6 things I will still miss in iPhone 3GS

1/ syncing over wifi (or bluetooth)
2/ video call
3/ haptics
4/ themes
5/ USB storage mode
6/ flash support

I will miss those, but (!) I will enjoy the rest!

Ah, and MMS support is quite lousy in 3.0... Just an attachment (no background color, no text formatting, no multi-page animations, no sound attachments). A half-hearted attempt, driven by mass-bickering more than belief...

UI metaphor collision... or not?

Person A >> Hmm.. I wonder why computer 'desktops' are covered with 'wallpapers', not with 'tablecloths'?

Person B >> You see, monitors are vertical, so tablecloths would not hold.

Source here

What's next for iPhone?

I have been watching Steve Jobs giving iPhone lauch Keynote 2007 and it just struck me - he was talking about Visual VoiceMail as "just an example" of "what's coming", and he assured the public that "this is just a first fruit" of cooperation between Apple Inc. and AT&T. He underscored that point, obviously it was important for him.

"The innovative Visual Voicemail feature lets you view all your voicemail messages at once, then listen to them in the order you prefer. Use the Play/Pause button to control playback of your voice messages. The scrubber bar even lets you replay portions of a message you find hard to understand"

In fact, the telecom industry, as a whole, has not been fast to adopt IT-led innovations, and Visual VoiceMail is not an exclusion from that.

(Reality Check: Of those coutries where iPhone is sold, how many have VVM now?)

It does not take much observation power to see that user services innovation rate is much slower in telecom than it is in IT. This only adds to user's attachment to the Intenet and aversion to mobile operator "innovations".

Nokia takes on that with it's Ovi services suite. But Ovi is completely IP-based.

Is there a space for innovation of telecom-based services?
Will Apple take lead in that?

As if that "left hook" from Apple's honcho was not enough, there was a second hidden punch, an uppercut done by Cingular's chief Stan Sigman who went on stage and, incidentally, talked on the same subject - how Apple innovated [their sleepy] telecom kingdom.
At about 6:30 down the show he talks about partnerships with Apple, and at 7:35 he mentions VisualVoiceMail, ominously uttering "and I promise - you'll see more of that coming down the road".

Now, hold on. WHAT could they mean?

Well, I have an idea.
It seems so that right now we are in need of "3G saviour", a killer app which would be the differentiator, a watershed, between old-style 2G networks and the new ones, "innovated and reinvigorated with some help of Apple Inc."
Of course, I hear you say, internet via 3G is so much faster!
Well, but WiFi on a 2G handset can give you better speed, not to talk of a wired computer.

And what about VideoCalls? "Yuck!", you'd say, "who needs those?"

Well, sure, like nobody "needed" internet on a handset before iPhone.
Remember, when there's no market, there's opportunity to create one - exactly Apple's business.

I'm very sure that further innovations in mobile networks must focus on this single feature - mobile video call.

First of all, video quality must be improved.
Current 3GPP codecs were developed during the 90s era - they are just pure crap by modern merits, even when compared to YouTube's FLV (Flash Video) compression.
Ripping and replacing them for H.264 or some proper codec would be the first great step to improve usage rate.
Of course, next comes into play the high usability of iPhone user interface.

If it's easy to use and the quality/price is great - people will use it.

Why would you not make a "killer app" (and a cash-cow) out of that?
iPhone could do it to mobile internet usage, it can do the same revenue increase with proper use of video calls.

It also takes some consideration to notice that video calls are of greater use to long-distance (like Paris/Rome tourists calling Moscow home) and business users (telecommuting, making it a corp policy to call workers with video).
While the former group makes it harder to implement (all CSPs must be capable to handle the new H.264 codecs), the latter group is much easier to harness (as was demonstrated by the Windows gang) - they are policy-driven. And policies are centralized...

Next gen iPhone would need a separate frontal camera for video call.
I was surprised when I did not see videocall demo by Steve at Keynote 2008, along with launch of iPhone 3G. There must be more to do, to be ready for such massive roll-out. New standards, RAN upgrades, new mobile phones...

Could this happen this year? Probably not, "thanks" to reduced budgets for innovations, worldwide.
But I secretly hope it's still in the iPhone's+AT&T roadmap.
Maybe LTE version?

Can't hold it, sorry. Have to share.

"Wisdom #403460" from bash.org.ru (Russian)

"Create a simpler user interface and the world will come up with dumber users"

One more exploit for Nokia 1208

As a follow-up to previous topic, here's another firmware defect on Nokia 1208.
Let's ironically call it "a longer way to reboot", or a "Nokian way of Ctrl+Alt+Del"?

Here's how to epxloit it:

1/ From the main screen, press Down button to go to Contacts
2/ Open any contact
3/ Press Down button to see contact Name, not number
4/ Select "Options" by pressing Left soft button
5/ Scroll down to "Copy Contact" and select it
6/ Press Back, as to cancel contact copy
7/ Now scroll to "Delete Contact" and select it

Boom, RESTART
Enjoy

Exploiting a Nokia 1208? Why not?

There are simple things you are almost always sure of. Water pipes, electricity, central heating, cell phones... Ooops!
Did I say "cell phones"? In fact, most often than not, you could find some ways to hinder its' performance. Even for the smallest ones, the dumbest ones.

Take Nokia 1208, for example.
Who'd ever think that this "flashlight" phone, running sub-par version (is it S20, I'm not sure) can be exploited?

Now, don't hold your breath, the exploit is purely local - only phone's user can do it.
It can not be said of as a "security breach", just a fun with firmware, an example of attention needed for thorough and rigorous testing.

You can cause stack overflow and phone restart with the following routine:

1/ Press "Menu", go to "Messages"






2/ Select "Message Settings"

3/ You will see 10 items, starting with "Info Service". Note the number 1 in upper right.

4/ You can scroll down all 10 items, and you will roll back at "Info Service", number one.

5/ Press "Select", then press "Back". Notice the scroller on the scroll bar became smaller!


6/ Now, if you keep scrolling down, you will start passing numbers 11, 12, 13 and so on. The list got duplicated as result of step 5.

7/ Repeat step 4, going into "Info Message" and back. Try scrolling down again, looking up numbers and notice the increasing thinness of the scroller.



8/ Once you have appended list 6 times, you will pass number 71 "Info Service".






9/ One step down and boom - your phone restarts. Enjoy.

Of course this is very geeky and who cares about such kind of "local exploit" but hey - just for your fun and info!
Firmware RH-105 v3.72

A Lifeblog integration tip

A while ago, I ranted about lack of integration between Lifeblog, Notes and Sound Recorder on my Nokia N95.

Turns out - half of those woes can be resolved by the user, although at the price of sound recording quality.

LifeBlog is able to pick up, show and transfer to PC Sound Recordings, but only those recorded in AMR format.

I don't mind a little bit more compression, as long as speaker's voice is loud enough to be legible.

Turning to Settings - Applications - Voice Recorder and tweaking File Type a little bit enables LifeBlog to recognize any new recordings. (depicted)
And so - they are backed up to PC via "bigger brother", LifeBlog on PC.

No more separate file-digging! (and there was NO syncing of recordings from PC Suite, either!)

Wonderful.

If only there was some hack to enable similar integration with Notes...
Anybody got a tip?