The now famous image of the first Nexus One found in the wild!

I’ll keep this one short and sweet, go watch the commercial for the new Google Nexus One here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8442205.stm?ls

I will say; WOW! This is the first phone that looks exciting to me since the first generation iPhone hit the market! I think I’ll be getting one of these as soon as my contract is up… sorry Apple!

Oh a side note… Phillip K. Dick fans might recognize the name of this device. Interestingly enough, Dick’s daughter is not happy about this. I say take it as a tribute to the man, not a rip off… after all, it’s just a name and I am pretty sure it was meant to pay homage, not disrespect. Read more here:

http://sffmedia.com/films/science-fiction-films/445-google-phone-nexus-one-annoys-philip-k-dicks-daughter.html

Okay, before you get too excited I should warn you; This is more so just a documentation of my experience doing this rather than an actual tutorial like I usually post. Before you jump in to a project like this you can save yourself a lot of headache (and avoid ruining your phone!) by doing your homework and watching videos on disassembling your model of iPhone. There are a lot more videos that just show you how to change the glass/digitizer than there are full disassembly vids (which is required to change the back), so take care of your due diligence before trying this at home kids! :)

My iPhone’s screen shattered one evening while it was changing on my desk and I received a phone call… unfortunately I wasn’t nearby and it vibrated off the table…

The good news; I ordered both the replacement glass / digitizer part and a slick new orange iPhone back for around 35 dolars on eBay. There are lots of sellers on there with these parts, so just find a reputable one with good feedback & positive comments for their iPhone parts. I had to wait two weeks to get the back part from Hong Kong, but it went smoothly and shipping was free! [FYI, the glass and touch sensor, which is called a digitizer, are one part, so you must replace them together]

Here, documented via somewhat blurry photos, is my attempt to do this without destroying my phone completely… luckily it was a success! The first thing you hear in the how-to videos for disassembling your iPhone is the importance of removing the internal connection in the proper sequence. So I carefully lifted up my digitizer panel and peaked in… yeah, the connectors just popped off all at once! haha. Thankfully the phone still worked in the end!

I apologize that I didn’t video this or put more time in to a proper tutorial, but this turned out to be more involved and time consuming than I had imagined… and to be honest I just don’t want people trying this solely on account that they saw my successful attempt here, as you will have many opportunities to ruin your while iPhone doing this!

Sorry for the burred images, the lighting I was working in sucked!

At one point later in the disassembly process I did get a bit overwhelmed trying to remember where screws went and how parts were oriented, so I did miss what probably would have been some interesting photos of lots of little parts lying around on my desk!

You’ll notice in the second to last picture that my case did not completely close evenly at the top! It looks worse here than in real life and so far no one has noticed it until I pointed it out. I am not certain if this is due to a part defect or if I did not seat the battery perfectly or something.

If you’re an iPhone owner, particularly if you’ve jailbroken your phone, you probably saw the news this morning of the first ever iPhone worm to appear in the wild. The good news is that it’s just a proof-of-concept virus written by white-hat hacker Ashley Towns to spread awareness about the default password vulnerability that we’ve all known was a potential security hole for ages now. This only effects iPhone users who have jailbroken their phone and have installed SSH (and keep it running on their device, as it does by default). While the worm does ‘infect’ your iPhone with with an annoying wallpaper change, that is about the extent of it.


For more info on protecting yourself from this and future woms/virii that exploit this vulnerability check out this great YouTube video by D7 [below]. If you don’t know who he is you will probably want to subscribe. He has a plethora of helpful iPhone videos on YouTube! In addition to changing the default password I’d also suggest you get the SBSettings module ‘SSH Toggle’, this way you only have to run SSH when you actually need to use it (which isn’t very often for most users).

Thanks for the video D7!

Hi there. I know I haven’t been posting much recently, and I’ll be sure to update you all on what’s been going on soon enough, but this seems like a quick and easy blog post.

I just wanted to pass along these Accessory Geek discount codes that they share with me as an affiliate. Please use the the ad link at the top of this site to get to their website so we can get credit for sending them any business :)

Enjoy!

You can also use the code Geeks1040 for $10 off $40 or more!

