Cui – On My Way

iPad is a browser?
Yeah, you said it. Actually it’s the best internet browser in this planet ever. Pinch, Zoom In & Out, Speed, yep, in all these respects. Safari works great, which has been proved in the iPhone. Now it comes to iPad. So it would be very easy for you iPhone owners to catch up here.

iPad is an ebook reader?
Absolutely. Apple even created a new application named iBook for this purpose. With iBook, you can get the ebook with one click, just like you do applications by AppStore, music by iTunes. Furthermore, the reading experience is ‘gorgeous’ and ‘phenomenal‘, esp. the part of paging up and down. You can even stick to the same page by paging up a little bit, exactly the same when you do a real reading in the printed book(video here). Not mentioned that your book are rendered on a shiny 9.7 inch wide-screen in the resolution of 1024-by-768-pixel at 132 pixels per inch(ppi).

iPad is a gaming device?
You bet. Did i mention iPad has an 1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed, high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip CPU? Plus the whole multi-touch screen. You already played couple of games in the iPhone/iTouch, right? Very cool, isn’t it? Now with the new hardware, you can imagine how you will feel the new iPad games are coming.

iPad is an iPod, an photo organizer, an email client, an navigator?
True, to all of them. Larger screen, better viewing experience, faster and more powerful than iPhone. However, big size reduces its portability. You cannot put iPad into your pocket as you do to iPod. Actually we cannot expect one single device to do all things and meet all needs. That’s not fair, isn’t?

iPad is an phone?
No, at least officially no any phone functions until now, though iPad does have a model of  Wifi+3G. So iPad can’t take the place of your iPhone, either.

Do I need an iPad?
It depends. If you spend a lot of time on reading, including browsing the web and reading an ebook, or on gaming, and are willing to be an early adopter of Apple’s cool gadget, personally I think iPad is worth of a try.

Well, that’s my answer to the question of what iPad is. What’s yours, my friend? Share with me in the comments, please.

Very depth and worthy of your time, if you are keeping an eye on the mobile internet.

If you’ve got limited time and just wanna get a whole picture, then this article is for you(title says all):We Read The Morgan Stanley Mobile Internet Report So You Don’t Have To.

For Chinese readers, please take a look at TechWeb’s translation summary here.

Of course Apple has been mentioned again and again, and you know the reason, don’t you?

Full report of three pdf files are(click to download):

The Mobile Internet Report Setup
The Mobile Internet Report Key Themes
The Mobile Internet Report

Inspired by wikipedia’s List of digital distribution platforms for mobile devices, I’ve just created a similar but compact list for the Chinese native App Stores here. It’s far from complete and detailed, but it could give you an idea of how the success of Apple’s AppStore business has influenced the Chinese mobile market.

I’ll keep it updated when related information is available later. BTW, all links in the table are directed to Chinese page, so be awared.

News by Sina: 详讯：联通明日发布苹果iPhone手机事宜

It said China Unicom will announce the coming of iPhone tomorrow, i.e, Aug.28 of 2009. The exact date that customer can get the phone would be in someday of Oct. The model would be iPhone 3G 8G and 16G, while 3GS has been delayed until perhaps Oct. And the price would be lower than the unofficial price of related iPhone 3G which is currently 8G by 3000RMB(439USD) and 16G by 4000RMB(586USD).

It also mentioned China Unicom has spent 10 billion RMB(1.46 billion USD) to get 5 million iphones from Apple, who has given up the revenue-sharing-contract model in this deal.

Unfortunately the imported iPhone has been ‘customized’: No wifi module, no iTunes and App Store applications.

So the question is: would you buy it?

iPhone OS 3.0 is coming. There ARE really lots of exciting features announced by Apple, like MMS, Cut’n'Paste, Universal Search, blablabla. CNet has a detailed list here. Very nice.

Among all of those, sure the Copy, Cut and Paste is what I want most. MMS as the second. But it says MMS is for iPhone 3G ONLY, due to ‘a different ratio‘ that iPhone 2G may not support.

That’s weird, really, ‘coz the 3rd party app SwirlyMMS has already support for MMS in the iPhone 2G for almost years. Anyway, I’m pretty sure someone will fix it for us

Apple says the iPhone OS 3.0 will come to us in ‘this summer’. Are you looking forward to its coming?

I am.

Not my words, it’s Sina’s(Chinese).

It says Foxconn is currently testing iPhone 2.75G and will import it into the Chinese mainland market in Apr,2009.

4. Contacts search goes much much faster.

Well, that’s all that i’ve found about the new iphone 2.1 OS so far. Perhaps later I’ll get more. If so, i’ll update it here.

One more thing, at this moment, there’s no jailbreak solution out for the new OS. That is to say, you do the upgrade, you lose all of those unofficial 3rd party applications installed either by Installer or Cydia. So you decide to update or not.

Update(Sep.17,2008): Significantly better battery life confirmed.

After being blocked for about a week since last Monday, iTunes Store has been unblocked and come back to live this morning.Now you can access it by either iTunes on the computer or App Store on the iphone.

Cheers!

I can install those of my favorite free apps now.

Update(Aug,24,2008): Here’s the screenshot of proof at the time of this updating.

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