Cui – On My Way

i’ve just updated my iphone(BL 3.9, first-gen 4G version) from firmware 1.1.4 to the new 2.0 by the newly released winpwn. Actually I pwned the phone twice, first with winpwn 2.0.2 and second with winpwn 2.0.3(download).

I am a little bit excited about some of the new features in 2.0, even if until now I only played with it for 2 days. Here’s why i’m saying that.

1.full system-level international support

For Chinese iphone owners like me, we can choose either of Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. Accordingly we have the input method and region format.Yes, we’ve got hand-writing input method too, as picture shows above.

Besides, we can read gb2312-encoded Chinese email now.

2.App Store

This is the coolest part. Tons of apps in the store and you are just one-click away to them.You may also feel surprised when you are playing with those really creative apps, like WritingPad(reviewed by ipodtouchfans.com) and midomi(youtube video). I do. I really do.

However, in order to take full use of the App Store, you need an valid iTunes account. And generally you have to provide some payment details in the registration process, like an Visa credit card info. This may block some people. Hackint0sh has a post here where i found this solution. For the phone number and address, i filled with Apple’s own info

3.some new features, like Contact Search, WiFi-only mode, Exchange support etc.

Some of you may feel more excited on Exchange support or Contact Search. Sure they deserve. But for me,I think wifi-only does help. I do have that kinda moment when I wanna browse the web while keeping the phone off. Not possible in firmware 1.1.4 and below.

These are all the reasons that drive me to do the upgrade. But, nothing is perfect. iPhone 2.0 still needs improvement as well. As to my experience, 2.0 is a little bit slower, less stable than 1.1.4. Perhaps that’s why Apple is pushing the testing on 2.0.1 now. Guess they’ll relesae it soon.

Last but not least, currently there are very fewer native 3-rd party unofficial applications in 2.0 than in 1.1.4. To update or not, you decide.

First, BL 4.6 + BB 04.02.13_G is done by the young well-known iphone-unlocking genius George Hotz(a.k.a GeoHot). Here’s his announcement on his blog. What does this means? Well, it means anyone who plans to use iphone on any unofficial carrier network can go to get an iphone without any hesitation for now. For OTB or upgraded 1.1.2 or 1.1.3, try Ziphone . For others, use google.

Second, one of FF 1.1.3′s exploits founded by Dev Team. So what does this mean, again? It means 1.1.3 has been jailbroken. It means you can try the newly-added features in the latest firmware yourself. Without this, you will never ever get Ziphone.

Last but not least, BL 4.6 downgraded to BL 3.9. Done by GeoHot, Again. I know your question. And here’s my understandings. Tutorial here by aCujo.

Basically, it means you can make your 1.1.3 OTB iphone fully functional(hopefully) while staying at the up-to-date 04.03 BB.

Besides, if GeoHot continues his awesome job, a customized BL would be possible. That means, most likely, the hacking community will take a big step advance in the cat-and-mouse battle against Apple. For the iphone owners like me, we will benefit so much from that. Say no worry of no available unlock method at all when we do the upgrade in iTunes

You know what the title means? I don’t, until I google it and find out it’s the name of a song by Mogwai.

You know why I put it here? ‘Coz it’s shown in my iphone somehow this morning!

Although i haven’t figure out what’s exactly the repro steps are, I do know it’s related to the sync between iphone and iTunes, esp. when something goes wrong, like iphone is disconnected before iTunes has completed the sync or something like that.

I’m sorry i didn’t take the picture. But if you have seen it, you may understand what i’m talking about. Guess what? I think Mogwai is, perhaps, one of some Apple iPhone engineer or product manager’s favorite bands. And that’s why he or she put this easter egg into iPhone.

If you enter google.com in iphone’s safari browser, by default you will redirect to google.cn sometime, which may not be what you want. If so, try yidong.google.com.

I know it’s a Chinese PinYin for the word ‘mobile’(移动), but it does be able to take you to google’s default global-search, other than the Chinese-only one.

Besides,there you can also see the google’s new move on web apps esp. for iphone as below.

Rumor source here 

D.Phone(迪信通) is one of the largest phone retailers here in beijing, even whole mainland. Actually my first mobile phone moto P7689 was bought there in Jan, 2001.

