Alert Ringtones

It didn’t take long for expert hackers to bypass iPhone’s activation requirement with AT&T.

A Norwegian hacker Jon Lech Johansen, has found a way to use the iPhone’s wireless web surfing application and iPod features without the need to first activate the phone. What this means is that in essence, you have free internet access after purchasing your iPhone. The iPhone is sold as a non-activated device, with all features disabled. Unless users activate their phone, it doesn’t hold much value.

Many want an iPhone to use the iPod and WiFi features without the need of entering a 2-year contract with AT&T. Jon’s iPhone hack shows on his blog the exact steps required and what programs are needed to complete the hack. I wont list them here for the sake of upsetting Steve Jobs.

Jon is only 23 years old and has a full write up in Wikipedia. He has already been taken to court twice for his involvement with DeCSS, a computer program capable of decrypting content. Both times his innocence was proven.

Mobile Phone Blows Up

Oh my, I hope this doesn’t happen again. A factory worker was reported to have had his mobile phone blow up this week killing him on the spot. The explosion was so fierce that it broke his ribs with rib fragments piercing his heart. The Motorola phone was in his shirt pocket and apparently blew up due to high temperatures. Don’t be too concerned though if you’re using a Motorola phone. The guy that died was actually using a fake Motorola battery. If you’re using the real McCoy, then keep fingers crossed that this wont happen.

This is not the first time a mobile phone has blown up due to using fake batteries. In 2004, a Kyocera mobile blew up burning the users hand when the battery acid spewed out. In China, over 10 million fake batteries are made each year, with many of them finding their way to the western world.

Since 2004 Nokia has been applying hologram labels to its batteries to help users distinguish from a fake battery. Don’t risk your life by using a fake battery! Unfortunately many will still buy a fake battery over an authentic one due to the costs. Authentic batteries sell typically 7 times the price of a fake one.

For those that don’t know, YouTube Mobile was released back in May of this year. The idea is to get users to upload funnier content from their mobile phones whilst on the road. You no longer need to be at a PC to browse or upload videos to YouTube. However, YouTube Mobile wont suit all phones or phone plans. You will need:

1. A mobile that supports RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol)
2. A service carrier that supports video streaming

Check your phone’s manual and speak with your service carrier to confirm whether you are ready to go. Or even easier, visit m.youtube.com from your phone’s browser and see what happens.

Beware of Costs Though
Whilst YouTube doesn’t charge you anything, your service carrier may charge you for data downloads. YouTube Mobile is quite a data intensive application that could soon eat into your back pocket. I suggest subscribing to a flat-rate data plan.

Uploading
The uploading process is simple. Members simply create a YouTube Mobile profile, receive a unique email address and then send videos from their mobile to this address. To keep you from wondering, YouTube will then send you an SMS upon successful upload.

Hopefully as time goes, we will then see funnier and more on the spur video footage.

Just a day after writing about a cheaper iPhone, I’m sorry to say that you’ll have to hold your breath a little longer. JPMorgan stock analyst Kevin Chang who made the initial findings was shot down today (not literally) by three of his colleagues claiming that he was a little too excited. Chang’s speculation helped Apple stock’s climb to a record high.

Most likely there will be a 3G model available before any low-end model comes out. The possibility of a low-end iPhone probably wont come anytime soon. It took Apple two years before they released a low-end iPod mini. In fact, it wouldn’t be sound business sense to undercut a new product with a cheaper version only months after.

It’s not the first time a rumour has affected Apple stocks. Back in May, tech blog Engadget reported that the iPhone will be delayed, wiping off 4 billion from Apple’s market value.

Hold on! A cheaper iPhone could be only months away. As with anything new, we can expect to pay high prices. Give things a few months, and that’s when the real price value is typically applied to products. And for all those who rushed out and bought themselves an iPhone, well at least you had the bragging rights to it for a while.

Apple is now mulling over a cheaper ultra-slim iPhone version that could be released before Christmas and priced below $300. This is bad news for Nokia and Motorola whom primarily service the cheaper end of the market.

Last July 5th, Apple filed a patent for a new hand-held device that features a scroll wheel similar to that of the iPod nano. I know speculation can really bite you in the bum, but if you’re about to buy yourself an iPhone, I suggest holding off for a few months.

Apple realises that the majority (85% to be exact) of mobile phone users tend to spend $100 or less on a mobile phone.

Apple declined to comment on my inquiries.

The mobile phone was once JUST a humble mobile phone. Then in no time, it went to a triad of entertainment options:

• Audio
• Games
• Video

And now we see the next generation phones offering even more:

• Audio
• Games
• Video
• INTERNET
• TV

Some experts say that we now spend more than 80% of our time using mobile phones for entertainment rather than chatting. The new iPhone would surely make this figure rise too.

