--> goto iOS 3.1.3

Many of the 3G users out there have a problem – after upgrading to iOS 4 (4.0.1 / 4.0.2) their iDevice didn’t act as expected anymore. It got slow – painfully slow.

The reason so far is clear – there is a new hardware on the market, the iPhone4. And this device is much faster than the 3G. So Apple restricted the functionality of iOS4 on these devices to a lower level (no multitasking, no background image… but the device was still slow. Sometimes it really is hard to believe that this piece of SW found it’s way out of the holy rooms of Apple to our 3G devices…

In the meanwhile Apple picked up the issue and it seems that they are really working on this issue to get it solved – iOS 4.1 is on it’s way… if we can believe in all the posts on twitter / blogs over the last days. But what can you do if you need NOW a solution for your problems?

First way:

• restrict the amount of downloaded mails to a minimum (if you are downloading e.g. 200 mails – shrink it to 25 mails)
• stop spotlight searching / indexing your stuff on the iPhone by deselecting all checkmarks in the spotlight search preferences (located at ‘Settings’, ‘General’, ‘Home Button’, ‘Spotlight Search’)

These tips works without touching your iOS4 installation – just setting it up in a different way. But – if this is still not working for you, you will have to revert to the good, old ‘iOS 3.1.3′.

Second way:

• download the iOS 3.1.3 version here
• connect your iPhone to your computer and open iTunes
• put the iPhone into the maintenance mode by pressing the ‘power on/off’ and the ‘home’-button for several seconds.
  The display will show the  ’Slide to power off’ message – but keep holding the buttons here until the display switches to black;
  Now release the ‘power on / off’ button – but keep holding the ‘home’-button
• iTunes will show you that your device is now in ‘Maintenance mode’ – release now the ‘home’-button and confirm this by clicking ‘OK’
• Load now the downloaded iOS 3.1.3 image by clicking on the ‘Restore’-button while holding the ‘Alt’ key on your keyboard (Mac / PC);
  select the downloaded ‘ipsw’ file in the displayed file-dialog
• downgrading will start and goes ahead for several minutes – during this time a error ’1015′ will be displayed but can be ignored
• after finishing the downgrading process you will have to exit the ‘maintenance mode’ – therefor use this little Mac application ‘RecBoot‘
  I don’t know if there’s a version for windows – google for it, I’m on a mac
• after downloading RecBoot you have to start the app ‘RecBoot Exit only’ within the RecBoot folder
• click the ‘Exit Recovery Mode’ button
• Finished

Don’t restore a backup if it’s not a 3.1.3 backup! Use this opportunity to clean up your device

This way of restoring the older version is only available for the iPhone 3G – the 3GS is using special keys and therefor going back to a prior version is not so easy for these devices.

As always on such a guide: use it / do it on your OWN risk!

Well – here’s the simple solution:
1. Go to the ‘settings’ app on your device
2. Open the ‘Mail, Contacts, Calendars’ tab
3. Select the account in the list which has this issue
4. Open the ‘Advanced’ tab
5. Open the ‘Deleted Mailbox’
6. Select ‘Trash’ in the section ‘On My xxx’ where ‘xxx’ stands for your device

Yes I know that this is already preselected – but it has to be selected manually so that it’s recognized.

After this you shouldn’t see the alert box again

The beginning:
Unboxing was a little bit suprising because the box was much bigger than the iPad itself. Unlike for Apple because they try to avoid too much packaging material these a days. In the box there’s of course the iPad itself and a little paper wallet containing the warrenty certificate and a sheet with infos how to proceed. And there’s the charger with the USB connection cable… But the charger wasn’t needed because of the fact that the iPad was charged fully.

Next step:
Contacting iTunes – so i had to startup my MB pro and connect my iPad via the USB-cable.

Setup:
Setting up the iPad is easy at all. After connection iTunes automatically starts up and the first backup of the device takes place. Select the content you want (don’t forget to get iBooks from the iTunes store!) and organize the apps with the designated tool in iTunes. Really easy – and for those of us already owning a iPhone / iPod – nothing new.

Content:
Yes – that’s the point i stick to. iBooks only shows up FREE books which are Project Gutenberg related – nothing else. But I’ve heard that ‘Random House’ already has a signed up contract with Apple for their books  to be available within the Austrian Apple-Store. We’ll have to wait..

Movies? – No movies there, no TV-series. Only podcasts.

Alternative contents:
You are able to put your own videos into iTunes – this is what I’ve done before the iPad – this is what I’ll do now
Books? Well – use Stanza – this app allows you to add ePub documents which are available through the internet. And of course PDFs. But PDFs are not so nice to be handled within the iPad as eBooks are.

Differences to the iPhone:
There are differences.

Safari. There’s no ‘Search within this page’ feature as you have on the MB Pro. I’m missing it really.

But:
I – and my family – love the iPad. For reading. Surfing. Watching movies. Using Apps.
It’s so easy to browse the content you want. Flash? Not missing at all. Most of the internet sites I’m used to visit already switched to HTML5. Videos are available… Ads are not missed.
You’re able to write emails – if they aren’t too long. You’re able to post on your blog – if the article isn’t too long. There are things you can do with the iPad perfectly – others are… well – not horrible… but simply not convenient.

