Fone2Phone Migrates Data From Cell Phone to iPhone
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Nova media has announced Fone2Phone for Mac OS X, a new utility that moves data from an "ordinary" cell phone to the iPhone or iPod.
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InfoWorld - LG Electronics Inc.&#39;s battle to beat the iPhone is far from over. The South Korean electronics company has unveiled its second iPhone-like handset and this one packs several important features the iPhone doesn&#39;t: 3G and high-speed cellular data networking.
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Cell phone contacts find their way into new phones for $1.99 a month--without the thumb strain.
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(InfoWorld) - Now that Apple's iPhone is finally on sale, the race is on to see who can unlock it. Locked phones can only be used with cellular service from one carrier, a move designed to guarantee carriers recover the cost of subsidizing a handset through monthly service charges. But the cost of the iPhone, which is priced at either US$499 or $599 depending on the model, is not subsidized by AT&T. Users must pay full price for the handset and sign a two-year contract, which requires them to pay from $59.99 to $99.99 per month for cellular service. Unlocking the iPhone will enable the handset to be used with any cellular provider with a GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) or EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) network, not just AT&T's network. That's an attractive proposition for users who already have a cellular contract with another carrier, or users outside the U.S. who can't wait to get their hands on Apple's new handset. Efforts to unlock the iPhone are being tracked on several Web sites, including Hackint0sh and the iPhone Dev Wiki. Initial signs look promising, although the iPhone remained locked at the time of writing. Like other GSM phones, the iPhone uses a SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card, a removable smart card that contains a user's phone number as well as limited storage space for contacts and messages. SIM cards are designed to be swapped between phones, allowing users to change handsets while using their cellular service. They can also be switched when users travel, allowing them to avoid international roaming charges with the purchase of a prepaid, local SIM card. A removable SIM card is a good sign for hackers, because it indicates the phone is locked using firmware, which can likely be cracked. Of course, unlocking the iPhone requires more than simply changing the SIM card. Swapping the AT&T SIM card used with the iPhone for a SIM card from another carrier results in an error message that reads, "Incorrect SIM. This iPhone must be used with an approved SIM." To unlock the iPhone, hackers must first circumvent the handset's activation process. New iPhone users are required to activate their handset using the latest version of iTunes, released on Friday, before they can use the phone. Without activation, which requires users to sign up for an AT&T service plan, none of the iPhone's functions, including the camera and music player, can be accessed. If hackers can circumvent the activation process, the next challenge will be to unlock the SIM card itself. That could happen as soon as Monday. By Sunday night, U.S. time, hackers had made progress towards circumventing the iPhone activation process, gaining access to key system files and finding two passwords used with the phone, according to the iPhone Dev Wiki. "I think by the end of tomorrow we'll have an activation crack," one user wrote on the site.
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(InfoWorld) - A video showing the founder of a Belfast, Northern Ireland, company unlocking the iPhone hit the Web early Wednesday U.K. time as proof that software exists that can unlock Apple Inc.'s device for use with carriers other than AT&T Inc. In the six-minute video, posted on the iphoneunlocking.com blog , John McLaughlin, founder of Uniquephones, is seen with a PC and an iPhone unlocking the device using software from his company. In the video, McLaughlin takes the SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card out of a Vodafone Blackberry device and puts it into the iPhone. He then makes two phone calls using the device. The video was shot at his house in Northern Ireland, he said. The video is of poor quality, as noted in his blog entry. "Sorry about the focus, it was done late night using a Nokia N95, but youâll see the process," he wrote. Uniquephones already unlocks phones from many manufacturers, including Nokia Corp. and Motorola Inc., and about 60 percent of its customers are in the U.S. The video is the second time someone has tried to prove a software-only method exists to unlock the iPhone. AT&T has a long-term contract with Apple to be the exclusive U.S. wireless carrier for the phone, a fact that has irked iPhone users who want to have the option of using another carrier's service. The iPhone isn't yet available officially outside the U.S. The race to unlock the iPhone began as soon as the device hit stores June 29. Beginning last Friday, reports began to surface that a teenager in New Jersey had won. Seventeen-year-old George Hotz, who has sinceÂ traded his unlocked iPhone for a new car, unlocked the phone via software and hardware modifications, the latter of which required soldering. However, most observers agreed that not many users would want to tinker with such an expensive device this way. On the same day, a company called iPhoneSimFree.com and McLaughlin both claimed to have the first software-only unlocking method, but iPhoneSimFree.com was the first to show it to a credible third party: an editor of Engadget.com, which reported that Engadget editor Ryan Block had witnessed someone from the elusive group unlocking the iPhone via software. McLaughlin had planned to post his company's method for unlocking the iPhone to the Web site iphoneunlocking.com last Saturday, but it didn't go up. He said he feared legal action by AT&T Wireless if he posted the software because of a phone call he received at 3:00 a.m. in Belfast from a representative of O'Melveny & Myers LLP, an international law firm calling on AT&T's behalf. McLaughlin claimed the caller said Uniquephones.com would be in violation of copyright infringement and distributing Apple's intellectual property if he began selling the software to iPhone subscribers. As of Tuesday, McLaughlin said he is still undecided whether he will distribute the software, but that the video at least proves to naysayers that his company has unlocked the iPhone.
