iPhone4idiots » iPhone

ATT Data Throttling Down to Edge Speeds

hirtme — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:22:40 +0000

I’ve written in the past about how ATT has instituted a policy of data throttling for it’s top 5% of bandwidth users. I was curious as to how much speed would be cut back and the folks over at AppAdvice uploaded a video demonstrating the extreme nature of the slowdown. Using the popular Speedtest app on two identical iPhone 4S the download speeds on the throttled device are almost ten times slower. What’s even crazier is that the throttled speeds are similar to Edge! Now I haven’t tested this myself as I don’t want to suffer through these slow speeds until my next billing cycle. However, the video is quite clear as to what happens. ATT’s reduction of the data speed by such an extreme amount serves a purpose. It encourages their heavy users to cut back or switch to another carrier altogether. I’m sure ATT doesn’t mind losing the bandwidth hogs. The reduced speeds make it impossible to stream video and make apps like Maps and Safari quite slow. So where does the throttling begin. In the past ATT stated that 98% of it’s users use less than 2GB of data. However, I went over that amount last month and didn’t get throttled. In any event, if you want to avoid this keep an eye on your data usage and use wifi whenever possible. You can easily check your ATT data usage at any time by dialing *3282# (star DATA pound) on your iPhone. You’ll get a text showing how much data you’ve used, when your next billing cycle beings and how many texts you’ve sent. Not sure where this is going as I’m confident Verizon and Sprint are or will be doing something similar. In the meantime just hope you don’t get the text displayed here!

iPhone 4S & iPad 2 iOS 5.0 Jailbreak Arrives!

hirtme — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 20:35:18 +0000

Great news the untethered jailbreak for iOS 5.0 and 5.0.1 for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 has been released. This is the first jailbreak of any kind for iPhone 4S so servers are sure to slammed for the next 48 hours. The jailbreak is easy as I’ve already updated my iPad 2 to 5.0.1, re-jailbroke it and so far am experiencing no bugs (as expected). So watch the video cause this jailbreak called Absinthe works differently than redsn0w or greenpois0n. After watching click continue reading for a few extra tips.

At the moment there is only a version for Mac. A Windows version should be out before the weekend is over. Greenpois0n.com is getting slammed so be patient or download the Mac version here instead. A working redsn0w version of this jailbreak will be out soon. Absinthe works for

iPhone 4S: 5.0 (9A334), 5.0.1 (9A405) & (9A406)
iPad 2: 5.0.1 (9A405)

All is right in the jailbreak world now as an untethered jailbreak exist for every iOS device on 5.0.1 now. Expect iOS 5.1 to be released soon, but don’t update if you want to keep your jailbreak. With the jailbreak now out expect some very cool Cydia tweaks involving Siri to follow shortly!

A Few Tips

1) If you want to carrier unlock your iPhone 4S you have to be on 5.0 not 5.0.1
2) Don’t have a passcode set when jailbreaking
3) If Absinthe crashes, just reboot and try again
4) If Absinthe won’t open you might have to wait for redsn0w
5) When you see “Error Establishing a Database Connection” on your device – that is normal. That is when you goto Settings on your iPhone or iPad and toggle the VPN on.
6) If you use VPN for anything else you must remove it from the list. If you don’t know what VPS is, then you don’t use it so don’t worry about it

New Data Plans for ATT

hirtme — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 03:44:17 +0000

Starting Sunday January 22, ATT is once again changing their data plans for smartphones and tablets. Current ATT customers can keep their existing plans, but any new ones will be subject to the new contract pricing. Why are they doing this? Simple, just like any company they are doing it to make more money. The bottom line is that they raising prices $5 per month putting them more in line with Verizon. To see the new pricing and comparison to Verizon and Sprint continue reading below.

