The Great iPhone Blog

Saddened by the fact that the Apple logo on the rear-shell of the iPhone is just a dead, un-illuminated entity, a bunch of Russian modders have taken a dremel and soldering iron to one—or is it a replacement back shell? Either way, they brought the sexy (glow) back. Apparently "the battery doesn’t suffer a lot, you can adjust the glow level in Settings menu." Hmmm. Are they hacking into the screen back-lighting circuit? If you're not convinced by the photo: check out the video, it looks pretty real.

Now you should be convinced: if this mod isn't real, that video is a very well-done fake. There's no info on how it's been done, so it's up to you to work out how to follow in their footsteps if you too want a glowing fruit. [iNews76 via Yanko Design]

written by iPhone Fan

This is TuneWiki, the music playback app that shows Karaoke-like lyrics and album art on almost all the music on your phone. It's been officially ported to Android and looks very very impressive. They've added features like searching YouTube for videos of your tracks, plus searching their database for certain song lyrics if you only remember caught a part of a song. There's also the built-in Google Maps API for looking at other people using TuneWiki and being able to see what people are listening to around a certain area. Yeah, we're pretty excited.

The guys from Tunewiki also told me that they released a versioin for iPhone 2.0 jailbreak that's on both Cydia and Installer, and is doing quite well. [TuneWiki]

written by iPhone Fan

Pocket Gamer has the scoop on an upcoming iPhone game called Astro Ranch that's half Harvest Moon, half Animal Crossing—both games that require you to manage different resources on a day-to-day basis. We're not sure what other iPhone tech this would involve other than the panning for gold by shaking the camera like a prospector (and controlling the camera with your finger), but it will have multiplayer abilities insofar as you can exchange items and send presents to your buddies. This might just be the best iPhone game yet when it comes out in March 2009, but at the very least it'll be the best iPhone game that involves simulating a '49er. [Pocket Gamer]

written by iPhone Fan

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Support forum threads on Apple's site and a number of ramblings across these great interwebs are starting to complain at great length about the iPhone 3G's headlining new feature -- 3G reception, that is -- and pretty much every aspect of it: signal strength, call dropping, connecting to EDGE when 3G is present, the list goes on. Some smartypants analyst from financial firm Nomura thinks he has it all figured out, saying that the issues are "typical of an immature chipset and radio protocol stack" and suggesting that a firmware update pushed out to existing handsets is unlikely to ease the pain. We've been hearing that Cupertino could actually be working on just such an update at this very second, though, so this cat better get ready for the possibility that he could be eating his own words down the road. For what it's worth, intermittent issues have been reported the world over, so this doesn't seem to be anything to do with AT&T's (or anyone else's) infrastructure -- and needless to say, not everyone is having issues to start. And for anyone whose iPhone 3G we just jinxed by writing this post... well, our bad.

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written by iPhone Fan

According to Businessweek, the solution to the iPhone 3G's chipset issues could be easier than most of us probably expected. They believe Apple has found a way to correct the problem with a simple software upgrade instead of a costly and annoying recall. Businessweek claims that Apple and chip maker Infineon are hard at work on the fix and it could be released as early as the end of this month. [Businessweek via CNET]

written by iPhone Fan

The previously jailbreak-only Simplify Media has just hit the iTunes App Store, allowing you to stream your entire iTunes music library (plus up to 30 of your friends') to your iPhone. The official app has all the features of the old version, including album art, lyrics and artist bios, plus works over EDGE, 3G and Wi-FI. It's free for the first 100k downloaders, so we can't think of any reason why you wouldn't want to use this seeing as it gives your phone an essentially unlimited amount of storage space. Video demo after the jump.

[Apple]

written by iPhone Fan

Sure, gadgets all have their uses that they were designed for, but that doesn't mean they can't serve other purposes. Once you buy something, you can do whatever the hell you want with it. Maybe you're using your old boom box to keep the tarp on your boat from flying away in the wind. Maybe you're using your old, broken iPhone as an ashtray. Perhaps your PSP is propping up a wobbly table. There are plenty of strange uses for gadgets that aren't in any instruction manual, and we want to see them.

So bust out your camera and snap a picture of your unique gadget use. Send it over to me at contests@gizmodo.com with the subject line "strange gadget uses" and the file named FirstnameLastname.jpg with the name that you want to be credited with. On Tuesday, I'll pick three top winners and post the rest of the best in the Gallery of Champions. Get to it!

written by iPhone Fan

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

If you're fortunate enough to have access to a Premier (business, that is) account with AT&T, you're now able to forgo the charade of meandering down to your local store to buy -- or place an order for, more likely -- the iPhone 3G. All three varieties of the best cellphone Apple makes are now available directly through the carrier's B2B online store for the usual $199 / $299 pricing scale; if we had to guess, it's just a matter of time before they'll throw the doors open to the riff raff (read: us), too. We'll drink to that.

[Thanks, Vasudev R.]

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written by iPhone Fan

Good news if you're special enough to have access to AT&T Premier (mostly for business dudes), you can now buy every flavor the iPhone 3G online. Ship time is 7-10 business days, a little bit faster than pre-paying, which has a wait time of about two weeks. The upshot is that even if you aren't a corporate dude, this means everyone will probably be able to buy it online soon, restoring order to the world. [AT&T Premier - Thanks Carbonfly!]

written by iPhone Fan

The iPhone 3G's network speed has been coming under fire recently, and Wired has decided to investigate with a global iPhone 3G network speed study. Head on over and add your data to their interactive map. [Wired]

written by iPhone Fan