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A national database is being set up to help return lost and stolen phones to their rightful owners.
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(InfoWorld) - If the mountain won't come to Mohammed, then Mohammed will come to the mountain, goes the saying. Now, the high-tech version of that saying might read: If the iPhone won't come to the enterprise, then enterprise will come to the iPhone. The announcement this week that NetSuite, a Web-based-only service provider for ERP and CRM to the midmarket, runs on the iPhone without any major tweaking almost as well it runs on a desktop has a lot of people rethinking the capability of the iPhone as a business tool. To make matters even more interesting, NetSuite didn't spend one day in Cupertino to figure out how SuitePhone, as it's now called, would run on Apple's new device, though the two companies worked together in the past to ensure that NetSuite's SaaS (software as a service) solution ran well on Apple's Safari desktop browser. "For the iPhone, we didn't have to do additional development work," says Malin Huffman, senior product manager at NetSuite. Whatever improvements were made to NetSuite 07 in order to work with the latest version of Safari for the desktop "carries over to Safari on the iPhone." While most mobile solutions are limited in what they can accomplish -- dialing directly from a contact manager is typical -- Huffman claims NetSuite customers already use the iPhone and the SuitePhone solution in the field to look up customer history, process credit cards, and even do payroll. So is this a unique circumstance due in large part to the way NetSuite was built originally? After all, it does not use Flash or need Java to run, making porting to the iPhone, which lacks support for both, that much easier. Huffman says no, the NetSuite build is not that unique for a SaaS application, but it may be too early to tell. While the iPhone famously does not support Flash or Java, it does support JavaScript and all the Web standards that AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is built on. Plus, it supports PDFs and Microsoft Word documents. "The AJAX technology allows [NetSuite] to work faster over the slower network than it would otherwise," notes Huffman. Also, because AJAX allows users to drag and drop from selected environments without having to refresh the entire contents of a page, the SuitePhone version makes for a more seamless experience.Â  Of course, there are a number of limitations, as InfoWorld pointed out in its review by Tom Yager. Yager notes that the device will not upload or download files. However, in a SaaS solution like NetSuite, this limitation may not be a deal breaker for purchasing the device. The strong suit of any SaaS solution is in accessing data directly from the server. Focusing on real-time instant access rather than offline access, says Huffman, is what its users care about the most.Â  But Yager also says, "Safari does not allow a Web page to sense finger motion using standard events, so drag, slide, and drag/drop operations require special effort." True, says Huffman. "You wouldn't want to do a lot of configuration of NetSuite on the iPhone. You would do the configuration on the desktop."Â  Safari also lacks the "ability to adjust a Web page's text size," notes Yager. It is a valid criticism, says Huffman, but it doesn't affect NetSuite because users can pinch or drill down. So have too many industry reviews underestimated the iPhone's usefulness in the enterprise? While the iPhone is not perfect, there is no denying that NetSuite ports to this handheld device easily. The apparent ease with which it does that comes from a very obvious but often overlooked fact: Apple has duplicated the Safari browser almost exactly as it exists on the desktop. If you can re-create a browser for a handheld that is almost identical to the desktop version, everything that can be done on the Web on the desktop can, in theory, be carried out on the handheld browser, too. Where Apple has gone the extra mile is in creating a user interface that makes up for many of the small-screen limitations: for example, the so-called two-finger pinch that allows a user to drill down and expand what they are looking at. Huffman adds that users also can customize their views to suit the small screen by setting up dashboards in a one-column format or creating forms that are better suited to the iPhone. There is nothing really new here other than a better-thought-out, user-friendly interface. But Apple took the obvious -- what others have tried -- and put all the pieces together in a single package. Some believe it is so unique that the device may become, in essence, a wake-up call to the entire high-tech industry, especially handset manufacturer designers and software developers.Â  And what that wake-up call from Apple and NetSuite says is that if you build it right, they, the enterprise, will come to the mountain, er, the handset manufacturer.
