Well, it’s been just over a year now when I bought the Motorola S9-HD Bluetooth Stereo Headset. The sole purpose was to be wireless when out and about to stream audio content from my iPhone 3GS. The catch here was that the iOS did not have the full AVRCP 1.0 built-in, so skipping forward or backward had to be done directly from the 3GS. Since then iPhone and iPod Touch users have waited through various iOS updates which added up to nothing more than teases in various iOS betas, now with iOS 4.1 you can finally keep your iPhone where it belongs… in your pocket.

Last night I downloaded the new iTunes 10 and the iOS 4.1 GM. Installed the new iOS on to my iPhone 4 and tested it out with my S9-HD. In one word… s-w-e-e-t. This is one of those features that either works or it doesn’t and in this case it works. I haven’t tested it outside yet to see if the Bluetooth connection is any better but that’s coming. So for those waiting for the official release of iOS 4.1 just know you should have total control of your media via a bluetooth headset once 4.1 is released to the masses. Just be aware that all headsets don’t always play nice with all devices so make sure your headset firmware is up to date, actually supports AVRCP and restore your iPhone as a new device. This way you leave behind any trace of the older firmware/software that may not be compatible and cause problems.

I covered in a 2 part series the new MMS and tethering capabilities built into iPhone 3.0. You can find them here:

iPhone 3.0 MMS & Tethering: Part 1

iPhone 3.0 MMS & Tethering: Part 2

In this article I wanted to get more specific and focus on my experience tethering my 3.0 enabled iPhone 3G (note not the 3G S) with my recently purchased iMac (running OS 10 Leopard).

First thing I had to do was turn on Bluetooth on the iPhone. I normally don’t deal with Bluetooth devices so I leave the radio off. Plus it’s a good idea to save on battery life by turning it off. The iMac (which wonderfully has Bluetooth available) wasn’t listed on the devices list, even after I made it discoverable (the iMac that is).

I decided then to go through the device setup wizard available through the Bluetooth configuration icon in the status bar.

On the second page of the wizard there was an option for “Mobile Phone”. I chose that to proceed.

A search page then appeared as it tried to locate (from 2 feet away mind you) my iPhone. It took a moment but it showed up and I was able to select the device to continue. The iMac said that it needed to gather some bits of data about my device (no idea what) but after that I had a code popup on my iPhone which matched a code appearing the iMac screen.

The popup display on the iPhone indicated that a paring was occurring and I had to click OK to permit this. I did. However the pairing came up unsuccessful.

I tried a couple combinations of turning off Bluetooth and back on, switching the discover mode on the iMac to restarting the wizard but I wasn’t having much luck.

I eventually stumbled on the solution (no stopping for directions for this guy!). I had to be on the Bluetooth settings page on the iPhone with it scanning for devices. I then let the wizard attempt to pair with the phone. When the wizard came up with the code, I clicked the OK to permit prompt on the iPhone and then went back to the wizard to click continue.

Success! I could then setup a network connection through the iPhone.

In the Bluetooth settings page (use the Open Bluetooth Preferences from the status bar icon) you will see your paired device and details about it:

All you have to do is click the device and connect! (click the little settings cog wheel next to the minus sign).

So really this is a simple process, and a wireless one at that, much better solution that having to carry around a dock connector.

I did a few connection speed tests to measure the performance (excuse my lousy net speed!)

This is my broadband DSL connection (above)

And here is the tethered test.

About 100 kb/s off on the download, but significantly bad on the download. That is OK with me, since if I was using my iPhone for net access, I would likely really only care about the download speed.

This post originally appeared on DavidRStorms.com on August 10th, 2009

On my last post I talked about the new MMS features with regards to sending pictures in the iPhone 3.0 software update. In this article, I will document my experience trying out the tethering capabilities built right into the iPhone. Now like MMS, tethering technologies have been available on other platforms for years, and without jail-breaking your iPhone, you couldn’t do it previously.

The iPhone is only available on 2 carriers in Canada: Fido and Rogers. I am with Rogers and at launch of the 3.0 update they were one of the carriers that were ready to support tethering. I had to dig a bit to find out what were the conditions of tethering, can I do it now? Will I be charged a ton of money to do it? Do I need some kind of tethering enabled plan?

