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I bought my Tom Tom Go whilst on holiday early last year.  Previously, I’d had Tom Tom on a PDA although it had been problematic and I’d never got around to updating the map.  Since it’s really easy to manage the newer Tom Tom devices and I’ve had the device a little over a year, I decided I’d look at upgrading my map.

I connected my device to my PC, opened Tom Tom “Home” and selected the relevant screen for map upgrades.  Once I got to the checkout screen I was horrified to see how much Tom Tom were trying to rip me off.  According to them, my current map was two years old.  Rather than be charged what I’d expected, £18.95 for a new map, Tom Tom wanted to bill me for the current map as well as the map from the year before; therefore making the bill a little under £40.

If I go to a store and buy a road atlas, I am not charged a price that includes the price of the year before’s road atlas.  I pay for the current map.  If I go to buy a new Tom Tom device in two years time, are they going to charge me a price that reflects the cost of the hardware and all map updates since they started to make devices?  No.  So why do they feel it’s acceptable to try to rip me off in this manner for an upgrade. Read more…

I seem to have had a run of bad luck recently!  Once I had completed the re-jailbreak of my iPhone 3G (to resolve some Cydia issues) I went to connect my iPhone to my PC so I could sync with iTunes and get all my applications, data and media transferred.  After an inordinate amount of time waiting for iTunes to open, and an even longer period of time for my iPhone to appear within iTunes, an error message was displayed that read, “An iPhone has been detected, but it could not be identified properly. Please disconnect and reconnect the iPhone, then try again“

In the end, the way I resolved this was to reboot my PC, reboot my iPhone, open iTunes, then connect my iPhone to my PC.

Why am I posting this really simple fix?  It’s an equalling simple answer: if you Google the error message some of the top results are both confusing and misleading.  The best example is right here on Apple’s support site.

I hope my resolution was a simple for you as it was for me!

Whilst re-jailbreaking my iPhone 3G with redsn0w last night I got really worried.  redsn0w appeared to have hung! On my computer was a screen saying, “Uploading ramdisk” and on my iPhone “Downloading jailbreak data“. Both had been sat in such a state for at least 10 minutes. I knew from previous jailbreaking that this was way too long.

How did I overcome this?  The solution was actually, thanks to Apple’s processes, very simple… Read more…

I took the plunge yesterday and upgraded my iPhone 3G from 2.2 firmware to 3.0  I closely followed the process for upgrading and jailbreaking, followed by the process for unlocking the handset to all carriers (via ultrasn0w).  It went well; however being the curious kinda guy I am, during the redsn0w jailbreak sequence you are asked to say if you want to install Cydia or Icy or both.  I opted for both.  I then found this was my downfall.

The phone worked fine; however when I went to update Cydia I was given a series of error messages.  The one that most commonly got displayed was, “Couldn’t configure pre-depend dpkg for grep, probably a dependency cycle” Read more…

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I ran into a slight issue last night after installing Ultrasn0w 0.6 (using Rob’s guide), I rebooted my phone with a Vodafone UK SIM inserted & I was presented with the following message:

“Different SIM detected – Please connect to iTunes”

I initially thought Ultrasn0w hadn’t installed correctly so removed/rebooted/reinstalled several times but with the same result – Determined (as always) to fix this, myself & Rob have researched tons of tweets and web pages to try and locate a solution, which I’m pleased to say we found and are now ready to share with the world!

• Insert approved carrier SIM:
  Ensure an approved carrier SIM for your country is inserted into your iPhone – For UK this is O2 and for US residents it’s AT&T
  .
• Backup your iPhone:
  Open iTunes, right click on your iPhone and select ‘Backup’
  .
• Restore your iPhone:
  Left click on your iPhone and then select ‘Restore’ – Accept the confirmation and wait while iTunes restores your device
  .
• Jailbreak your iPhone with the latest version of redsn0w:
  Click here for a guide I posted last week which you can use as reference
  .
• Insert a non-approved carrier SIM in to your iPhone:
  For my iPhone I now inserted a Vodafone UK SIM card but any UK network (apart from O2) should work
  .
• Install Ultrasn0w from Cydia:
  Click here to see Rob’s guide on how to do this – You will need a WiFi connection in order to do this as your SIM will still be inactive at this point
  .
• Reboot your iPhone:
  You should now be able to use your iPhone on any non-approved carrier – Enjoy
  .
  (Don’t forget to restore your iPhone to get your personal settings & data back!!)

Originally anticipated for the 19th June, Ultrasn0w arrived in the very early hours of Tuesday morning (23rd June).  After a fantastic effort from the jailbreaking dev team, the iPhone 3G can now be upgraded to version 3.0 firmware and be unlocked so that any sim card can be used.  No need for a nasty turbo sim – it’s a simple software unlock.

The following prep & walkthrough guide covers the following devices ONLY:

• iPhone 2G
• iPhone 3G

The iPhone 3GS cannot yet be unlocked so if you’ve a shiny new iPhone, I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait a while longer.

You need to jail break your iPhone before we are able to start the process of unlocking the handset to any network.  In order to do this, please follow our iPhone 3.0 Jailbreak Preparation & Walkthrough post.  Once you’ve completed those steps, please return here.