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(InfoWorld) - NetSuite's users can start accessing the company's hosted midmarket applications suite via their iPhones as businesses start to investigate the possibilities of using theÂ much hyped Apple mobile deviceÂ at work. NetSuite 2007.0, the latest version of the company's software-as-a-service online suite, includes native support for the most recent release of Apple's Safari Web browser, functionality that NetSuite has dubbed SuitePhone, the vendor said Thursday. The iPhone, which debuted in the U.S. on June 29, uses Safari as its Web browser. Unveiled last month, NetSuite 2007.0 is being rolled out to the vendor's existing customer base and will be available to new users in August. SuitePhone allows users to log into their NetSuite accounts on their iPhones and access the vendor's hosted ERP (enterprise resource planning), CRM (customer relationship management) and electronic-commerce functionality. Circle of Friends is giving NetSuite a try over iPhone. The 13-person company based in Santa Monica, California, specializes in personal care products for children such as shampoo, bubble bath and sunscreen. "We're definitely a mixed-use shop," said Brian Keare, the company's chief operating officer. "We have half Macs and half PCs. Personally, I use both." Keare purchased an iPhone for his own use at home, he said. After a trouble-free experience buying and activating the device, he started thinking about whether he could use it for work as well. Circle of Friends has previously tried unsuccessfully to access the basic online version of NetSuite from Treo and BlackBerry devices, Keare said.Â In May, NetSuite announcedÂ it would rely on partners to extend its suite to BlackBerries, Windows Mobile devices and Treos. Keare did look into the third-party middleware that makes such access possible, but he found it too expensive and limited in its scope. He's been very impressed with the NetSuite functionality he's able to access for free on his iPhone without having to download any additional software, he said. Keare has already entered and approved sales orders, made deposits and checked inventory from his iPhone. "I won't be replacing my desktop computer, but on the road or on vacation, I'll pull out my iPhone before I pull out my laptop," Keare said. The firm has been using NetSuite for the past two and a half years and likes the all-in-one integrated suite, which gives its employees in the U.S. and a small team in India access to the same information, Keare said. Circle of Friends had previously struggled with back-office applications from PeopleSoft that proved too complicated for its needs and, before that, QuickBooks Enterprise accountancy software from Intuit Inc., which was too limited in its functionality. NetSuite began offering native support for Apple's Safari back in 2004 and has been working closely with the vendor ever since to ensure its suite continues to support the Web browser, according to Sean Rollings, senior director of product marketing at NetSuite. The vendor positions Apple as one of its strategic partners. Coincidentally, as Apple was ramping up to release the iPhone, NetSuite was working on its support for the latest version of Safari. As the consumer buzz about the iPhone settles down, Rollings expects to hear a lot more talk from both vendors and users about the business possibilities for the device. Currently, NetSuite hasn't provided much in the way of tweaking its software for the iPhone, bar the ability for users to configure their dashboards, said Malin Huffman, senior product manager at the company. Initial customer feedback suggests more tailoring isn't required, he added. Â
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Over-hyped and over here Mobile network O2 is close to getting the exclusive right to sell Apple's ludicrously-hyped iPhone in the UK.â¦
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Apple's iPhone is locked to AT&T's telecom service, but now that the device is finally available for sale, a number of hackers are working to unlock it. The prognosis is promising.
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NEW YORK - AT&amp;T and Apple on Tuesday said wireless service for the iPhone will range from $59.99 per month to $99.99 per month. The $59.99 monthly plan includes 450 minutes of voice time; a $79.99 plan includes 900 minutes; and a $99.99 plan includes 1,350 minutes.