It was bound to happen… Apple users have long enjoyed a relatively smooth ride with regard to virus’ and malicious attacks, but this morning xaminer.com posted info on this serious iPhone expoit, discovered Charlie Miller:

It’s well-known that binary code can be sent to mobile devices using SMS. Normally the sent code isn’t executed, but Miller found that the iPhone operating system automatically processes the code without any user intervention. Not good. Knowing this, Miller developed code using the principle of Sulley Fuzzing, a method of injecting random data into program after first forcing the operating system to trust the new code.

And they go on to confirm the worst:

Another vulnerability that Miller found was the ability to use the SMS function to gain root access to the iPhone, more or less giving an attacker the “keys to the kingdom”.

On a positive note, Apple appears to already be working on a patch for this serious security vulnerability. We all know Apple’s history with timely updates though, so don’t hold your breath.

Get the full scoop here: http://www.examiner.com/x-14651-Minneapolis-Information-Technology-Examiner~y2009m7d3-Apple-iPhone-SMS-exploit-allows-attacker-to-control-phone

So… who’s gonna beat Apple to the punch with a security patch that jail broken iPhone users can apply? :)

Thanks to Gadget Cracker reader RagnaParadise for sharing this enlightening info:

QuickPwn.com Profits on iPhone Jailbreak With Microsoft Ads

Google Adsense Abuse for iPhone Jailbreak Software QuickPwn

UPDATE: Thanks to GC reader Will Benson for commenting below. His blog has an interesting perspective on this topic and it lead me to this forum thread that I think is worth sharing here as well. Thanks Will!

It also doesn’t sit well with me that QuickPWN’s site did not mention RedSn0w and rejected comments mentioning it as an alternative for quite some time after it was available (they do mention RedSn0w now that it’s clear QuickPWN is history).

You decide! Just reporting here, not judging. But with that said, I will be replacing all my QuickPWN bookmarks with direct links to the Dev Teams blog where you can always get the latest jailbreak/unlocking tools right from the source!

Oh, and don’t forget the Gadget Cracker article ‘No QuickPWN? No Problem! OS 3.0 Jailbreak for iPhone’ if you need help using RedSn0w!

Peace.

-GC

UPDATE: Still awaiting a QuickPWN release? Maybe you got punked! Did QuickPWN.com Rip Off The Dev Team’s iPhone Jailbreak? Just some food for thought. On with the show…

Like many of you, I counted the days until Apple released OS 3.0. I knew the Dev Team had been churning out the jailbreaks for the beta versions of OS 3.0, so I was pretty confident it would be released quickly, but just to be safe I went and glanced at the QuickPWN blog. Yep. It’s out. All set.

Oops… Yeah, so I went ahead with the OS 3.0 update only to realize that in my excitement and haste I had misread the blog and there was no QuickPWN for OS 3.0 yet!!! This was disheartening, but I was sure it would be available any day. Well, to make a long story short, it isn’t out and it isn’t coming, atleast not from the Dev Team. Although QuickPWN’s blog says they will have something out soon, I can’t wait any longer… I’m going in to deep jailbreak withdrawals and need a fix ASAP! So, here’s the result of my digging around to figure out a solution…

Here’s the usual disclaimer… you could turn your iPhone inside out and upside down and maybe make it poop on itself. That said, you’ll probably be just fine if you follow these instructions. And if not, it’s highly probably that a restore in iTunes will fix your problem and get you back to normal. What fun would gadget cracking be if you couldn’t potentially brick you expensive high tech toys? THIS IS NOT FOR IPHONE 3GS! Only 3G. I will verify this on my girlfriends iPod Touch 2G later and let you know if I had to buy her a new one or not :P I don’t mean to make this sound so risky, it really isn’t, but I don’t want angry iPhone users pissed at me because something went awry.

Step 1 – Preliminary Work (read: boring stuff):

Go to this entry on the Dev Team’s blog and READ the entire post. Make sure you understand what they’re saying (okay, this basically more disclaimer). While your there download RedSn0w for your OS of choice (I am jailbreaking mine on a PC). As of right now I think everyone running OS 3.0 is using revision 7A341, but to make this article future proof I need to tell you how to check this on your iPhone to be sure. It is very important to use the correct firmware for the jailbreak! Don’t worry, it’s easy and doesn’t merit a sub-totorial. Just go to Settings > General > About. You will see the firmware version at the bottom of your screen, like so:

See it downthere at the bottom? That was simple enough.

