iPhone 5, a few days later and where to trade in your old iPhone
I wanted to write a followup to my last post, My iPhone 5 Review. Now that I've had my hands on it for a few days and I've been able to put it through some various tests, I can update what I've already written.
First off, I'm on iPhone 5 number 2. My first one had some issues with the anodizing on the case having some scuffs and scratches out the box. I brought it back on Monday and luckily they had one in stock to trade out for me. Since then, I've have 3 days to play around with the new one, plus 2 days with the old one. So far, this is what I've seen (in addition to the first post).
- The battery life isn't as good as the 4S. I've got a femtocell that sits in my living room, a mere 15 feet from me, so you can't tell me that it's the battery life issues due to poor cell signal that other people have seen.
- Passbook, although I praised it in my last post, doesn't work worth a shit. Granted, I've only tried to use it at a few places, but none of them have worked. That may be an issue with Passsource.com, the site that I used to create the passbook cards, but either way, it still doesn't work well.
- The headphone jack being moved to the bottom kinda sucks because I use a dash mount for my phone. Nearly all dash mounts are going to cover the bottom headphone jack.
- iMessages is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I love the fact that I can send texts from my MacBook Pro or iPad and everything shows up on the phone too. If I send from my MBP, all the information shows up on the phone and the iPad, so I can continue a conversation regardless of what's in my hand. I've wanted this feature forever, and it is easily the one I use most (This is an iOS 6 Feature).
- The panoramic pictures can get a bit wonky if you don't have a steady hand.
- Apple Maps sucks. I've used the turn-by-turn directions a few times and every single time, the route was different than the TomTom that was next to it. I find this weird because TomTom provided the data for it. One time, it tried to send me somewhere that wasn't even close to my actual destination.
- The cable. Yes, I know I said I was a fan of the new doc connector, but it has come out that Apple has installed a verification chip in the new cables, so you won't be able to buy cheep cables anymore. This sucks because I've already sold 100 of them on eBay and I've had to process 10 returns already. Those will charge, but won't move any data. Also, the USB side of the cable (on the OEM ones) has a tendency to get in the USB port. They are VERY tight and could take some force to remove.
- There's a bit of chromatic aberration in the camera that causes pictures to have a purple tint to them. This is actually quite normal in small cameras and isn't extremely noticeable until you load it into Photoshop and look at the color levels.
That's pretty much all my complaints about it. Also, if you're looking into getting one, you'll find the prices that different places are paying for trade-ins below. Amazon is by far the best bet for guaranteed money. That's who I'm using!
My iPhone 5 Review
(Jump to the tl;dr if you don't want to read the back story)
Today I got the new iPhone 5. I've been using the 4S for a little less than a year, and the 4S was the first iPhone that I had that actually made calls (the other ones were all programming platforms). I guess that's the price you pay when you're on Sprint. Before the 4S was an HTC EVO 4G and prior to that, a Treo Pro along with a Blackberry back before that. So I've had experience with iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry OS.
I decided to get the phone because I had an upgrade credit and I figured that despite the change in dock connector, I might as well get it over with now because Apple is going to be moving to Lightning on everything going forward. I'm going to have to do it sooner or later, might as well be sooner. I ordered my wife's 16GB on the first day of pre-orders and it arrived Friday afternoon. After toying with it for all of 30 seconds, I decided I needed to get one myself. After calling all over the place yesterday (launch day) and not finding a 64GB Black Sprint phone (quite a few places had white left), the Apple Store informed me they were getting a shipment in this morning. I showed up at 10am when they opened. Since I had already toyed with the phone yesterday, I had an idea of what it could do. My 4S was running iOS 6 already, so I had seen quite a few of the features available already.
tl;dr
I like the fact that it's longer. You really start to notice it after a while and you miss it when you're using apps that haven't been updated yet and are running in letterbox with the black bars on top and bottom. You don't really notice the bars because the black is good enough that it blends in.
Although I bitched and moaned about them changing the doc connecter and not making it any faster (USB 3 anyone?), I kinda like it. I thought it was going to be bigger... maybe the size of a standard USB in width, but it's only about half that. The reversible design is awesome too. The price of spare USB cables sucks.
It's weird to have an extra row of apps on the screen. You're so used to seeing 4 rows plus the bottom that 5 seems alien.
Speed: It's not faster. You may think it's faster, it may feel faster, but I had the 5 and 4S side-by-side and ran some tests. Opening apps, playing music, surfing the net... It's not any faster. Granted, if you're on LTE, your surfing will be faster than 3G, but the apps open at the same speed. That being said, it feels faster for some reason. I'm going to go with placebo effect.
It's lighter. You notice it. I put mine in an Otterbox before I left the mall, seeing as I dropped the phone before I ever made it out of the Apple store, but I hated it so it's out.
Roundest corners yet!
We're going to have to see what battery life is like. I've been dicking with it all day and the battery is at 50% still. Not bad.
That's about it. The new apps and features are pretty cool. I like Passbook because I hate carrying all those cards with me. You can create your own Passbook cards by going to Passsource.com and using their templates. I've got tons of them already, but the CVS card didn't work. They know about it and are looking for a fix.
