iphone update
one of the best ways of wasting time? mess with your geeky toys.
i’d been putting off upgrading my iphone to the latest revision of the firmware – too many complaints on the internets of problems with upgrading – but i’d decided i wanted a few things from the appstore, which i couldn’t get without performing said upgrade.
i had a bit of a rocky start – but i was able to successfully upgrade the phone by following the tutorial from iClarified.
after updating, there were a couple important software add-ons from Cydia to install:
- bossprefs
- aussie number localization
- vodafone au logos/gprs fix
- flashlight
i had to tell bossprefs to use the “old” method of turning off gprs; without doing so it didn’t work (and would have cost me a small fortune in mobile data charges). the aussie number localization teaches the phone how to interpret australian number formatting, while the vodafone au logos and gprs fix modify a few settings so that the phone displays the vodafone logo instead of the fairly plain “Voda-AU” for a carrier indicator. flashlight is a nice bit of fun – does exactly what it says – and apparently works better than the appstore version.
on to stuff from the appstore – Remote is the coolest thing since forever; it lets me control my itunes from my phone. very cool, and also free. i haven’t installed anything else, but there’s a few things that look interesting – sudoku, a converter application, texas hold’em and so on…
one incredibly annoying thing that i didn’t consider – you really need to ensure you’ve got a backup of everything. i already have all my contacts on my computer, all my e-mail is stored on the server … but i’ve managed to lose my notes and sms’es, because i didn’t have working backups of those. absolutely nothing i can do about it either – oh well. 
another thing that annoys me is that i can’t get chuzzle! it looks like it hasn’t (yet) been re-compiled for the new version of the iphone software, which is a real shame.
those gripes aside, i’m pretty happy with my iphone update. 
- zac.