Step 2 – Select the right firmware:

Run redsn0w. The first thing it does is ask you to locate the iPhone firmware. This must be the same version that you are running on your phone! It will have the file extension .ipsw and on my Windows XP system it resides in:

C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR_WINDOWS_USERNAME\Application Data\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPhone Software Updates\

Notice the full path and filename of the appropriate file!

Take care to make sure you select the proper .ipsw file! If in doubt run a search for *.ipsw. or download it directly from Apple here [this file is for 3G only!]. If your using OS 3.0 (Which I presume you are) make sure to select the file ‘iPhone1,2_3.0_7A341_Restore.ipsw’!
It is important to note the 7A341 part of the file name, this is the revision of the OS 3.0 firmware and it must match the version we looked at on your iPhone during Step 1!

Okay, so you’ve selected the proper firmware file for RedSn0w, and you should be able to hit the ‘Next’ button now!

Step 3 -The fun and scary stuff:

If all went well in Step 2 you should see a screen like this now:

Okay? Good. Hit ‘Next’!

Oooh, sounds important! Better make sure you ‘Click next ONLY when your device is BOTH off and plugged in’! But wait! Don’t click ‘Next’ just yet! It makes this next step easier if you know whats about to happen. If you’ve used QuickPWN before this is the stage where you have to hold down buttons for the right amount of time and in the right sequence. If you haven’t used QuickPWN before, well… this is the stage where you have to hold down buttons for the right amount of time and in the right sequence.

It all happens kind of quick, but if you mess up you only have to try again. You can’t brick your iPhone just yet, so be patient :P

Don’t do this yet, I’m just priming you!

1. Hold down the Power (corner) button for 3 seconds
2. Without releasing the Power button, also hold down the Home (bottom center) button for 10 seconds
3. Without releasing the Home button, release the power button BUT KEEP holding the Home button for 30 seconds

Again, this is just a procedure to get the phone in a sort of debug mode, same as they would do at the Apple store, so just relax. If you do it wrong just hit back and try again! Here is what it looks like in RedSn0w:

Whew, you made it through that, right? Now you can release your clutch on the Home button and sit back & enjoy the pineapple show!

I apologize for the crap picture... I ran frantically looking for the camera, snapped a quick pic, and it finished! So it is what it is...

This is the part where your precious iPhone could brick in the very unlikely chance something goes wrong here! That said, I’ve gone as far as accidentally unplugging the USB cable in this step and seemingly bricked my phone, but it was an easy fix! I just put it back in DFU mode and let iTunes restore it to health (Google is your friend!). No problem!

I'm also using a cable that looks like this... I ain't scared! :P

Okay, so its probably done by now, huh? You can breath a sigh of relief and pat yourself on the back, because now your iPhone is  way more kick ass than most anyone else you know! At least for the moment… Wow, you know, that really was just as easy as QuickPWN, wasn’t it? Who needs QuickPWN…

Here are a few screen shots to prove I’m not just playing with your hopes and emotions here:

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! Please share Gadget Cracker with your friends and follow @gadgetcracker on Twitter!

Notes and sources:

1) Relavent Dev Team Blog & RedSn0w download – http://blog.iphone-dev.org/post/126908912/redsn0w-in-june

2) iPhone 3G OS 3.0 firmware – http://content.info.apple.com/iPhone/061-6578.20090617.VfgtU/iPhone1,2_3.0_7A341_Restore.ipsw

You can also read this title as ‘Top 5 Excuses to Jailbreak Your iPhone’! :-)

This is the Quickpwn mascott. I guess it is a ninja pineapple... get it? pineAPPLE :P

Now, I have to do an obligatory disclaimer… you could damage your phone, void your warranty, and maybe even increase your risk of cancer if you jailbreak your iPhone! But as promised, here’s my top 5 list for all you crazy bastards that like living on the edge of life and death enough to jail-break! Haha. I hope you detect the sarcasm there. Jail-breaking has become very simple and fairly safe. I have jail broken my iPhone 4 or 5 times now using Quickpwn on two different PCs and once on a laptop with absolutely no problems at all. And if your wondering, all but one of those times I redid my iPhone it was simply to get a fresh start after accumulating a ton of junk. The one other time was because out of the blue one day I could not get Cydia* to download anything new. I racked my brain and finally just restored my phone and redid the jailbreak.