All in all, it's your typical new Apple phone. Small, incremental changes from the last one, same outrageous price. If you get one, everyone's going to tell you how much better the Samsung Galaxy S3 is and how Android kicks Apple's ass, but they would have said that no matter what Apple did. I really wish they would have implemented NFC and went to Micro USB, but other than that, I'm happy with it.
ASA 8.3(2) is out, as is ASDM 6.3(3)
I got off my ass tonight and decided to update the ASA (yes, my licensing is correct!). I haven't had a chance to play with it a while lot (you can see it's only been up for 3 and a half hours), but it seems pretty cool. I sat down and read the release notes for 8.3(2) and there's a few things you should know. First off, you're going to need more memory. Well, if you look at mine, you can see I've maxed out what the thing will accept, so I'm perfectly safe; but chances are, you're not. Cisco has a nice table to let you know what your memory needs are. In fact, if you head over to this web page, you check out the release notes for both 8.3(1) and 8.3(2). You'll see the new features as well as caveats fixed with these versions. Now that I have informed all you guys about the upgrade, I'm going to start playing with it for a little bit before the sun comes up and kills me. Dammit! It's already 1am!
HTC EVO 4G, Froyo 2.2 Final release, Unrevoked3 and ROOT
Sprint and HTC released Froyo today as an over-the-air update to all of you out there that haven't already rooted your phone. Well, my EVO was rooted within the first 48 hours of me owning the phone. I recently dropped back to the stock unrooted image only to use Unrevoked3 to root it again.
By having a rooted phone, I can't get the Froyo update over the air, but I can still put it on my phone, and you can too. Here's how to do it.
Step 0: I'm adding this late, but if you don't want to have to search for your apps again, check out AppBrain. Install it before the upgrade, sync your phone up with the website, create a new list on the website and copy all your apps to that as a backup. After you are done with the upgrade, install AppBrain first and sync it back up. All your apps will be there waiting for you.
Step 1: You need to have a phone rooted with Unrevoked3. That's the way I know how to go about it, so go root your phone with Unrevoked3 and come back.
Step 2: Download the rooted Froyo image from here. (Thanks netarchy!!!)
Step 3: Copy the .zip file to the root of your SD card on the phone.
Step 4: Power down the phone and reboot into the boot loader. To do this, make sure the power is off and hold the volume down button while holding down the power button.
Step 5: Once in the boot loader, use the volume rocker to navigate to RECOVERY. Select it by pressing the power button. This will bring you to Clockwork.
Step 6: From ClockworkMod Recovery, select " wipe data/factory reset". Confirm it and do the reset.
Step 7: Select "install zip from sdcard", then "choose zip from sdcard".
Step 8: Navigate to and select "HTC-OTA-3.26.651.6-Final-Froyo-Rooted-Odexed-netarchy-signed.zip". Confirm the install.
Step 9: Once the install is done, navigate back to the top level of Clockwork and select "reboot system now".
And you're done! You should now reboot into Froyo. You can verify this by going to Settings -> About Phone -> Software information. You should see "Android Version 2.2" at the very top!
Once you have updated Froyo, you need to apply a couple of radio updates. You do this the same way you installed the Froyo zip file. After each install, reboot the phone and let it do a full reboot. After it's rebooted, power down and boot into the boot loader to apply the other one. Follow the instructions above (you don't have to wipe data for the radio updates) and you'll be just fine. Here are those two files:
Radio update: 2.15.00.07.28
Wimax Update 26023
Enjoy the speed of Froyo and have fun with your newly rooted phone! For the full thread on xda, click here.
-Greg
Update: I've seen a HUGE spike in traffic in the last hour (that's to be expected) and I can see that a lot of you guys are doing the upgrade (I love Woopra). Leave some comments below and let me know if everything ran OK for you.
DD-WRT and the WRT54G-TM
So I do a lot of DD-WRT how-to's. I don't know why, I guess it's just that I seem to put DD-WRT on a bunch of different routers and decide that I'm going to document what I've done. Today's how-to is for the WRT54G-TM. Let me give you a little info on the WRT54G-TM.
The WRT54G-TM (TM stands for T-Mobile) is also called the T-Mobile "Hotspot@Home" service. It allows calls to be made via T-Mobile's GSM network or via WiFi Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA), using the same telephone and phone number (a special dual-mode phone designed for the service is required e.g. Blackberry Pearl 8120). Additionally, once a call is in progress, one may transition from WiFi to GSM (and vice versa) seamlessly, as WiFi signal comes and goes, such as when entering or exiting a home or business. A special router is not needed to use the service, but the T-Mobile branded routers are supposed to enhance the telephone's battery life. This is the only known tweak to the TM version of the firmware. Obviously, none of this will be worth anything seeing as you're about to flash it with DD-WRT.
The hardware appears to be like WRT54GL however has 32MB ram and 8MB flash. Yeah, this thing is a monster. Until not that long ago the only way to upgrade this router was through a JTAG cable and header, but luckily we don't have to worry about that anymore. Let's get to it.
