Some thoughts after two weeks with an iPhone 5 … Well two iPhones actually …

Let’s start with the big four issues – call quality, getting stuck with only Edge or no data service, getting stuck off WiFi. and poor battery life.

AT&T support had me try lots of things over three days before giving up and suggesting the phone be replaced and then suggesting replacing the SIM card. Ultimately, none of these actually resolved the issues. All tolled, it cost me 8-10 hours of my life and $45 is gas and tolls for the drive to the nearest Apple Store.

So at this point I’m on my second iPhone 5 and my second SIM for the phone and one thing is better and all other things are just the same.

The first iPhone 5 had a small scratch on the aluminum. This is consistent with Apple’s attempt to improve quality control. The replacement phone has no scratches – so one thing did get better.

Along the way, I bought a nan-SIM to micro-SIM adapter. This let me test the iPhone 5 SIM in my old iPhone 4. The conclusion was the SIM was fine and the local cell towers are not great but not really any different from a month ago.

*Personal Opinion Alert:*

My guess is that the iPhone 5 and iOS 6 network switching algorithms are at the root of the problems. The iPhone 5 has LTE. However, there is no LTE in my area and I am between two cell towers. It appears the network switching is getting stuck on a weaker tower and/or is constantly hoping for an LTE signal. This results in a much shorter battery life and often failing to settle with a 3G signal.

It turns out there is some interdependency between LTE and cell calls too. You can not toggle the LTE option while on a call without dropping the call. I don’t understand this one but I did find several cases of people attributing poor call quality to LTE “hunting”.

So, when I turn off LTE on the iPhone 5, my battery life returns to that of my iPhone 4 (but no better), call quality returns to that of my iPhone 4 (but no better), and my data service returns to that of the iPhone 4.

The remaining issues are that the data service still can get stuck at “E” (for the low speed Edge service) and can occasionally get stuck not connecting to my home WiFi (even though it sees it and has the password). I attribute the latter if not both of these to iOS 6. I would not be at all surprised to see a update quietly appear to improve the switching and connecting algorithms.

My work around for “stuck on E” is to cycle the Airplane Mode. My work around for not connecting to my WiFi is to manually select it from the Setting menu. Both of these are annoying but they work. (BTW: the failure to connect to WiFi has been reported and witnessed on other devices running iOS 6 so that further points to some software problem.)

So, while the iPhone 5 has a wider screen (which doesn’t really help with anything) I do like the better camera and faster CPU. Still, it’s not even close to being a good justification for the cost of the upgrade. Remember, you might get the iPhone 5 with a new contract for $200, $300, or $400 but you will also need a minimum of one extra charging cable at $20-$30 and a new case at $20-$60 and none of your old accessories such as a charging dock or clock radio or stereo speaker dock or car interface will work so there’s another $75-$300 in extras (and they don’t even exist yet).

Yup, I've got a new iPhone 5. I'm so special. Don't you wish you were me? Well, I don't.

Thus far my issues have been …

AT&T let my buy the iPhone 5 upgrade without changing my plan. Problem is, you MUST change your plan since the iPhone 5 has LTE.

Not a big problem to solve but it does require a call to AT&T technical support and it seems they were having computer issues. The support person was very personable and I can't hold his computer issues against him but why doesn't AT&T automatically enable LTE since it is not a plan change nor is it a rate change.

My iPhone battery life is … how shall we say this … piss poor!

I took the phone off the charger at 5:30am with 100% battery. I used it on WiFi for about 2 hours total and on cellular data for about 15 minutes. I placed on 40 minute call. The phone died before 2pm and is now back on the charger.

The iPhone 5 lost its data service.

I went to do an Internet search while out on a walk only to see my signal at 4 bars then 1 bar and all points in between – while standing still. Worse, the data service was “E” (for edge) or nothing at all. Once I was back from the walk I placed my call to AT&T technical support (getting good at that part). They had me reset the network. That fixed it. They said they would schedule a callback in a few hours to insure it was still working. That was at 8am. The phone is on the charger now since the battery failed to go for even 4 hours of use but I can tell you, I've reset the network three times in the past 6 hours. I works for as long as I am outside but as soon as it connects to its first WiFi, the cellular data capability is kaput!

