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Let’s put all partialities aside.

Currently, I own an iPhone, an Evo (which I’m borrowing through work for testing), and a Pre (my work phone). I have been a Windows user most of my life, and spent 2 or 3 years with Linux on my desktop. In the PDA days I ran a Palm Pilot, a Handspring Visor, and a Dell Axim (Pocket PC) device. In all honesty I don’t care what the brand of the device is that I use – I care that it gives me the best experience for my money and will provide the same for my family. At the same time my experience may be different than yours. You may need something cheaper. You may not need a camera. You may just need the phone features. All these factors go into the purchase of a cell phone.

Yet, when Consumer Reports says that it can’t recommend the iPhone 4 as a whole simply because of one feature, when it rates it higher than the competition on every other test, I call foul. Something’s fishy in this review.

Partialities aside, when you rate phones, as a whole, feature-by-feature, side-by-side with the other phones that I own, the iPhone 4 still outperforms them, hands down. Even Consumer Reports confirms that. The iPhone 4 takes better pictures than my Evo. It takes better video. The iPhone 4 has so much better screen quality than my Evo. I can edit my movies on my iPhone 4. The iPhone 4 lasts at least 3 times as long in battery life than my HTC Evo. The iPhone 4 has a better, more consistent application experience than my Evo. There’s simply no comparison on those features. The iPhone beats the Evo in user experience and simplicity (My 2 year old has issues with the Evo – he has no problem with my iPhone). It has better parental controls. It has a much smaller, easier-to-hold form factor. It has FaceTime, and before you say the Evo has apps that do that, the Evo has not integrated it into its Operating System and phone book, and that’s a huge difference.

Now let’s look at the Evo. True, the Evo does have better call quality. That’s perhaps the one advantage that matters to me. The Evo has better Google Apps integration, although that’s not as big a deal to me either since at work we don’t use Google anyway. (and the iPhone 4 is good enough) The Evo has social integration built in, but except for the hard-core techies and Social Media geeks, this simply won’t matter to the majority of the world, and the iPhone 4 has better apps to handle this anyway. What else can the Evo do better?

I know you’ll bring up the issue of Choice. I’ve covered this before – it’s a valid reason, but I ask you to define choice. Can I run my Evo on Verizon, and run Verizon Android phones on Sprint? How easy is it for you to switch services with your Android phone? Can I port my iPhone Objective-C based apps over to the Android marketplace? No matter what, there will always be elements of the OS you can’t port, and there will always be limitations in choice. History doesn’t change, so long as one company is controlling the infrastructure. At the same time, no one is stopping me from Jailbreaking my iPhone to get the extra features I might want, should I want them. Sure, Apple makes it harder, but that’s not stopping people from doing it. There will always be some form of choice no matter what phone you’re using.

I don’t get all the bashing by mostly people that don’t even own an iPhone 4 based on solely connectivity issues. I use my phone with my left hand. Yes, I notice and can reproduce the reduced signal, but it simply isn’t that bad. Especially contrasted to all the other amazing features I get from the phone. Yet at the same time, Consumer Reports admits they didn’t even test it with the recommended case that Apple suggested all iPhone 4 users purchase. Since Apple suggests that to fix the connectivity issues, I would definitely just consider that as part of the purchase price – it’s still a cheap phone!

I don’t understand all the negativity and targeting of the iPhone, asking for recalls and such because of simple connectivity problems. I still think most of the vocal critics are all people that don’t even own the phone. For those that do, go get a bumper, for goodness sakes!

And if you still refuse – I remain to ask: Name a better phone.

When that phone comes I’ll be all over it.

Recently, after the excitement of upgrading to iOS 4.0 this last week, I had need to downgrade again so I could sell it in preparation for my new iPhone 4. There are many others who say iOS 4 is slow on their iPhones and also want a way to downgrade. Previously, there were ways to downgrade if you had the iOS 4.0 beta installed, but since the final release, Apple seems to be verifying new restores, and doesn’t seem to want people to downgrade to the 3.1.3 firmware. You can tell from the long list of support requests in the Apple Support Forums.

I finally found a way to make this work, thanks to combined help from GadgetsDNA and MacLife. It seems that Apple is checking a server at gs.apple.com, and if you previously saved your ECID SHSH certificate to Saurik’s authentication server you can trick iTunes into thinking his server is their own and go through with the install. If you haven’t saved your certificate (you may have done this if you jailbroke your iPhone before), feel free to try this and let me know if it works, but I hear unfortunately there isn’t yet a way to make it work. I hope to be proven wrong.

So here’s what you need to do:

First, you need to trick iTunes into thinking Saurik’s server is Apple’s. To do so, you need to find your hosts file (On a Mac, this is on /etc/hosts. On a PC, this is in c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\). Once you’ve found it, edit it, and add the line, “74.208.10.249 gs.apple.com” to the end. This points gs.apple.com to 74.208.10.249.

Next, you need to put your phone in restore mode in preparation for the restore. To do this, just disconnect your iPhone and turn it off (do this by holding down the power button until you see the “power off” slider). Then hold your home button while you reconnect the phone to your computer. Keep the home button pressed until iTunes opens and gives you a message saying you need to restore.

Now, you’re going to need a 3.1.3 firmware file. Here is one for the 3GS. Here is one for the 3G. To load the file, hold down the alt button on a PC, or on a Mac, hold down the alt/option key and click “Restore” in iTunes.

Wait for the restore, and if it works when you’re done, it should reboot into 3.1.3 and you’re done!

For me, I got a 1015 error, so I then went and followed the instructions MacLife to complete the restore process. To start, you need to download iRecovery (I only have the Mac version) and libusb.

With iRecovery downloaded, go to the directory you downloaded it to and type:

./iRecovery -s

setenv auto-boot true

saveenv

fsboot

exit

Now, you just need to reboot the phone and you’ll be back to iOS 3.1.3! To reboot the phone, just hold down the power and home buttons until you see the Apple logo.

Let me know how this works for you. Oh, and do so at your own risk! While I don’t anticipate these steps hurting your phone, I offer no guarantee and there is always a chance doing steps Apple didn’t intend will break your phone.

Category: ios 4

Name a Better Phone

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