Hasta La Gadget!

Be warned, this is beta stuff and we haven’t been able to test it ourselves. However, a number of breathless tipsters and commenters are reporting a successful jailbreak and unlock of their iPhone 3GS. The magic begins with a 3GS jailbreak released by GeoHot. See, George is fed up with the Dev-Team’s insistence on waiting until Apple releases iPhone OS version 3.1. As he puts it:

Normally I don’t make tools for the general public, and rather wait for the dev team to do it. But guys, whats up with waiting until 3.1? That isn’t how the game is played. We release, Apple fixes, we find new holes. It isn’t worth waiting because you might have the “last” hole in the iPhone. What last hole…this isn’t golf. I’ll find a new one next week.

Meeeeow. After performing the jailbreak, ultrasn0w should then take care of the unlock although we haven’t seen official comment on this by GeoHot or the Dev-Team yet. Good luck, backup, and kiss the children goodbye — it could be a long weekend if you brick your new iPhone. Now hit the read link if you must.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

iPhone 3GS jailbreak released by GeoHot ahead of Dev Team originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

 
Whether anecdotal reports of iPhones overheating are true or not, Apple has taken them seriously enough to reveal the presence of a temperature warning screen for the iPhone 3G and 3GS.

Here’s the deal: an unknown but probably very small number of iPhones have been affected by overheating, to the point that some white iPhone 3GSes have allegedly turned pink. Sascha Segan, our phone analyst, said he hasn’t seen any such problems with his iPhone 3GS, however.

Apple, however, has issued what some might call a “common sense” warning: a support document that warns users not to keep the iPhone in an environment where temperatures can exceed 113 degrees Fahrenheit, including parked cars.

But Apple also warns that CPU-intensive applications, such playing music or using the GPS while in direct sunlight may also overheat the iPhone.

In that case, actually using the iPhone in temperatures over 95 degrees can also trigger the temperature warning. “Low- or high-temperature conditions might temporarily shorten battery
life or cause the device to temporarily stop working properly,” Apple warns.

Obviously, summer temperatures in many locations top 95 degrees.Las Vegas, for example, has forecasts topping 100 degrees for the next 10 days; Phoenix routinely climbs above 103.

So what will happen? Read on.

After a mere nine months, I’m dumping my Hackintosh netbook (more precisely, selling it to my editor Dylan Tweney so his children can make better use of it). This is by far the shortest relationship I’ve ever had with any of my gadgets. Why the abrupt end? Oddly enough, the puny, low-powered computer didn’t fit into my lifestyle. And my recent purchase of an iPhone 3GS made the netbook completely lose relevance.

Allow me to explain.

Like I said in a previous post, my Hackintosh (10-inch MSI Wind) and I went through a brief honey moon phase before stuff got rocky. Most notably, I eventually encountered problems with Wi-Fi connectivity in “Hack OS X.” And the most annoying quirk was when the netbook kept shutting down with the slightest bump or nudge.

But even then, I gave my HackBook a second, third and fourth chance. I fixed the aforementioned problems. And then I kept finding weird applications for the netbook: I turned it into a pet cam to check on my kitten, and recently I used it as a virtual instruction manual to guide me through installing an iPod-integration kit in my car trunk. While the netbook was indeed useful for these instances, I realize these are rather rare instances. (My kitten has grown since, so I no longer need to check on her. And how often am I going to be installing iPod kits in cars?)

Then came the iPhone 3GS, which I purchased June 19. After work, I found myself plopping down on my couch and pulling out my iPhone to browse the web, check e-mail and instant message friends. The speed boost makes the iPhone much more bearable to use as a companion computer for extended periods of time. And the introduction of push IMing enabled me to switch between apps without logging out of chats. With those two changes, the iPhone 3GS became a perfectly adequate gadget for casual computing — perhaps even better than my netbook, whose keyboard and track pad create a pretty crampy experience over time.

During Apple’s quarterly earnings call in October 2008, Steve Jobs said the iPhone could compensate for Apple’s lack of a netbook offering. Back then, I disagreed with him because the previous iPhones were just too slow for me, and the lack of the ability to run multiple apps in the background was a serious drag. But the 3GS and iPhone 3.0 OS cover those shortcomings, and Apple could stall for even longer on offering a netbook if the company chose to.

One could argue that a netbook would be better than the iPhone 3GS for doing work. I’ll be honest: I didn’t get crap done on my netbook. I tried reporting for Gadget Lab once using my HackBook, and I gave up after 30 minutes squinting at the 10-inch screen. (For serious work, I use a MacBook Pro.) I could find a bunch more kooky applications for my netbook, but let’s face it: If you’re looking for reasons to use something, it means you don’t need it.

Crazy how much can change in just nine months, huh?

See Also:

• Six Months With a Hackintosh Netbook: It Ain’t Pretty
• Eight Months with a Hackintosh Netbook. Conclusion: Fantastic …
• All Sound Finally Working on Wind Hackintosh
• Hackintosh With Genuine Glowing Apple Logo
• Hackintosh Pushed to its Limit: 80 Apps Launched
• Hackintosh Update: Installing a New Wireless Card

Photo: Brian X. Chen/Wired.com

Anticipation for the iPhone 3GS helped make Apple’s Web site the top destination among hardware manufacturers in May 2009, according to data from Nielsen.

