iphone questions.

[de8212]

Just ordered my wife an iphone. Tracking shows it will be delivered monday so I was curious about some things.
It's a 16GB white one BTW.

1. Does it include a wall charger and a car charger?

2. What "apps" do you use? I know she has a facebook account so if that's possible i would like to install that. What else would you consider "must-haves"?

3. Someone on another forum told me to jailbreak it. He claimed it is legal but just the quick research I've done on it allows you to download apps for free that would normally cost $. Is it legal, is it necessary, what all can you do with it?

MODS - if this is an illegal subject please delete the question from my post.

4. What can we do to prepare for the phone? Create an itunes account (I think I saw where that's what it uses)?

5. She has a bunch of mp3's. Can those be copied over to the phone? Or do you have to use itunes?

Anything else i should be aware of?

 

[gorcorps]

It comes with an AC to USB adapter, so wall charger. No car charger

Facebook app is a big one, I like Shazam although I rarely use it, Stanza is a great ebook reader that I use a lot

Jailbreaking in itself I don't believe is illegal, but allows you to do illegal things. Sort of like torrents. There are some valid reasons to jailbreak other than pirating apps, but I haven't jailbroken mine because it DOES VOID THE WARRANTY.

Install itunes and create an account (if you plan on buying apps). If her other phone allows her to, sync her contacts to outlook now and those will sync to the iphone. Import the mp3s into itunes as that's the easiest way of syncing your music. There may be other non-itunes ways but it still requires software.

 

[pm]

I agree with what gocorps said.

2. I use:
AroundMe (free) which uses the GPS to list out restaurants, banks and gas stations nearby and works overseas,
Keeper ($2) which encrypts passwords and info so I put my driver's license numbers and credit card numbers into it in case I lose my wallet.
Pandora (free) which is a free internet radio app
Skype (free) super-cheap phone calls from WiFi hotspots. Great when travelling overseas.
Translate (free) uses Google's translation system to translate text.
Bloomberg (free) which has a nice stock tracker with more info that Apple's version
Weatherbug (free) which offers more detailed weather info than Apple's version
Facebook (free) which is pretty cool

for games I like Flight Control ($1), GeoDefense (free and $2), Tanzen (free and $5), Lux (free), Fieldrunners ($3)

all prices are from memory and may or may not match up with reality.

3. To the best of my knowledge, jailbreaking is not illegal, but it does void your warranty. I actually am not at all familiar with the whole pirating apps thing - I long ago resolved to buy all of my software and besides all of my apps added together cost less than $10...

But I have had my iPhone jailbroken since the day that I got it because I have mine hacked over to T-Mobile (which is also not illegal, covered under DMCA exception #3, at least until Nov. this year unless it's extended) and jailbreaking is required to do the unlock hack. There are at least a couple of cool apps that are only available for jailbroken phones - Winterboard allows you to replace icons, create themes and modify the way the GUI works. I like it because my iPhone doesn't look like anyone else's.

The other jailbreaking app which I like is SBSettings - which allows access to the bluetooth, Wifi, brightness and other settings from the home screen. I use it all the time to turn on/off things to save battery life.

I personally would not recommend jailbreaking your wife's iPhone unless she likes to mess around with things. It's more like a geeky thing to do.

4. Yeah, download iTunes, install it and create an account. You'll need it for the apps store.

Also consider downloading Handbrake - it's free and open-source (no spyware/malware), relatively easy to use and convert DVD's to iPhone format.

5. I'd transfer using iTunes. Just drag and drop, or have iTunes find them.


Regarding the legality of Jailbreaking:
Doing a bit of research, it appears that the current legal situation of jailbreaking iPhones is that it's unclear on whether it is illegal or not, but is not currently being tested in court and no legal decisions have been made regarding it. So... no one knows. On the one hand there is Apple who says it's a violation of the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), and on the other hand there are organizations like the EFF (Electronic Freedom Foundation) who maintain that it's covered under the unlocking provision of the 2006 DMCA exception list. The EFF is currently working with the US Copyright office to add a jailbreaking provision to the 2009 DMCA list of exceptions. ( http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...4/dmca-hearings-phone- )

Regardless of whether not it's legal - and right now I'd maintain that it is - Apple specifically matains that it violates their warranty. And, when my first jailbroken/unlocked iPhone had screen issues that I believed should have been covered under warranty, I actually fixed the problem myself (took it apart, replaced the screen) rather than take it to Apple.

