seek time, so there won’t be additional lag. “Additional” because I still have yet to encounter a smart phone that is NOT laggy. Yes, iPhone included.
The slide-out keyboard is very much welcome. A slide-out keyboard would also be easier to implement cut-and-paste, a feature that is highly touted for by users, but continuously ignored by Apple. I could certainly learn to say “Command-C/Command-V”, instead of “Control-C/Control-V”. Of course, the keyboard solves only half the problem; the other half being the common clipboard, but that’s another story. The drawback is that it will add to the thickness. It will be a looks-vs-awesomeness fight, so that’s why I don’t see Apple putting a physical keyboard in.
A bigger and better camera is also welcome, with some simple pre- and post-processing software. 5MPs seem to be the sweet spot. I do believe the hardware and OS is capable enough to provide simple processing, like adding gimmicky picture frames and modes such as night shot, macro and burst. However, the downside is that a bigger camera probably requires more space. Another looks-vs-awesomeness trade-off.
Of course, all of these features are highly dependent on battery life, which I’ve blabbed about, and the underlying OS itself. Mac OSX is already highly regarded as being super-stable with good performance. However, I find the mobile version to be highly lacking. The latest 2.2 update is great, but I am still getting crashes in Safari a few times. I still can’t believe the stock Notes app still takes very long to start, although it is just a simple text editing app. More performance fixes and enhancements will also be much appreciated.
I think my dream iPhone is one with a stable, performance-enhanced mobile OSX and extended battery life. Both of these are highly probable to be on Apple’s to-do list, unlike a bigger camera or physical keyboard.
Source: The new iPhone ELITE
Another Reason For Liking iPhone 2.2 Update
Thursday, November 27th, 2008I no longer get the stupid “Unknown Error: 0xE800002E” when I update my iPhone apps!
Previously, on iTunes, if I try to update any app with the newer version, I am unable to, unless I delete the app from my “Applications” tab in itunes, sync and remove app in iPhone, redownload the app from the store, and re-sync. A 4-step process that is not only troublesome, but removes any saved data, like hi-scores and so forth. Update with the in-built App Store app on the iPhone gives an error while trying to install the updated app and tell me to use iTunes instead.
Googling does not help, it only shows you the multitude of people facing this issue. And the silence from Apple.
But now it’s gone! And amazingly, there seems to be no mention of it anywhere. Probably between the pixels in “various bugs” line in the changelog.
Just Realised Bejeweled 2 Is In SG App Store
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
I didn’t know Bejeweled 2 got released in the SG App Store. Previously when I looked for it, I only saw it on the US Store, and for US$9.99 to boot!
Now, it’s a nice US$2.99 for some reason. Hopefully, it’ll stay that way. There goes my sad, sad life.
iPhone 2.2 Update: Great! But Jailbreaking Still Required…
Monday, November 24th, 2008The iPhone had its 2.2 update on Thursday (if I’m not wrong). As usual, I would let the suckers early adopters try it out first. Then I will read all their whines and complains on the web before deciding if I should jump the gun.
However, as soon as I saw the new features, I began to get the itch. Was it the improved Google Maps? Nah, GMaps is good, but not too useful in Singapore. Was it the ability to directly download audio and video podcasts over the air? Hmm, I have yet to subscribe to any podcasts these days. Probably because I’m too hooked to Google Reader to try. Was it the supposedly improved stability and performance of Safari Mobile? Maybe! I’m an on-the-go Google Reader freak, and its crashes was even causing me to contemplate switching to another mobile phone.
All of these were compelling reasons, but the most compelling one for me is this:
The ability to turn off auto-correct! Woohoo! 
I’m a simple man who prefers simple pleasures. It’s these little niggly things that gets on my nerves. Such a simple feature to implement, but why oh why does it take Apple so long to put in such a simple feature? Cut/Copy-&-Paste is another noteworthy feature, but will Apple allow a shared clipboard across all apps? Hard to say, but in my opinion, probably not in the near future. Probably in iPhone 3G part deux maybe.
So does this mean the no more jailbreaking? Of course not! There are quite a few compelling reasons to continue jailbreaking:
- Ability to tether your 3G connection to your laptop (but superbly sucks battery life in a flash)
- Download youtube videos using MxTube
- Get a chewed-off pineapple instead of a chewed-off apple during boot-up (I kid… I kid…)
- Root access to iPhone through SSH/terminal app
- Latest for 2.2: Enable emoji on non-Japanese iPhones!
