Ecamm releases renamed PhoneView
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Remember iPhone Drive? And MegaPhone? Well, Ecamm's pretty sure they're (finally) not going to get sued with their newly renamed "PhoneView." Along with the new name for the iPhone/iPod touch data access tool, PhoneView delivers an overall software refresh.
You can now add and edit notes without rebooting after each change -- wait until you're done and tap "Apply Changes" for a single reboot instead. There's also undo/redo support for the notes editor. There's a new search feature for music, contacts, SMS, etc.
Read on for more details.
Automatic SMS and Call History archiving is another nice touch. Ecamm tells me that when you roll over 100 calls or 1000 SMS messages on the iPhone, you won't lose that earlier info. (Dimmed icons appear next to each item in the PhoneView list, indicating that the data is no longer on the phone.) Another new feature allows you to view synched photos by photo album.
As you know, I'm now in the iPhone developer program so I ended up having to test the software with my beta-based iPhone. Everything I tested worked exactly as advertised -- so if you're hesitating because of the upcoming firmware release, be reassured. Notice: The screen shots above were supplied by Ecamm and (per NDA) have no beta-based screenshots.
I can't really think of any other third party tool that does the job that PhoneView does. iPhuc has more or less ceased development and never offered a graphic interface; it was command-line only. The pwnage/iLiberty tools are basically jailbreakers/installers. They provide no browsing ability. (Let me know if there's another tool that I've missed!)
PhoneView gives me an easy way to move data onto and off of the iPhone media partition and has been delivering this functionality reliably despite a series of Apple iPhone firmware releases. It lets me add notes, browse and grab images, look through my call data and more.
Obviously, I'd love Apple to open up the platform and provide unhindered full-disk access to the iPhone. But for now, PhoneView is doing a great job getting users where Apple won't let them go.
PhoneView works with the iPod touch and iPhone. The software is Mac-only (Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later, iTunes 7.3 or later) and costs $19.95