I think to make iphone available to china, at least the deal should cover several issues:

1.Official unlocked iphone.
Perhaps the same as the Germany/France version. Good news, anyway, isn’t it?

2.UI Localization
This may not be a big issue.
Actually even without the official one, an Chinese lang pack are already there by achan11.
 
3.App Localization
Like Chinese Input(I know you’ve already got iCosta or NativeCn working, but kinda hand-writing IME is still necessary), Phone Enhancement(CallID correctly recognition etc).

4.Hardware Localization
Perhaps, Wifi module has to been removed as required by Chinese goverment(sorry,it’s in Chinese).
But I wonder how many people still wanna buy such an iphone.

We all know iPhone’s multi-touch technology based user interface, but can you imagine what a ‘bigger version’ will look like?

Well, check out this video.

Awesome, isn’t it?

It does remind me of something similar: Microsoft Surface. Tons of videos could be found in YouTube. and here’s one of them.

So, A whole new chapter in user experience is coming. And I’m ready to say ‘Cheers!’.

Apple, China Mobile discuss China iPhone

Considering the market of the CMCC’s more than 523 million subscribers with about 7million/mon growth rate, guess Steve would make a compromise. As a result, the Chinese mobile users will benefit from that.

iPhone, as invention Of the Year by NYT, even though Apple has made the restriction on the amount and the way that people buy iphone, still drops to 3999RMB(535USD) in Guangzhou, China(in Chinese) today.

Of course, it’s Chinese-localized, activated and unlocked by the resellers. All in all, it works perfect in both China Mobile and China Unicom.

And i think that price of iphone is still very competitive to the following competitors, although it’s 235USD more than in US:

N95(8GB) : 5999RMB(803USD)

N93i : 3990RMB(534USD)

Moto RAZR : 2600RMB(348USD)

Sony-Ericsson P1i : 3080RMB(412USD)

Confirmed.

Now that the function of chinese input support is much more important than a pretty handsome apperance, then I uninstalled SummerBoard.

Of course, iCosta is back.

P.S. I’m in 1.0.2.

Update: iCosta CAN work under SummerBoard as holly  pointed at the comment.

1.You must install weDict first by either iBrickr or Installer.

2.Then download the dictionary in your language from startdict.

For me, I downloaded the oxford-gb dictionary(en – zh_CN) 牛津现代英汉双解词典(click to download). And the file I got is stardict-oxford-gb-2.4.2.tar.bz2.

3.Now unzip the .bz2 file by winrar, which is the one I take, or any other uncompress software you prefer.

Three files extracted: oxford-gb.idx, oxford-gb.ifo,oxford-gb.dict.dz.

4.Re-unzip the .dz file by the freeware 7zip to a .dict one. WinRar can’t do this for you.

5.Copy the .idx and .dict files to iPhone’s /var/root/Library/weDict/ by WinSCP or Putty.

6.Launch weDict and enjoy!

Update: for the most recent weDict version 0.5, in order to make the newly added dictionary work, you have to manually choose the dictionary first(which is not necessary in the previous version).You can get it by checking the following picture out.

One more thing,if you use WinScp to copy the dict files to iPhone, make sure you copy them to the right place, because WinScp’s default folder for iphone is very similar to the right folder. Again, see the picture, please.

Update(Feb 12,2008): If you are in firmware 1.1.3 and weDict can’t work any more, you may check out George’s fix as quoted below. There’s lots of other fixes here.

weDict stores the dictionary index cache in /var/root/Library/weDict, if for some reason this folder was not created (which is my case), apply the following fix:

mkdir /var/mobile/Library/weDict

chown mobile /var/mobile/Library/weDict

ln -s /var/mobile/Library/weDict /var/root/Library/.

Update(Jul.10,2008): I’ve uploaded the oxford ready-for-iphone dict files here(click to download). Download and unzip it to your local disk, then copy the two dict files to the right folder on the phone. Launch wedict and enjoy.

Update(Sep.26,2008): Currently the dictionary files you copied to the wedict folder are NOT always avaiable. Check out the details on the comments of this post here.