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(InfoWorld) - For some cell phone fanatics, the iPhone is love at first sight: a cool touchscreen, a slim design, promising simplicity. The only thing standing between you and that dreamy device is your contract with another carrier. Is there a way to break the relationship without paying a penalty of $150 or more? Yes. First, in a few situations, you can dump or suspend a contract without enduring too much hassle: You can end a contract early without paying fees if the carrier makes changes that have a significant negative effect on your service or your subscription rate. For example, if your carrier raises its fees for text messaging, you can use that as your get-out-of-jail card. Still, you'll have to plead your case to the carrier -- it won't let you go that easily. You'll need to convince the company that the change applies to you and that it has seriously and negatively affected your service. Carriers will also suspend your wireless service during active-duty military deployment. That doesn't free you from your obligation entirely, but it's better than paying for something you can't use at all. In the most extreme situation, a contract is terminated if the customer dies -- though this circumstance does put a crimp in the deceased's future iPhone enjoyment. Trade it in Another way to lose your current contract is to transfer your account to someone else. How do you find that someone? Either on your own (through a network of friends or by posting an ad at a community site such as Craigslist.com) or via an online trade-in service such as Cellswapper.com and Celltradeusa.com. These sites provide a place for people to buy, sell, or trade their wireless contracts. "Consumers see the account transfer as a fair resolution," says Eric Wurtenberg, co-founder of Celltradeusa.com. "With our service, people can get a provider that works better in their area, and the carrier gets someone to fulfill the contract. Our core customer has always been and will continue to be the person who wakes up one morning and finds the service doesn't work in his apartment, or a college student who finds the phone doesn't work on campus." Good time for a deal? With the upcoming release of the Apple iPhone on AT&T, the number of people buying AT&T contracts on Celltradeusa.com has increased by about 33 percent in the past two months, said Wurtenberg. "We see equipment envy as increasing the demand for our service." Likewise, Adam Korbl, co-founder and CEO of Cellswapper.com, says that "thousands of potential Apple and AT&T customers have recently flocked to Cellswapper to get out of their contracts and be ready to sign with AT&T when the iPhone launches at the end of the month." If the iPhone is a little too expensive for your tastes but you still want to upgrade your phone, this might be a good time to pick up a used smartphone on the cheap. "We have seen that in order to get the iPhone, people are not only selling their used phones, but even willing to give them away as incentive for someone else to take over their contact," Korbl says. "Many people are offering great phones and big cash incentives just to break free of their contract in time for the iPhone." For example, in a recent search on Cellswapper, I found the Nokia 5300 XpressMusic offered for free (a brand-new version costs $150 at T-Mobile's site) for assuming a three-month contract on T-Mobile at $50 a month. Not bad. In addition to throwing in your old phone or offering a cash incentive to entice people, Wurtenberg advises you to gather up all your contract information and have it with you when you post your service plan on the site. "You need the original date of the contract," he says. Make sure your account balance is up to date, too. And provide detailed descriptions and pictures of your phone if you're including it in the sale. Finally, try to respond quickly to buyers' questions. "These things go a long way to finding someone to take over your account," Wurtenberg notes. If there's a match, the seller pays $20 at Celltrade or $15 at Cellswapper. Then the buyer and seller go through the process of formally transferring the account in the carrier's records. With most mobile operators, this can be done by phone or at the carrier's retail store. Typically, transferring your contract means losing your current phone number. On Verizon, for instance, the phone number carries over to the new customer because the number is tied to the previously existing contract, says Verizon spokesperson Brenda Raney. To port your current phone number to another carrier, you must be have an expired contract or you must pay a penalty to break it, according to Raney. Still, if you're determined to dump your contract, getting a new number is a fair trade-off. Before switching to a new carrier, evaluate your predicament, recommends Wurtenberg. "Do your homework by asking friends and neighbors how they like their wireless service." If you want to get rid of your old phone completely, recycle it. Sites such as Collective Good accept cell phone donations. Or trade in your old phone for a few bucks or for a gift certificate to a retail store. Web services such as CellforCash, GreenPhone, and ReCellularTradeIn will offer you cash or a gift card in return for your handset. For a cash trade, check a few sites to see whether their offers differ significantly. There are no set prices for used phones, so it's best to determine which site will make the best offer. For more information on donating cell phones, read "Dialed In: Cell Phone Recycling" and "Tips & Tweaks: Recycle PCs, Notebooks, and Components." Before relinquishing your old phone, remember to wipe your data off of it. For tips on how to proceed, read "Privacy Watch: Wipe Your Cell Phone's Memory Before Giving It Away."
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No opening the handset case, no soldering -- a hacker group has announced that they've come up with a workaround allowing iPhone owners to make calls via networks other than AT&T.
