• Processor speed
• RAM
• All of iOS 5
• Voice Assistant(?)
• New form factor(?)

Cheaper iPhone 4S? Maybe. Why?

• Same new internals, old shell
• A slightly smaller screen doesn’t matter
• If it runs iOS 5 with all it’s features, why not?

I agree with Gruber that the “openness” argument with respect to the Apple iPad has about as much merit as it does applied to a modern motor vehicle. One is no longer able to pop the hood and tinker; there’s nothing left to tinker with. And automobiles are much more reliable, powerful, economical and efficient as a consequence.

I’ve spent the last ten years riding the only vehicle I own—a Yamaha RD350. It’s a two-stroke. It’s less efficient than most modern sedans. It smells and pollutes. It needs expert hands, love and care to fix (if you can find those hands). By necessity, I can tell what’s wrong with it by the way it moves and sounds. I can strip and rebuild it’s carburetors in 20 minutes. I could and have modified it to go faster, turn better and look the business. It’s “open” and it’s a giant pain in the ass.

I’ve used PCs for over 20 years. I’ve used DOS, OS/2, various versions and flavours of Windows, Linux and the BSDs. I can build a PC from scratch in 30 minutes, code if the situation is dire, remain on-call for tech support to friends and family and generally owe my gainful employment to the PC. Through the years my PCs have broken down, been upgraded, replaced, reformatted and tinkered with just for fun. My PCs are “open” and a giant pain in the ass.

These days, ET uses a MacBook, which she bought against my better judgement. My better judgement wasn’t. It has been a singularly prudent computer purchase. Three years, one dead hard disk and battery later, she still uses it every day. It’s rarely turned off or rebooted and has been around the country and halfway across the world with her more than once. Today, the home PC is in the best shape it’s ever been. Guess which one needs more tech support?

Nowadays, I commute on a tester Yamaha R15. It’s tiny, 4-stroke, fuel-injected, plastic, boy-racer red and has the old-school motorcycle cred of Lady Gaga. It’s also quick, reliable, safe, fun and frugal to the extent that I have money left over at the end of the month. I don’t want to give it back.

So I’m keeping my second iPhone and saving for the 3G iPad when it comes along. As applied to most people, complaints about it’s level of “openness” or lack thereof is just hypocrisy. We consume more than we create. Deal with it or learn to clean your own carbs.

You don’t have to have just one computer or just one motorcycle, but if I had to choose today, I’d probably choose to ride to work with a very tiny backpack for my lunch and iPad on a plastic rice-rocket.

Here’s the thing: in Mumbai, the voicemail number is 555, except it isn’t, and most of Airtel doesn’t know this. After a number of complaints, a mysterious call from an Airtel employee told me to use 567 instead. This works. Still no idea how to set a custom greeting.

So you now know your voicemail number. Great! Except that your iPhone doesn’t. It still thinks it’s 555. You tell it otherwise by punching in a USSD code on your phone dialpad thus:

*5005*86*567# (press “call”)

Now your iPhone knows it’s own voicemail number. Brilliant. Almost.

Here’s the other thing: the iPhone doesn’t have settings for “call divert” like other phones. That is, there are no explicit settings for whether the call should go to voicemail if unanswered, busy or out of coverage. The iPhone manual is also vague about this. However, since voicemail is a network feature, it’s possible to set options using network USSD codes, and generic GSM ones at that! What I used:

Send to voicemail if unanswered: **61*567#

Send to voicemail if out of coverage: **62*567#

I didn’t use this one, but it’s useful because you can then send any call to voicemail by simply pressing the lock button twice (busy signal):

Send to voicemail if busy: **67*567#

There’s a whole bunch of options to these well, so I’ll just link to the sources:

http://www.iphonehacks.com/2007/09/voicemail-hack.html

http://www.theunwired.net/?item=how-to-diverting-voice-calls-by-using-ussd-codes

The good news is that factory-unlocked iPhones are now going for what hacktivated ones used to. The premium is so minimal that there’s really no reason to save the cash and go through the cat-and-mouse routine with pwnage, hacktivation et al. I can confirm that the phones work as expected and will explicitly state that they are unlocked, once reset and connected to iTunes. Using a Vodafone SIM (an official iPhone 3G carrier), the phone also supports internet tethering out of the box. Baseband and firmware is the latest available.

Brilliant stuff. Ten points for Indian grey market enterprise.

Here’s hoping the next time round actually, finally allows background notifications.

In brief: I wouldn’t recommend an iPhone to anyone, anymore. It’s not worth the compromises, or the official price. It still makes some sense for me, since I mostly live on the Web and appreciate the touch interface. But 15 months and still no background data? Come. Fucking. On!