Those are my three current pains. There is a forth – the fact I am having to buy new cords, cases, and all other accessories. I knew that going in. What I did not know is that Apple was more than draconian this time around so most vendors have not yet brought their accessories to market.

First order of business is to buy a nan-SIM to micro-SIM adapter. I suspect my iPhone 4 will be getting a good workout yet.

If this were baseball, the umpire would be calling “STRIKE 2″ !

A little while ago, a developer was telling me that HTML5 and its localStorage spec was no guarantee that a web app's data would be their when needed. I thought he was spreading a conspiracy theory. Turns out he was right.

Apple chose to implement its Mobile Safari and WebKit API using a lawyer's interpretation of the spec. Where as other browser providers have implemented the “spirit of the law”, Apple chose the “letter of the law”.

User agents must have a set of local storage areas, one for each origin.

User agents should expire data from the local storage areas only for security reasons or when requested to do so by the user.

Because the W3C draft specification says “should” rather than “shall”, Apple is within its rights to purge local storage when it chooses and without end user content.

This decision by Apple means a developer can not guarantee to be able to implement a mobile web application that will run off-line. For most developers and their end users, this is an inconvenience and will result in (a) some extra code, (b) the need to always store local data back to a server, and (c) the occasional hit when everything needs to b reloaded because Apple threw stuff away.

Well, that was bad. Now comes Apple's latest “holier than thou” decision. Apple has chosen to interpret the HTTP caching rules different from other browser providers (or Apple just got stupid and introduced a bug).

Responses to this [POST] method are not cacheable, unless the response includes appropriate Cache-Control or Expires header fields.

Apple's interpretation is to cache if not explicitly told NOT TO. So, whereas other browser providers check to see if an application has requested caching, Apple Mobile Safari checks to see if an application has requested not to cache.

Once again Apple's interpretation of the specifications is unique to say the least. It breaks developer's code and long held practice but hey, they're Apple. They can do anything.

Sometimes it's the little things that count !

Just time enough for a quick – albeit expensive – pick-me-up so I stop into a neighborhood Starbucks. The place was full and eight patrons had laptops out. Seven were Apple. The phones were iPhone but for a single “simple phone”.

Anyone who discounts the superior user experience, marketing, and application ecosystem needs to seriously get out of their cubical and look at what’s happening in the real world!

And for the record, I have my yellow Thinkpad X60, my Blackberry Bold, my iPad 2, and my iPhone 4 with me … but I blog from the iPhone.

jailbreak 4.2.1 with greenpois0n

I’ve been holding my iPhone 4 back with iOS 4.1 for a few months. It’s only been recently that the older version has been an issue. More and more Apps are getting updated and requiring iOS 4.2. I’ve had to defer those updates until today.

There are a few different groups working on Jailbreak solutions at any given time. This is a good thing. Most of the time, they are each working on a different exploit. To be honest, it’s best if one of them finds a chink in the Apple armor, to keep it quiet because every time they show their cards, Apple changes the game to block them.

I used JailbreakMe.com to get into iOS4.0.1. Then I used Limera1n on iOS 4.1. This time I used GreenPois0n to get into iOS 4.2.1.

It took two times – the first I forgot to power off the iPhone as the first step. Other than that, it worked perfectly. It takes Cydia three reboots before it I’d fully installed and up to the most resent code+database … reminds mega lot of Windows that way

I backed up using both iTunes and PkgBackup. Once iOS was updated to 4.2.1 and iTunes restored my music, data, and Apps, I went to Cydia to reinstall PkgBackup and then it restored everything else.

All tolled it was 20 minutes for Apple to do it’s thing. 3 minutes for GreenPois0n. Another 5 for Cydia. And finally about 5 minutes for PkgBackup to put everything right.

It’s nice to be broken out of jail