[*Cydia is the app you get most all of your jailbroken apps from. It's kind of like the iTunes store, but for jailbroken apps]

If you think it is worthwhile for me to do a jail-breaking / getting started tutorial let me know, if I have enough interest I’ll make one.

Anyhoo… on to the Top 5 list! Just remember, these are in no particular order… I only count down to trick your brain into creating a feeling of suspense for your reading pleasure :-P

#5 – Cycorder – FREE

This was my original motivation to jailbreak. When I got my iPhone I didn’t research it much. I was so sure this cool like peice of modern engineering magic had to have a video recording application… saddly I was dissappointed. This app is the answer. As far as cell phones go the quality is pretty nice. it wont replace your camcorder, but it definately does the job when you need to capture video in a pinch! This alone is a great reason to jailbreak! Here’s a sample video:

Note: This sample is done in ideal lighting conditions, you may notice bluring and noise to greater degree if the enviroment is dim or it is dark. But overall this surpasses most cell phone video quality that I’ve seen.

#4 – Intelliscreen – $10.00

Paying for jail-broken apps just seemed wrong to me at first, because jail-breaking feels like your doing something subversive… hell, it’s called JAIL-BREAKING! haha. But I’ve come to realize that its not wrong at all! In fact these guys work as hard as any programmer with an app store release, sometimes harder, so they deserve your cash sometimes too. That said, $10 bucks is a bit pricey compared to most apps, but once you try Intelliscreen your hooked!

These are the three main screens from Intelliscreen on my iPhone. I have blurred out personal info in places.

Okay, so basically this app gives you interactive access to your SMS/text messages, e-mail messages, calendar, news, weather and more all from your lock screen! Thats right, you just hit the home button and blammo, you see all your useful info right there! Whats more is that you can press the home button again at this point and a speed dial screen appears where you can call anyone on your favorite caller list! At first I was worried about accidental dialing happening in my pocket if I used this app, but it is designed very well and I have never had an accidental call or anything wacky.

Here is a folder I created for all of my utility type apps.

#3 – Categories – FREE

If you happen to be an app junkie like me, and you probably are if your reading this blog, you know how overwhelming all those icons spanning across five, ten or even more springboard pages can be. This app, which is simply and appropriately called ‘Categories’, allows you to fix just that… it lets you categorize all your apps into nice tidy folders. You can even select from quite a few differnt folder icons. This app is indispensable, I don’t know how I’d know whats what on my iPhone without it!
One word of caution, sometimes this app is a bit buggy and crashes on you. I recommend organizing one folder at a time, then exiting and allowing it to re-spring, and then doing the next folder. Occasionally it is reported that Categories can crash and mess up your folder organization. If this happens this link may prove helpful: http://www.modmyi.com/forums/native-iphone-ipod-touch-app-discussion/24785-categories-app-bug-reports.html. For what it’s worth I have not had any problems since the last update of Categories, so I think most of the bugs have been ironed out.

This is my springboard 'look', warts and all! :P

#2 – Winterboard / Themes / Visual Customizations – FREE (almost always)

Lots of slashes on this title. That’s because theming and general customization is a big part of the fun of jailbreaking and I didn’t feel any one theme or customization app deserved all the credit. Out of the box there is very limited room to customize your experience on the iPhone, and this was another thing that disappointed me when I bought mine (in addition to the inability to record video). Winterboard is a popular theme engine, and most of the themes I’ve encountered work with / rely on this app. What is cool about Winterboard is that you can mix different theme elements. For example, say you install a certain complete theme, and maybe it looks cool overall but the keyboard and dialer skins both look like crap. You can then find and install a skin you like better for those two specific things, and within Winterboard you can ’stack’, or ‘order’, the new keyboard and dialer skins above your main theme, so they will override those items in your theme. Also you can get custom lock screens, sounds, video wallpaper (which kind of slows down your phone, but looks neat), and of course all sorts of great looking complete themes!

I prefer to keep things pretty basic these days, as themes can add overhead to your iPhone’s already scarce memory, affecting performance slightly. Right now I have my iPhone ‘themed’ as you see in the image to the right. Now, this isn’t actually a single complete theme, it is really just one app that combines the ‘Five Icon Dock’ with a custom ‘flow’ style skin (I beleive it’s called Dock Flow) [bottom of the above pic], and then a custom background I downloaded using the ‘Backgrounds’ app (‘Backgrounds’ is a free Appstore app). Other than that I am just using Categories from #3 of this list and some randomly colored folder icons. This is an example of how you can make a fairly complete looking theme that is actually pretty basic and not much of a resource hog.