I managed to find this blurb on the Rogers web site:

So lucky me I already have a 1 GB data plan so I wasn’t worried about incurring charges. And it seems that I have until the end of the year to enjoy this. I haven’t seen anything yet as to what happens in 2010, but I’ll keep digging. A good resource for this is the forums at iphoneincanada.ca where they have a thread on iPhone plans that people can post.

Tethering

This is incredibly easy to do. My first test was with connecting the iPhone to my Windows Vista PC using the dock connector cable that comes with the phone. I made sure wireless was off and the ethernet cable was unplugged and that I had no internet access.

First up is you go to Settings, General and then Network to see this screen:

Click into Internet Tethering to get this screen:

You toggle the ON/OFF and almost immediately are are setup, when you go back to the home screen a nice little blue bar indicates that tethering is enabled:

It’s very similar to when you exit a call to go to the home screen, only not green but blue. When you think about it, it makes sense and is handy to know so that you don’t leave it on and suck up all the bandwidth on your account.

When charging and the phone is locked, you still get the blue indicator:

When I went back to my Vista PC, a new prompt came up:

I choose Home just to get rid of this screen and that was it. I fired up my browser and hit my first web page on tethering:

On the final part I will show the Bluetooth connection with my new iMac and visit a speed testing web site.

Note: this article originally appeared on DavidRStorms.com on August 3rd.

Apple announced this afternoon the release of iPhone OS 3.0.1, Available for: iPhone OS 1.0 through iPhone OS 3.0

As quoted from their website

Description: A memory corruption issue exists in the decoding of SMS messages. Receiving a maliciously crafted SMS message may lead to an unexpected service interruption or arbitrary code execution. This update addresses the issue through improved error handling. Credit to Charlie Miller of Independent Security Evaluators, and Collin Mulliner of Fraunhofer SIT for reporting this issue.

Meaning that an update on our post from yesterday was dead on (kudos to the BBC and Computer World), this patch should be available via iTunes.

One of the exciting additions to the iPhone in the recent firmware update is the ability to send multi-media messages (pictures and video) the same as text messages. This is nothing new to the mobile phone market, as these features have been staples in products for many years. Could be that these things were left off the release table for Apple until now because it was too much work for them to get it in the phone, or they were planning ahead for future firmware releases and didn’t want to use up everything on their feature list!

Regardless, it is here on the iPhone and it is amazing! Also coming along with the update is the Internet tethering capability which had not been available to non jail-broken phones.

MMS

Unfortunately I wish that I had a 3G S phone so that I could test the video side of this, but alas I only have the 3G, so I will only cover my experience with pictures taken by the camera on the phone.

First thing you will see when you open the Messages app (used to be called a speech bubble called SMS but that wouldn’t make sense now would it!) you will notice near the text bar a small camera. Clicking on that little icon will bring up 2 options:

You can click “Take Photo” and jump right into the Camera app, or click “Choose Existing” and head into the Camera Roll and find the picture you want to send.

When you take the picture, you can optionally choose to Retake the photo, or click Use to have it go into your message.

You can type your text right in the speech bubble. I really like how the image is shrunk down and appears with the message. When you click send, it ends up in its own little speech bubble and the text gets separated into its own bubble:

You will notice a nice addition in 3.0 is that the screen isn’t locked with the sending progress bar anymore. The progress shows up at the top so you are free to start typing the next message, or go back and send a message in a different message thread.

I couldn’t make it happen, but when I first started using this feature I would have failed messages. I am with Rogers up here in Canada so shortly after 3.0 came out I imagine they were a bit overloaded with MMS going everywhere. When failures occur, 3.0 now shows them with a red exclamation point beside them. All you have to do is click that and hit the Retry button when it prompts. This is great because it leaves your messages there, so if it was network congestion with Rogers, I can easily leave the Messages app and come back in later and retry them.

You will notice as I did that with the image bubbles, you lose a lot of real estate in landscape mode trying to read other messages:

Of course if someone sends you a picture, it is easy to grab it. Just click on the image (it will appear as a bubble on the left, just like the senders messages) and you will get a full screen preview of the image. In the bottom left is a little icon that lets you easily save that image into your camera roll for safe keeping:

Speaking of camera roll, if you happen to be in there and looking at images and see something you want to share, there is a new option along with the Email to to send via MMS:

In the next part, I will share my experience with the tethering options found in 3.0.

