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iPhone 4 Death Grip Doesn't Affect Edge Connection

June 29, 2010 6:53 AM • by iPhone News Blog Staff • Posted to News | Opinion | iPhone Tips and Tricks Comments (4) | Permalink
I've been watching the whole "death grip" with the iPhone 4 with interest. Some say it's a defect, while other reports claim that all phones do the same thing, while others claim its a little of both. 

I believe it's an issue with software that Apple will fix as soon as their engineers figure it out. I could be wrong, but here's a test you can do for yourself if you have an iPhone 4. 

If you have the so called "death grip" condition, go ahead and make those bars disappear. Now I want you to do a little something:

Go to Settings > General > Network > Turn off 3G.

You're now on the Edge network. Watch those bars come back. If it was a hardware issue, wouldn't those bars stay gone, no matter what network you were on? My guess would be, yes. this is one strange problem!

All we can do is wait and see what Apple does to address this issue. Either way, rest assured, if it's a software OR a hardware issue OR both, Apple's got your back and will fix it.

Update: Interesting reading from a commenter here as well as more here.

Original iPhone Dock Works with iPhone 4

June 28, 2010 5:36 AM • by iPhone News Blog Staff • Posted to News | iPhone Tips and Tricks Comments (2) | Permalink
Over the weekend I went into my local Apple store to see if there were any accessories for the iPhone 4 to speak of. Of course the only thing they had available was the dock, power adapter and nothing else. There was no way I was gonna shell out $30 for a dock I'd probably hardly make use of.

iphonedock1.JPG

Well, if you're like me and bought the original iPhone the day it came out, you may have a few of it's accessories lying around and collecting dust. I found two docks for the original iPhone in a box. One was the original dock that may have come with the iPhone and the other was the dock that was originally sold with the Apple bluetooth wireless headset. (Yes, this is the one I dropped on the road and subsequently ran over with my car.)

iphonedock3.jpg

I eye-balled the dock and it seemed like my iPhone 4 could possible fit... so I decided to try it out! It fit perfectly and securely. I plugged it in and did my first sync. The other benefit is that the dock has a line out for playing music! I was very happy with my discovery to say the least.

If you had an original iPhone, go dig out that dock you have laying around and see if you can put it back in action. It saved me $30!

How to: Disable Backups in iTunes 7.7

July 31, 2008 6:38 AM • by R. Look • Posted to iPhone Tips and Tricks Comments (0) | Permalink
A lot of people, including yours truly have been wondering if it's possible to disable backups in iTunes 7.7. I found this tip in macosxhints. In any case, iTunes has a hidden preference that will allow you to disable backups only if you don't mind diving into the command line. If you are comfortable with the command line, type the following:

defaults write com.apple.itunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool YES
EDITORS NOTE: This will stop the backups, however users are warned that if you happen to have stopped the latest or most current backup you will NOT have a working backup in the case that the iPhone crashes or needs to be restored.

How to get Longer iPhone 3G Battery Life

July 18, 2008 9:10 AM • by iPhone News Blog Staff • Posted to FAQ | News | iPhone Tips and Tricks Comments (1) | Permalink
So you've finally got that spiffy new iPhone 3G. You've waited for a long time for 3G speed, location services, and those really cool iPhone third-party applications and now you're happy. What? You're upset with the battery life?

This is the most common complaint I've heard from the lucky folks who have the 3G iPhone: with some usage, by the end of the day, their battery is almost dead or dead. And, there's no way to swap the battery with a fresh one to fix this problem.

Make a Webclips icon for your website

January 15, 2008 5:03 PM • by iPhone News Blog Staff • Posted to News | iPhone Developer Resources | iPhone Tips and Tricks Comments (0) | Permalink
Cool tip we found this evening: If you do the following steps, you can have a default webclip icon for your website when anyone saves it to their iPhone:

  • Create a 57x57 PNG.
  • Name the png "apple-touch-icon.png"
  • Put it in the root folder of your website
We found the information on Apple's iPhone Dev Center. Read more under Create a WebClip Bookmark Icon.

iTunes 7.6 adds ability to Manually Manage Music

January 15, 2008 4:47 PM • by iPhone News Blog Staff • Posted to News | iPhone Tips and Tricks Comments (0) | Permalink
iTunes 7.6 finally brings to iPhone owners what almost all iPods take for granted: the ability to manually manage music! To do this, simply check off Manually manage music and videos in iTunes when you connect your iPhone.

manualmanage.jpgYes now you can drag and drop music into your iPhone, but it seems like you cannot do this for any type of podcast. Podcasts are still managed by syncing with iTunes.












iPhone Hacks galore

October 9, 2007 9:49 AM • by iPhone News Blog Staff • Posted to Rumors | iPhone Hacks | iPhone Tips and Tricks Comments (0) | Permalink
If you're into hacking your iPhone, we bring this news to you!

