Crave

On a recent trip to the California desert, with access to both a BlackBerry Storm and an iPhone 3GS, I had a chance to test Verizon's vaunted claims about better coverage.

Anza Borrego Desert State Park, about two hours south of Palm Springs by car, is California's largest state park and covers roughly 1,000 square miles of desert. In other words, it's mostly raw, but stunningly beautiful, wilderness. Over the years, I have often made day trips (alone or with friends/family) to boulder up washes (aka arroyos) in the surrounding mountains (see photo).

Anza Borrego Desert State Park: looking east towards the Salton Sea: good coverage even here.

(Credit: Brooke Crothers)

The largest town in the area, Borrego Springs (the 2000 census put the population at about 2,500), is famous for having rock-solid 2G (and increasingly 3G) coverage for most major carriers. In fact, in the spot shown in the photo (embedded in this post), which was taken after an hour of bouldering up a wash just west of Borrego Springs, there is no hiccup in service.

But Borrego Springs, surrounded by a desert (figuratively) of dead zones, is the exception. Outside of town, in places like the outback of Coyote Canyon or in the desert east of the Shelter Valley area (part of Julian, Calif.), it's very hit or miss. ... Read More

Apple's original Newton

(Credit: Apple)

Back when CNET UK was a baby, it pitted an Apple Newton MessagePad against a Samsung Q1 UMPC in a brutal boxing match to the death. The Newton, despite being 10 years the Q1's senior, emerged victorious and the crowd--that's you lot--went wild.

Today, we've taken the reigning champion, the very same Newton, out of retirement to put it up against a brand-new contender. This time, the opposition is no Windows-tainted experiment doomed to failure. Oh no--this time it's the Newton's very own grandchild, the iPhone 3GS.

It would be a little unfair to compare the two devices on a like-for-like basis. One's a phone, for goodness sake, and one's a 400-year-old tablet thingy. CNET UK's Flora Graham and Rory Reid take a relative look at each, focusing on how innovative they were for their respective times...

Read more of "Apple Newton vs Apple iPhone at Crave UK.

You can control the iPhone's music playback within the Gokivo GPS app.

(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)

You have two main options when it comes to GPS apps for the iPhone: apps with offline maps and apps with online maps. Examples of apps with offline maps are the Navigon, the iGo My Way, TomTom, or the recently added Magellan RoadMate.

These apps are excellent for frequent users as they don't require a live data connection to work. All the maps are included with the app and downloaded to the phone. However, they tend to require gigabytes of storage space and take a long time to install. If you plan on going on a long road trip, they are good fits.

If you are a casual user, however, it's better to use an online GPS application. These applications are just a few megabytes in size and therefore take a few seconds to download to the phone via a 3G connection. This means you can immediately get one the moment you suddenly need turn-by-turn directions.

The first online GPS app for the iPhone is the AT&T Navigator, which works pretty well. Unfortunately, it's only available to AT&T customers and is rather expensive ($10 per month) for what it offers. The good news is, you now have other and more flexible choices.

Your mileage may vary, but you should be able to sell your iPhone 3G for the same price as a refurbished 3GS.

So it has come to this: My iPhone 3G is a year old and out of warranty. Its battery ain't what it used to be. And, heavens, does it seem slow sometimes.

Needless to say, I've been eyeballing a 3GS for some time, but I still don't qualify for a price break on an upgrade--not until April, 2010, according to AT&T.

So if I want to replace my 16GB 3G with a 32GB 3GS, it'll cost me $499. It'll be a warm January day in Michigan before I spend that kind of money on a phone.

Ah, but there's another option. I can get a refurbished 32GB 3GS for $349 (provided I sign on for another two years with AT&T, of course). That's a little more reasonable, and here's the kicker: Guess what a used iPhone 3G will fetch on eBay these days?

You guessed it: right around $350. (Sometimes even more.) That amazes me right down to my sneakers, but I guess people are willing to pay handsomely for an iPhone that's free and clear of AT&T and ready for jailbreaking.

So--and this is what I'm telling my wife--I'd be crazy not to do this. After all, I do write about the iPhone for a living. I should have the latest model, right? Right? Honey, put down the rolling pin!