Note: this article originally appeared on DavidRStorms.com on July 26, 2009 and is reprinted here unedited.

Like many millions of people I downloaded on June 17th the highly anticipated 3.0 software update from Apple for the iPhone. Since I’m not even a year into my contract with Rogers, this review will be based on my 3G. I think this will make a more accurate review of the software itself without confusing 3.0 features that work only with the 3GS.

Please note that this is from the “Canadian perspective” and I apologize if any current AT&T customers feel jealous about MMS!

For the most part I will revisit the highlighted items from my post back in March on the iPhone OS 3.0 Update. (note this link goes back to my personal web site)

Installing

Installation was a breeze. I have to admit that I was caught up in the excitment for this one and got up bright and early and started scanning for updates in iTunes but none were to be had. At work through TweetDeck I setup a search feed to watch Twitter for #iPhone3.0 and saw a lot of people waiting. I checked again at lunch time and nothing (I’m in EST by the way). Around mid afternoon, say around 3-4 pm I saw notes all over the place of people downloading. There was also reports of time outs, iTunes activation problems, delays, peoples phones not coming back, etc. Needless to say I was a bit aprehensive. But I know I would try anyway.

I was home around 5 ish that night and wondered if the servers would still be bogged. I plugged in my iPhone, gave it one last glace at 2.x, then proceeded with the upgrade. The download of a couple hundred megabytes took about 17 minutes or so. The backup of the phone took place, then the firm ware was installed. This was probably about 10 minutes. During installation my phone went black and I saw the normal silver Apple logo with a progress bar underneath. I thought I would see that progress bar each time the phone started as a new feedback feature, but alas not the case.

Before it was done iTunes alerted me that there was a software update from my carrier (Rogers) and if I wanted to download this. I can only assume that it had something to do with the MMS and tethering capabilities. I agreed and it downloaded and installed in no time.

That was it. My iPhone came back all loaded. I normally reseve the home page for the factory apps, and in 2.x I had 1 spare space where I put Tweetie. After 3.0 the Voice Memos app was added which pushed Tweetie to the next page. However what it did was put it on a blank page just to the right of the home screen all by itself. I was startled at first but fine with it. I believe you can go up to 10 pages now and I find that I now want to still reserve factory apps for the home screen, then frequently used ones on a more or less empty page.

Later on I’ll talk about Spotlight which kind of antiquates this.

App Store & iTunes (from iPhone)

I find these 2 apps now slower for me. Maybe I’m crazy but I get the loading screen a bit longer than I normally do. Even slower when not on Wi-fi.

First time I started the App Store I had 2 apps that had updates now that I was on 3.0. However each of them failed repeatedly. They would sit on the waiting stage for a while and then I would try again and from the App Store and I would get 2 failures. Finally I was in either the App Store or iTunes and I got prompted to accept the license agreement.

Finally on the App Store, when you look at the details of an app, you no longer have to click through the images, they all load on the detail page and you just swipe left and right to look at them. This is great for me beause I like to see all the screens but I don’t want to have to click one, then go back, click one then go back.

I did that and lo and behold I could update those apps. Only hiccup I’ve had there.

While I haven’t done it, I think it’s neat you can get TV shows and movies from iTunes right on the phone. I beleive you will need Wi-fi to download them because my 1 GB cap just won’t handle it!

Touted Features

Apple says over 100 new features, and I found this site that lists them all. Here is my personal experience with each of them.

Cut, Copy & Paste

Another feature that I think it’s great that it is there and extremely useful, but I just don’t do that much copy pasting on the phone to begin with. When I do use it though, it works as expected. And the shake to undo and redo blows a lot of people away and was a very nice touch on Apple’s part. I’m used to double tapping to zoom things and often the bubble pops up with text selected but its easily dimissed.

It’s just the way it is, but without a mouse it is a bit slower to narrow down to select the text you want, and I do find that the feature is smart about finding a word, then paragraph and then page.

The fact that the feature works across all apps is expected and works great. Copying images (up to 5 I believe) from the Photos app to an email works well (although you can send via email right from the Photos app), but grabbing an image from a web page and mailing it off is great too.

I don’t use this a lot, but I sure am glad it’s there!

Landscape Keyboard

I sort of got used to typing in portrait mode so it is a conscious reminder to flip to this form. Primarily I would use it in Email and Messages. I don’t take notes very often but I’m sure I would use this there as well.