Jailbreak for 1.1.1 Imminent
If we hear the underground correctly, a new Jailbreak for 1.1.1 is coming shortly...

New Mobile protocol handlers in the 1.1.1 update
Eric Sadun over at TUAW has snooped around and has discovered new Safari-style protocol handlers.


itms:// Launches Mobile iTMS store.

maps:// Launches Google Maps. (iPhone only)

feed://, feeds:// Launches dotMac reader

tel:// Dials a number, specified in the URL. (iPhone only)

mailto:// Launches the iPhone mail app. (iPhone only)

youtube:// Launches YouTube.


Springboard hack updated for 1.1.1
Now Springboard has a cool "paging" feature which allows you to have apps on multiple pages or pagination for your apps. To access it you must first Jailbreak your iPhone then access this link from Mobile Safari.

iPhone BSD package updated
iPhone hacker/dev NerveGas has updated the BSD subsystem just in time for the upcoming jailbreak for 1.1.1 update.


iPhone Quick News

September 30, 2007 2:10 AM • by iPhone News Blog Staff • Posted to News | iPhone Hacks | iPhone Tips and Tricks Comments (0) | Permalink
Downgrade your iPhone from 1.1.1 to 1.0.2
BOOM! It feels like I'm reliving the battle between Sony and PSP hackers. The iPhone Dev Team has come up with a way to downgrade your iPhone from 1.1.1 to 1.0.2. This still leaves the iPhone unable to use the phone part of it's name but it will allow you to use everything else as well as third party applications.

iPhone 1.1.1 has secret bug: Bluetooth streaming music
Seems like the iPhone's 1.1.1 update has an interesting bug in that it allows you to now send audio (yes music) over to your bluetooth headset. Unfortunately the audio is only in mono and the audio keeps playing out of the built in speaker as well. [via engadget]

FREE iPhone Unlock Software

September 11, 2007 10:12 PM • by iPhone News Blog Staff • Posted to News | iPhone Hacks | iPhone Tips and Tricks Comments (0) | Permalink
Tonight, hot on the heels of iPhoneSIMfree, a group of iPhone hackers have duplicated the technique used by iPhoneSIMFree for unlocking the iPhone to run on any SIM card.

From the looks of it, this hack depends on a buffer overflow of sorts and we here at iPhoneNewsBlog.com all agree that this will probably break with the next iPhone upgrade. So do this at your own risk!

The hack involves uploading a few files to your iPhone and following step by step guide. You can download them here. The whole process looks easy enough if you are accustomed to using the terminal app, if you aren't then this might NOT be a good time to learn.

We haven't tried it out ourselves but please report your findings if you try it out! [via Macaper]

MakeiPhoneRingtone saves the day

September 11, 2007 12:47 PM • by iPhone News Blog Staff • Posted to iPhone Apps | iPhone Hacks | iPhone Tips and Tricks Comments (0) | Permalink
We couldn't get our custom ringtones to work with iTunes, even though we posted how to do it. It just never worked and we didn't like the chore of having to switch the file naming and switch it back thing.

Luckily the folks at <a href="http://www.rogueamoeba.com/utm/posts/Article/MakeiPhoneRingtone-2007-09-11-09-00">Rogue Amoeba</a> have come up with an app that can get iTunes to recognize your custom ringtones,  <a href="http://www.rogueamoeba.com/utm/posts/Article/MakeiPhoneRingtone-2007-09-11-09-00">MakeiPhoneRingtone</a>.

We haven't tried it yet, but we will later on today. We hope it works and we really hope this won't break with Apple's next version of iTunes

iPhone Replacement Battery

July 31, 2007 6:27 AM • by iPhone News Blog Staff • Posted to iPhone Tips and Tricks Comments (0) | Permalink

iphone-replacement-battery.jpg

Gizmodo beat us to this, but a company out of China called Brando is producing an iPhone battery replacement kit. The kit includes instructions, a replacement battery, a plastic tool to take the aluminum case backing off the iPhone and screwdriver.