You wont be in the dark with this app! Lame... I know... But I'm a Dead fan! ha

#1 – Flashlight – FREE

I know what your thinking… “What?!?! I know this mofo did not just put a flashlight app as a top jail-break app, there are countless FREE flashlight apps in the Appstore”! Yes, I did, and I know. What sucks about the Appstore flashlight apps is that none of them can change your iPhone’s display brightness. Apple does not approve any flashlight apps that do this. This one, however, will automatically set your display to maximum brightness (and return it to normal when your done), which results in a flashlight app that is actually useful! I don’t know if it’s possible for me to really drive home

Just give it a try and put it right on your first page of springboard where you’ll quickly and easily find it in a jam. After you use it a few times and get used to going to your iPhone for a quick light source you will find yourself using this app all the time! Here’s some handy uses for this app:

• Lay it in the bottom of a PC case while your working inside (just don’t drop that heatsink on it)
• Sneak to bed at 4AM with minimal disturbance to your lady friend (or guy friend, whatever the case)
• Signal friends as to your location at a dark concert
• Find something you just dropped under your desk

You get the idea… it’s a flashlight :-)

———————————————

There you have it, these are some of the apps that make me very appreciative of all the guys and gals that spent countless hours and probably bricked a few iPhones figuring this stuff out and making it so relatively safe and easy for the rest of us. You really do need to understand that all this is possible only because of people who have a passion for doing this stuff, for hacking around with hardware/software and figuring out how to do what didn’t seem possible. So please, if you have questions or problems, just be friendly and people in the community will help you. This is very safe in my opinion, but at the same time I want to make sure I scare you just enough that you don’t assume that there is no risk at all and jump into this haphazardly, as there are some basic instructions you must be capable of following properly for both the jail-breaking process and for using some of the apps properly. It may also confort you to know that a jail-break can be undone at any time simply by restoring your iPhone in iTunes.

And again, for more info on jail-breaking your iPhone, and the tools needed, visit these guys: http://www.quickpwn.com/

Happy jail-breaking!

This is simply a list of my top 5 favorite iPhone apps. Now, I’ve used a lot of iPhone apps, both free and paid, but with that said, I couldn’t have possibly tried them all. So if you see this list and you find it odd that I prefer app X to app Y, leave a comment, maybe I am not aware of app Y! These are in no particular order, but I will list them in trendy count-down style so I can build a false sense of suspense :-P

#5 – WiFi Touchpad – $2.99

WiFi Touchpad works a lot like your Laptops touchpad, but it goes beyond that!

This app is a god send! I have a PC in my living room connected to my entertainment center, and this app allows me to easily ditch the keyboard / mouse combo. Not only does it function as a very low latency laptop-style touchpad pointing device, but it also features:

• Landscape touchpad, great for wide screen TVs
• Landscape keyboard. Although a little cramped, it is very cool that it offers most all the keys you would need for interfacing with your computer.
• A mode that allows you to type all of the text you want right on the iPhone (using the familiar iPhone keypad) and then send it to your computer all at once. This is useful if your just typing text for an email or IM or whatever, even a web address.
• Can work with multiple iPhones / computer systems.
• The receiver app is VERY small and unobtrusive. It doesn’t run at boot by default, so toss a shortcut in your startup folder!
• Works on Mac or PC (although I have only used it with a PC)

Oddly, some comments knock this app for having a lag between touch pad movement and when it responds on the screen. Being a musician who fools around with lots of MIDI I know latency when I encounter it, and the latency (lag) with this app is very small! It feels just as, or damn close, to the responsiveness of any laptop touchpad. If it lags for you it is likely your network that is the problem.

My only complaint is that double-taps on the pad (without using the actual button) takes some getting used to, as the taps have to be timed fairly consistently, but this happens naturally after you use it for a bit.

I also tried VLC Remote, but I could not get it to work. WiFi TouchPad required no additional configuration on my network. Just install the iPhone app, and then the receiver app on your computer and your in business! Zero configuration hassle!