AT&T:

- $20/month for 300MB data with a $20 charge for each additional 300MB
- $30/month for 3GB data with a $10 charge for each additional 1GB
- $50/month for 5GB data with mobile hotspot/tethering and a $10 charge for each additional 1GB

Verizon:

- $30/month for 2GB data
- $50/month for 5GB data
- $50/month for 4GB data with mobile hotspot/tethering
- $70/month for 7GB data with mobile hotspot/tethering
- $80/month for 10GB data
- $100/month for 12GB data with mobile hotspot/tethering

Overages on all Verizon plans are $10/GB

Sprint:

- $30/month for unlimited data

So even with the increase, ATT pricing is still slightly better than Verizon. That said, Sprint offers by far the best pricing plan. However, Sprint also has the worst data speeds. The choice is yours and I’m sure all this will change again once LTE iPhones and iPads arrive.

iPhone4idiots App Review – Run Roo Run

hirtme — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:36:48 +0000

Run Roo Run, 5th Cell Media LLC $0.99, is another time wasting game along the lines of Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, Doodle Jump and Feed Me Oil. The storyline is a mother kangaroo has to travel from Perth to Sydney to find her stolen Joey. The journey entails twenty levels of twentyone boards (fifteen regular and six extreme). You complete a board by simply hopping from one side to the other without hitting any obstacles. Each level unveils a new tool to be used to help move across the board. Some of these include a springboard, tire swing, moving platforms, umbrellas, cannons, tunnels, barrels and more. The hardest one has to be a ghost that turns you invisible as you then can’t tell exactly where you are and when to jump. The first few boards in each new chapter are very simple. Of course, they get more difficult, but you can make an in app purchase of bus tickets which beat the board for you. In the board pictured here you jump over the shovel and into the barrel which rolls across the water. You jump out onto the tire swing and off into the next barrel to complete the board. Once you have finished all 420 boards the next challenge is earning gold stars for each one. You get a gold star when you finish it quickly. I believe it’s under four seconds but it might be different for each level. In a neat twist ten new boards are released each week for free. This app is similar to those I mentioned in the beginning. Personally, I find Doodle Jump more addicting than this game, but I like this far more than Feed Me Oil. To each their own, but if you like these type of games, you’ll want to try this one out.

Cydia iAP Cracker – Free in app Purchases

hirtme — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:24:40 +0000

Just watch the short video to see what this Cydia tweak does. In short, it allows you to make in app purchases for tons of apps for free. It doesn’t work for all apps, but there is lengthy list of apps listed for which it does. I believe it only works for iOS 5.0 and above which means it will not work on the iPad 2 or iPhone 4S until the jailbreak is released for these devices. This tweak can be found in the Xsellize or Insanelyi repos. If you don’t know how to add sources to Cydia you see how to add these two repos here.

iPhone 4S uses Twice the Data as iPhone 4

hirtme — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:59:38 +0000

A study released last Friday by U.K.-based technology firm Arieso revealed some interesting things about data consumption. According to Arieso, iPhone 4S users consume twice the amount of data compared to iPhone 4 users. Yes, it’s faster but I don’t see myself surfing the web any more or less because of it. The bottleneck is carrier download speeds which are essentially the same on the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 (unless you are on ATT in which case the iPhone 4S is a good bit faster). So why is this? Well for one, the iPhone 4S has a camera with more megapixels so all photos and videos being uploaded are bigger files. Of course, there is also Siri. The convenience of asking for web searches for directions, restaurant recommendations and a host of other things has to be a factor as well. More interesting is that the top 1% of data users consume half of the downlink data. Expect this trend to continue as the early adopters of streaming video hog the bandwidth. Anyone cutting the cable cord and getting all their television/video content from the internet surely must use ten to one hundred times the average amount of data. This is the reason you really can’t blame carriers for throttling speeds to these power users. At one point I thought true 4G LTE would solve this problem but it will just be a temporary fix at best. I could easily use over 100GB of data per month if I streamed all my television shows and that’s not even in 1080p. It’s just the nature of technology. Remember the 1.44 MB floppy drives. It really wasn’t that long ago except when it comes to technology 12 months is a long time in many respects. A year from now iPhone 5 users will surely be using twice as much data compared to iPhone 4S users and unlimited data plans will be a thing of the past.

iPhone 4S & iPad 2 Untethered Jailbreak Next Week!