Give it away again? No. Never.

Update:
All the issues I had are solved by giving the iPad settings a closer look. Settings I’ve done month’s ago on the iPhone

I checked T-Mobiles homepage and found their promise for being customers to get the new iPhone4 for a BETTER price… well, not only a better price:

So I contacted T-Mobile by phone and got a operator. I asked about the details of the prolongation and was finally very suprised.

The offer was: give us all your bonus-points, prolong the contract for 24 additional months (beginning with March 2011), pay us monthly 39,– EUR (as I pay currently) and in addition the special iPhone4 price: 199,– EUR.

What???

That’s exactly what EVERY user has to pay when he comes to them and sign a contract with the same conditions – but remember: new customers DON’T have bonus-points! Ahhh, yes. Sorry didn’t understand… the special price is that existing customers have to pay the price as all the new customers and ON TOP give their bonus-points…

Btw: I would have to switch my current contract to a new version… with 1GB only instead of 3GB!

But this is not the end of the story – one more thing…

I’ve two contracts and on the second one are also many bonus-points; so I asked what the price for the phone would be when using ALL the bonus points (almost the double points then).

You won’t believe what the answer was: EUR 650,–

Remember: the unlocked iPhone could be purchased cross the Border in Switzerland for EUR 565,– and in Italy for EUR 659,– WITHOUT ANY CONTRACT or bonus-points…

So every time you give bonus-points the price for the device goes up…

Update:

T-Mobile told me now that the benefit for existing users is the fact that they receive the new iPhone4 on the same price a new customer would get it. They also told me that I’ll save 50€ in comparison to a new customer.

Dear T-Mobile!

This is only the half truth. Yes – I’ll save 50€ if I calculate it on the base that a new customer get’s his iPhone4 via a local store – but if he’s ordering via the online store he get’s a rabat of 39€… so I would get it at least 11€ cheaper then a new customer?
In addition you want to force me changing the current contract what in detail means that my free traffic would shrink from 3GB to 1GB.

Wow – what a deal!!!

Keep in mind that a new customer at Orange get’s 25€ Webshop Bonus and in addition 50€ Switching-Bonus… and the contract even contains an roaming-feature with 300mins for free within EU-calls.
So – thank you for the fish. I’ll get a contract with Orange later on. Bye, bye T-Mobile…

iPad 16GB WiFi only

Being back I did what I’ve decided during my vacation – I ordered a iPad at the Apple Store. MediaMarkt – where I checked in for the iPad first didn’t have one any more. They are out of stock… and the shopmen there are really not happy about this situation…

Well – Apple told that they will deliver it on Aug. 11th, so that it’s in my hands on Aug. 16th – but todays ordering-status tells me something different:

iPad ordering status

So hopefully I’ll have it early next week

What is the problem? I just googled and found an support entry saying that the issue is the jailbreak with [redsn0w]. Downloading books before jailbreaking it works fine – after JB not.

Tweeted MuscleNerd about this – looking forward his response

Update:
And here we go:
For anyone who saw iBooks problems after redsn0w beta, try the latest one (see update #2 at http://is.gd/cYogT )

Now waiting to get more infos and what’s all about the issues I’ve described previously…

Just recognized that there’s a problem with the contacts app now. I just wanted to create a new contact (on the iPhone 3G with iOS4 GM, no jailbreak) and realized that there is no field for phone numbers now:

There’s a button to add additional fields – but again no phones, no emails, no fax – NOTHING!

The + button at the ‘ringtone’ field does not work.

So I tried to create a entry and then this:

An entry was created in the contacts database – but the entry was created with EMPTY fields (Ohne Namen –> without name)…

It’s really not the way apple is normally delivering a GM of it’s new OS – so what’s going on here?

BTW: I cross checked this on my second iPhone (3G, iOS4 GM jailbreaked) –> the same behavior

One of the big changes so far: WordPress has released version 3.0 and I updated now. Went fine with one issue coming up:
I had to update my php.ini to allow more than 16M cache for scripting. There have been troubles already in the past when viewing the admin-page – but with 3.0 installed the admin page even didn’t show at all.
To get rid of this I first removed all the plugins to get sure the installation was fine on it’s base. After this the php.ini was updated with this little change: …16M… to …64M… for setting the cache for scripting.
Now it works perfectly.

Second thing was that I’ve updated my iPhones last week with the GM iOS4 and realized that the phones performance went down dramatically.
I wasn’t sure what the problem was – but I saw it running faster on other phones…
In addition I was disappointed that the ‘wallpaper’ feature will NOT work on 3G phones. I think this is not performance related at all, only to push ‘old’ 3G users to the shop for getting a new iPhone4.
So I jailbreaked one of my phones today to check it out – and surprise, surprise… the phone is FASTER and reacting on touch-events now again much better. So my decision for the next days: I’ll give it a try