Top iPhone Resource

Apple has seeded iPhone OS 3.1 to developers with a few new features.

• Voice Control activation from a Bluetooth Headset
• iPhone vibrates on moving apps on the Home Screen
• Modem firmware updated to 5.08.01
• OpenGL and Quartz improvements
• Cut, Copy, Paste functionality in Dial Pad of Phone App
• Non destructive Video editing - option to trim your clip then “Save as copy…” instead of replacing the original clip.
• APIs to allow third party apps to access videos and edit them

But, OS 3.1 might leave some iPhones out there completely disabled for ultrasn0w per Dev Team. Here is what they are saying:

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Hello there! Hope you found a nice app, or a cool hack or the latest iPhone news. Don't miss future updates, grab our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter and get free updates.

Shriya and I use Gmail and Google Calendar extensively. iPhone’s native Calendar is nice but Google Calendar lets us access our events from our computers as well. Plus, I have tons of contacts already filled out in my Gmail that would be nice to have them in my iPhone.

With Google Calendar, you can also subscribe to other Calendar (CalDAV) compatible services like Remember the Milk, Anyvite, etc.

How to Sync Google Calendar with iPhone?

With this little tip, you can integrate Google Calendar right into your iPhone Calendar using Google Sync. I am going to assume you have upgraded to OS 3.0 and get to 2.2 later.

iPhone OS Version 3.0

1. Open Settings in iPhone
2. Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars
3. Tap on Add Account
4. Select Microsoft Exchange

   

5. In the Email field, enter your full Gmail address
6. You can leave the Domain field empty
7. In Username, enter your full email address
8. In Password, enter your Google password
9. Hit Next and enter m.google.com in Server field

   

10. Press Next
11. Select the Google Services you want to Sync - only Calendar & Contacts supported at the moment
12. Choose ‘Keep on my iPhone‘ to keep your existing contacts and events in your iPhone.
13. And you are done!

Gotchas

• Google Calendar and Contacts will automatically sync if you have Push (Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Fetch New Data) enabled. Push settings can also drain your battery faster so play with it and see how your battery holds up with various intervals.
• You can choose which of your Google Calendars to Sync by going to http://m.google.com/sync in Safari
• You can only create 1 Exchange ActiveSync account. So if you already use one for work you are out of luck. Thanks Apple!
• After the Sync is done, you chose to see All Calendars or just specific Calendars in iPhone

  

• With iPhone OS 2.2, you won’t see the screen where you can chose to Keep your existing Contacts in iPhone. You have to heed the warning that you will lose your iPhone data and hit Sync twice.

Hope you were able to set up your Google Calendar and Contacts in your iPhone with these instructions. Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll try to answer them.

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If you have used a previous generation iPhone, you are probably aware of this little trick.

If you are a new iPhone 3GS user, you might not have stumbled on this yet and will appreciate it.

While listening to music on your iPod (iPhone), if the screen locks out you don’t have to unlock the screen to skip, forward, pause etc. Just quickly press your Home button twice. The iPod screen will be overlayed in your locked screen. It lets you

• Skip to previous song
• Skip to next track
• Shows you album cover
• Adjust volume

If you use the Apple’s earphones, you can do this right in it. If you use some other earphones like I do, you might like this handy little way Apple has provided us.

Also, did you know that Apple has been renaming everything in their site from iPhone 3G S to iPhone 3GS? I like it. Do you have a tip to share of your own? Hit the comments section.

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Digits is one of those Apps that make you wonder why it wasn’t included in the iPhone OS natively.

Digits lets you quickly add a phone number to a contact. And that’s it. It lets you quickly type in a phone number with the big numbers as you seen in this screenshot. Then you enter a first name and last name and then you save it to your Contact.

Digits [iTunes] is an excellent buy!

Price: $0.99 -> Free

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The Compass has been touted as one of the big additions to the new iPhone 3GS and I was giving it a test drive at lunch today.

Some of you might already know this but I just stumbled across this tip and figured I’d share it if anyone else here is wondering about it.

Turn on Compass View in Google Maps

Compass itself is pretty neat when you hold it and see what direction you are facing. But, it is WAY more useful when turned on in Google Maps so you can see if you are actually facing the right direction while driving or walking with the help of Google Maps.

Initially I couldn’t figure out how to turn on the ‘lighthouse beam’ kind of animation. It turns out to be just a toggle of the same ‘current location’ button we are used to using. Just hit that button again and you will see it change to Compass view.

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Dev Team released their iPhone OS 3.0 jailbreak software this past weekend for both Windows and Mac.

RedSn0w or QuickPwn for so easy to use, we had our iPhone 3G jailbroken within minutes. But, we weren’t able to unlock it as redsn0w only supported unlocking the original iPhone.

UltraSn0w is capable of unlocking iPhone 3G and make it work on any carrier. Here’s how you’d do it

• Upgrade and jailbreak your iPhone OS 3.0 with RedSn0w or PwnageTool
• Run Cydia or Icy
• Add the repo repo666.ultrasn0w.com to Cydia or Icy. Note that ultrasn0w has a number 0 in the name.
• Search for ultrasn0w in cydia and install it
• Reboot your iPhone 3G
• Voila!

Dev Team notes that T-Mobile USA users should disable 3G before using ultrasn0w. If you have already used, share your experience with ultrasn0w here in comments or on Twitter with us.

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iPhone OS 3.0 is a free software update bringing 100+ excellent new features to all iPhone models. With the announcement of iPhone 3GS, if you are confused on what features are exactly in your particular iPhone, help is here.