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Blog: Group claims it can unbind the iPhone from a specific carrier to "expand the functionality" of the device.
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Only just... 02 has shifted 190,000 iPhones in its first two months of sales, just short of its target of 200,000.â¦
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Apple iPhone will enable mobile networks to increase their customer base, analyst says.
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(InfoWorld) - A company that unlocks cell phones in Europe said it is close to having an application that will allow customers to unlock their Apple iPhones so they can use SIM cards from carriers other than AT&T to activate the phones. In an interview this week in New York, John McLaughlin, founder of Belfast, U.K.-based Uniquephones, said he has engineers working around the clock in several countries who are close to cracking the complex security system Apple has set up to ensure customers can only use iPhones with AT&T Wireless service. The race by hackers to unlock iPhones has been on since the phone was released last Friday. Currently, AT&T Wireless has an exclusive deal with Apple to provide service for iPhones, and customers must agree to a two-year service plan with the company. However, customers have complained that the carrier's wireless service is slow, and according to McLaughlin, there has been tremendous interest in the ability to unlock the phone. By Sunday night, he said, more than 150,000 inquires had come in through the Web site he set up to request IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) numbers from customer iPhones. While not everyone would volunteer their IMEI numbers, they still expressed interest in learning how to unlock their iPhones, McLaughlin said. When the site was set up, he thought it would be an easy case of supplying unlock codes from AT&T to unlock iPhones. But sometime over the weekend after iPhones went on sale, unlock codes from AT&T for about 6,000 iPhones disappeared from the carrier's database, and McLaughlin's team also realized it would be a more complex matter than simply providing an unlock code to release iPhones from AT&T's grip. There is at least a two-step process to unlocking an iPhone, McLaughlin said. His team has been able to unlock the activation process to the AT&T SIM card specific to an iPhone so another AT&T SIM card can work with the phone and be activated through iTunes. However, any attempt to change the firmware of an iPhone so it can support another carrier's SIM card breaks the phone, he said. The key to unlocking the phone is breaking the encryption process that protects the token sent through the iTunes activation process to an iPhone's firmware, McLaughlin believes. Norwegian hacker Jon Lech Johansen, also known as "DVD John" because he cracked the DVD encryption scheme, claims he's been able to unlock the iPhone beyond the activation process that requires an AT&T account but said the device can't be used as a phone when that happens. Even after an iPhone were unlocked, it still could only work on carrier networks that support the GSM network, which is what AT&T's service is based on. In the U.S., T-Mobile is the only major carrier on a GSM network. And there is no guarantee Apple will not lock down the phones again in a future firmware update through the iPhone synchronization process or create a new way to unlock the next wave of iPhones they put on the market. That is, in fact, exactly what one analyst said will happen. "I assume that someone will succeed in unlocking the iPhone," said Avi Greengart, principal analyst, mobile devices at Current Analysis. "I also assume Apple will close whatever loophole is open the next time they synchronize [the software]." It's also likely there will be complications with special features of the phone that are designed to work only on AT&T's network, such as the visual voicemail feature, he said. Greengart said that he sympathizes with those that might want to use an iPhone with another carrier but "that's not the way the product was designed." "Exclusive agreements are not that unusual in this industry at all," he said. Aaron Santell, an iPhone user in New York, said that he would have preferred to use the service provider he has for his Blackberry device, Verizon Wireless, when he purchased an iPhone. But using AT&T's service is "a small price to pay" to use a device that provides such a rich user experience as the iPhone does, he said. As one might imagine, unlocking phones is a thorny issue with carriers, which certainly don't condone it. Carriers will give users unlock codes upon request for a fee, but they don't encourage the practice. In the U.K. and Europe, third parties have been unlocking handsets for several years, although there is no law that specifically protects them, McLaughlin said. However, in the U.S., it is legal to unlock mobile handsets under an amendment to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that was passed in November 2006. McLaughlin said that even though it's legal in the U.S. to unlock phones, he anticipates that if his team is successful, Apple may take legal action against them based on their tinkering with the firmware. "They'll probably come after us for copyright infringement," he said. Apple did not reply to requests for comment Thursday. McLaughlin plans to charge customers about $49.99 for software to unlock iPhones. Even if Uniquephones is not the first to offer unlocking capability, it won't be hard for them to replicate what others have done once the encryption is cracked, he added.