I'm kidding--I do most of the baking in this house. But I'm not kidding when I say I can't see any downside to making this move. Even if my old crank-start 3G brought in only $300 on eBay, I consider $50 a perfectly reasonable upgrade expenditure.

Obviously your mileage may vary, like if you're moving from an original iPhone or looking at a 3GS with 16GB instead of 32GB. Heck, you might be able to come out ahead on the transaction.

Thoughts? Discuss.

For many smartphone manufacturers and carriers, the Apple iPhone is the great, white elephant in the room. Though they might not want to acknowledge it, the iPhone has certainly changed the game and for better or worse, it's become the gold standard to which a lot of people compare other touch-screen phones.

While most of the competition might be content to let their products speak for themselves, Verizon has made a bold move by single-handedly calling out the iPhone and AT&T in its iDon't and "There's a map for that" TV commercials. The ads are certainly entertaining to watch, but are they actually true? Did Motorola really create an earth-conquering smartphone in the Droid?

Well, we decided to find out in our own Motorola Droid vs. iPhone 3GS Prizefight and while we won't spoil the ending here, we will say it was our closest smartphone Prizefight ever. Check it out for yourself and be sure to take advantage of our new commenting system right on the Prizefight page to leave your remarks. Apple, Android fanboy/girl alike, we're sure you'll have plenty to say. It all goes down right here.

The cat and mouse game continues between Apple and the Dev Team, a group of guys who are passionate about freeing Apple handheld devices from the company's short leash. The Dev Team has been jailbreaking new Apple firmware for years, and it just did so again--though this time around it seems Apple is still taking the decisive lead.

The team announced Friday the availability of PwnageTool 3.13, which allows for jailbreaking and unlocking the iPhone 3GS running the latest firmware, version 3.1. Currently only a Mac version of the tool is available, but the Windows version will be out soon. (Keep in mind, however, that you download and use the PwnageTool at your own risk.)

A jailbroken iPhone can do a lot more than what Apple wants it to do.

(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)

The tool creates a custom firmware from the version 3.1 firmware released by Apple. To install it, you put the phone into recovery mode (turn it off, then plug it in while holding down the Home button) and use iTunes to restore the phone with the custom firmware (hold down the Option key while clicking on the Restore button).

The custom firmware, apart from jailbreaking, will not upgrade the baseband--the chip that connects the phone to a service provider--and therefore still allows the phone to be unlocked.

But there's a catch here. The tool only works with the iPhone 3GS that has been jailbroken with the firmware version 3.0 or 3.0.1. This means if you buy a new iPhone 3GS that already has version 3.1 on it or you have updated to version 3.1 using iTunes, there's still no way to have your phone jailbroken. There's even a rumor that there might never be one, unless a new exploit is found.

If this is true, it seems Apple has finally been able to gain significant ground in stopping the practice it claims could pose a threat to national security. And for thousands, if not millions of iPhone 3GS users who rely on jailbreaking and unlocking to use their phones with the service of their choice, this is sad news.

So far I've tested four flat-fee GPS applications for the iPhone with built-in offline maps: Navigon, iGo My Way, TomTom, and CoPilot Live. They all have pros and cons, but they share a few common shortcomings: a lack of real-time traffic, no support for text-to-speech (except for Navigon with its recent update), and outdated maps.

AT&T Navigator's real-time traffic works well most of the time, even where 3G signal is not available.

(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)

I've just finished testing a GPS navigation app that offers all of those previously unavailable features: the AT&T Navigator (version 1.2i.5). The catch? It doesn't have built-in maps (meaning you will need a working data connection to download the maps in real time) and it requires a monthly subscription of $10. The app itself is free.

This is one of the first GPS navigation applications made for the iPhone. It's actually a product by TeleNav and is also available for other cell carriers, including Sprint and Alltel.

Unlike the other aforementioned apps that take an hour or so to download using Wi-Fi, the AT&T Navigator has no built-in maps and therefore is a snap to install on the iPhone, even via a 3G or Edge connection. This makes it a perfect quick add-on when you suddenly need a GPS navigator.

The app also launches very quickly, taking just a second or two on my iPhone 3GS. When it can (more on this later), it also picks up GPS signals very fast. After about a week of use, I can say I really like the real-time traffic updates--which warn you both onscreen and audibly--and the text-to-speech features. This is especially helpful when you are in a unfamiliar town.

