Apple iPhone 3G shortcomings

Updated: 24 July 2008

I was really blown away by the hype surrounding the launch of the new Apple iPhone and was even looking forward to getting one for myself. I was telling one of my friends about my plans to get one. However, according to him the new iPhone is still not good enough to beat the Nokia N95 he's using right now and he may be right.

No doubt the the new iPhone looks great and has loads of great new applications. However, it obviously has some shortcomings.

1. I guess the most obvious is that it does not have a camera on the front which means that proper video conferencing (where people on both ends can see wach other) is out of the question.

2. Another great new feature, the GPS capability apparently does work but using it for navigating your car around the city night be a problem. According to an article on Businessweek, the phone still does not allow "turn-by-turn, voice-enabled directions". This means that I still have to carry my TomTom sat nav around with me. I read on Engadget that TomTomwas working on a sat-nav version that works with the iPhone but am not sure whether it has.

3. I was also dismayed to find out that it is still not possible to copy and paste text on the new iPhone (source: Reuters). I would have thought that the Apple engineers would have added this simple functionality but they didn't.

4. Just found out that the iPhone doesn't record videos. I simply couldn't believe it. Even my 3 Skypephone can do that.

Clearly the iPhone 3G is not perfect but as a lady friend told me " who cares about all those functions, it's the sexiest phone in the market". I agree wholeheartedly.

Keyboard failure

It's been less than a year since I bought my cheap Dell PC. I had hoped that cheap not equal to low quality and so far, I have been very happy with the performance. Just found out that the accessories that came with the

I have been using a BenQ wireless keyboard all the while. I never liked the keyboard that came with the PC. It is noisy and uncomfortable. However, yesterday I found out that keyboard has stopped working. My wife had wanted to use it with her laptop but it wouldn't start. Quite surprising because I had only used it a couple of times to type on my wife's laptop. I hate typing on the tiny keyboard.

Well it's truly dead and as my wife took my old BenQ keyboard, I had to look for a new one for my PC. Looked around on the net and found out that the best deal I could afford was the Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000 costing £14.99 in Argos.



So I reserved it on the Argos website. All I had to do was drive down to the store at Gallagher park, go to the automated payment kiosk, type in the reservation number and pay. They had the new keyboard ready for me to take away in a few minutes.

I love my new keyboard. Took me a bit to get used to the curved ergonomic design but it's really comfortable. I wish I had bought it earlier. Also just ound out that it has spill resistant keys. I have had a few hot coffee accidents in the past and I may have a chance to find out if it is really "spill proof" one day.

iPhone 3G sold out

The new Apple iPhone 3G has already sold out on the O2 and Carphone warehouse sites here in the UK. However, you don't have to worry as both companies have assured that they have stock in their stores when it is launched on Friday (11 July, 2008).

In case you are wondering, the only significant difference between the old and the new model is that the new iPhone has 3G capabilitie, meaning faster internet browsing speeds. It also has GPS built in. Now you don't have to depend on static Google Maps anymore. I was thinking of getting the Nokia N95 but I may have to reconsider.

As for the physical characteristics, it will be slightly thinner on the edges and thicker in the middle as compared to the old model.

If you are just interested in the look and not concerned about the features, you don't have to upgrade to the new phone. I predict that eBay will soon be flooded with old iPhones and you might be able to get your hands on one for a few pounds.

Read the Reuter's report: "iPhone UK websites swamped before Friday launch".

Cheaper 3 dongles

Some good news for those who have been thinking about getting the 3 mobile broadband service. Just got to know that as of today, 3 is reducing the price of their 'Pay as you go' mobile broadband dongles (both E220 and ZTE models) from £99.99 to £49.99.

This should be welcome news to some of my friends who liked the service but felt that the modem (the dongle) was a little on the costly side.

Read about it on the Mobile Buzz site.

Levi's Mobile

Just got to know about the Levi's mobile, made exclusively for Levi Strauss by the French design company, Modelabs.

The compact phone (96 x 55 x 11 mm) has a steel casing with their famous logo of two horses pulling a jeans, etched on the back. It comes in metallic silver, black and brown copper colours.

The triband phone has a 2 megapixels camera and MP3 player. It comes with 64MB memory which can be expended upto 2 GB (Micro SD).

The website claims that the Li-Ion batteries gives you a Talk time of up to 3H30 and stand by time of up to 200 Hrs.

Another unique feature (which I don't really like) is a detachable chain that hooks up to your phone on the bottom.

