Cui – On My Way

i’ve just updated my iphone(BL 3.9, first-gen 4G version) from firmware 1.1.4 to the new 2.0 by the newly released winpwn. Actually I pwned the phone twice, first with winpwn 2.0.2 and second with winpwn 2.0.3(download).

I am a little bit excited about some of the new features in 2.0, even if until now I only played with it for 2 days. Here’s why i’m saying that.

1.full system-level international support

For Chinese iphone owners like me, we can choose either of Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. Accordingly we have the input method and region format.Yes, we’ve got hand-writing input method too, as picture shows above.

Besides, we can read gb2312-encoded Chinese email now.

2.App Store

This is the coolest part. Tons of apps in the store and you are just one-click away to them.You may also feel surprised when you are playing with those really creative apps, like WritingPad(reviewed by ipodtouchfans.com) and midomi(youtube video). I do. I really do.

However, in order to take full use of the App Store, you need an valid iTunes account. And generally you have to provide some payment details in the registration process, like an Visa credit card info. This may block some people. Hackint0sh has a post here where i found this solution. For the phone number and address, i filled with Apple’s own info

3.some new features, like Contact Search, WiFi-only mode, Exchange support etc.

Some of you may feel more excited on Exchange support or Contact Search. Sure they deserve. But for me,I think wifi-only does help. I do have that kinda moment when I wanna browse the web while keeping the phone off. Not possible in firmware 1.1.4 and below.

These are all the reasons that drive me to do the upgrade. But, nothing is perfect. iPhone 2.0 still needs improvement as well. As to my experience, 2.0 is a little bit slower, less stable than 1.1.4. Perhaps that’s why Apple is pushing the testing on 2.0.1 now. Guess they’ll relesae it soon.

Last but not least, currently there are very fewer native 3-rd party unofficial applications in 2.0 than in 1.1.4. To update or not, you decide.

Here’s the proof(Bootneuter 2.0 from iphonedev on Vimeo):

The reason i say again is because they have done it before, for many times, actually, from the starting 1.0.0 to 1.1.4. I don know what you think, but i do think i should salute to them, again, not mention just after i read their latest post titled Rush,rush,rush on their blog.

btw, it’s for the old 1st-gen iphone, not the new 3G one.

In the morning of July 12, 2008(Beijing Time), as usual, I launched Google Reader from my Safari’ bookmarks in the iphone and wanna see if anything could interest me a little.

Guess what? I didn see the old and familiar Reader interface. Instead, i saw the New one. Actually i did try it when it’s still beta before. I even bookmarked it, for later use.

The New Reader is cool, in some way. However, there’s one very important feature missing compared to the Old one: mobiled the targeted html pages. Let me remind you of that with the following screenshot.

Why is it such an important feature, anyway? You may wonder. Well, I’ve explained before on this post. And after some googling, I’ve found i’m not the only one.

There’s a post titled See original – mobile vs. full HTML – Please fix created by mangala8 in the Google Reader Team’s groups, which exactly says the same thing. I already left my agree comment there.

So in all, we’d like to see this cut feature could be able to appear in the New Reader again some time in future.

I have no idea of how Google chooses the features for their product, but I do hear that Google treats user feedback very seriously. Hopefully Google will not let us down this time.

I’ve been waiting for an iphone edition WAP browser for a long time. Today i just happened to get it: UCWEB.

Of course it can do a lot of things, Nek has made a good summery for us here. Quote part here:

1. WEB and WML webpage browsing
2. WiFi, CMWAP(only in China), CMNET access
3. bookmarks
4. upload and download files
5. search
6. address
7….

For me, the most wonderfully thing is exactly what it’s designed to be: browsing wap sites on the iphone. I myself actually use Google Reader on Safari for the daily news, and Safari does work fine for me most of time, but in the worktime, i do need to visit some wap sites a little. That’s always been my headache when coming to it.

Now it’s come to the end,finally. Cheers

BTW, the source for UCWEB iphone edition is http://wap.ucweb.com/iphone/UCWEB.plist. And its offcial forum is here(in Chinese)

Update(Feb.26,2009): To answer antonioj’s question, here’s the how-to(from left to right):

To access the bookmarks, click the yellow star icon in the upper left corner as the picture shows below:

Update(Feb.27,2009): Besides, the UCWEB install source for Cydia has been updated to http://wap.ucweb.com/iphone/cydia, as antonioj said.

Update(Sep.21,2009): The latest UCWEB is 6.7beta which I’ve talked about here.

I’m not sure if it will work for you, but it does work for me. here’s the how-to step by step:

1. switch to the classic if you are in the new yahoo mail. pic below shows you where to find it.

2. Enable the pop support.

3. now add your yahoo mail account in the phone by Settings->Mail->Add Account->YMail.

I’ve also tested mail receiving and sending, both work well.

Failed again? Try yahoo pop. That is, add a pop account on the phone in which you use the following yahoo pop settings:

Still no luck? well, if you can do step 2, you may choose to let yahoo forward your ymail to one of your gmail accounts, here i assume you can be able to  access gmail on the phone successfully.

Hopefully you can take use of one of the three work-arounds mentioned above to fix the ymail issue. Good luck.

Update(Jul.6,2008): I’ve tried some other mail accounts, including @yahoo.com, @yahoo.cn and @yahoo.com.cn. All has no such an option I mentioned above by which you can enable/disable POP support. Sorry buddi