Archive for June, 2009

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/3.5/ gogogog

Here it is: the Optus iPhone 3GS pricing

It also happens to include new pricing for the iPhone 3G, due to the new US$99 price point, and charges for tethering your iPhone in the 3.0 firmware.

The plans are….mediocre at best. The original 3G plans were far better value for money. Optus now charge you a $9.99 just to tether your phone (or use your phone’s data allowance as modem allowance) which is frankly, crap. I’m looking to buy an iPhone 3GS, and I will, though I have no idea which provider I will use. Vodafone have yet to announce their plans and Three say they won’t have plans till July, which I’m not waiting for. Since Vodafone and Three are partially linked now, it’s possible you won’t see Vodafone plans till July either (or maybe not). Telstra are clearly out of the question due to their rip-off prices. Then there’s also Virgin Mobile…which practically are Optus. Their plans seem to be far better value for money, but there’s been absolutely no announcement of plans as of yet.

So, what sort of pricing am I looking at? Lets see…

$59 Cap + $14 handset + $9.99 tethering = $82.99

That’s nearly as much as I’m paying for my N95 8GB (I purchased it as soon as it came out) and Optus would only give me 700MB (* for a limited time…usually only 500MB) of data, compared to my 1GB on Three. I could limit my budget:

$49 Cap + $19 handset + $9.99 tethering = $77.99

But as you can see, price difference is minimal due to the increased cost of the handset (and over 24 months, sigh). That option would give 450MB of data (* for a limited time…usually only 250MB). Which I don’t think will be enough for me.

Coupled with the fact that it’s over 24 months…is a hard decision. You could always go ahead and jailbreak the phone and hope like hell that you could “hack” the tethering option to try and get free tethering…but then you’re in violation of your contract and risk a disconnection. This hasn’t been reported yet, as you can’t jailbreak a 3GS, yet, and they aren’t out in Australia, yet. How would this work? Well, the only way Optus could tell whether or not your using tethering is to assign the modem part of your phone to a different “Access Point” (or APN). Therefore, your phone will use one APN for when you use Apps on your phone, and a different APN when you using tethering. Currently, if you jailbreak a 3G you CAN change the APN of the tethering APN to equal the phone APN. This is how users are currently using their phones with free tethering on Optus (and other Australian providers). The only possible way for Optus to track this would be by analyzing network data. For example, the phone may use a certain TTL on packets but your laptop (or whatever you’re tethering your phone to) may use a different TTL.

Which brings me to my next point. The 3GS is not yet jailbroken. I sure hope it can be, and no doubt there’s a huge hacker base out there to eventually do it, but, I’ll be disapointed if jailbreaking for the 3GS is not out by the Australian release date, June 26th. Also, I’d love to know exactly how Voice Dialing works….with the jailbreak application, Backgrounder. As far as I know, Voice Dialing is activated by holding the “home” button on the iPhone….Backgrounder also works by holding the “home” button. How will this conflict work out? Well, I guess we’ll know soon enough. Without Backgrounder, I think I may be worse off.

June 2007. The month of Project Halcyon. It’s 2009, most of the warrenties are up, what survived? what didn’t?

What died:

• SilverStone Zeus ST85ZF 850W Power Supply, DoA
• Western Digital Raptor 150GB Hard Disk, 1 DoA, 2 RMA Later
• ASUS P5K Deluxe/WiFi-AP Motherboard (details), Replaced with another faulty board, gave up and bought a Gigabyte EP-45-EXTREME
• XFX NVIDIA 8800 Ultra xXx Edition – Started to artifact, RMAed, replaced with a GTX260
• 2 (of 4) Corsair 1GB Dominator XMS2-8500C5D, gave up, replaced with OCZ RAM (damn MSY and their lack of Corsair stock)
• Logitech Z-5500D Speakers, Control Unit died, RMAed, should be replaced Monday

What didn’t die?

• Intel Core2 Quad Extreme QX6700
• Creative X-Fi Fata1ty
• LG DVD Burner
• LiteOn DVD Burner
• Gainward NVIDIA 8500GT (Fanless)
• Hitatchi Deskstar 7K1000 (1TB) x2

That’s a pretty short list of things that survived…

And that’s just the parts that I purchased for my Desktop PC. What else went wrong?

• Dell XPS-M1330’s heatsink/fan began to make loud noises, replaced next day on site
• Dell XPS-M1330’s hard disk is significantly slower and casuing BSODs, yet to be replaced
• Bang & Olufsen earphones, left ear goes very dull. Replaced for free, then the left ear goes dead. Replaced with SuperFi 5 Pros…
• Ultimate Ears SuperFi 5 pro earphone wire splits, purchased a new wire, but pulling the wire pulled out the internals of the earphones. RMAed, waiting for a new pair
• Random generic microphone, started making lots of noise, $5 replacement. Meh

If there’s one person that’s sick of parts dying, it’s me. Once get my speakers and earphones fixes, the only thing I have left to fix up is my laptop’s hard disk. How I’m going to convince Dell to replace it, as it still sort of works, is beyond me, for now.

• Flash
• Front Facing Camera
• Improved Camera
• Video Support
• Compass
• Turn-by-turn Directions (with TomTom)
  
• Downloadable Maps (with Tom Tom)
• Background Applications (?, Well, Jailbreaking partially does it)
• FM Tuner
• BT Obex (with Jailbreak)
• Voice Control
  
• Document Management (with QuickOffice)

So, I really can’t decide. It’s a pitty that the refreshed hardware didn’t include a front facing camera for iChat/3G conferencing or an FM Tuner (even though the chipset can apparently send and receive FM signals, interesting). However, with 3.0’s support for 3rd-party hardware, perhaps a small FM tuner is an option, much like the iPod addon (which doesn’t work with the iPhone or iPod Touch). There’s still the lack of decent background applications, but I’m starting to wonder if that’s less of a big deal now. Then there’s always the  lack of Flash, but, maybe it’ll come sooner, than later, due to the extended battery and improved speed (seeing as Apple complained that Flash was too CPU heavy). Oh decisions. Either way it’d be on Optus, probably a 1 year contract.