If you are now jailbroken, let’s look at how we unlock your iPhone to any network. Read more…

I wrote a while ago about the potential of having guest bloggers contribute toward my site.  Regular readers will have noticed that a different author recently made an appearance writing about “iPhone 3.0 Jailbreak Preparation & Walkthrough“.  That author is Sam Harvey; a real life friend for many years and also a technology enthusiast.  Sam is hoping to regularly contribute articles to the site.  He and I have worked on various projects over the years including PHPBB implementations and several Wordpress sites.  He’s got his own blog, but would prefer to add content to an existing site (like mine) rather than irregularly update his own, something I welcome since it offers the site a different spin rather than just my contributions.

This doesn’t mean that I am going to rule out the possibility of having other guest bloggers make appearances.  Having spoken with Sam regarding this there are many avenues that could be persued.  Details of these will be revealed as we sign them off.  I’m looking forward to reading his content and would like to take this opportunity to welcome Sam on board.  Thanks for your contributions fella.  I’ve previously run post ideas, site content and design past Sam, so I hope you all enjoy the new additions he’ll bring – I think it’ll be a great step forward for abouthere.

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No Rob’s blog hasn’t been hacked, but you have got a new semi-regular co-author … me (Sam)! I’ve been too lazy to start posting on my own blog so Rob asked if I wouldn’t mind helping out here with the odd post or 2. Without further ado lets get right back on to the main subject … Jailbreaking your iPhone on OS 3.0 .

The following prep & walkthrough guide covers the following devices ONLY:

• iPhone 2G
• iPhone 3G
• iPod Touch
• iPod Touch 2G

Two very important warnings before I go any further; Please do not attempt this Jailbreak walkthrough on the new iPhone 3GS as it does NOT work, secondly if you are currently relying on yellowsn0w software unlock to use your iPhone on unauthorised carriers please be aware that you will lose this ability after upgrading as yellosn0w doesn’t work on 3.0 – You’ll need to use ultrasn0w. (We have a separate walkthrough for this here).

Right lets get down to business:

Read more…

Version 3.0 of the iPhone firmware has brought with it the ability (to finally be able to) use MMS (picture messaging).  If you are an O2 customer in the UK, then you’ll either get a text to say you can now use MMS, or you’ll need to get in touch with O2 (I believe you have to text 1010; however I’m not entirely sure).

For us Vodafone UK customers who are either jailbroken or using an overseas unlocked handset, we are all keen to get our hands on the relevant settings.  It seems that the details in a past post I made many months ago weren’t quite right (but we had no way to test it).

Anyway, here are the settings we all need and have been verified by an iPhone Vodafone UK users within the last 24 hours:

APN: wap.vodafone.co.uk
Username: wap
Password: wap
MMSC: http://mms.vodafone.co.uk/servlets/mms/
MMS Proxy: 212.183.137.012 (note the leading zero in the last octet)
MMS Max Message Size: (blank)
MMS UA Prof URL: (blank)

Enjoy!

The latest (and greatest) Apple iPhone firmware is to be released today.  Oodles of people are eagerly awaiting the official release and I’m sure there’ll be reports of server outages and network spikes whilst everyone grabs their firmware update.

I’ve an iPhone 3G that’s currently running v2.2 jailbroken firmware simply because I use the Yellowsn0w unlock software available on the Cydia repository.  Regular readers will know that I’m a Vodafone UK customer and therefore need a method of using my preferred carrier in my (normally) restricted iPhone.  Like others, I’ve been pleased to see the developments made by Apple to the iPhone platform.  I’m enthusiastic about upgrading my firmware to the new v3.0 release; however it’s not something I’m going to rush into.

Not all applications have been made compatible with the v3.0 platform yet.  I have a lot of apps on my phone and whilst I could do without several for a period of time, I’d prefer to move from my current set-up to the new set-up with as minimal change to usage as possible.

Until last night, there was no method by which I knew I’d be guaranteed to be able to update my firmware and still be able to reliably use my Vodafone sim.  Last night the iPhone dev team (not the Apple team) did a live demonstration of their new software sim unlock which they’ve called Ultrasn0w.  (Skip two minutes into the video for the start of the demo)

As it says in the video, we’ll see Ultrasn0w made available in an easy to install package via Cydia on Friday 19th June.  I have yet to see any official v3.0 jailbreak firmware releases and the necessary accompanying tools to easily jailbreak our handsets.  (I don’t know if things like the current version of QuickPWN can be used).

Personally, I’m not going to update my phone straight away.  I am likely to upgrade my Dad’s simply because he didn’t manage to get an iPhone with 2.2 firmware from Apple.  He has 2.2.1 and whilst we’ve been able to jailbreak him, Yellowsn0w doesn’t work on the later firmware.  He did try with a Turbo Sim for a while but it was grossly unreliable and therefore he’s currently using his iPhone for data services (with his O2 sim) and carrying around his Nokia for calls (with his Vodafone sim).  I’ll probably blog about the upgrade, jailbreak and Ultrasn0w unlock over the weekend.

When are you planning on upgrading to v3.0?  Are you reliant upon a software sim unlock too?

Updates

redsn0w jail break released – walkthrough here

ultrasn0w sim unlock released – walkthrough here