Muthukumar Rajamani : Interaction Designer/Manager, Bangalore » Product Design

Unlocked Apple iPhone

Muthu Online — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:09:29 +0000




Just unlocked my brand new Apple iPhone with a firmware version of 1.1.4
Unlocking iPhone for FREE: 

Downloaded and installed the free unlocking software Ziphone version 3.0 (30th of March 2008), from www.ziphone.org 
Connected iPhone to my laptop
Disabled iTunes and related daemons & services.
Uninstalled Apple update program/li>
  
Ran ZiPhoneGUI.exe software and clicked on "Do it all" button

  (This would jailbreak, activate and unlock iPhone. It will also downgrade the bootloader if it's v4.6.)
Scrolling Text appeared on the iPhone and after 10 minutes, the system hung!

  Last known system response was "Loading zibri.dat." 
PANICKED

Clicked on "Stop Process" and then clicked on" Do it all" button. Still nothing happened 
Disconnected the iPhone from the laptop and still it wouldn't shutdown. 
I rebooted my system still nothing happenned.
Read the Trouble Shooting document and PANICKED even more. 


Venky, my friendly neighbourhood AJAX expert offered to help and connected the iPhone to a Mac. Nothing happenned.
Then we figured how to restart the iPhone by holding the "Home" button and "Sleep" button together for 7 seconds!
iPhone got rebooted. All systems functioned normally! 
Removed the SIM card holder using a paper clip and inserted my "Airtel" Sim card. And lo!, ZiPhone really unlocked my iPhone!   

 
iPhone Unlock Demo on YouTube ZiPhone 2.5 

  

 
ZiPhone GUI

 
Some initial observations

Very impressed with the  iPhone's package design.  
Displaying progress indicator on Safari's address bar is a cool idea. 
Thanks to the Accelerometer, browsing websites, reading blogs, viewing photos, YouTube videos, maps on a mobile never felt so good!
Kept looking for a "close icon" for all the apps. Took a while to get used to the "Home" button
It was a smooth experience flipping through photos, zooming into a blog  et all
On-screen keypad was initially a lil' difficult to use. Ended-up pressing the wrong keys

To be continued...

Apple iPhone runs on OS x

Muthu Online — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 05:24:08 +0000

Phone combines three products
— a revolutionary mobile phone
- a widescreen iPod with touch controls,
- a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching — into one small and lightweight handheld device. More here > and here

Rack Mount Blitz Video from Sun!

Muthu Online — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 06:32:11 +0000

The video showcases a new rack mounting solution for Sun 1U/2U products. Also showcased are my talented ( or slightly crazy?) colleagues from the UCD group! The motto at Sun is “Kick Butt, Have Fun!”

Whats new on Firefox 2!

Muthu Online — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 11:29:45 +0000

I was checking the Release Notes of Firefox 2 and here are some of the cool new features of this next generation browser.

Tabbed browsing :
By Default, all new links will be opened in a ‘New Tab’ and not in a ‘New Window’
Every Tab gets an individual Close Button
When ‘Power Users’ open up ‘n’ number of Tabs, buttons with forward and backward arrows will appear to help them NAVIGATE between these Tabs.

Search :
The new Search Suggestions feature dynamically updates a drop-down list of suggested search terms as users enter text into the search bar for Google, Yahoo! or Answers.com search engines.

Spell Check Inline spell checking in Firefox 2 automatically checks for spelling errors and suggests corrections as users interact with Web sites, bringing a common desktop feature to the Web.

Customization :
With thousands of add-ons that enhance the browser’s functionality and features, Firefox lets users personalize their Web browsers to fit their interests and style.

Download FireFox 2 and

Motorola PEBL

Muthu Online — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 17:27:35 +0000

Update : I couldnt resist the temptation. Got it and luvin its style! The PEBL designer has cracked the “dual hand” usability problem of fliptop mobile phones. Luv the slide and pop-out improvement which lets the user flip the top with just one hand!

The moment i laid my eyes (and hands) on Motorola PEBL at Forum mall this evening, I fell in love with it! Just as a kid would play with a pebble, I started playin around with it. Didn’t ask for the price or for the feature specification.

Guess i am gonna throw away all the mobile phone feature research that i did , all the reviews that i read for the past few months. The matters of the heart take precedence now. This product is a truly a designer’s delight!

More practical stuff later…