Text Messaging & MMS

As mentioned above, the landscape keyboard is now in text messages which marginally helps me type. I do find it can take up a lot of room and leave me little area to see what is there:

One of the first things I did was try to send pictures over MMS. This worked like a charm. The small camera next to the text line makes it easy to snap a new shot or choose an existing one. I was told by my friend that pictures with text came out weird on his phone, but I love how they appear in speach bubbles on my end.

Last week though I tried to send him some shots of our basement project and all of them failed. Failed messages have a little red exclamation point beside them that you can click and retry. I did this many times but they still failed and I just gave up.

As I found out tonight (June 24) my friend also sent me pics last Friday (June 19th) and Sunday (June 21) and I didn’t get them until tonight. I then replied back with a picture and it worked. Best guess is that Rogers was overwhelmed or had to work on something last minute to make MMS work better. No idea. Haven’t seen any word on this.

You can now selectively forward and delete individual messages which I like rather than clearing the whole conversation.

Sadly I can’t take video because I don’t have the 3GS so I don’t think I can MMS any either.

A great change to the Messages app is now that when you send you are not locked out of the app while it sends but your message bubble pops up and at the top the app you have the “sending” note with the progress bar. That made a lot of sense to me.

I don’t find the app opens any faster but in fact seems slower to me.

Spotlight

This is a great idea addition to the phone. However I keep forgetting that it is there and often find myself locating apps and contacts the old fashioned pre-3.0 days.

I know its there I just need to remember to use it. The number 1 reason I would use this is quick access to my contacts. I don’t have pages and pages of apps and I organize them a bit so it’s not such a big deal to flip through the pages. I think it’s great that it will look into my email and calendar events, not to mention the iPod library.

Other

I have noticed modest speed boosts in web site rendering but I don’t tax things that greatly. I do know that JavaScript heavy sites like the Google services work quickly. I use the mobile version of Google Reader and its fantastic.

Another feature I use often is the landscape support in Email. Not so much for flipping through the list of messages, but opening emails I find it very useful. I still get the delay while the app tries to adjust the font size so it is readible, but that is mitigated a bit by the landscape support. I find that I type faster in SMS using portrait mode but from time to time I will use the messages app in landscape mode too.

If you want, here is forum documenting user found features you may not even know about yet!

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=715629

Note: this article has been edited from the original and first appeared on my site: www.davidrstorms.com on July 5th, 2009

A follow up focusing on MMS and Tethering will be coming soon!

Proceed with caution!!!!

Right in time for iPhone 3.1, the iPhone Dev-Team has begun issuing their usual warnings about jailbreak/unlock users and new firmware updates:

ultrasn0w users must stay away from official 3.1 (incl. betas) until we release the tools for it, or you’ll lose unlock!

Tempting as a tasty new beta may be, if you can’t live without your hacked iPhone, don’t hit that update button now, or any time before the iPhone Dev-Team has new, tested tools ready for you.

Once again, you’ve been warned!
(Via Twitter)

[Via The iPhone Blog]

It is hard to believe we are in our third year of the iPhone. When I initially switched from Windows Mobile to the iPhone I was looking for a device that would merge all my gadgets and toys into one neatly designed, well built package. I understood the decision I was making and the sacrifices I would ultimately have to live with.

The first glaringly obvious sacrifice that any Windows Mobile switcher user came made within was Apple’s, in my opinion, weak calendar and productivity suite. Microsoft made the premier productivity suite for mobile and still to this day it is what keeps a lot of Windows Mobile users with the archaic platform. Some who did decided to switch made the assumption that Apple would put out updates to build the platform up and strengthen it’s image as a true smartphone and to some extent they were (I was) right. The updates came, the SDK was released, and we are all falling in to a never ending black hole of apps.

After the release of their SDK the world was buzzing about background processes’ and productivity. Many of the mobility experts I knew where switching back to older platforms to take advantage of of the deceptively simple process of notifications, but were lured back by the iPhone’s ease of use and potential. Some even kept a second device as a way to get things done on the go. Apple’s premature announcement of PUSH notifications let the world know they were aware that there was a need to fill this niche on the iPhone. But was their solution really the answer we were looking for?

The answer is still unclear with only one productivity app in the App Store supporting PUSH (Remember the Milk) and PUSH still being in it’s infancy. I feel server based solutions will provide more problems than most users are willing to deal with.