The Blue team wins

One of the biggest format battles in our lifetime has ended with the Blu-ray winning over HD DVD as the industry DVD standard, after two years.

Apparently the end came as Toshiba announced the discontinuation of their HD DVD businesses. Tsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation:

"We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war' and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop."

The Blu-ray technology is controlled by Sony Corp. and is backed by Matsushita (Panasonic), Warner Bros, Wal-Mart, Walt Disney, 20th Century Fox, Blockbuster and
Netflix. Source: Toshiba drops out of HD DVD war.

I guess Warner Bros' decision to release movies only in the Blu-ray format, led to this conclusion. The major forces behind HD DVD were Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Animation, Intel, Microsoft and HP.

Microsoft does not expect this decision to affect sales of its Xbox 360 game console but I am sure they are worried.

Dream Gadget meme

I love electronic gadgets. I love reading about them, I love trying out the latest ones in the market and will buy them if I can afford them. However, I know of some guys who are even more obsessed and will be packed from head to toe with the latest gizmos, regardless of whether they really need them or not. I guess that in comparison, I am more practical and only buy stuff that I really need and will do so after detailed research and taking my wallet into consideration.

Anyway here are some of my electronic gadgets along with the ones I dream about:

1. Mobile: 3 Skypephone.

Dream gadget: Nokia N96.

BTW, the Nokia N96 isn't out yet. It will come out in Q3 2008.

2. Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX9.

Dream gadget: Canon EOS 400D / Rebel XTi


3. MP3 Player: I don't have a separate player. I just use my Skypephone.

Dream gadget: iPod Touch


4. Laptop: Fujitsu

Dream gadget: Toshiba Portégé R500-124


5. Satellite Navigation: TomTom ONE UK and Republic of Ireland

Dream gadget: TomTom ONE XL Europe


6. PDA: I don't use one though I have an old Palm

Dream gadget: I don't need a separate PDA, the N96 would be good enough.

So what are your dream gadgets?

I tag: Azwan / Doris / Emila / Eches / Mei /Narrowband
and anyone else who want to take part.

Vista Logitech camera compatibility issues

Despite my fears, I was able to run all my software packages that I regularly use, on my computer. I am still getting used to Vista and so far the only incompatibility issue I faced was with my old Logitech webcam. The one I have is the QuickCam Zoom Silver. Tyring to load the drivers led me to the Logitech site which helpfully told me that my webcam was not compatible with Vista and that I would have to buy a new one.



I was sure that there must be some workaround and after a search of the net finally found "Trick to Use Logitech QuickCam Messenger in Windows Vista". The trick involved installing the webcam driver for XP and then updating it to the latest version (10.5.1), which is Vista compliant.

I followed all the steps and my old webcam is now working fine.

Apple's MacBook Air

I have never owned a Mac my whole life though I am surrounded by die hard Apple fans - including my father-in-law. I can't say I was not tempted.

Their latest product might change all that.

As you may be aware, this year's Macworld 2008 expo in going on in San Francisco. It ends on the 18th of this month.

At his keynote speech, Steve Jobs' unveiled another amazing product - a new laptop range called the MacBook Air. Under the tag line "Thinnovation", this laptop is 0.16 inches at its thinnest point and 0.76 inches at it's thickest.



I have to agree when Steve Jobs said, "Apple makes the best notebooks on the planet". I haven't tried it as yet but we don't even need to. Just look at it. It's like a work of art.



It comes with a 13.3-inch display, a built-in iSight camera, full sized keyboard with backlight and a huge touch pad.

As for the technical specs, the computer has a Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 4MB on-chip shared L2 cache running at full processor speed. It was custom-built to fit within the compact dimensions of MacBook Air. The standard is 1.6 Ghz while the faster 1.8Ghz version is optional. The laptop has a 80GB 4200-rpm Parallel ATA hard disk drive or an optional 64GB solid-state drive.

In a first for Apple, Jobs also emphasised the "Green" status of the MacBook Air.

It's really amazing - the products they come up with. Wonder what they will come up with next.

TomTom hung

I had been playing with my TomTom sat nav and had been updating the software. Had a scare morning as we were about set out for our son's check up at the Walsgrave hospital. The TomTom One just hung after startup. It just showed the logo and wouldn't shut off. I panicked a bit as we had to reach the hospital in less than 40 minutes.

Fourtunately remembered that there was a reset button at the bottom (See figure).

Source: TomTom ONE manual.

However, it was in a tiny hole and I couldn't find anything to press it. Finally found a needle and used it to press the resest button. That finally turned off the gadget.

