How to jailbreak. Fast.

iPod touch and iPhone owners now have a one-click solution for jailbreaking. It's currently only available for Windows but a Mac and Linux version will surely come out eventually. However, there are several conditions that keep "blackra1n" from being a killer app:

1) If you rely on an iPhone unlock (meaning that you bought an iPhone under a carrier like Globe but got it "unlocked" so that you can use other carriers like Sun or Smart), do not download this app. If you have a Mac, you can use PwnageTool to create custom firmware that will preserve the prospect of an unlock.

2) The iPod touch 3G (the one released a month ago) is supported, but if you restart it, you'll need to do the jailbreak all over again.

So with that in mind, how to do it? Well, go to this website and click on the Windows logo. Yes, the Windows logo, trust me. It'll download the app "blackra1n.exe".

After the 600-some kilobyte download, you can open it. This is what you'll see.

Oh sorry, I forgot this was Windows. This is what you'll see.

Make sure your iPod touch or iPhone is connected before you get tempted to click that big grey button. If you do have it connected, just click it and let the app do its magic.

In my experience, it only took around a minute to get things up and running. The app will say that it's putting your iPhone in recovery mode and stuff, which means that your iPhone's screen will do a lot of crap. Don't mind that, that's normal. Once you see the picture of a man with rain as his background, that means success. You've jailbroken 3.1.2, be proud!

The iPhone/iPod touch will have a new icon (probably in the next page) that says "blackra1n". This will allow you to install such lovely sources as Cydia, Icy, and Rock. I advise you to go with Cydia since that's the source I've used ever since I first jailbroke my iPod. After you install Cydia, you can uninstall "blackra1n" if you feel like you won't ever use it again.

And if you've jailbroken (or pwned) your iPod touch or iPhone before, you can just do all that other crap again. Winterboard, NES emulators, what say you. If you don't trust my tutorial, then the two iDevices I have installing Cydia right now after the jailbreak might be from a non-existent dream.

How good does the iPhone 3G S's camera hold up?

One of the big deals that come with the announcement of the new iPhone 3G S is the long-awaited camera upgrade. True, it doesn't do 5 megapixels, but megapixels don't always do a photo justice; you could have a 2 megapixel camera and still shoot something that looks really good. It's all in the lens, people, but with that said, does the new iPhone do much better than last time?

Perhaps.

Advertised quality. (daytime)

Real-world quality (afternoon)

Whatever the case, the photos still sure look pretty damn good. Obviously, there are phones with much better cameras out there- most likely the Cybershot phones- but the fact that the iPhone also does a decent job of automatically applying appropriate controls like white balance and macro with one touch in a certain spot you want to focus in (that is, if the reviews are to be believed), that's a bonus too.

Auto-focus applied on the box.

The bigger deal is the addition of video recording to the iPhone. After two years of seeing an iPhone without video recording, it was worrying- to say the least- that other phones would follow suit (and some really did). Fortunately, Apple also makes up for the absence with not only a video editor, but also the same one-touch autofocus. True, the phone only records in VGA quality- the bare minimum- but surprisingly, the videos look quite tolerable- even if they are only on YouTube.

The audio is kind of not so hot, quite frankly. (raw file)

Tested on a wider color gamut. (raw file)

Video shot and directly sent to YouTube. (compressed over 3G)

Find a stolen iPhone... for $99 a year?

Apple today introduced a new and admittedly very cool feature called Find My iPhone. But the catch here is that you'll have to have a paid MobileMe account to be able to use it. And that service is not cheap at 99 dollars a year.

But this really cool feature could be irresistible and just plain invaluable for some, so this feature might be the one that could draw in all those iPhone owners to crowd the servers once again.

Anyway, Find My iPhone in MobileMe enables you to find your iPhone through its GPS receivers, whether you just misplaced it or left it at the diner. It will beep a lot when you send a message to it, so that you or other people will be able to notice- regardless of whether it was in silent mode or not. If it's stolen, you can also wipe it remotely, and the deletion of all data will be instantaneous.

If you do get to find your iPhone after instantaneously wiping it out, you can still retrieve all data through backup anyway, so it's a big win of a feature.

It's just so unfortunate that the Philippines doesn't have any decent GPS maps, really. I would actually subscribe to Me.com in a heartbeat if I got an iPhone. If ever I get it, that is.

iPhone 3GS Release Dates

This is the list of countries the keynote listed as having the new iPhone 3G S by these times.

June 19: US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, UK

June 26: Austria, Australia, Belgium, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands

July '09: Bulgaria, Columbia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Hungary, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Moldavia, Montenegro, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, Sweden, Uruguay

August '09: Argentina, Botswana, Brazil, Cameroon, Central Africa, Chile, Ecuador, Egypt, Guinea, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Jordan, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Niger, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela

Apparently, the Philippines has it one month later than the US, but one month earlier than last time during the iPhone 3G's release. Mainland China still doesn't have it, notably.

Apple announces iPhone 3G S

As expected, Apple announced new iPhone hardware and with it comes new features.

Just judging from the picture above gives you an impression of the new exclusive features featured within the new iPhone model. But Apple's guided tour can give you the highlights as well as an impression of how much focus on speed Apple put on it for snappier response times and less loading times.

Personally, the voice control takes the cake even if it is quite limited. Just being able to dial numbers and control the iPod is enough for me. Future updates will possibly add more voice commands like, I don't know, search?

It comes with the iPhone 3.0 firmware, so old iPhone users can somewhat join in the fun as well. I won't elaborate on the features of the firmware coming out June 17 for iPhone and iPod touch users (iPod touch users will have to shell out 10 dollars though), but I will give you the link to a past post I made featuring those, uhh, features. [click here for linkage]

So aside from those already pretty cool features, the iPhone 3G S also exclusively features 50% more battery life than the iPhone 3G- on Wi-Fi which is extremely impressive in comparison, VGA 30fps video recording (to catch up with phones made in 2002), a one-tap autofocus (YES!) 3 megapixel (OK...) non-zooming (aww...) camera with direct YouTube and MobileMe uploading, digital compass (which is much more accurate than the accelerometers) for more accurate turn-based directions and a basic video trimmer.

These features are actually nearly the same as the rumors that preceded them months ago, but the one feature I didn't hear about in the rumors (but probably was rumored about) is voice control. And as the video makes it out to be, it seems just awesome. It seems pretty natural, so it might become the killer feature of this iPhone model in my opinion. I don't think it's present on the Pre right? But nor is the relatively basic video editor.

But another more important part where the iPhone beats Palm is the price-for-GB. Basically, the iPhone has upped its storage capacity, therefore the 16GB iPhone will come in the 199 US dollar price point and the 32GB iPhone will come in the 299 US dollar price point.

It's available June 19, but pre-ordering is available, apparently with free shipping to your door. Obviously, this applies for the US, but what about the Philippines?

-looks for details in Apple's PH site-

Well, nothing yet. It'll probably take a few weeks before the iPhone 3G S comes here, maybe months? Who knows? The carrier has been established already right? You know, Globe? So chances are it might take less time than last time to bring the iPhone to our shores.