Is iPhone 4 worth the hardships it brings with it to those who aren't willing to sign up for the contract? In other words, is it worth wasting time trying to unlock it? I didn't think so at first, that's why I got rid of it when I've had enough. Then, after a number of Android phones, I find myself back with iPhone. This time however hardships of having iPhone on foreign networks has become bigger.

I decided to go with the Gevey SIM unlocking solution. Nothing has worked as easy as it appears on numerous youtube tutorials, but somehow I managed it.

Well, a week or two later I had to reboot the phone and here I am again — need to activate it again. No matter what I did this time, I could not activate it. The only reason for that was because as soon as I hung up the phone, I got "NO SIM INSTALLED" error message, so I did not have a chance to go and toggle Airplane Mode. So off to google I went and stumbled upon one forum post. Digging deeper, I found what [Gevey SIM] fine print was missing: disable Data and 3G from Settings > General > Network . If you don't do this you will be forever stuck between the step of dialing 112 and toggling Airplane Mode.

Some time ago I have come across a success story of "Car locator" app for Android. I never bought it although sometimes I need it desperately as I am the kind of person who often times, if not always, forgets where he leaves his car. My personal rule of thumb about paid apps is that I buy absolutely necessary apps. While this one seems like necessary one, I never got it for some reason.

A week or so ago, on my way to Florida, I managed to score a Daytona 500 ticket as I was passing by Daytona area, so I went to watch the race. As I entered a parking lot I realised that no matter how hard I try to memorize, I will never find my car without some sort of assistance. That's how bad parking lot was organized. I believe it was parking lot 7 in Daytona Beach,FL. All the while, I couldn't afford to get lost, as I had to meet my girlfriend in West Palm Beach airport who was flying down from Boston later that evening.

With time of an essence, I had to rush to the raceway, while doing some improvisations to find the car easily after the race:

• I parked the car in my desired spot;
• made sure my current location on Android Google Map was current;
• clicked and held on my current location until it loaded a custom marker;
• then, I clicked on custom marker and chose "Share this place";
• next, I emailed myself my own location.

Then, later on when I needed the car, I opened my email and clicked on the google map url that I emailed myself. Car was exactly on the spot that map brought me to. I was on my way shortly and on time. This can probably be done on iPhone as well; I did this on Android phone.

I have said many times that G1 Android is ugly and I still stand by what I have said. However, the day before yesterday I got tired of trying to attempt unlocking my iPhone and I started to consider Android.

Ever since I bought iPhone 3G, I could not unlock it successfully. First it was Turbo SIM, which did not work 100%; then it was so-called yellowsn0w, which did not work at all after many hours invested.

So perfect opportunity came and I said screw it. I went ahead and bought G1. Yes I had to sign 2yr t-mobile deal. But that is why I never went to AT&T because I had always been happy with t-mobile.

So far, quite happy with Android, especially its google account dependency. Time will tell but I don't think I will miss iPhone much!

For a couple of hours now I have been pulling my hair out about certain div's on a webpage being invisible on iPhone. I had guesses and theories by playing with css doing *{position:relative !important;display:block !important} but I absolutely had to see for fact what is going on in HTML. Randomly and incidentally, I came across this blog post which helped me tremendously.

In my case however, I did not want to view someone else's source. I wanted to examine mine. So I added this link to my HTML page and loaded it up on iPhone:

<a href="javascript:var%20sourceWindow%20%3D%20window.open%28%27about%3Ablank%27%29%3B%20%0Avar%20newDoc%20%3D%20sourceWindow.document%3B%20%0AnewDoc.open%28%29%3B%20%0AnewDoc.write%28%27%3Chtml%3E%3Chead%3E%3Ctitle%3ESource%20of%20%27%20%2B%20document.location.href%20%2B%20%27%3C/title%3E%3C/head%3E%3Cbody%3E%3C/body%3E%3C/html%3E%27%29%3B%20%0AnewDoc.close%28%29%3B%20%0Avar%20pre%20%3D%20newDoc.body.appendChild%28newDoc.createElement%28%22pre%22%29%29%3B%20%0Apre.appendChild%28newDoc.createTextNode%28document.documentElement.innerHTML%29%29%3B">View Source</a>

Thanks to my co-worker Johnny I fixed my iPhone problem. It was fixed by "inserting and removing a pair of headphones several times over again".

For furhter reading on this issue go to: Apple Support or Unofficial Apple Weblog.

Well today I noticed that my iPhone thinks that there are headphones plugged in even though they aren't. So the only way I can talk on the phone is by actually plugging in headphones. I am hopeful it can be fixed but I definitely do not want to touch it while I am away from home. iPhone is more than just phone, it's calendar, organizer, navigator, email client, etc etc etc.

Foreword: it isn't obvious in the context — this cable is to used in the car, hooked up to car amplifier RCA cable, so it's thickness isn't a big deal.

After last time I split cable apart and soldered back together, it lasted a couple of days only if that. So I ordered a new one and opened up old one again. Changed a bit how I do old one and keep brand new two dollar one as a backup.

The thing broke again. I know how to solder and all, but with this thing one has to work with sizes as small as a quarter of millimiter. I guess I didn't do a perfect job. It still works, but I have to press on a hacked up bundle of wires, or put it under something heavy enough (eg. map, book) so the it's tight, then it works. Otherwise half of the side doesn't work, i.e. only left or right depending how RCA cable is plugged in.

My hacked cable adapter broke today. One of the three wires on one of the plugs broke off. Since I am not home I don't have access to any tools. First thing handy was hot glue gun, but that didn't work.

Since a switch to iPhone 2.0 I was happy 100% minus one tiny issue. One of the most useful application I had on iPhone 1.1.4 is not working on 2.0. This application is NemusSync.

For now I figured another way to do this manually while NemusSync is not available for 2.0.

To sync your google calendar with iPhone caledar these are the steps:

My iPhone is now with 2.0 firmware thanks to Pwnage 2.0 tool . I used The Happy Coder's instructions.

Took a little bit more time than previous effort with 1.1.4, but all went smoothly. Most importantly all my calendar events, contacts, and other stuff was restored.

Ever since I decided to keep my iPhone I discovered a great feature of iPhone back-up. I never knew it worked so well, that's why I was always afraid to use so-called "Installer". Now that I knew I could always bring my phone back to factory settings without loosing contacts, calendar, and other data, I simply went crazy with Installer and discovered plenty of very useful apps — NemuSync, Flashlight, PocketTouch, and many more.

Of course not all these programs are ideal as they're not official. I found out a first bug with app called Navizon.

So when I sold my iPhone on ebay, I had a condition that payment must be made within 24 hours. The person who bought it couldn't get money in time and we kindly agreed to not exit out of transaction. I had a number of reasons to keep an iPhone for now.

But today and yesterday I noticed that I couldn't access my iPod area of iPhone and when connecting to my laptop, iTunes complaining that something got corrupted. Either way, I opted to restore and update my iPhone to 1.1.4. Previously, I've been running 1.1.1. 

The time has come to say good-bye to iPhone 1.0. New version of iPhone is few days away, and I definitely want that. So up for sale it is!

Since I decided to part ways with my carputer, I've started using iPhone as a car radio. I couldn't have done it without headphone adapter cable. The reason for that is the iphone, for protection and durability reasons, has a unique canal for headphones/RCA jack. Usually these are expensive.