iPhone 3G: guts, plants, and free SMS
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Jul 14th 2008 3:40AM
posted Jul 14th 2008 3:40AM
- Jonny Gladwell, better known as the first iPhone 3G owner in the world thanks to his perfect storm of location (New Zealand) and line position (first), has been outed as a plant for New Zealand's Yellow Pages. Turns out the guy was hired by the directory service to see if he could "survive" the brutal multi-day sitting experience using nothing but -- you guessed it -- the Yellow Pages to get by. Ironic that you don't need a friggin' Yellow Pages when you have an iPhone, isn't it? Hmm, Jonny?
- Portelligent has sacrificed an iPhone 3G to conduct perhaps the most thorough teardown thus far, finding some incremental improvements, largely to accomodate 3G and bring the design in line with the iPod touch, while carrying over a good deal of componentry that had no reason to be upgraded. Infineon and Toshiba had big wins here in the radio and flash memory departments, respectively.
- AIM acts as a conduit for sending text messages by allowing users to add phone numbers as "buddies." The iPhone has an AIM client. See where we're going with this? Yep, it's a cheesy way to avoid shelling out for a text messaging plan, if you want to go to the trouble of using AIM in place of the native SMS app.
- The plot thickens in the yellow screen issue. As we'd mentioned yesterday, Apple claims the warmer color temperature seen in the iPhone 3G was a purposeful attempt to make things prettier and sharper -- but now, Ars Technica reports that forcing an update in iTunes from the 3G's shipping firmware of 5A345 to the ever-so-slightly newer 5A347 pushes things a little bit back toward the blue end of the spectrum. So what's it gonna be, Apple?
wow.... this is getting really boring
Scroll right by then, douchebag.
Hey, that guy was FIRST on line for an iPhone 3G. You were only first commenter on this article. Give him due respect and I'll give you due respect.
dcm ===> :p
No portable screen is pure white. Just compare two phones and you'll see why they keep tweaking back and forth to get the closest thing to it.r
the most interesting part of this article is the total goober-douche look on this guys face.
hrm..
i can see you learn from the best
Man I love these comments.
He looks baked
Who cares which place you are. This was a boredome post.
WELCOME TO THE BORE DOME!
Two men enter, one man leaves!
Two men enter, one man leaves!
Considering the fact that 5A345 was developmental firmware, is it not possible that the yellow screen was never meant to ship??? I would think the "sharper colors" explanation would just be a way of not looking like idiots... Who knows...
Ninety First.
Wow... I would of thought better of you juding from your past posts...
saad, you disappointed hiko. you must relinquish 3 internets posthaste.
Yes you did... Shame on you...
Even, I, get bored of the useless articles. Sorry. :)
Engadget should just post a single word: iPhone. Then watch as the comments fly.
$$$$$$
how long till ATT/apple blocks....scratch that, tries to block the SMS work around in AIM?
∞
Exactly, engadget should mention that having AIM running in the background will drain your battery because it uses data. Native SMS does not use data it uses voice.
Wow, another iPhone post. We needed that like British TV needs more reality, cooking and home improvement shows.
Its the Simon Cowell Talent(less) search shows that anoy me.
Last!
Last transcendent!
42nd!
This is ridiculous... I can stand the fanboy comments. I can even stand the occasional "First". But it's sad when I go to see the comments and can't tell what the Fuck is going on for all the bullshit in between. Good job guys... I'm sure your parents would be proud
I'M AS MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!
No, I'm not mad... I barely care enough to comment. I just think it's funny.
@phanbouy
Oh wait... I see what you did there... haha...
Hmmm, normally one would expect to see the comments flooded with iPhone comments, but it would seem that even the fanboys are bored with these endless pointless posts now.
Does this SMS trick only work for US based numbers?
Well I know from the US you cannot send international SMS through AIM. If that helps, I'm not sure.
too bad aim for iPhone has no background notification so you don't know if you get a message If the sceen is asleep or you are not directly in the app... It even sucks as an Im app let alone a SMS substitute..
only for a few months. ...yeah it sucks, but it's a temporary situation. (push notifications in, what, september?)
Adding blue make it looks whiter. Ever see bleach? It's blue for a reason.
ever seen crappy knock-off HID headlights?
adding blue makes it SEEM whiter, but certainly isn't a more pleasant experience for the eyeball, and makes pictures look colder and more sterile. not only that, but like the knock-off HID healights, too much blue looks like a cheap, crappy way to try and trick people into thinking it's "nice" light. it just feels gimcrack.
any white (in a product like this) is going to be either blue-tinted or yellow-tinted. if the tint is subtle enough (as close to actual-white as they can be) then i'd MUCH prefer a slight yellow tint. ...if the tint is severe, it doesn't matter which way it went, it'll look horrible.
It's like when you buy a new flat screen and play with the colors. You start to think hmm maybe warm is better. but then you realize its too yellow.
...then you realize you don't know what accurate color and black levels looks like. Blue is inaccurate. Black levels on the 1st gen iPhone are lousy.
I really wish that an MSN app gets added soon, even if its done by a third party as such (like ebuddy), simply because AIM sucks
who still uses msn? everyone i know's on gchat
MSN? isn't that short for when girls have their period?
I do not know ONE person with gchat. MSN ftw!
Adium would be more likely, and much better!
i'd like to see something like Adium, with multiple services (jabber (g chat), aim, msn, etc) so then people could stop bitching about which is their favorite and how much ___ is cooler than ___.
...though, for the record, Google Chat (jabber) FTW!
if aol would actually release an aim app that would easily allow u to associate phone numbers with screen names, and on top of that allow u to save all the incoming/outgoing texts then i would def downgrade my text package through att
I stopped coming to this website because I was so sick of all the "A" word commentary about how great it is and such. Now that the whole G3 release has been a huge snafu I figured I would come back here to see what this biased site had to say for it's almighty hero. 3 days since the release and it still can not make a call Still! can not find one negative post about the damn thing.
I'm Jonny Gladwell and I'm a total DOUCHE BAG!
I know how to send outgoing SMS to mobile numbers over aim, does anyone know how I could route incoming sms to AIM or an Email address?
Because I was pretty sure there was no way to avoid getting hit with the SMS charge when someone sends your iphone a text - you can't even turn off SMS through AT&T, correct?
Anyone that has any more info on SMS workarounds is appreciated, thanks.
I have texts blocked to my phone, and it seems to be working. I can't even get the auth text from Loopt.
On the topic at hand, I really hope that we do move away from SMS and towards a push-type messaging system in the near future. The AIM client is close, but it needs some serious polish.