Soldering iron to disconnect the old iPhone battery and reconnect the new iPhone battery not included.

Unix hack brings Third Party Apps to iPhone

July 25, 2007 9:17 PM • by iPhone News Blog Staff • Posted to iPhone Tips and Tricks Comments (0) | Permalink

Hacker Nerve Gas and the hacker team at #iphone-shell have found a way to get "Dropbear SSH" running on the iPhone. With this hack you can now install real third party apps. Mr. Nerve Gas has already built Apache, Python and a bunch of other open source apps for the iPhone.

So how does it work? Nerve Gas states it works by:
“overwriting an existing binary on the system with chmod, and then calling it with the appropriate arguments to set permissions. The result is a fully functional SSH setup.”

What this means in laymans terms is that you can move over any program and execute it via the command line. While this is probably more for UNIX guys and gals, this could lead to really cool apps in the very, very near future!

Check out the load of binaries for the iPhone here.

Use iPhone for EDGE over Wi-Fi

July 25, 2007 9:09 PM • by iPhone News Blog Staff • Posted to iPhone Tips and Tricks Comments (0) | Permalink

Hacker "Tomo.M" has compiled a SOCKS (SOCKetS) proxy server for the iPhone called srelay. This is built upon the work of the iPhone Dev team hacker Nightwatch's iPhone hack. This means you'll be able to use the iPhone's EDGE connection with your laptop computer by running a proxy server on the iPhone.

Follow these steps then set up a computer to computer wi-fi connection between the iPhone and your wi-fi computer.

Watch video for more:

We're pretty sure we'll start seeing a ton of UNIX hacks coming to the iPhone sooner that we can say Apple iPhone Software Update. We're hoping they don't block those iPhone hackers from doing these cool hacks!

iPhone Mobile Safari Tip: Get back to the top!

July 17, 2007 7:17 AM • by iPhone News Blog Staff • Posted to iPhone Tips and Tricks Comments (0) | Permalink

Here's a little iPhone Mobile Safari tip:
When you're scrollng through any web page and want to get back to the top, simply tap/touch the top area of the screen and the Mobile Safari will jump you back up to the top. A real time saver and finger saver!

Got any tips? Send them to us!

iPhone and Gmail Cuts out the Spam

July 11, 2007 1:06 AM • by iPhone News Blog Staff • Posted to iPhone Tips and Tricks Comments (3) | Permalink

Here's an iPhone tip / trick from MacWorld. The iPhone's mail client has no spam filter at all. Here's a way to filter spam through Google's Gmail before it hits your iPhone mailbox. We've actually done this for our other email accounts, so we can confirm it does indeed work.

It is rather a slightly cumbersome process but a necessary one if you want to keep spam on your iPhone to a minimum. Check out this article on how to kill spam in your iPhone's email client here.

A better way to type a period or comma on the iPhone

July 5, 2007 1:28 PM • by iPhone News Blog Staff • Posted to iPhone Tips and Tricks Comments (0) | Permalink

We'll be sharing some of our iPhone tips and tricks with you as we find them in the coming days. The first one is for using the keyboard.

David Pouge posted this the other day on his Missing Manuals website. One his pet-peeves about the iPhone keyboard is the lack of a period on the alphabet key.

"So every time you want to type a period or a comma, it’s a three-step, awkward dance: (1) Tap the “.?123” key in the lower left to summon the punctuation layout. (2) Type the period. (3) Type the ABC key in the lower left to return to the alphabet layout."

David's solution as told to him by a reader:
"So here’s what you can do, all in one motion:

1. Touch the “.?123” key, but don’t lift your finger as the punctuation layout appears.

2. Slide your finger a half inch onto the period or comma key, and release.

Incredibly, the ABC layout returns automatically. You’ve typed a period or a comma with one finger touch instead of three. In fact, you can type ANY of the punctuation symbols the same way."

That's all good but we have a better way:
Why not just touch the ".?123" key, type the period and then press space? It automatically takes you back the the alpha keyboard and saves you from doing a gesture. So far, we like this method better.

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