Apple’s site attracted 55.7 million unique viewers last month, and the average person stayed on the site for an hour and 14 minutes.

Those numbers are more than double Hewlett Packard, which landed at the number two spot with 21.2 million viewers. Dell rounded out the top three with 16.8 million visitors. Also in the top 10 were Sun Microsystems, Nintendo, Xbox, Gateway, MagicJack, Intel, and IBM.

Overall, the hardware manufacturers sub-category grew 22 percent since last year – from 57.3 million in May 2008 to 70.1 million in May 2009.

Apple also dominated in the blogosphere, where mentions of a “new iPhone”, the iPhone 3G, or the iPhone 3GS jumped 1,226 percent week-over-week on June 8, the day of the 3GS announcement. Buzz dipped in the following weeks, but picked up on its release date, June 19.

The E3 video game conference also helped boost mentions of the top game consoles: Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360, and the Sony Playstation 3. Online buzz for E3 2009 was 30 percent higher than buzz for E3 2008, Nielsen found.

Just a week after the release of Apple’s new iPhone, a few owners have complained about the handset’s high temperatures, which in some cases are high enough to start browning the white plastic on the back of the phone.

Only a small number of iPhone 3GS customers have reported their handsets are reaching very high temperatures. But because more than a million iPhone 3GSes were sold in the first weekend, the issue could put tens of thousands of new iPhones at risk, a component specialist told Wired.com.

Aaron Vronko of Rapid Repair, which performs teardowns of iPhones and iPods, said overheating is likely an issue due to faulty battery cells, and said he expected it could spur a recall of up to hundreds of thousands of iPhone 3GS units.

“My guess is there’s going to be a whole lot of batteries affected because these [iPhones] are from very large production runs,” Vronko said. “If you have a problem in the design of a series of batteries, it’s probably going to be spread to tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, and maybe more.”

Apple has not returned phone calls and e-mails requesting comment on the reports.

Of all hardware-related failures, overheating batteries have historically posed the greatest safety risks — in extreme cases causing fires, exploding and even killing consumers. The issues of overheating batteries are typically traced to faulty battery cells provided by a component supplier.

Apple products in the past have had battery-related woes. In 2006, Apple issued a recall for iBook G4 and PowerBook G4 notebooks, because their batteries contained cells provided by Sony that were causing some batteries to explode.

Also, Apple in August 2008 issued a recall for defective iPod Nanos, which caused three fires in Japan. In that incident, Apple said only 0.001 percent of iPod Nanos were affected. Even so, that’s still a large number of consumers, considering the millions of iPods sold.

Over the past weekend, a small number of iPhone 3GS owners reported in forums and on blogs that their handsets were reaching oddly high temperatures. The issue was most visible in white iPhones, which were turning brown as a result of the high heat (right).

“At some point, I became aware the handset had become very hot,” wrote Melissa Perinson, senior editor of PC World, who felt high temperatures while gaming and browsing the web on her iPhone 3GS. “Very, very hot — not just on the back, but the entire length of the front face, too…. Toasty doesn’t even describe how surprisingly hot it got. It was too hot to even put the phone against my face.”

Vronko said the iPhone 3GS’s heat problem is evidently tied to the battery, because the pictures of discolored white iPhones reveal the outline of the battery. He noted that although thousands of iPhone 3GS users probably own defective handsets, the risk of causing fire or explosion is low because the iPhone’s battery cell is extremely small.

“[An overheating iPhone] is much less dangerous than a laptop,” Vronko said. “It’s extremely rare for a cellphone battery to explode. A little bit of smoke eventually is probably the best bet.”

He stressed, however, that overheating will more likely cause complete failure of the iPhone 3GS over time. When a battery overheats, it’s getting a runaway reaction that produces gas, causing expansion to occur inside the sealed battery. This expansion puts pressure on components, damaging them and eventually killing the iPhone.

Wired.com polled iPhone 3GS owners via Twitter asking if they were experiencing any problems with their new handsets. Only one out of 21 respondents said his iPhone 3GS felt like it was overheating.

Eleven of those respondents, however, reported the iPhone 3GS had poor battery life — even shorter than its predecessor — a different topic Wired.com will investigate soon.

Wired.com will continue examining the iPhone 3GS’s battery issues and keep you posted. Look forward to a battery test comparing the new iPhone to its predecessor in the near future. Meanwhile, e-mail any of your iPhone 3GS-related problems to Brian_Chen [at] Wired [dot] com.

See Also:

• IPhone 3GS Handsets Overheat, Turn Brown
• Gallery: iPhone 3GS Teardowns Reveal Underclocked CPU, More …
• T-Mobile Accidentally Posts Secret iPhone 3G S Specs
• iPhone 3GS Picks Up the Pace With New Features – Video – Wired
• Review: The iPhone 3GS By Steven Levy
• iPhone 3GS Trounces Predecessors, Rivals in Web Browser Speed Test …

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com, Le Journal du Geek