My3G bypasses 3G restrictions
This morning, I learned several things about using FaceTime in public. First, I realized that holding an iPhone a foot or two away from your face and talking tends to make you speak very loudly. This, in turns, tends to annoy other patrons in the restaurant. And this, in turn, tends to attract the same kind of people who love to stop and watch accidents happening.
Second, I learned that keeping your arm elevated as you FaceTime is really, really awkward (not to mention tiring). As you're probably aware, if you've used FaceTime for any length of time, if you don't hold your unit fairly high up, you tend to share unflattering nasal visuals.
Third (and probably most importantly), I learned that if you jailbreak your iPhone and install My3G, you can FaceTime loudly from public places (with those optional unflattering nasal visuals) without having to rely on a Wi-Fi connection. My3G lets you use your phone's 3G connection and bypass its Wi-Fi restrictions.
Over breakfast, I was able to FaceTime TUAW's own Steve Sande for several minutes over 3G. The connection was excellent and I experienced none of the bandwidth issues Steve and I had when testing FaceTime over Steve's Sprint MiFi portable Wi-Fi hotspot. Other than the whole speaking loudly with attendant bystander attention (and those nasal visuals), the conversation was a brilliant success. Beautiful picture quality, excellent audio quality.
This US$3.99 solution is not limited to FaceTime. My3G enables most Wi-Fi limited applications to provide connectivity over 3G networks when Wi-Fi connections are not available. Supported apps include YouTube, Skype, and Fring, among others. There's a free 10 day trial for anyone who wants to give it a try.
To use it, you must jailbreak and then download the software from either the Cydia or Rock stores. The download is free but you must register the software to keep using it after the trial period. Place your purchase either from the RockYourPhone.com website or from in-app in the Rock app.
Be aware that the Rock store installation process tends to run much smoother than the Cydia one, since the people who founded Rock Store are the same people behind the My3G application itself. Intelliborn also developed the MyWi application that transforms your iPhone into a Wi-Fi hotspot.
MyWi has now been updated for 4.0 with many enhancements over the 3.x release we reviewed. I had a chance to test MyWi 4 as well as My3G, today, and found it considerably updated and improved. The developer has clearly spent a lot of time improving and enhancing the product. MyWi costs $19.99 for new licenses and $9.99 for upgrades from the 3.x version. As with My3G, licenses are available through the RockYourPhone website and in-app with the Rock app.