However, I found out that the traffic updates are available mostly for freeways only, unlike Google Maps, which offer them all the way down to street level for major cities.

Since I got my iPhone 3GS a couple of months ago, I've been wondering when I would really benefit from its highly anticipated faster 3G capability. I finally got the answer, and as it turns out, the wait is far from over.

AT&T announced Wednesday details of its rollout plans for High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) 7.2 3G technology. This is the next generation of 3G, and it offers up to 7.2Mbps data connection speeds (as opposed to the 2Mbps and 3.6Mbps of the current 3G).

(This is, of course, just the theoretical number. Typical real-world downlink and uplink speeds will likely be less than that depending on location, device, and overall traffic on the local wireless network at a given time. Nonetheless, this promises a significant boost. HSPA 7.2 is part of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) family of technologies, which include GSM, UMTS, and the Emerging LTE technology. HSPA 7.2 offers backward-compatibility, meaning it also works with existing 3G and 2G devices at the lower device-specific speed.)

According to the announcement, the new speed will be available by the end of the year. Unfortunately, it's available only in six cities in the U.S., including Charlotte, N.C.; Chicago; Dallas; Houston; Los Angeles; and Miami. This means the rest of the country, including the San Francisco Bay Area where I am, must continue to wait.

The iPhone 3GS is a HSPA 7.2-compatible smartphone from AT&T.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)

It's unclear how long the wait will be for the rest of the cities, but the company says it plans to deploy HSPA 7.2 in 25 of the nation's 30 largest markets by the end of 2010, and to reach about 90 percent of its existing 3G network footprint with HSPA 7.2 by the end of 2011.

While this is rather sad news for me, for most people it won't mean much, as chances are your phone is not compatible with the higher 3G speed. Currently, the iPhone 3GS is the only HSPA 7.2-ready smartphone I know that AT&T offers.

However, AT&T assures that it will offer more compatible devices with the rollout of HSPA 7.2. The company expects to have six HSPA 7.2-compatible smartphones in its device portfolio by the end of the year, as well as two new LaptopConnect cards.

The rollout of HSPA 7.2 is part of AT&T's plan to invest some $18 billion this year, of which more than two-thirds is going toward broadband and wireless. Key projects of this investment include, in AT&T's words:

CoPilot Live's map view could use some cleanup and suffers some lag when switching between the vertical and horizontal positions.

(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)

CoPilot Live is the fourth turn-by-turn GPS application with offline built-in maps for all of North America that I have on my iPhone 3GS. After Navigon, iGo My Way, and TomTom, I thought there would be nothing new I could find in a navigation app. I was wrong.

CoPilot Live offers a quick way to switch between modes of travel, which include auto, RV, motorcycle, biking, and walking. This makes the app ideal for getting around town, especially, say, if you need to change from driving a car to walking. The Navigon app offers a similar option, but you have to dig pretty deep into the menu to change your travel mode. With CoPilot you can do this anytime, even in the middle of an existing route, just via a few taps.

CoPilot Live offers a quick way to switch between different modes of travel.

(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)

Another nice thing about CoPilot is the Live Services option, which includes Live Weather and Live Link. Live Weather lets you see local weather or weather in a different city. Live Link connects CoPilot Live users, allowing them to send messages or share locations. I wasn't able to try this out as I was the only one I know who used the app during the testing.

The Live Services option, of course, requires an Internet connection and is only available when there's a cellular or Wi-Fi signal. Unfortunately, the most anticipated feature that also requires an Internet connection, the real-time traffic option, is not yet available, though there's a placeholder for it within the Live Services section of the app. According to ALK Technologies, maker of the CoPilot Live, this service will be added via an update that's coming out by the end of the month and costs another $20 per year, on top of the current $35 flat fee for the app. No other flat-free iPhone GPS apps with offline maps currently offer real-time traffic.

Also missing is the text-to-speech feature, where the app would read out the name of the street. Nonetheless, the app has a wide selection of voices for you to choose from. It includes voices of 29 languages, each with a few options of accents, both male and female. It's probably the most versatile GPS app for the iPhone in terms of languages it supports.