The Great iPhone Blog

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Audio

We've seen the iPod-as-cassette-tape design in older speaker docks like Altec Lansing's inMotion iM7 bazooka tube before, but Sony's bringing it back with its new ZS-S4iP boombox, which appears designed for only iPhone and iPod touch owners. Apart from the novelty of hitting eject to insert and remove your player, it's pretty much the generically boring CD boombox it looks like, although you do get MP3 CD playback. It's preordering in black and white in Australia for about AU$179 ($142), should make it Stateside in October.

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written by iPhone Fan

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

We had a chance to paw this beauty on Tuesday at the Apple event, but finally getting home and spending some quality time with the device has given us a far deeper impression of just what the folks in Cupertino have done. So far our impressions are favorable: physically, the nano redesign is a move in the right direction for the company, leaving that awkward previous generation nano on the cutting room floor, and falling much more in line with Apple's current design language. The player feels solid and compact -- maybe a bit too tiny for our big paws -- though build quality is on par with the 1st generation iPhone. You can tell a lot of careful rethinking went into this, and there's not an edge out of place. We're going to be doing a full review of the device and its new software, but for now feast your eyes on the gallery below.

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written by iPhone Fan

After being voluntarily retired from the iTunes App Store, following a call by THQ Wireless, the most useless yet completely obligatory Phonesaber is getting back to the store as LightSaber Unleashed. The lightsaber simulation app will tie in with the new LucasArts's game, including completely new graphics, "dueling music", and characters from the game:

THQ Wireless has the license for all things Star Wars and mobile, which is why the application was pulled in the first place. But don't worry about this becoming a pay application: It will still be free, making it even better than the equally useless Spore for iPhone. [The Mac Box]

written by iPhone Fan

Filed under: Cellphones

While the DevTeam rightly asserts that Apple can't undo the bug exploited by PwnageTool via firmware update alone, it's still subject to the whims of iTunes connectivity. In fact, iTunes 8 seems to detect jailbroken devices jailbreaking attempts and then stomps its feet and refuses to play nice. While the DevTeam says that fixes are in the works, the growing list of useful applications in the AppStore coupled with the global retail availability of the iPhone (and lack of a 3G unlock) makes PwnageTool less and less relevant with each passing day.

Update: The problem seems to occur when you try to restore to an iPwned ipsw from a non-ipwned device. Syncing to an already Pwned device works fine.

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written by iPhone Fan

Since they can't avoid hacked iPhones no matter how hard they try, Apple seems to have prepared iTunes 8 to avoid pwning, disabling this ability in mint iPod touch and iPhone devices. But don't fret, because the iPhone Dev Team have already launched a counterattack:

The nice thing about iTunes decisions is that we can provide you with patches to counter them. We have one such patch already for Mac iTunes 8 for iPod touch. We’ll be working out the full suite of patches for all the combinations over the next week.

Begun the Apple-Hackers iTunes Wars have. [iPhone Dev Team Blog]

written by iPhone Fan

Filed under: Cellphones

While that 480 x 800 pixel display has everybody in a feverish pant, MoDaCo has released even more unconfirmed specs on the rumored HTC Touch HD guaranted to pound a lustful wave of disruption into your handset purchasing plans. To start with, it's listed at 115 x 62.8 x 12-mm making it almost exactly the same size as the svelt 115.5 x 62.1 x 12.3-mm iPhone 3G. That's a good start. Now slip GPS, HSDPA data, a 5 megapixel camera (no flash), stylus, microSD slot, 3.5-mm headphone jack, and 1350mAH battery into the mix and you've got the stuff of serious, WinMo fantasy. We'll know if it's all legit soon enough as MoDaCo claims a retail date by Christmas. Yes, really.

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written by iPhone Fan

Filed under: Cellphones

While that 480 x 800 pixel display has everybody in a feverish pant, MoDaCo has released even more unconfirmed specs on the rumored HTC Touch HD guaranted to pound a lustful wave of disruption into your handset purchasing plans. To start with, it's listed at 115 x 62.8 x 12-mm making it almost exactly the same size as the svelt 115.5 x 62.1 x 12.3-mm iPhone 3G. That's a good start. Now slip GPS, HSDPA data, a 5 megapixel camera (no flash), stylus, microSD slot, 3.5-mm headphone jack, and 1350mAH battery into the mix and you've got the stuff of serious, WinMo fantasy. We'll know if it's all legit soon enough as MoDaCo claims a retail date by Christmas. Yes, really. Only thing missing is WiFi... and Android.

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written by iPhone Fan

Tonchidot's Sekai Camera is the iPhone killer application I was looking for: just point your camera anywhere around you to have instant feedback about whatever is in your screen. Directions, reviews, messages, offers, and any tag you can imagine will appear floating in front of you, adding a graphic overlay to the world.

Tonchidot defines their amazing Sekai Camera—in Japanese, World Camera— as a "social tagging device" for the iPhone. It combines most technologies in the iPhone 3G, from the camera and the GPS to the internet connectivity and its microphone. When you start it, the application first checks where you are using the built-in GPS in the iPhone 3G.

At that point you can do two things. One, you can see information about places and objects around you, overlaid on the real-time video. Two, you can add your own information, whether you are an individual, a businesses, or any other kind of organization. You just point and add your tag, which can include text, images, and sound. [Tonchidot via Dvice]

written by iPhone Fan

Sony Insider has uncovered Sony's newest Dream Machine, the ICF-CD3iP, the most attractive iPhone/iPod Clock/Radio Dock I've seen yet. No telling what it sounds like, but for the $100 or so it will cost when it eventually surfaces, I'm guessing it would be somewhere between "tinny but decent" and "hey, that's not so bad."

SI mentions the fact that it has an iPod/iPhone remote, and that its alarm can co-exist with iPhone/iPod alarms; I don't believe that's a first, but it's a good thing to hear. By the looks of it, that iPod dock slides out, too, a nice thing for those who might not care for iStuff. If the round face hasn't tipped you off already, it's also a CD player with MP3-CD playback, and it has a line in, in case you still want to patch in your 120GB Zune. What? Sony still makes MP3 players? Huh. [Sony Insider via iPodNN]

written by iPhone Fan

In their teardown of the iPod touch version 2, iFixit found a secret surprise: A Broadcom Bluetooth chipset! Though totally unannounced and not listed on the spec page (Apple says Nike+ doesn't use Bluetooth), the iPod touch's Bluetooth chipset supports 2.1+EDR. We don't know for sure yet if it has A2DP, which would let you use stereo headphones—and be another hardware one-up over the iPhone besides ">the built-in Nike+ functions. We've got our fingers crossed—what else would it be used for? Update: MacRumors notes that Nike+ uses the same 2.4GHz frequency as Bluetooth, so that might be what's going on here. [iFixit]

written by iPhone Fan