Cell Phone TV

The ultimate in cell phone entertainment is video. Whilst many would tell you that TV on a cell phone is ludicrous due to the small screen size, slow 12~15 frames per second, dropouts and whatnot, manufacturers are still heading towards making this a standard feature. Nearly every survey conducted, cell phone users are telling us that TV on a cell phone is plain stupid. Manufacturers do not care though – perhaps they will beat our expectations. Already in Japan we are seeing waterproof cell phones with inbuilt TV. The idea is to watch it in the bathtub! And Nokia’s N92 cell phone is already shaping the future for some exciting new trends in entertainment.

Today brings us to the end of our first week of blogging here at Alert Ringtones. I hope readers have been somewhat happy with the content and quality I have brought you. If you would like to see certain topics discussed, then post your comments. I have a growing list of topics and will try to get through 1 every weekday. Weekends I reserve for time off and to chill out.

I’ve been quite surprised at how easy it has been to write blog topics on the cell phone industry. Probably because of my passion to these gadgets which now rank as the most quickly embraced gadget in the world. From a decade ago, there were 34 million cell phones in the USA. Today, there are 203 million! Now that’s getting close to almost one cell phone for each person in the USA.

Enjoy the weekend!

The iPhone was the first cab of the ranks showcasing the future of mobile phones. And only a few days later came another touch-screen smart phone thanks to HTC – a Taiwanese company that has been around for more than 10 years. There’s no mistake that 2007 has brought a huge change in the way we use mobile phones. Touch-screens are here to stay sending the push-button experience one step closer to extinction.

And if you can’t wait for the iPhone to be released in your country, then the good news is that HTC have already rolled out their smart-phones in Australia (just days after the iPhone release in the US). The US had the luxury of having the iPhones first, and if Apple don’t speed up delivery times in other countries, they will surely loose market share to companies like HTC.

The attached HTC smart-phone claims not to be an iPhone copycat as it has been in development now for 2 years. Here’s what you can expect:

• Slightly smaller than the iPhone and about 2mm thicker.
• 2.8 inch LCD screen compared to iPhone’s 3.5 inch screen.
• Powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6 Professional operating system.
• 1GB removable micro-SD storage card compared to iPhone’s 8GB. Interestingly enough, both phones have the same retail price.

So there you have it folks, mark 2007 as an inflection point in the mobile phone industry. If you find yourself looking for a new phone, best bet would be to hold off a few months until such touch-screen phones become more widespread on the market.

It didn’t take long for the iPhone skin to be ripped and ported to other devices. Steve Jobs and Co. are irate seeing the iPhone skin on the Windows mobile and palm-based smart phones. If the forums hosting the iPhone skins (brighthand and xda developers) don’t remove them, then Apple will most likely commence proceedings. Lawyers are already rubbing their hands.

These skins don’t offer an functionality, but just portray the Apple trademark on non-Apple devices. Whilst it is illegal to use intellectual rights without permission, having the iPhone user-interface (UI) on non-Apple products just ads to the hype and helps with more free promotion of the iPhone. Really, the guys at Apple should be ecstatic about it all.

Bloggers at Risk

Apple is flexing their muscles rather a bit too much by also sending letters from lawyers to journalists who have reported on the fact that these skins are available. Let’s hope we don’t get any letters here.

This is not the first time that Apple is attacking individual bloggers for revealing trade secrets. A lawsuit was made in 2004 claiming that three bloggers had revealed trade secrets of an unreleased Apple product. Apple won the case, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the organisation representing bloggers, placed an appeal and later got the ruling overturned. It was ruled that bloggers are not professional journalists protected by the First Amendment rights. Apple then dropped the case rather than taking it to the Supreme Court.

Before I continue, the spelling is MOSQUITO not MISQUITO! Believe it or not, many refer to it as a misquito ringtone. Across the popular search engines, there are over 100 daily searches on this incorrect spelling. There should be no excuses nowadays since Firefox has an inbuilt spell checker. Don’t ask me about the other web browsers because I don’t use them. Firefox rocks!

So what is all the fuss with these mosquito ringtones? Well for starters, it’s a way for kids to get around having to turn off their mobile’s in class. These high-frequency ringtones are only audible to youngsters, so teachers and adults over the age of 30 wont be able to hear them when your phone rings. The ability to hear high-frequency sounds drop as we get older, and this is the reason behind the popularity of mosquito ringtones. When we hit 30, the most we can hear is 15.8khz – an average of course. You just may be superman and have better hearing than most. If you go to our old front page (** sorry, link removed, as it’s way old and now deleted **), you can see a link to a sample mosquito ringtone.

My results are below. Find out which ringtones you can hear!