UK iPhone User: “Who’s this? – OMG, it’s an iPhone Production Line Worker!”

iPhone Production-Line Worker.

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While we recently heard iPhone owners were opening their newly-bought, boxed iPhone’s to find numerous photos of iPhone 3G’s on a production line, no-one knew what to make of the claims.

Last Wednesday, markm49uk a fairly new Mac Rumors member posted three photos claiming, on opening his iPhone 3G, to his utter surprise, three photos depicted the action’s of what appeared to be an iPhone 3G factory worker.

According to markm49uk:

“Hi,

Not sure if this is or is not the ‘norm’ but I just received my brand new iPhone here in the UK and once it had been activated on iTunes I found that the home screen (the screen you can personalise with a photo) already had a photo set against it !!!!

It would appear that someone on the production line was having a bit of fun

I have to say, the images look legit:

Photo 001, Photo 002 and Photo 003.

Did someone just get bored with the long shifts on the production line? – Or presumably, testing the iPhone’s camera components work, before shipping the device, is all part of Apple’s quality control process – Except this time, someone forgot to delete the photos, after testing.

It’s safe to say, the employee(s) involved may have lost their job due to this action. Apple are very stringent of production information leaving the factory walls. I think you’ll agree though, it is pretty awesome to see inside one of the factories.

View the original discussion thread: Here

R-Fly

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iPhone 3G is Crackin’ – No, Seriously …

Image courtesy of 'thedarkhorse' at Mac Rumors

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A lot of people seems to be having an all too familiar problem with their iPhone 3G.

Cracks.

We’ve previously seen this on the Macbook and now we are starting to see it on the iPhone 3G as well. The problem can only be described as the appearance of hair-line (or quite drastic – as pictured) cracks in the plastic backing – and they apparently seem to come from no-where.

Reports are mainly coming in from owners of the white 16Gb model currently, although some black models are affected too.

- Is this due to the plastic Apple is using during manufacturing?
- A faulty batch?

Who knows.

After saying this, as you know, I also own a white 16GB model, and can see no signs of these cracks, just yet, thankfully.

Via: Mac Rumors / Digg / Engadget.

R-Fly

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Twinkle = Twitter + Location + Style – [Updated].

Twinkle by Tapulous

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[UPDATE] – 31.08.08

Tapulous recently pushed an update to the App Store for Twinkle.

Version 1.1 Fixes include;

– Fixed an issue where corrupted image could cause Twinkle to crash.
– Toned down notification sounds.
– Toned down starry background.
– Fixed an interaction problem when composing messages by moving the Send button out of the
keyboard.
– Increased text color contrast to enhance legibility.
– Localized units of distance.
– Overall increases in performance and stability.
– URL scheme twinkle:// now launches Twinkle from other applications, including Safari.

Original Article:

I’m not a big twitter user, but when I do use it, I like to be able to use it in a user-intuitive and easy fashion.
This is where Twinkle from Tapulous comes in.

If your new to Twitter …

From Wikipedia

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates (otherwise known as tweets) which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them.

The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application such as Twitterrific or Facebook. For SMS, four gateway numbers are currently available: short codes for the United States, Canada, and India, as well as a United Kingdom number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email.

Feel free to follow me on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/razorianfly and of course, I use Twinkle on iPhone too.

Twinkle not only allows you to see tweets and follow others users, but with the iPhone 3G and it’s build in GPS chip, it also allows you to see where those people are twittering from – this is truly a step forward for mobile twitter clients.

The UI of this app is stunning, and updates being pushed from Tapulous to the App Store, to fix bugs, are steadily appearing and rectifying minor issues I currently have with the app.

The Old Days
We first heard of Twinkle when it appeared on the ‘Jailbreak’ scene. It’s fair to say, even though the idea was there, it wasn’t very well implemented at the time, but people had nothing better, and so lived with it.

Twinkle has come a long way. Old UI (Left) New UI (Right)

I’m pleased to say, the guys and gals at Tapulous took Twinkle under their wing,
and have bought it into the 21st century.

Using Twinkle
Using Twinkle couldn’t be simpler, and the great part about it is, you don’t even have to have a Twitter account – but it does help if you do. To get started with twinkle, all you need is a valid e-mail address.

