iPhone Firmware » iPhone Tips

iDongle – Standalone Tethered Booting For Your Jailbroken iPhone

Andy — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:22:17 +0000

The new iPhone 3GS models with updated ROM do not allow users to perform the traditional full jailbreak. As a result, there may be instances when the user may be required to perform a tethered jailbreak everytime their iPhone crashes or reboots. This c...

DSstyles announces Cubical Series Swarovski Crystal iPhone Case

admin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:00:00 +0000

DSstyles today announced a new series of Swarovski Crystallized iPhone Case, the Cubical Series. Each Case featuring with the excellent combination of flat back round and flat back square Swarovski crystals. The series combines these crystals to bring new visual effect. These New Swarovski Crystallized iPhone Cases will definitely be the trend for 2010 for any Swarvoski Crystallized Cases.

Apple patent: use your iPhone as an electronic “iKey”

Chris Rawson — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:30:00 +0000

Filed under: Rumors, Odds and ends, iPhone

The Daily Telegraph reports that a new Apple patent has surfaced which could potentially allow the iPhone, or another Apple portable, to act as a sort of electronic key. The potential applications are as limitless as the number of things locked by old-school metal keys. It could be used for cars, offices, homes, or lockers. Basically, anything that could have an electronic receiver mounted to it in place of a metal tumbler-style lock could then use an iPhone as a key.

While Ars Technica notes that "the patent application itself merely describes a unique way of using motion detection to generate an input, such as turning a virtual combination lock-style dial," the patent itself, as reported by the Telegraph, says that the device could be "any suitable electronic device such as a portable media player, personal data assistant or electronic lock" that could open up any number of physical lock types just by communicating wirelessly.

Continue reading Apple patent: use your iPhone as an electronic "iKey"

Apple patent: use your iPhone as an electronic "iKey" originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Toggle Between Last Two iPhone Apps Running On Your iPhone With LastApp

Andy — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:12:45 +0000

Applications like ProSwitcher and Multifl0w have offered jailbroken iPhone users the ability to multitask between applications. However, if you have to toggle between just two iPhone apps, here is an application that will make the process much simpler....

InfiniBoard – iPhone App To Enable Vertical Scrolling On SpringBoard (video)

Andy — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 18:25:15 +0000

Remember Infinidock - a nifty tool for jailbroken iPhone users that enables horizontal scrolling on the iPhone dock? Now chpwn, the developer of Infinidock and other jailbreak iPhone apps like ProSwitcher has released another useful application that wi...

DIY Tutorial: How To Restore The Casing Of A Scratched iPhone

Andy — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 20:40:30 +0000

I love the look of the shiny back case of the iPhone but it only takes a drop or a few weeks of rough use for your iPhone to get scratches all over its surface and lose its shiny luster. If this has already happened to you, here is a...

Custom iPhone Stands Made Completely With Cutlery [iPhone Accessory]

Andy — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:24:13 +0000

A custom car mount for your iPhone, a DIY stylus and DIY iPhone camera zooming lens. Think you've seen it all? Here is something that will beat them all in the cuteness factor - an iPhone stand made completely out of cutlery. ForkedUpArt, a North Salt ...

revMobile: write iPhone and iPad apps without knowing Objective C

Steven Sande — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:00:00 +0000

Filed under: Developer, iPhone, iPad

One of the biggest barriers to entry for people who want to develop their own iPhone apps is the requirement to actually know how to program in Objective C. Runtime Revolution (AKA RunRev) has been developing and marketing a HyperCard-like development environment since 1997. To quote the company's site, "Rev uses plain-English words and phrases for most of its operations, eliminating the obscure symbols and complicated structures required of other programming languages. Rev is easy to learn and use, requires 90% less code, and can deliver a 10-fold increase in productivity over traditional languages."

What does this have to do with developing for iPhone and iPad? The answer is simple -- the company is stretching the development environment to the mobile computing market with a new product, currently in pre-alpha, called revMobile. For developers who want to market their products to the widest possible range of mobile devices, revMobile not only supports the iPhone and iPad world, but Nokia's Maemo platform and Windows Mobile 7 as well. Since apps can also run on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux, this represents a very robust development environment. The video at the top of this post shows a simple game being conceptualized, designed, and written in a little over 3 hours.