Started it but the same thing happened again.

I repeated the whole process but this time, I hooked it up to my PC and started the TomTom HOME application. After loading it up, I put on my TomTom. I went ahead and restored the old files I had backed up.

It worked perfectly after that. Phew!

My Workplace

In his latest video post, the Problogger shows off his new office, which he calls his "HQ 2.0".

Anyway, here's a pic of my own "Blogging HQ".



Yeah! I am still using an old CRT monitor. Still trying to get a good used TFT monitor on eBay.

About Abt Electronics

It's amazing the amount of technology that goes into appliances we use everyday. I didn't even understand what fuzzy logic means until I read it on our waching machine. Searching it on the net, I learnt that by Fuzzy Logic, it means that our waching machine has some advanced electronic stuff that monitors and makes the necessary adjustments automaticlly during the wash.

Talking about washing machine, check out the wide range of washing machines from brands like Whirlpool, Bosch and Frigidaire among others on the Abt Electronics site.



The company has a long history. It was set up in 1936 in Chicago and has grown to become one of the largest single-store operations in the US. They started selling online with the launch of AbtElectronics.com in 1998. Their online site carries high-end electronics products of almost every well known brand names. They are reputed to have one of the best services and pricing policies around.

Go and have a look.

Shopping for ipod accessories

It seems like everyone around me has an iPod from the low end iPod shuffle to the latest iPod Touch. The portable media players designed and marketed by Apple has become almost a fashion icon. Despite the presence of cheaper and some say, better portable media players, everybody I asked would rather buy the iPod - in fact any iPod. I guess the brand image and the "cool" factor is what makes the iPod a must have gadget.

They are not cheap either. The cheapest - iPod shuffle starts from £41.70 (ex VAT) and goes up to £228.94 (ex VAT) for the top of the range iPod Touch.

It amazing but whole businesses have been built up supplying all kinds of ipod accessories. These range from head phones to extremely costly iPod speakers.


PDO TopSkin for iPhone

There is also one obvious problem with the iPod, I won't call it a defect but as every iPod owner I have talked to confirms, the shiny covers are very susceptible to scratches. Thankfully there is an amazing range of covers for almost any generation of iPod that you may own. Check out the range of covers for the iPod, other MP3 players and phones (including the iPhone)on the PDO store site.

The Sony Ericsson music monster

Sony Ericsson has come up with a great fun interactive site called My Music Monster where you can create your own unique Music Monster.

Choose the music you like the most (you have four to choose from) and then choose the characteristics of your monster. You can create as many as you like.

I went with the rocker who like riffs. Since this is the festive season, I decided to have my Music Monster put on some Santa gear. And this is how it looks:


Download them to your desktop or send them to your friends.

That's not all. They are having a competition where you can enter your monster for a chance to win “Monster of the Month”. The prizes: a Sony Ericsson W960i Walkman® phone and for the runner-ups, two W580i Walkman® phones each.

Using the 3 Skypephone as a modem

The reason that I haven't not been able to update my blogs regularly or reply to your comments and queries is because I am still waiting for my broadband connection at home to be set up. It's been more than 3 weeks now but TalkTalk still hasn't sent me the modem and installation CD as yet. Read my post : "TalkTalk Broadband update".

We are really fortunate that we have two 3 Skypephones that we can use as a modem to connect to the Internet using 3's 3G connection network (that sounds kind of funny).

To do that, I had to use the installation CD that came with the phone. It installed 2 applications, namely the Skypephone's PCSync and the modem USB driver. Once installed, connecting to the web was a breeze. All I had to do was connect the phone to my laptop using the USB cable and hit the "connect" button.



In initially has some problems getting on the web even though I had the phone connected. The phone was simply not detected. Later on realised that I need to have the PCSync application on as well. There were no problems after that.

Initially, whenever we got connected, we would be taken to this page which informed us that the connection would cost us £1 per Mb. It was kind of annoying but we finally got the point and went for the Internet Add-ons option. £5 got us one whole month of Internet access (fair use policy, of course). We felt that it was more cost effective than the £2.50 for a week or 50p for a day options.

We are connected to the web at 115.2 Kbps. Though not broadband speed, in our predicament, it was way above acceptable.

BTW, get the chance to win not one but three Skypephones for free. Check out my post: "3 Skypephone competition".