Update: Looks like a lot of you are having trouble with the lack of caller ID on the iPhone in India. If you’re jailbroken, try this link. It’s what I used. There’s also an Installer.app package that does the same thing, but I haven’t tested it.

There is some indication that first-gen iPhones should now be unlocked on Airtel and Vodafone. Can anyone confirm this?

Moving on.

iPhone status: 1.1.2, jailbroken, activated, using with X-Sim. Amazing what market demand and trader ingenuity can do for you in the motherland. X-Sims are flexible, reportedly work even with the 1.1.3 firmware, and are available over the counter for a minor premium. No fucking with the baseband while you wait for the rapid and dangerous revision cycle that is the 1.1.3 jailbreak effort. Stick with 1.1.2 till everyone else has bricked and recovered.

• EDGE-only: We don’t have 3G in India, and even if we did, it would be rubbish (ask any ‘broadband’ user). Also, client processing speed is more important, which is where the iPhone scores.
• Touchscreen-only: I’m not a fan, but using your thumbs on a virtual keyboard beats hunt-and-peck with a tiny stylus. I’m improving with the iPhone’s keyboard, but still not up to E61 speed.
• No memory cards: 8GB is enough. I can never fill ET‘s 5GB mp3 player.
• Expensive: Not really. You’d pay more for recent N-series phones.
• N95 is better: er, no.

Of course, since I bought it on the 11th from the Apple store in NYC, it runs the latest firmware, which has not yet been unlocked. Which means I have an iPod Touch. Still, with the cool browser and WiFi, it makes a damn fine Internet tablet. Some observations:

• WiFi antenna is better than in my E61. Usable signal in my room.
• It’s not perfect. It can act sluggish at times, but even that is leagues better than what I’m used to. No crashes so far.
• Email client is functional, but doesn’t seem to do true push email. IMAP support exists, but I don’t know if it does IDLE.
• Earbuds are horrible. Seriously, if you bought an iPod and think the sound is great, you are a sad, ignorant poser. It’s like Steve Jobs mandated “midrange above all else”.
• WiFi does not work with some models of iMac/MacBook/PowerBook using the built-in Airport and Internet Connection Sharing. It worked fine for me yesterday but died after a few hours and never came back. The Internets have no solution, nor does Apple support.
• Camera is discreet, which is important to some people.
• Buttons are excellent. Just the right amount of relief; tactile.
• Front face is a fingerprint magnet. Nay, it’s worthy of gathering forensic evidence. Keep RayBan-wipie-cloth handy.
• Phone is dense, heavy. Must get a cover. Doesn’t look like it would survive a fall too well.
• Google Maps doesn’t have cell-tower triangulation. I’m addicted to that feature on my E61.
• Browser is bloody brilliant. Even though it uses the same core as the S60v3 browser, it’s just heaps better. I suppose it helps that everyone has or wants to publish an iPhone-optimized site.
• It needs a device-wide search. Or any search for that matter. I’m sure flicking through hundreds of contacts to find the one I want will get lame real quick.
• Battery life with heavy usage is about par for the course. I think I’d get about a day. However, this is with a LOT of WiFi use and with the GSM radio hunting for signal all the time. In actual use, I think I will be satisfied.

I hope it’s a short wait until someone finds a 1.1.2 unlock solution. So far I’ve done a jailbreak and activation, staying away from all the nasty baseband poking (which doesn’t work for 1.1.2 OTB anyway). There are reports of people being able to unlock it today, but at exorbitant rates and with a big question-mark on future viability. There are too many flaky iPhones out there to risk doing something that you may not be able to reverse.

One thing that did interest me was Java as a mobile platform. I don’t think I ever posted this before, but there used to be something called SavaJe, which was an all-Java platform phone. They even did a proof-of-concept. Tim Bray played with it and I agreed with his conclusions. I quote,

…the notion of having a phone that any Java geek can program to do whatever—if it actually happens—isn’t just a game-changer, it’s a world-changer.

He was also probably talking to the right people at the time…

The vibe I get from my mobile-savvy friends is that a lot of people think Linux+Java is the mobile platform of the future.

I think what we have with Android is just this—a phone any Java geek can program to do whatever. This, I think, has the potential to spawn some crazy third-party development, helped along surely by Google’s $10 mn prize stash.

I’m still in doubt as to whether Android-based phones will be crazy-cool devices as the iPhone is. A platform needs to be implemented real nice on some real nice hardware to create something desirable. LG, Samsung and HTC have some nice(?) phones, but they’re not Apple. The Android videos show prototypes that are neat, but not iPhone-quick.

Unrealistic wish: iPhone hardware, Android software.