RunRev has always been compiled at runtime, but for the purposes of getting RunRev apps into the App Store, revMobile apps are going to be compiled at build time so that a single executable is available for submission. You can find out more about revMobile, including pricing and availability, at the RunRev website.

revMobile: write iPhone and iPad apps without knowing Objective C originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sausage stylus comes to the US

Michael Grothaus — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:00:00 +0000

Filed under: Accessories, iPhone

It was a little less than a month ago when news broke of a South Korean company called CJ Corporation noticing a sharp increase in sales of their frozen sausages. CJ did some digging around and it turned out the good people of South Korea were using their sausages as iPhone styluses. Someone who was sick of taking their gloves off in the cold Korean winter to use their iPhone found out that the sausages were electrostatically compatible with the iPhone's touch screen, and nearly as effective as using a human finger.

South Korea is one of the most technologically advanced countries on the planet. Anything they're doing, we want. And now we can have it. CaseCrown, a company that sells iPhone cases, has acquired a large shipment of the Korean sausages. They are on sale for a limited time for only 99 cents (down from $3.99). So if you don't mind carrying a mixture of dubious quality meat around in your pocket and live in a cold area, the iPhone Sausage Stylus may be just right for you! The sausage stylus is compatible with all iPhone and iPod touch models.

Sausage stylus comes to the US originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPhone dev center down today

Michael Rose — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:55:00 +0000

Filed under: Developer, iPhone, SDK, iPad

Developers who try to log into the iPhone dev center or iTunes Connect this afternoon are being greeted with the traditional yellow sticky note or the Sorry! note above, indicating that some sort of update effort is underway. With the on-again, off-again release of the 3.2 beta 3 version of the SDK in late February, and the unconfirmed-but-likely launch of the iPad on March 26th, no surprise that there are fixes and finish to take care of on the site.

When it comes back up, we'll let you know; if you spot anything of consequence when it does, please let us know.

iPhone dev center down today originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The most awesome iPhone stand ever made out of cutlery

Steven Sande — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:00:00 +0000

Filed under: Accessories, Humor, iPhone, iPod touch

That headline is probably a bit of an overstatement, since this is probably the only iPhone stand made out of cutlery. ForkedUpArt of North Salt Lake, Utah, is actually selling two different stands. ForkHead, who you see standing at attention at your right, and SpoonHead, ForkHead's smarter brother.

tweetmeme_url = "http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/04/the-most-awesome-iphone-stand-ever-made-out-of-cutlery/" tweetmeme_source = "tuaw"

Sold through our favorite iPhone accessory store, Etsy.com, the ForkedUpArt iPhone stands can be customized if you want, and according to the artist, "I'm making these guys as fast as I can."

How much will one of these unique items put you back? About US$20, plus shipping. That's less expensive than some of the fancy-schmancy stands you can buy through more traditional sources, and let's face it -- these stands are really cool.

[via iPhone Savior]

The most awesome iPhone stand ever made out of cutlery originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Push Doctor Fixes Push Notification Issue On Hacktivated iPhone For Free

iPhonehacks — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 23:27:54 +0000

One of the known issues with a hacktivated iPhone running iPhone OS 3.0 or later is that the Push Notification feature doesn’t work. The iPhone Dev Team had released a fix to resolve the issue back in July, but it had a major flaw. There is finally s...

The App Everyone is Talking About: A Guide to Marketing an iPhone App

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:10:00 +0000

David Wooldridge, author of the newly released "The Business of iPhone App Development: Making and Marketing Apps that Succeed," offers some questions directed to iPhone app developers. These questions are a great place for developers to start considering marketing during the app development process. Without marketing to gain the necessary publicity and exposure, a killer app may simply get lost in the relentless stream that floods the App Store on a daily basis.

Guide: Push Doctor Fix for Push Notifications on Hacktivated iPhone 3.1.3

Taimur Asad — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:08:56 +0000

If you have activated your iPhone through an unauthorized carrier (aka hacktivation) on iPhone 3.x, then your Push Notifications functionality in most cases will be broken. Even if you have tried getting it to work through “PushFix” via iPhoneil available in Cydia, it wont work as that fix uses a single shared certificate for all users who have installed it. This causes battery drainage and huge use of cellular data access.

iPhone Tips: How To Extend Your iPhone’s Battery Life

iPhonehacks — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 01:41:44 +0000

Apple claims that iPhone 3GS offers up to 5 hours of talk time on 3G (12 hours on 2G), 5 hours of Internet use (9 hours on Wi-Fi), 10 hours of video playback or 30 hours of audio playback and finally 300 hours of standby time. However, you might have...