3 Skypephone camera test

The 3 Skypephone I am testing out comes with a 2 megapixel camera. The images are saved in the jpeg format with a 1600 x 1200 px resolution. Unlike some phones (such as the Sony Ericsson K800i and the Nokia 6288), the Skypephone does not come with a flash and night shots or pictures taken in poor light come out bad. However, shots taken in bright light conditions come out much better even though a bit grainy.

Overall the image quality is nothing to shout about but not that bad either. They are definitely better then those taken by my old Motorola L6 and my wife's Nokia 6131.

The pictures below have undergone minor editing (reduction in image size and image rotation) using the IrfanView software.

3 Skypephone: first impressions

Matt from 3mobilebuzz.com was kind enough to send me two 3 Skypephones. I will be testing them out for a month. The first box I opened had the white coloured phone, while the other one was black.



Passed the white phone to my wife and I took the black phone. Placed side by side, the white phone does look better.



I don't know why but somehow, the black coloured phone looked a little cheap at first. It was probably due to the fact that I am presently using a sexy Motorola L6. The dimensions of the phone are 100x44 x13.6mm. It's smaller than my L6 in length but a little bit thicker. However, as they say, don't judge a book by it's cover. The Skypephone is loaded with amazing features found on much costlier phones.

Of course, there's the ability to make Skype calls to all my contacts all around the World and to receive calls from them as well. Then there is the 2 megapixel camera. It gives quite good shots - much better than those taken by my old L6. I will upload some samples later.

The phone also has a decent MP3 player and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the sound through the earphones that are supplied with the phones.

I also appreciate the fact that that they bundled a phone sync software so that I can download and upload stuff from my computer to the phones and vice-versa using a USB 2.0 cable. It's surprising but most phones don't come with a sync software bundled.

Passing it around to my friends - the phone received mostly good reviews except for one friend who pointed out that it didn't have any games installed, apart from two trials versions of Pac man and Tetris. I don't play games on my mobile so I am not particularly concerned with this particular feature. However, it might be a good idea to bundle in some games with the phones for people who do care - especially the younger generation.

The internet connection over the 3G network was really fast (for a mobile) and a search of my ah ok lah blog on Google took only a few seconds. I even posted a comment on my blog using the phone. I later learnt that the phone can be used as a modem to connect my laptop to the net. Look for the review in an upcoming post.

Overall, the 3 Skypephone is a great phone and I haven't found any flaws in it as yet. I am seriously considering using it with a "Pay as you go" account once the trial period is over.

Engadget is giving away over 100 gadgets

Engadget, my favourite Gadget site, is giving away hundreds of gadgets. There will be four rounds a day, once every six hours. I missed the earlier ones but was finally able to enter round 4.

Why I think this contest is the best ever?

1. There is greater chance to win. Hundreds of chances.
2. Open Worldwide. Not "Only for USA".
3. No reviews, links, etc. All I had to do was leave a comment.

So what are you waiting for?

Useful USB temparature sensor

There are so many amazing gadgets that can be connected to your computer via Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports. One of them is the
Temperature@lert USB Sensor with Email Alerts. This gadget monitors the ambient temperature and will alert you via email if it falls below or climbs above a preset range. You can have Realtime graphing and XML support with temperature measures in both degrees Celsius or degrees Fahrenheit.



The device was primarily meant to be used as a alarm if the air conditioning in a server room failed. However, people have found out several creative uses for it. I was thinking of a crazy use for it. I drink a lot of coffee and have had my tongue burnt a few times. However, if you leave it to cool too long, it won't be tasty to drink. I was thinking that the 'Temperature@lert' would be a great way to test the temperature of the coffee in the cup everytime I want to drink it. However, I have to make sure that it is covered in a waterproof plastic bag and make sure that I have some tissue nearby.

Get rid of your old video conferencing equipment and go high definition

I can still recall the first video conference I had. Though I had read about it, but to experience it first hand was truly amazing. That was about 7 years ago and I the quality was terrible. There would be a lag whenever each side spoke and the videos were like a series of still pictures. As I mentioned earlier, that was several years ago. However, I still find so many companies using substandard and outdated equipment for their video conferencing needs.

At least almost everyone agrees that Video Conferencing can reduce travel costs and save time. It can also help children in remote areas get access to a decent education. The possibilities are endless. However, for certain applications such as telemedicine, only the best will do.

LifeSize is one of the leaders in providing Video Conference Equipment. Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Austin, TX, their Video Conferencing Systems are being used all around the World. For example, they were chosen as the high definition video communications provider for Pan Birmingham (United Kingdom) Cancer Network's telemedicine program.

View a demo of the LifeSize Video Conferencing Equipment here.