#4 – Beejive IM – $15.99

Okay, I must admit, I don’t like the idea of paying $16 for an iPhone app… but this app is well made and I believe it’s well worth the money. Now, if you’ve tried other IM applications on the iPhone you know the dilemma here; no 3rd party apps on the iPhone can run in the background (without jailbreaking), so how does one receive messages when the app isn’t running in the foreground? Answer: YOU DONT. This app gets around that by keeping you connected on their servers for a length of time you can specify, and when you get an IM while the app is not open you will instead receive an email (if you configured this) that lets you launch the app and check your messages. This sounds a bit hokey, but in practice it is very satisfactory.

I signed up for a new yahoo email account specifically for this app to use so that I know any message in this account is a new IM or network notification, or something from Beejive. Yahoo also supports Push technology, so it’s pretty much instant. So far i’m still not getting any spam in my inbox, so this is working out well :-)

Other than that it is a very well designed IM application that supports most all major IM networks (AIM, Yahoo, Google, MSN, MySpace, ICQ…). Now, I have had some issues with myspace support, but luckily I don’t use it regularly and just tried it for the heck of it, but you may want to consider this if you are a fan of MySpace IM.

If you need to be able to receive IMs while your doing other things this is the only thing close to an elegant solution that I have found, so it get my vote for best IM app despite the relatively hefty price tag!

#3 Tweetie – $2.99

[this post was updated after 13 year olds over ran Twinkle]

Ok, I have finally seen the light with Twitter. I have to appologize for ever beleiving Twinkle was up to par and I am now quite happy that those annoying youngins’ drove me away from that app [see update below].

Tweetie is just a pleasure to use. It really makes Twitter everything that it should be! I love being able to save my searches. For example, I have a search for ‘#php’, one for ‘#iphone #app’, another for ‘#iphone #dev’, etc. I also love how Tweetie incorporates Instapaper. If you don’t know about Instapaper (I didn’t) it is one of those things that is so simple it can easily be written off as useless. All it does is let you save a list of things you want to read later. Kind of like book marks, but if you’ve tried to do this with your bookmarks you know how quickly it can all get out of hand! Once you save something to instapaper you can retrieve the articles later from any device with a browser. This is a very useful tool that I use many times daily.

It also has the ability to find other users in your area, but somehow this feature doesn’t seem as exciting to me as I thought it was with Twinkle (but this is only due to me just now ‘getting’ the whole Twitter thing I think).

I could go on and on about Tweetie, but basically every feature it has is useful and nothing seems to be fluff. Tweetie is an iPhone app and a Twitter app that was done right!

#2 – ShapeWriter Free – FREE

This app is one you grow to love. But once you learn it you will love it! In concept this is similar to the Notes app that comes bundled with your iPhone, but with one huge difference; you ‘type’ not by hitting keys, but simply by ’sliding’ a thumb from letter to letter to spell the words. The software is smart enough to know either exactly what you were trying to spell or it will display a small group of selections that will most likely contain the word you intended to spell. And worst case, you can still peck at the keys. The beauty of this app is that after a while you can write out sentences with one thumb much faster than you can with two thumbs in the traditional maner. This is the fastest way I have found to get spur of the moment thoughts and whatnot on to the iPhone before you loose it! If you have ever tried to jot down a complex idea on your phone in the traditional way, you know that you quickly find yourself thinking more about typing on on the damn little keyboard than concentrating on what your writing about! And, yes, I even prefer this to a landscape keyboard. Try it and give it a chance, ShapeWriter will probably become one of your most used apps!

#1 – WinAdmin – $11.99

WinAdmin lets you access your Windows PC via the iPhone!

Okay, I know… I know… another app on the list that’s over $10 bucks! The good news here is that, unlike Beejive, there are cheaper and free alternatives that seem work equally well (maybe even better). I believe one free alternative is called RDP Lite. I just happen to like this one, but it may have something to do with the fact that I’ve already invested $12 bucks in it, ha!

What this app does is allow you to connect remotely to your Windows PC (maybe other platforms that support RDP?) and you can do anything you would normally do on your computer, but… remotely! There are some limitations, like watching a video, which works in theory but really bogs down and practically locks up the connection (atleast in my experience).