Apple will always try to lock you (as with all companies) so that they can retain control and milk you for all its worth! Lucky for us, there’s these guys!
Hopefully, the tweaks to Safari Mobile fixes the multitude of crashes I’ve experienced, the feeling will be like moving from Windows 98 to Windows XP! Let’s see how many I crashes I will get this week.
Another Reason Flash Will Never Come To iPhone
Thursday, November 20th, 2008Wired has a nice article on why Adobe flash will never come to the iPhone, citing the license agreement and Apple’s unwillingness to allow any interpreter, other than its own, to run code on the iPhone. I guess there’s no hope for Java either.
I have my own theory why Flash won’t come to the iPhone. It’s because Apple knows Safari Mobile sucks when handling pages which require huge amounts of memory.
Yesterday, I found out about iTunes DRM when I wanted to sync my iPhone with iTunes. I decided to wipe off the jailbreak and restore from a clean slate. This morning, I Google-Reader’ed on the bus on the way to work.
The verdict? Reading Gizmodo feed on Google Reader mobile caused Safari to crash. Twice.
Ok, so I realised that jailbreaking doesn’t seem to have much effect on the crashes I encounter on Safari. But I did notice one thing. Google Reader on the iPhone isn’t your normal web interface. The whole page does not get refreshed, just the feeds within the page. (From this point on, I’m just hypothesizing. Correct me if I’m wrong.) Safari always seem to crash on me when opening image-heavy sites (some memory issue I presume). For example, I can’t seem to go to VR-Zone forums on the iPhone. Anyway, my theory is that for Google Reader, since the page never refreshes, each time I open a feed item, the memory used for the page itself increases, until I “mark all feeds as read” and they disappear or get replaced(I set it to show only new items). Thus, if I were to open a few image intensive feed items, somehow it gets overloaded attempting to show these feed items, even though they’re opened only one at a time.
Imagine if flash were ported to the Safari Mobile. Or java? Die! Both eats resources like no tomorrow!
In order not to reveal that the iPhone is actually just like Windows Mobile, aka. a crippled small brother of a much better OS, isn’t it much better to just not allow these things to be in there? After all, Apple users are snobs!
Maybe that’s why I can forgive the pitfalls Symbian OS readily. There’s no benchmark or a reputation to uphold against a more developed and powerful OS.
Now, can anybody lend me an Andriod OS smartphone, so I can get that off my chest too?
Showdown With iTunes DRM. Time To Get E71 Instead?
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008When I first got my iPhone 3G, I was running Windows XP. Recently, I discovered the itch and decided to change to Windows Vista 64. Everything was running smoothly, until I decided to try to sync my iPhone.
My safari mobile for some reason kept crashing while doing simple Google Reader-ing. Ok, probably it’s because I jailbroke it. I decided to restore to original settings. All syncing went fine, except for one thing:
Source: ZDNet: iCrash: Buggy apps tarnish iPhone 2.0 appeal
(I had to grab that off another site, as I forgot to take a screenshot of mine.) Googling around, I came across this discussion thread on apple forums. I had to click on “Store” > “Authorize…” to authorize this PC somehow. And after doing so, that’s when it happened: iTunes kindly informed me that I had used 2 out of 5 available autorizations.
What. The. F*ck.
The only thing that had changed was the operating system. My PC internals was still the same as it was back then. Who wants to bet that if I had re-installed the same copy and version of Windows 5 times, I would have used up all my available authorizations? Of course, after using all 5, you could theoretically de-authorize all your computers. Of course, there’s a catch involved. You could only do that once a year.
I didn’t buy Mass Effect or Spore because I hate the install limits it pushes on to me. I would probably not get Red Alert 3 or Far Cry 2 either. Exceptions to buying these games would be to see if a crack is available. Who am I kidding? A crack is always available. I would have to download it first. Is it about time to search for a suitable workaround for this too?
Or maybe I should just go back to owning a Nokia phone. My fiancée’s E71 is looking mighty nice right about now. And couple that with an Iriver, Cowon or Archos media player. Something like this looks mighty tempting…