TigerText iPhone App Lets You Self-Destruct Your Text Messages

Andy — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:35:59 +0000

Those text messages that you write to your friend cursing your boss or raving about the girl next door have a much longer life span than you think it does. Text messages typically reside on the carrier's server for anywhere between two days to two week...

Gull1hack iPhone Jailbreak Tool is Fake by Design

Taimur Asad — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 10:40:07 +0000

Gull1hack and Blacksn0w V2 by the Gull1hack team has now been confirmed as fake by the iPhone Dev-Team. A Release Candidate version of Gull1hack was released the other day which was supposed to jailbreak all iPhone and iPod touch devices on the new bootrom untethered.

Adafruit shows off the Square dongle for credit card payments on the iPhone

Mike Schramm — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:00:00 +0000

Filed under: Hardware, Software, iPhone, App Store

Adafruit is one of a few companies that has been chosen to test the Square dongle that automagically takes credit card payments on any iPhone. Even though we got to see it in action at Macworld, I think every look we can get at this thing is worth it, considering just how darn revolutionary it seems. The video on Flickr shows just how quick and easy it is -- just swipe the card, and sign with your finger on the iPhone's screen.

I haven't bothered carrying cash for a few years now, and something like this only makes it easier to not only take payments for vendors, but for me to pay. Hot dog guy needs a few bucks but doesn't have a landline connection to run a credit card on? No worries, just swipe and done. Want to give to the Salvation Army guy over the holidays but don't have any money left in the wallet? Just swipe and done. Word has it that the transaction cut will be 2.9% (though the video above shows 3.5% -- maybe you can change the percentage depending on circumstances), but odds are that in most cases, the convenience will be well worth it.

The whole program's still in beta, but it probably won't be long before you'll see (and maybe even use) one of these out in the wild.

[Via Engadget]

Adafruit shows off the Square dongle for credit card payments on the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Smoother iPhone browsing with VanillaSurf

Steven Sande — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:00:00 +0000

Filed under: iPhone, App Store, iPod touch, App Review

While most iPhone and iPod touch users make do with the built-in Mobile Safari web browser, there are a number of alternative browsers that offer features that didn't make it into Safari. All of these alternative browsers have one thing in common -- they are all based on MobileSafari as a result of Apple's policies. What the other browsers bring to the table are features like full-screen browsing, different ways of organizing tabs, and ad blocking.

Many of the alternative browsers have passed by my iPhone home screen at least once before being summarily dismissed, but there is one that has actually been getting some use lately; bitStorm's VanillaSurf. The free browser, which is now at version 2.1, offers features that seem more at home on a laptop or desktop machine than on a smartphone.

Launching VanillaSurf for the first time brings up a blank screen with the familiar address bar at the top and an unfamiliar toolbar at the bottom. The toolbar sports eight icons -- back, forward, settings, downloads, actions, bookmarks, tabs, and full-screen. The back and forward (or previous and next) icons provide their usual functionality, while the settings icon is a portal into some more useful items.

Continue reading TUAW review: Smoother iPhone browsing with VanillaSurf

TUAW review: Smoother iPhone browsing with VanillaSurf originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Find my iPhone rescues two phones at Busch Gardens

Mel Martin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 19:00:00 +0000

Filed under: Odds and ends, iPhone, MobileMe

It was like something out of CSI. The St. Petersburg Times is reporting that the snatched iPhones incident began when a mom and her stepdaughter were getting aboard the SheiKra roller coaster at Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida. The theme park provides unlocked storage bins for people to put things in so they don't fly away during the ride, so their two iPhones (in purses) were dropped in. Probably not a very safe thing to do, but that's what they did.

When the 13-year-old girl cut her lip during the ride, the pair was about to rush off to a first aid station forgetting about their possessions, but before they could get back to the storage bin someone snatched the purse with the iPhones inside.

The police and park security were called, and then the 13-year-old crime victim remembered MobileMe. In an employee break room, the teenager logged into the family MobileMe account using an officer's laptop.