hirtme — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:09:49 +0000

Anyone following @Pod2G on Twitter has seen some great tweets to ring in the new year. Eariler today he tweeted, “I made a step today for the A5. With some luck we could expect a release in a week.” A5 refers to the chip used in the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S that has been the reason there has been no jailbreak of any kind on iOS 5. Apparantly, not only is one coming soon, but it will be untethered just like his recent exploit that was used for the latest release of redsn0w. He later tweeted that it was safe to update your iPhone 4S or iPad 2 to iOS 5.0.1. Yes, this long awaited untethered jailbreak must be very close. While it could take a bit longer we all hope the “luck” is there and a new jailbreak is released next week. Maybe Sunday will be funday! I know there is a huge number of iPhone 4S users that have been waiting for this day to arrive. My recomendation, go ahead and update to 5.0.1 right now. Once the jailbreak is released servers (including Apple’s) will be slammed with activity. Expect iOS 5.1 to be coming fairly soon as well. I doubt there will be anything signifcant so I don’t recommend updating as you’ll lose your jailbreak. Supposedly the 5.1 jailbreak will come quickly, but again I would stay on 5.0.1. As soon as it’s out I’ll let you know. Who’s excited?

iOS 5.0 & 5.0.1 Untethered Jailbreak Arrives!

hirtme — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 17:46:40 +0000

Let’s start with the bad news. There is no iOS 5.0 or higher jailbreak for the iPad 2 or iPhone 4S. Despite all the rumors other sites post, IMO there likely won’t be one until after iOS 5.1 is released which means it is still months away. Now the good news! Today @pod2G released an untethered jailbreak for iOS 5.0 and 5.0.1 that works on iPhone 4 (both GSM & CDMA), iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch 3rd and 4th generation and iPad 1. It uses redsn0w and is very simple. Watch the quick video as I spent that past hour re-jailbreaking my iPhone 4 and my kids iPod Touch 4th generations. If you were already using a tethered or semi-tethered jailbreak keep reading as I recommend doing a full restore to iOS 5.0.1 as opposed to using the Cydia patch.

If you haven’t jailbroken on iOS 5.0 or 5.0.1 its easy.

1) Plug your device into iTunes and update to 5.0.1
2) Download latest version of redsn0w 0.9.10b1 here
3) Run redsn0w to install Cydia (see video if still unsure how to do this)

If you are using a tethered or semi-tethered jailbreak already you have two options

1) Run redsn0w but uncheck “Install Cydia” or there is a Cydia tweak from the Chronic Dev Team called Corona that will update your jailbreak from tethered to untethered. I don’t recommend using these methods. For the tethered jailbreak to get out of a reboot cycle I (and many like me) had to point redsn0w to iOS 5.0 firmware even though I was running iOS 5.0.1 on my iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4. You will likely get into a reboot loop unless you do a full restore to iOS 5.0.1. Plus, I’m a big believer in doing a full restore every so often just to make your device run smoother anyway.

So there you have it. Untethered jailbreak is here for all on iOS 5 except iPad 2 and iPhone 4S who will have to wait a few more months.

Untethered iOS 5.0 and 5.01 Jailbreak

hirtme — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:53:25 +0000

Chronic Dev Team (the one’s behind Greenpois0n) member @pod2g shows a working untethered jailbreak for iOS 5 in this video! It is on an iPod Touch, but will surely work on the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS as well. He tweeted it works on 5.0.1 too. However, he has not tested and it likely will not work on the iPhone 4S and iPad 2. He doesn’t own either device so he hasn’t tired, but I doubt it will work on the A5 device. Nevertheless, this is good news for iPhone 4 and iPod Touch owners that have been wanting an iOS 5 untethered jailbreak. It shouldn’t be long now. Maybe before the end of the year. For those iPad 2 and iPhone 4S users the wait likely will continue into 2012. Before you ask about what can or can’t be jailbroken see this chart.

Twitter Updates iOS App Removing Landscape View #Fail

hirtme — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 19:56:18 +0000

I just don’t understand tech companies sometimes. Twitter just updated its iOS App and there are two major problems. The first and biggest is it no longer supports landscape viewing? Why would they remove this feature. I use it all the time. Landscape view makes the tweet stream easier to read in many situations and I used it daily. Removing features that your customers like and are used to is a big mistake. Not Netflix screw up big, but pretty big. The other problem is the bottom tab now labeled Discover. This was where you could quickly look at Top Ten trending topics which is one of the best things about Twitter. It’s how you can see what’s hot right now. As you can see in the photo, the trends are now displayed under Stories. Frankly I don’t care about the Angels, Ice Cube or Eddy Curry. I want to see the Top Ten trends and then pick which interest me. That now takes a swipe down and extra tap to accomplish. Twitter now only displays two trends. Sorry, I don’t count the promoted trend. That’s not what’s in the news, it’s just what’s paid for. Nice job Twitter, I might now offically move to Tweetbot.