Expert Blogs
If there's a gotcha in this, please don't blame me. I'm too chicken to try it myself. But, the fact is, iPhone 3.0 users have figured out that it's very simple to enable tethering (that is, using your iPhone to enable your laptop to connect to the Internet wherever you can get a signal). CrunchGear tells two methods of doing it, one simply entailing pointing your iPhone's Safari at a particular website.
If you're eager to get the new iPhone 3G S but found out that you don't qualify for the lowest-priced upgrade for another month or three, I have good news for you. AT&T has announced that if you're eligible for an upgrade in July, August, or September, you no longer need to wait. You can get your new phone right away — at the lowest upgrade price.
Last year AT&T opened up their national network of Wi-Fi hotspots so that iPhone users could have free access — Starbucks, McDonalds, airports, etc. But accessing these now-free hotspots was cumbersome, involving entering your phone number, receiving a text message, then clicking a link in that message.
The website iSmashPhone has an awesome article titled "How To Use The Best 40 Features of iPhone 3.0." It not only lists these features, some which I hadn't heard about before, but often also tells you use to use them, complete with screen shots. The features include: e-mailing up to 5 photos at a time, shake to undo or redo, shake to shuffle, copy/paste, autofill username/password, Spotlight search, move an app across pages, mail search, and notes search.
The new iPhone 3G S, which will be on sale Friday, is already in high demand. According to InformationWeek, Apple and ATT&T have already sold out their allotment of pre-order units for the June 19 launch. Those who ordered after June 13 may have to wait one or two weeks to receive their iPhone.
TidBITS has a great article on the eligibility criteria for getting the lowest subsidized price for the new iPhone 3G S. While no one knows all of the criteria, the article explains that it's not simply how long you've had your phone. Another factor, for example, is your account history — and how promptly you pay your bill. Also, the article points out that their system sometimes makes mistakes, and that the only way you can be sure you're getting the lowest possible price is to call AT&T.
Tripwolf is a free app just released last week that gives you travel guides for over 500,000 destinations worldwide, combining info from professional travel guide publishers and user-contributed information. The app limits you to having three destinations on your iPhone at one time. And while the guides for major cities have a considerable amount of information, lesser destinations, such as Kansas City, Missouri, or Des Moines, Iowa, only have a basic info page and a listing of accommodations. You can access the guides online, or you can download them for offline access later.
Macworld has a great article titled "iPhone 3G S: What you need to know." It highlights the significant new features: speed, better gaming experience, camera, voice control, etc. And it answers commonly asked questions. Best of all, the article has a list of features unique to the iPhone 3G S and discusses some of them. These are features you'll get with the new phone that you won't have even if you upgrade your older iPhone with the new iPhone 3.0 software. See the list after the break:
Postcards — how quaint. Yet if you're on some distant shore and you'd like to send a quick photo taken with your iPhone to someone who doesn't have e-mail, HazelMail Postcards is the ticket. The new app, launched yesterday, instantly turns your photo into a personalized postcard, and the prints the card, puts a stamp on it, and mails it for you.
As discussed in a previous post, if you still have a lot of time on your contract, you'll pay more than $199/$299 for a new iPhone 3G S. (I did read, though, that an exception is being made for those who bought their iPhone 3G less than a month before the announcement.) If you are indeed eligible for the lowest subsidized price, or if you're going to bite the bullet and get a new 3G S even though you'll have to pay a couple hundred more, then the question arises what to do with your old iPhone. Gazelle will buy it from you. A company rep told me that in 2009 they've paid an average of $153 for used iPhones.
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