You can use this app to (read: Things I’ve done with):

• Check on torrents your downloading at home, and make sure Peer Guardian hasn’t crashed again ;-)
• Do some lite PhotoShop work for a website, then upload the graphic to the server
• Reboot or fix something on a Windows server without making a trip to the office
• Fix the parents PC without a trip across town (or country, whatever the case)
• Pull up docs and other info that are stored on a home or work PC when your out and about
• Impress your friends by telling them you put Windows on your iPhone! :-P
• Countless other uses… use your imagination!

Okay, there you have it, my Top 5 iPhone Apps! If you have any objections to my choices please comment and I’ll seriously consider revising this list if there an app that does basically the same thing as one of these, but better.

Stay tuned! I am going to follow this up with a Top 5 iPhone Apps Worth Jail-breaking For… or something to that effect.

Happy iPhone-ing!

This is intended to be a central location to archive hacks and modifications pertaining to the T-Mobile Dash cell phone.

The T-Mobile Dash is just a re-branded HTC Excalibur phone. Although many of these hacks are derived from, and may be compatible with the Excalibur (or other Windows Mobile devices), I cannot personally attest to weather or not they will work on any device other than the Dash. Hell, I will not even guarantee they will work properly on your Dash, although I have used all of the following hacks successfully on mine. As with hacking any device, or modifying any Windows system’s registry, proceed with caution, and proceed at your own risk.

That said, all of these hacks have been used by myself and other Dash owners, and if care is taken when following the instructions there is relatively little risk involved… but hey, don’t cry to me if you screw up your phone!

If you find any errors on this page please leave a comment correcting me!

The Hacks:

• Restore Scroller/JOGGR Support
• Disable Accidental Call Rejection
• Display Alpha-Numeric Dialpad
• View Dash Specifications

Restore Scroller/JOGGR Support

For reasons beyond my comprehension T-Mobile decided to cripple JOGGR functionality when they released the Excalibur as the Dash. On the Dash the JOGGR only adjests in-call volume, and rejects calls, and it does both of these functions very poorly. On the Excalibur, however, the JOGGR functions as a very handy scroller/navigation device for your phone. To make JOGGR behave like it does on the Excalibur change the following registry values:

\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ControlPanel\JogBar\Settings\BottomKeyApplicationName = \Windows\iexplore.exe

This will launch Internet Explorer when the bottom of the strip is double tapped, but you can set this up to launch any application.

\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ControlPanel\JobBar\Settings\TopKeyApplicationName = BACK

This sets the function for double tapping the top of the strip. This can be an application as above, but I would suggest using ‘BACK’ here, as it has functionality in many apps and I find it very useful.

\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ControlPanel\JogBar\Settings\SwitchToAudioFunc = 0

Finally, this function is what T-Mobile has enabled that cripples JOGGR, to make it behave like a scrolling device again set this to ‘0′.

Credit: Thanks to akil on http://www.howardforums.com/

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Disable Accidental Call Rejection

Have you ever recieved a call and as you pull your Dash out of your pocket it says ‘Call rejected’? I have, and it annoys the hell out of me! I derived this hack from a hack telling how to enable this feature, but mine was enabled by default so I am going to assume the original hack was intended for the Excalibur and T-Mobile decided to enable the feature on their phones. By default (can anyone else verify this is default on the Dash?) simply touching the JOGGR strip on the Dash during an incomming call will reject the call. I hate this and here is how you can disable it!

\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ControlPanel\JogBar\Settings\EnableRejectCallFunc = 0

As you probably guessed, this is a binary value, setting it to 0 disables it, 1 enables it.

Credit: I stumbled on this myself, although I am sure I wasn’t the first.

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Display Alpha-Numeric Dialpad

This handy hack will display an image showing a keypad and coresponding alpha-numeric keys. This is useful for dialing telephone numbers with letters in them, such as 1-800-T-MOBILE.

First, right click and save these two files to your \Windows directory on your Dash.

carrierlogo.gif

dialpad.gif

Then change the following registry key to point to the dialpad.gif image we just copied over to the Dash. Note that there is no need to specify the other image file anywhere in the registry, trust me, this will work!

\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shell\Rai\:MSCdial\BannerImage = \Windows\dialpad.gif

Credit: Thanks to www.qusers.com for this hack, although the originator of the hack remains ambiguous.Credit goes to ‘blue rocket’ on the Q Users forum for the images! Send me your own and I’ll post them here too!

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Specifications

From www.tmobile.com

T-Mobile Dash