Apple has published a chart with a list of features and its compatibility with different iPhone models.

You can read more on iPhone OS 3.0 new features here. Also, the iPhone OS 3.0 User Guide will be your best bet to finding little buried in features.

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iPhone OS 3.0 has a lot of new features. But, I keep discovering little thoughts tweaks here and there. In fact, I had missed this one and came to know from Patrick of my favorite iPhone blog.

You are probably loving the copy, paste functionality much in OS 3.0. But, did you know instead of holding down the backspace button to delete characters, you can undo your whole typing in input fields by just shaking your iPhone.

This feature is definitely nifty but it would be super cool to have some sort of undo history function added to it. But, hey I welcome even this small but thoughtful add-on.

In fact, if you just copied and pasted a blob of text in the wrong place, just shake your iPhone to undo the whole paste.

Hi5 to Patrick for this tip!

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Apple has updated and posted the iPhone OS 3.0 User Guide (pdf link) online.

Get your hands on it now!

Here are a few posts that can help you find some cool iPhone OS 3.0 features that you weren’t aware of

• 100+ Hidden Features in iPhone OS 3.0
• AT&T WiFi auto-authentication on OS 3.0
• iPhone OS 3.0 plus 46 security bugs
• How To: See New Push Notifications Settings in iPhone OS 3.0
• The Push is On: Apple Turns on Push Notifications
• Big Update: Evernote for iPhone 3.0 is Here

Have a good reading time! I am awaiting my iPhone 3G S shipment to be delivered by Fedex today and will post our unboxing pictures later on.

If you got your iPhone 3G S already, post your thoughts in the comments. We wanna hear from you.

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Gmail has been making great strides these days. We just saw Gmail get offline access.

With so many of us using Gmail primarily as the email provider as well as to store and manage our contacts, it becomes hard to not have those contacts in your iPhone contact list.

Yes, you could open up Gmail and then try to find it but it can’t beat the ability to sync your Gmail contacts with iPhone without a lot of effort.

NuevaSync does just that. Nuevasync allows direct, over-the-air, native synchronization with public PIM and calendaring services including Google.

NuevaSync supports not just Gmail contacts but also

• Google Calendar for calendar events
• Google Contacts/Gmail contacts for contacts
• Plaxo for Contacts

NuevaSync supports the following devices

• Apple iPhone 2.0
• Apple iPhone 3G
• iPod Touch 2.0
• Windows Mobile based PDAs and smartphones

Support for push email is supposedly coming soon. The first time you sync with Nuevasync it could take a little while but after that it should only take a few seconds.

Gotcha’s for iPhone users

• If you can’t edit your calendar events after a sync, check your sync configuration email address and make sure it’s right
• If you found 2 copies of some contacts, it looks like a iPhone firmware issue but a resync should fix the duplicates.
• If your Google Calendars come up with a different color in iPhone, you have to change it in GCal as you can’t change it in the phone.

Also, check out the Apple-specific page at Nuevasync.

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There is a bunch of rumors surrounding iPhone running around at the moment. What’s new, right?

If you haven’t heard them all already, here is a short roundup.

iPhone 2.2 Firmware Coming Nov 21st

There’s talk on the street that iPhone Hellas has an insider report that the much awaited iPhone 2.2 firmware is to be released on Nov 21st.

Some of the cool iPhone 2.2 firmware features I am waiting for are

• Google Maps Streetview and Walking directions
• Transit routes that will give timings and directions for public transit
• Ability to share your current location via email
• Safari browser tweaks
• Ability to download podcasts straight to your iPhone (why they probably denied the excellent Podcaster app)
• Sorting Apps by categories in AppStore

One good news is that DevTeam had already announced that they have had success jailbreaking the beta versions of iPhone 2.2 firmware. So, we shouldn’t have to wait too long to jailbreak 2.2 firmware release.

AT&T to Offer Tethering Plan

MacBlogz is reporting that AT&T is working on an official iPhone tethering plan and that it could be as much as $30/month with a 5GB cap on bandwidth. No launch date in sight yet but this could be the answer for folks waiting to do this the non-jailbreak 2.1 way.

Costco to Sell Cheap iPhones?

There is already news that Apple is cutting down on iPhone production, with the way the economy is at the moment.

Now, there is another rumor that the discount wholesale giant Costco might be carrying discount iPhones that could cost $150 starting in January 2009.

Is Walmart Selling iPhones too?

This kinda doesn’t make sense if you consider the other rumor that Walmart might be selling iPhones soon. Walmart does have a iPhone friendly website now that you can browse products with and even locate stores near you easily.

We’ll watch and report which of these rumors indeed become true but the one news that has us excited is the iPhone firmware 2.2. Hopefully this should also addresses some performance issues with jailbroken 2.1 iPhone 3G’s experience.

[Image credit: AppleInsider]

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Google’s Mobile Blog is reporting that Google has rolled out an iPhone friendly search results page.

Google Search results are not dumbed down or anything. It’s just better laid out and optimized for viewing in iPhone or iPod Touch. This will help us from having to scroll side to side to see the whole result.

One of the best examples of this optimization would be the Local Search results in Google. It neatly lays out the phone number for the business and a link to get directions prominently. (see pic)

The phone number is a click to call link. The map is shown by default if it’s a single result that’s returned or there is a Show map link for multiple listings.

The new iPhone friendly results page are available to those in US only at the moment. Plus you need the iPhone & iPod Touch firmware 2.x.

We welcome the love Google is showing iPhone in spite of Android’s release!

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