Get started with twinkle, and get twinkle'ling!

Twinkle Location API
The makers of Twinkle have also made the experience even better as you can now ping the native GPS chip inside of iPhone 3G to attach a location to your tweet! Not only that, but you can search for ‘Twinklers’ in your area and photo-blog on the move!

Sharing that picture of your half-eaten Sunday roast, is no longer a challenge – with Twinkle.

Twinkle's photo-blogging ability & location aware UI

Rating: 8/10 (Recommended)

Get it here: Twinkle

R-Fly

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Yes, it’s the iPhone – Now with 3G.

iPhone 3G White (OMG!)

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ALERT – WE’VE MOVED TO RAZORIANFLY.COM

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Yes, I got one.

Late news, I know, but I thought I’d give my opinion on the device anyway …

It is in fact, the iPhone 3G – Twice as fast, Half the Price – or is it?

I’ve had the device for over two weeks now, and it has it’s good and bad points. Being my first ever iPhone, I had to get use to the device and how iPhone-specific features functioned. With previously owning the iPod touch I wasn’t entirely new to the interface or most of the software-related features previously added in v1.1.3.

I have to mention, that this is now my second iPhone. The first unit had a battery which lasted 3 hours including standby, and after toying with myself whether to take it back or not, I decided, I just had to. The exchange was painless (or less painless than I thought it was going to be) – and I now have another perfect looking, iPhone.

3G Networking
Ok, so firstly, 3G speeds are great. I’ll go as far as to say it’s approaching Wifi speeds. The first thing I loved about the iphone 3G, quite ironically, was 3G. The ability to be in the car, and browse the internet is truly a necessity, but doing it with no limits – is even better. Thanks to O2 here in the UK, data usage is unlimited and uncapped meaning no extra charges, and no limitations of how much data your device can receive.

GPS
As well as 3G, iPhone 3G now has GPS. Now the type of GPS differs to that of, say, a garmin or Tom Tom GPS unit, in the sense that it is A-GPS (Assisted GPS). This means iPhone switches to cell towers when GPS information is not available or is unreceivable in your current location. I’ve only tested it a couple of times, but I have to say, it works, and it works, very well. It will consult several services to locate you. 3G/Edge (cellular network), Wifi and finally the satellites. Some users on Mac Rumors have been experiencing the device not showing their location as precisely as they’d like. I’ve found that this is due to one or two of the iPhone’s GPS sources to be unavailable or not reachable. For example, iPhone will first triangulate you by cell towers, if not Wifi, and finally display a direct reading from A-GPS. Overall I’ve found it to work as advertised.

So thats the main features of iPhone 3G, but what about the other features added, through software …

The App Store & Software 2.0
On July 10th – in time for the iPhone 3G launch (July 11th) – Apple released the App Store, a new, user-intuitive way to download, buy and install further 3rd-party applications onto iPhone.

The App Store

Let me tell you, this works, but has some flaws.

Firstly the app store allows you to browse the 500+ application library from your iPhone, Mac or PC.
30% of the store consists of completely FREE applications – some of which are really so very, very kool.

Some of my current favorites include;

- Aurora Feint (The Beginning)
A fast paced game which is really good for passing time, and possibly the best free application on the store to date.

- Password1 (Free for a limited time)
Need to lock information down on your iPhone securely? – Get this.

- Bejeweled
Great port of Bejeweled 2 for iPhone

- Twinkle
This is a great client for on-the-go twitterlious tweets
Checkout my latest review

Battery Life
So with this great platform, new applications, demanding 3G networking, push email notification and more, how does the battery life fare on this truly capable device? – honestly? – not that well.

I mean ok, for a device which does nearly everything, it is great battery life, but realistically, you won’t get more than a day, and it may die before the day is out requiring a recharge on the move.

Verdict?
It’s a great device.

It looks great, it sounds great, it functions pretty well, but it has flaws which your probably now sick of hearing as they were not present on iPhone Classic, either.

- No MMS Support
- No SMS forwarding support
- The camera is still stuck at a measly 2MP
- Software 2.0 is extremely buggy

I’ll keep you all up to date of how I fare with my new iPhone 3G …

R-Fly

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