The officers dispatched another squad car go to the displayed location, when a man sitting outside an apartment building hurriedly concealed a cellphone when the officers approached.

You guessed it. He had one of the stolen iPhones, the other one was inside the apartment. Police reports say Richard Emerson, 25, admitted the theft and is charged with grand theft. He's out on bail, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement says it is his 19th arrest.

It took 45 minutes from the time of the theft to the arrest of the man. MobileMe may not be for everybody, but the Find my iPhone feature is getting a pretty good track record. It's probably a good idea to emphasize that recovering stolen property is a police matter, not something you should do on your own.

[Thanks to Dan for the tip]

Find my iPhone rescues two phones at Busch Gardens originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Flash Developer Explains Why Touchscreen Devices like iPad, iPhone Cannot Use Flash

Andy — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:01:51 +0000

There has been a lot of discussion lately over the lack of Flash support in iPhone OS. Most of the arguments presented have been about the technology being buggy, crash-prone and resource intensive. Steve Jobs has also called it a "dying technology". H...

How To Set Up A More Secure Passcode For Your iPhone Or iPod Touch

admin — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 16:28:18 +0000

If you are the kind who is very particular about security, you might have realized that the four digit passcodes for unlocking your iPhone is not fool-proof enough. Fortunately, it is possible to set a more secure alpha-numeric passcode with the help o...

Review: Reiner Knizia’s Poison a fun way to kill (a few minutes)

Sebastian Blanco — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:00:00 +0000

Filed under: iPhone, iPod touch, App Review

One of the criticisms launched against prolific game designer Reiner Knizia is that his games get their the theme pasted on. This means that whatever the players are trying to accomplish through the game's mechanics really doesn't have much to do with the graphics and the box description. He has at least 200 published games - and might have another one thought up by the time you're done reading this review - so we understand that they can't all be perfect matches.

Knizia's card game Poison, first released for the table top in 2005, is a perfect example of this. The game could almost be played with standard cards - the deck includes three colors/suits (each with three 1s, two fours and one each of 2, 5 and 7) and eight "poison" cards worth 4 each - but the company that released the game, Playroom Entertainment, printed it with a magician/warlock/witch theme. It was later rebranded and slightly tweaked to include donuts as the game Baker's Dozen in 2008.

The iPhone and iPod touch version of the game (US$2.99) uses the earlier Poison graphics, and it's a gorgeous looking little translation. The app was released 2009 by Griptonite Games and we honestly wish they'd have updated a few nagging items by now. Read on to find out what is good, and what could be improved, in this clever card game.

Gallery: Reiner Knizia's Poison

Continue reading Review: Reiner Knizia's Poison a fun way to kill (a few minutes)

Review: Reiner Knizia's Poison a fun way to kill (a few minutes) originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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F0recast Released for iPhone 3.1.3 Jailbreak Info

admin — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 13:29:36 +0000

The guy behind Sn0wbreeze – the PwnageTool for Windows has just released a new tool dubbed f0recast for iPhone OS 3.1.3 firmware. This is a nifty little tool which enables iPhone 3GS, 3G, 2G and iPod touch 1G/2G/3G users to know all they need to know about unlocking and jailbreaking their iPhone and iPod touch. F0recast (download [...]

iPhone battery dead? In a squeeze you can charge it with Jaffa oranges

admin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:00:00 +0000

Filed under: Video, How-tos, Cult of Mac, iPhone

This may be strange -- in fact very strange -- but Imperial Leisure, a marketing and social media firm, has created an advertisement using an iPhone, to promote the sale of Jaffa oranges. They found that with a lot of rods and cable you can use orange power, or rather the power of 2380 Jaffa oranges, to power an iPhone. Talk about thinking outside of the box, or in this case, the crate.

[via Engadget and Macenstein]

Click on the Read More link to view the ad.

Continue reading iPhone battery dead? In a squeeze you can charge it with Jaffa oranges

iPhone battery dead? In a squeeze you can charge it with Jaffa oranges originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 17 Feb 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fix iPhone EXIF rotation from the command line

admin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Filed under: UNIX / BSD, iPhone

My iPhone is the camera that i use more than any other, but there's one thing that has consistently annoyed me about it. Apple uses an EXIF tag to rotate images. This can be a problem when you share images with others. Safari will rotate the image correctly, but no other browser will.