1.) CONFIDENTIALITY-The average user will have to trust their personal information not with the developer of the application but in some if not most cases with a third party vendor.

2.) CONSISTENCY-If you have ever run a website you know your website only works when your server works. PUSH notifications will depend on that same type of reliability. BlackBerry isn’t even 100% and they are the industry standard of for PUSH and reliability. Unless your app will tell you that it can’t communicate with the server, you will be blissfully unaware that your appointment, task, or conference call has passed by without even a vibration.

3.) CONTROL-We’ve addressed in the past the issue of dealing with a Tsunami of notifications. Where we have a little control over alerts by choice of sound, badges, and a pop up, there is no control over when these apps go off. I could receive a game challenge in the middle of a meeting, or tweets in the middle of the night, But if you have all your favorite apps sending out notifications all day with little control of over when, then one of two things could happen. : 1) You are going to check every time they go off which could lead to loss of productivity or 2) you will become desensitized to all the alerts and miss important ones.

With companies like the makers of OmniFocus not wanting to support PUSH it becomes apparent that it is still not the solution to make he iPhone a productivity giant. So what is the answer? Do we allow background processes at the sake of our batteries, or is there is simpler solution? Can applications be granted right to use the calendar API to use it’s alerts and keep us from having to depend on a connection to get things done. What do you think? Are we on the right track with PUSH or do we need to see more from Apple?

Like many of you, I received the iPhone 3GS on June 19th. I upgraded from the original iPhone, and I’m here to tell you about my thoughts and observations between the two devices.

Speed: The 3GS’ namesake is speed- and for good reason. There is no more lag. At all. Everything opens fast- especially the camera which always gave me problems with the 2G iPhone.
Win for the 3GS

3G- 3G is easily four times as fast as EDGE. However, there are problems with 3G that I will enumerate on in the next section.
3GS-2 2G-0

Reception- This is probably more related to AT&T than the iPhone itself. When the 3GS has signal, it is great. Crystal clear, nice and loud calls. Much louder than the 2G! However, my experience with signal is awful. If you are out in the open, there are few problems. But anything seems to be a source of interference that degrades the signal to complete lack of usability. I will probably take the phone into the nearest Apple Store to get it checked out and see if it is a problem with my phone. The 2G never had great signal, but it was consistently a decent signal. I have used the phone in a slightly rural area, a medium city, and a large city (Whoa, I have done some serious traveling this past week).
Winner- 2G iPhone

Design- I never liked the look of the newer iPhones, but having used it, I really like how it feels in your hand. The oleophobic screen is a work of art- probably will still put a screen protector on it just in case though. The plastic back attracts grease and fingerprints like none other, but I have a Griffin Clarifi case that I can pick up Monday (Look for a review soon).
Winner- 3GS (Score is 3-1)

Hardware- The 3.0mp camera with autofocus is great. I used to not be able to take a close-up picture with the 2G camera (which influenced the purchase of the Clarifi) but the new camera seems to work very well with most shots. The compass, by itself, is nearly useless unless you are hiking. The Compass integrated with Google Maps is great. Makes it easy to navigate a new city!  The video camera works very well- my only complaint is that I forget to switch from still to video cameras. Great quality in all of these aspects. Well, except for Voice Control. It is awful. I have yet to get the phone to do ANYTHING that I wanted it to by using VC. It got to the point where I decided to be juvenile and start commanding the phone using words that are inappropriate for this particular site . When I did this, one of my family members was called. Maybe VC knows something I don’t?

Considering the 2G had none of these features without jailbreaking, it is obviously another win for the 3GS. (4-1 3GS)

Battery life- After a week, I was kind of hoping that the battery life of the 3GS would begin to get better. So far, it sucks; the phone eats up battery at a huge rate compared to the 2G iPhone due to its increased power. However, I am using the phone a lot because I love 3G when I have it. I can only hope that battery life improves. I will wait to pass final judgement on the 3GS until later, but until then, the 2G wins hands down.

So, the 3G S wins handily over its older sibling. Even though it might not have been a fair fight, I’ve enjoyed every second of it. We now return to your regulary scheduled programming.

Check it out. Find my iPhone has supposedly already save a iPhone 3G S. http://happywaffle.livejournal.com/5890.html

What a cool service….. Time to enable mine.