 

[gorcorps]

Quick question for you PM, although it's a bit OT your reply reminded me of something. I'm thinking of jailbreaking the phone in order to change the themes/UI and such. What's a good resource for new themes or UI mods? No need for jailbreak instructions, just your opinion on good sites that have themes/icons/etc for the iphone.

 

[de8212]

Got the phone in and activated yesterday. Not real happy with the signal strength at my house but nothing I can do about that. Wife will be taking it to work and checking out signal strength to and from.

I'll hold off on any kind of jailbreaking for now.

I did set up itunes on my PC to get things started for her. Didn't sync it with my email or anything. Will it be an issue to put itunes on her PC and use it there instead of mine?? I know I had an issue in the past on my Zune after connecting it with 2 pc's.

She did download a song from itunes but then wanted to use it as a ringtone and I couldn't figure out how to. I saw some instructions to do it from itunes before you buy the song. How can you do it after you buy the song? Is this done through the phone or the computer?

 

[pm]

One of the bizarre things about the iPhone is that it's not a particularly good cell phone. So the signal strength issue is, unfortunately, normal. They got a lot of things on the iPhone that are better than other phones but signal strength, call quality and other cellphone-like functions are better on Motorola's and Nokia's than iPhones.

Without mucking with iTunes library files to fool it, you can only sync music/podcasts, apps and movies from one computer. You can sync email, contacts and calendars from several computers. I sync my calendar and contacts from my work laptop and then movies and music from my home computer. Just checkbox the appropriate checkboxes for what you want from where.

To make a song into a ringtone:
1. you need to buy a non-DRM .AAC song (or rip it from a CD in .AAC format),
2. Edit it to get the section that you want (or no editting needed if you don't mind it starting from the begining)
Save it and rename it .m4r.
To get it into iTunes, I believe you just drag and drop it. Because it's M4R-named, iTunes will put it in the ringtones list.

I don't blame you, de8212, I wouldn't recommend jailbreaking to someone's wife's phone. It's a fun thing for a gadget-geek to do, but it reduces stability and speed a bit. I know for a fact that I'd avoid doing it to my wife's phone - although she doesn't like iPhones.


Gocorps, sorry missed your message. Pretty much I used the Cydia installer that gets installed when you jailbreak (there's a new icon called Cydia and it works like a somewhat-geekier/messier version of the Apple appstore icon). So to browse themes, I loaded up Cydia, selected themes and then punched the theme name into Google's Image search to see what they looked like. Cydia has a screenshot preview thing, but it takes a while to load and Google on my main computer was faster.

 

[de8212]

thanks for the info PM.

So, since I want to only snyc with my wife's PC from now on, will I have an issue if I just install itunes and sync to her phone? Will I need to do anything to the phone to avoid any kind of issue? When I put itunes on my pc and sync'ed it, I can't remember all the options but I did not choose to have it sync any email, contacts, etc. So, basically I don't really know what it actually sync'ed????

I guess ther is a way to erase all settings on the iphone and put it back to a "new" state but my wife has already entered a bunch of contacts in it. I'd really hate to have her have to re-enter.

 

[pm]

No, you don't need to do anything. When you sync it with your wife's it will pull up a box that says something along the lines of:
"iphone <name> is currently sync'd to a different computer, if you continue all movies and music will be erased and replaced with content from this computer"
or words that resemble what I wrote.

If you then continue and hit "yes" or "next" or whatever, it will align the phone to the new computer and erase anything that it thinks came from the previous computer that it is DRM-controlled. It shouldn't mess with contacts in my experience. It will just lock it's music/videos/apps control to your wife's computer. You don't need to do anything like reseting the phone.

 

[de8212]

Originally posted by: pm
No, you don't need to do anything. ...........

thanks.