Content
- My Experience
- Review of the iphone 3gs
- Find out how to jailbreak 3.1.2
- Find out how to unlock 3.1.2 (Windows)
My iPhone experience
I was going to wait until my birthday in Jan but the girlfriend gave the go ahead to get my new Iphone 3GS as she was going to buy me one. But as she found out, i wont be able to unlock it with my own carrier, as of the jailbreak resistant iphones being released.
She forced me to go and buy it with her (who can say NO to that cute face). So we went to the apple store and brought an iphone and one of the idiots there told me that it was a 3.0 firmware so i could unlock and jailbreak without the baseband being unlockable. So i took it home and unpacked and checked. (!*$%*&^$) Suprise, it was a 3.1.2 SDK and no unlock or jailbreak 
and no way was i going to pay for another contract with O2 (rip off).
I got in contact with an old friend, and we made a deal with his unopened iphone. £400 with 3.0 firmware and it costed me £120 less than the normal price for a unopened iphone 3gs. Unlocked and jailbroken with the Three!!!!!! and i got a max internet addon with three which enable my 3G
My Iphone 3Gs Review
The first thing I noticed was the overall speed. Thanks to its 600MHz processor, everything is much snappier — boot up, app launches, keyboard typing. Here’s one example. Google Earth takes 23 seconds to load on the older 3G over WiFi, but loads in just 5 seconds on the 3G S — that’s more than 4x faster. Apple claims 2x speed gains. Well, Apple is right on track with the speed of the new iPhone 3gs.
One of the major improvement on the iPhone 3GS is the loading time for applications. In my own experience and in independent tests, applications have loaded faster on the iPhone 3GS when compared to older models. The additional memory that was added to the 3GS and the extra CPU clock speed make a big difference.
Current iPhone users have a tougher decision ahead. First they must ask themselves if the features offered exclusively on the phone (as opposed to the free upgrade, which they should download immediately) are worth the expense of a new phone. For some users, Voice Control, the new camera, and the speed boost will be worth the cost. For others, it won’t be a huge sacrifice to go without.
The new camera is 3-megapixel — one more megapixel than the previous iPhone. It is pretty fast in good light. The autofocus quickly finds its target, although it can hunt around in a rapidly changing scene. To lock the focus on the subject, you tap in the focus box that appears onscreen.
I found it worked well most times, though sometimes wandered in complex scenes like reflective windows. The video camera is surprisingly smooth and fluid. It shoots VGA video (640 x 480) at 30 frames a second, though the frame rate sometimes dropped to 25fps. Not HD by any means, but perfectly adequate for my purposes.
I had such high hopes for voice control, which is supposedly initiates calls and plays songs by simply saying, “Play Britney Spears.” At first, it seemed to work unbelievably well. It made calls and played songs, just as a I commanded. I thought it might have trouble with my British accent, but it worked fine. Trouble is, you have to trust it or its useless. Unless it works every time, I’m just not going to use it.
There’s clearly a lot of use for something like this when driving or working on something which keeps your hands away from your phone, though you still have to engage the app physically, so we’re not sure how much you’d get out of it in those situations. The whole concept seems something very much in the vein of Cover Flow — a really impressive component for the phone that just doesn’t have a ton of practical use. Yes, your friends will think it’s pretty cool, but as a pragmatic group of gadget nerds, we don’t see a tremendous need for this functionality.
The compass app, along with the magnetometer, is great at pointing you somewhere in the general direction of North. It also doesn’t matter which way you’re holding the phone—either parallel or perpendicular to the ground—the arrow and numbers will still more or less give you a sense of where you’re facing.As a bonus, if you hit the “find me” button in Google Maps a second time after it’s located your GPS position, it’ll re-orient your map to reflect the way you’re facing. It would have been extremely useful when I was on foot, lost in San Francisco trying catch the last train, not knowing which way was which since the street signs are so small and the blocks are so large. If I had this, I wouldn’t have to have gone a block in the wrong direction just to figure out I should have been heading the other way.
Conclusion
Here is the most important part of this review. If you are coming from a different phone, then I would switch to the iPhone. Many say the iPhone is overrated, many say the iPhone is a child’s toy, but Apple is moving in the right direction. It is working around the consumer, and more and more the business area.
The iPhone 3G S isn’t perfect — and to be honest is far from perfect, but that perfect phone doesn’t exist and probably never will. When I don’t have my iPhone and have to use a different phone temporarily, it really is difficult. I’m so used to having GPS, and easy texting, and all my music if I needed something to listen to. It’s like I’ve grown accustomed to the iPhone. Just understand though this model still lacks things like MMS (for America), voice navigation, background applications, a front facing camera, e-mail body searching, text message searching, haptic feedback… I could go on.
Overall, I’m pleased with the iPhone 3G S, and like I’ve always said, Apple is moving in the right direction.