First off, download the software you're going to need. Here's a rar file with everything you're going to need. In the archive are 3 files:
CFE_Updater-WRT54G-TM.bin
dd-wrt.v24-13064_mega_generic.bin
tftp2.exe
The upgrade is pretty straight forward, but it has a little twist. The default LAN IP Address of the Linksys WRT54G-TM is 192.168.0.1. The default IP for everything else is going to be 192.168.1.1. A way around this is to simply setup 2 static IP addresses on your computer. I setup 192.168.1.9 and 192.168.0.9, but you can put whatever you want as long as they fall within the /24 subnet of 192.168.1.0 and 192.168.0.0.
1.) As always DO A HARD RESET BEFORE YOU FLASH FIRMWARE. This does not mean hitting the reset button and saying you are done. This means doing the 30-30-30 reset. To do a 30-30-30 reset you must push the reset button with your router powered on. Hold it for 30 seconds with the router powered on. STILL holding it, pull the power cord for 30 seconds. Still holding it, plug the router back in and continue to hold the reset button for 30 more seconds. You will have held the button for a full 90 seconds without releasing it. You will not get a password renewal page as you have stock Linksys firmware on the router still.
2.) Open a command prompt window and type ping -t 192.168.1.1 and hit enter. Leave this window open. We're going to come back to this later, but you need to keep this open.
3.) Log into the WRT54G-TM's web interface @ http://192.168.0.1 and go to the Administration Tab - Firmware Upgrade. Upload the CFE_Updater-WRT54G-TM.bin to the router.
!!!ATTENTION!!! You MUST wait at least 5 minutes after clicking the Upgrade button to allow the CFE_Updater to replace the stock CFE on the router and for it to erase the rest of the flash, otherwise you will brick your router.
A few seconds after clicking the Upgrade button the Linksys web interface will report that the upload has been successful and the power light will begin flashing on the router. Do NOT assume that the CFE replacement/flash erasing/reboot process has finished as the power light will continue to flash after it has rebooted. So there is no way to tell when it is ready for you to TFTP the DD-WRT firmware to it except when you begin to see the ping respond.
So once it is finished replacing the stock CFE and erasing the rest of the flash, the router will reboot. When the router is ready for the TFTP upload of the DD-WRT firmware, you will see the ping -t 192.168.1.1 begin to respond in the command prompt window that you opened before.
4.) Open up the TFTP utility and set it up like this:
The file there is the path to the dd-wrt.v24-13064_mega_generic.bin in the archive
Now click the Upgrade button. Once the firmware is sent to the router, it will reboot. The power light will change from flashing to solid when it is ready to be configured. The default IP will be 192.168.1.1.
If you do not see a progress bar as the tftp utility transmits the file, you may need to power cycle your router. Wait until the tftp utility has finished its attempts, then power cycle (possibly waiting a few seconds) and wait until you can ping 192.168.1.1 before clicking Upgrade again.
A few notes:
- Tornado has made it so that the router will retain it's MAC Address that is on the label on the bottom of the router with the new CFE replacement.
- Tornado is in the process of making a revert bin for those who may choose to revert back to the stock Linksys firmware (god only know why)
Many thanks goes out to Tornado, Eko, and Brainslayer for their work on this! Also, thanks to Luniz2k1 that wrote the original how-to that my lazy ass ripped off to make this one.
DD-WRT? In my WRT54G2? It’s more likely than you think!
Happy Thanksgiving kiddies! I've decided to put together a little how-to for the home users that may be throwing around the idea of upgrading the firmware on their WRT54G2 to DD-WRT. "But the WRT54G2 isn't supported by DD-WRT yet Greg!". Well, that's not exactly true. Follow these simple instructions and you'll have it done in less than 10 minutes.
You'll need the following files:
Linksys TFTP utility
VxWorks Prep
VxWorks Killer
DD-WRT Firware
I've put them all here for your convenience.
Here is another How-to with a little more information that is based off this one.
Get and install Linksys tftp.exe, set your PC to static IP, 192.168.1.10.
1. Reset the router to defaults on the Linksys Admin page, and let it reboot or manually reboot it after its finished.
2. Set your computer to a static IP of 192.168.1.10/24 and plug Ethernet cable into one of the LAN ports on the router.
3. Close all your browser windows. Start the tftp utility, set server to 192.168.1.1. Password is "admin" and browse to the VxWorksPrep-G2V1.bin file. Click Upgrade. Wait a minute for it to reboot on its own, if it doesn't, then power cycle the router manually.
4. In the tftp utility, browse to the VxWorksKiller-G2V1.bin file and click Upgrade. Wait 2 minutes for it to reboot on its own, if it doesn't, then power cycle the router manually.
5. Tftp the DD-WRT firmware to the router, use "dd-wrt.v24-10709_NEWD_micro.bin"; after successful tftp, wait 3 min for the router to finish writing new nvram defaults, etc... It should reboot on it's own at least two times, so give it the 3 min and then open a browser to http://192.168.1.1 (If it not reboots on its own, wait another 1 min, and then power cycle it).
6. When if finishes booting up...do a hard reset on the unit...let it boot again, and configure.
That's it! Now you have a lot more control over your WRT54G2 v1!
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