Adding to the trouble is that Mail.app and the Finder will also "auto-correct" the rotation, so it can be hard to tell which images need to be "fixed" and which don't.

You could use the '/usr/bin/sips' program (sips --rotate 90 picture.jpg) if you knew which pictures need to be corrected, and which direction they need to be rotated (clockwise or counter-clockwise). But I wanted something that would, as they say, "just work."

(I also wanted something I could use on my webserver, which runs Linux, but that's really a side issue.)

My attempts to find a solution on Google were fruitless, so I asked on Twitter. Michael Baltaks pointed me to jhead, which describes itself as a "Exif Jpeg header manipulation tool" which includes the source code as well as pre-built binaries for OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, and even Windows.

To fix a picture named "image.jpg" just type "jhead -autorot image.jpg" and you will see "Modified: image.jpg". You can fix all JPGs in the current folder using "jhead -autorot *.jpg" and it will only change the images which have the EXIF tag.

Note: You might be tempted to use the "-norot" argument, which will "zero out" the rotation tag, but it will not have the desired effect, and (even worse) once you have used the "-norot" you can't use "-autorot" -- trust me, I learned that one the hard way.

Fix iPhone EXIF rotation from the command line originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 17 Feb 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Shazam adds Last.FM integration to iPhone apps

admin — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Filed under: iPhone

Shazam is one of my favorite iPhone apps, and it was one of the first I downloaded from the App Store. Every time I'm in a store or listening to the radio and hear a song I like but don't know, I let Shazam listen. The free version is still in the store, but just recently they've also released Shazam Encore and (Shazam)RED, two paid versions of the app that offer up more functionality (the RED version gives part of the purchase price to charity). Among that new functionality is Last.FM integration: now, you can apparently send any songs you "tag" straight over to the Last.FM app (assuming you have it installed), and make up a radio station directly from there. Pretty slick, and the iTunes description for both apps says that Pandora works as well.

Unfortunately, reviews for the paid version say that the app still includes ads (a weird choice for a paid app), and there are a few reviews that even say the app crashes occasionally (though I've never experienced the problem of it not finding a song for me -- even with rarities and b-sides, it's always come through). But it's a real shame that reviewers are having problems -- while Shazam definitely needs to find a way to monetize its service, failing to provide a premium experience on a premium app obviously isn't the way to do it. Still, if you made the jump to the paid app already, or use Last.FM and/or Pandora often, it might be worth a look.

Shazam adds Last.FM integration to iPhone apps originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple secures iPhone trademark

admin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Filed under: Apple Corporate, Hardware, Apple Financial, Apple, iPhone

Apple has expanded its trademark on "iPhone" with the inclusion of the US Patent and Trade Office's (USPTO) "category 28," which reads as "handheld unit for playing electronic games." Other USPTO categories included in the trademark are number 9 (mobile phone and digital audio player) and number 38 (electronic data-transmitting device). Note that Apple filed to include category 28 way back in December of 2007, so don't take it as a sign that the next gen iPhone will be a gaming monster.

This news is no great shakes, but an example of Apple covering its bases. For example, back in 2002, Apple applied to register the iPhone trademark in China, but that application was limited to computer hardware and software, not mobile phones. Earlier this year, Apple took control of the "i-phone" trademark in China (yes, "i-phone") from manufacturer Hanwang Technology, who briefly sold a device with that name in 2003 (three years before the iPhone's introduction).

[Via Engadget]

Apple secures iPhone trademark originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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DIY iPhone Stylus accessory (do it yourself)

admin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:46:14 +0000

The iPhone has revolutionized finger based touch screens but when it’s extremely cold and you’re wearing gloves, the use of finger based touch screens doesn’t seem very practical. You could always buy an iPhone accessory like Pogo Stylus or use i...

AppSync for iPhone 3.1.3 Jailbreak Firmware

admin — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 23:31:28 +0000

AppSync patches MobileInstallation file on iPhone OS 3.x which is needed in order to install .ipa files manually without using iTunes. I have been asked repeatedly, both by email and in comments about the latest version of AppSync which is compatible to work with the newly released iPhone 3.1.3 firmware. So as it turned out, the older [...]