I love the UI more than I love the phone.

I love the screen more than I love the phone.

Sometimes even, you could say I hate the phone.

It’s frustrating, because I want the iPhone to be amazing – the best mobile I’ve ever used. And at times it is. But as it stands there are 2 things that come up that really hurt it.

Bluetooth

and

iPod functionality

Bluetooth is great. I love it. Long’s SonyEricsson T616 was the first phone I ever used that had Bluetooth. And it was neat. There was a program called Float’s Mobile Agent (fma). It was neat to connect to your phone from your computer and control Winamp and add/edit contacts. And I could even send ringtones to my phone – no more using Nokia’s ringtone program to type in ringtones on the phone. I could send midi files and it was spectacular. Eventually I upgraded to a SonyEricsson K700, which had HID profiles so it could act as a keyboard or a mouse. Very neat stuff. Anyways, the iPhone can do none of those neat things. The only Bluetooth profile it has is headset. I can’t even make calls/send text messages from MacOS X’s Address Book like I could with all of my previous phones. It’s more disappointing than ridiculous.

See, every so often I think wouldn’t it be great if I had a GPS in my car. But, I don’t want to spend thousands to replace my factory radio and then have it stolen. Nor do I want a separate GPS device like the Garmin Nuvi or TomTom whatever. I’ll leave it out in plain view one day and it’ll get stolen. Plus I don’t want to have to keep track of something else. So the ideal solution is to buy a Bluetooth GPS puck and stick it in my car, and then use Navicore or whatever on my phone. Brilliant plan. Except the iPhone doesn’t support the Bluetooth Serial Profile. Because you know, and I know, and Steve Jobs knows that the iPhone has an amazing screen. If it had a GPS application, it would be amazing. Just look at the Google Maps app.

Steve Jobs likes to say that iPhone is their “best iPod”. And that is a lie. Their best iPod is the iPod. There are 2 things missing in the iPhone – iPod app: Searching and the ability to Shuffle by Album. Don’t worry, I’ve already suggested it to Apple in their iPhone feedback form.

So, I’m just counting the days until someone releases something that matches the iPhone in terms of user experience. I think Nokia can do it. Just look at the N810. If it wasn’t almost $500 I’d buy it in a heartbeat.

For example, with Dish, I had 2 timers. Every weekday at 10pm, the receiver would automatically turn to Comedy Central to watch The Daily Show/Colbert Report Power Hour. And then at 11pm, it would switch to MSNBC to watch Keith Olberman. It was a great setup.

But apparently, the eggheads over at AT&T Uverse have never used Dish/DirecTV/Cable before. What if I had a VCR still? How would I use it to record things without auto-tuning.

Also, the guide is slow. Whenever you send a command using the remote, the receiver is slow to respond. I imagine there is a tiny old man with binoculars in the receiver. When he sees the IR pulse, he writes it down, and hands it over to the other old man next to him. He then slowly gets back on his stool with his binoculars and waits for the next pulse. While he’s doing that, the other old man with the command written down, hops on his bike and slowly pedals over to the old man who’s operating the levers. But that old man can’t see to well. So the messenger old man has to slowly yell (lots of moving parts, kinda noisy in there) out the command, and then old man at the levers starts pulling the levers to make things happen. My wish, is finally their command. Then the messenger old man, has to get back on his bike and pedal back to the old man who’s watching for pulses. While all this is going on, I’m sitting there pushing buttons, repeating the mantra “IPTV is the future”, and crying.

Seriously.

I wish I had one

1. Sennheiser PX100
2. Audio-Technica ATH-AD300
3. Beyerdynamic DT 231 Pro
4. Audio-Technica ATH-SJ5

4th in the hunt of finding the perfect workspace headphones. And you know, I think it may be the one. I wore them for about 4 hours today, and they didnt hurt my ears. They didn’t hurt my ears! This is great news. Let me walk you through the contestants, so you’ll see why.

First, Sennheiser PX100. These were awful. Sure they sounded fine, but in terms of ear hurting, these were just awful. And you know what really pissed me off, the overwhelming majority of the folks on head-fi said these were COMFORTABLE.

Second, Audio-Technica ATH-AD300. I saw the ATH-A500 mentioned a lot on head-fi. The ATH-A500 are more expensive and they’re a closed set. See the perfect workspace headphones is closed so you don’t disturb others, yet open enough to let you know when someone is talking to you/about you. I decided to try the cheaper, open model, since the PX100 was an open set and satisfied the semi-openess requirement well enough. Well, the ATH-AD300 was too open. But it sounded amazing. I never knew sound could sound so good. The one negative, it hurt my cheeks. I had to “play through the pain” and then my healing factor kicked in and now it fits perfectly. So they stay at home. They’re the reason why I ended up buying a receiver. See, I got tired of plugging and unplugging them when I wanted to switch between speakers and headphones.

Third, Beyerdynamic DT231 Pro. Frustrating. These headphones were frustrating. Headroom went on and on about how great these were, sound quality wise and comfort. But, they’re liars. These phones didnt sound particularly great, and these bastards became unbearable an hour in. Not to mention, they’re pretty ugly.

Fourth, Audio-Technica ATH-SJ5. This is where we are today. These are great. I think I can finally be happy. They sound wonderful and fit just great. They have a light touch that doesn’t hurt – clamping force is the term they use on head-fi. And after a while, you forget about them.

You know what this proves, the Germans have oddly shaped heads. See, Sennheiser and Beyerdynamic are both German companies. Audio-Technica is a Japanese company. The ATH-SJ5 isn’t even sold in the states. So there you go. If you have a normal head like mine, try the ATH-SJ5.

…You’ll probably be disappointed, because you listened to someone on the internet for advice on headphones. That’s the real lesson to take away from this.

The rest of this post recounts my adventure in upgrading the firmware to the latest R2CA001. Before we continue, I have to make this clear – I DO NOT KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT. Repeating for emphasis, I DO NOT KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT…AT ALL. NOT KIDDING.

So let’s continue. To upgrade the firmware we need a few things 1) Service Cable – I used this one, UC-10 Cruiser Cable Originally I bought this set, from UnlockCellular, but they didn’t work for me. 2) Davinci Remote Unlocker 13.8 3) Davinci Remote Unlocker, Latest Version 3) SETool 2 4) Correct firmware files, ex. K700iR2CA001MAINCHINAAL2AL3AL4CID36.bin and K700iR2CA001FSChina_CID36.bin

Step 0. Remove your SIM card

Step 1. This step could probably be skipped if your phone is CID36 already, but my phone was CID29. See to use the latest firmware, you phone needs to be CID36. This was the hardest step because I couldn’t find any information on converting my phone from CID29 to CID36. One way to do this is to use the latest version of Davinci Remote Unlocker and download ‘k700 TRANSFORMCID29to_CID36′. Then use the older client, version 13.8, to flash your phone with the transformation file without finalizing.

Step 2. Using SETool 2, select the files to be flashed. For Main firmware file, select K700iR2CA001MAINCHINAAL2AL3AL4CID36.bin and for the File System image, K700iR2CA001FSChina_CID36.bin. Then press the ‘Flash’ button.

Step 3. To complete the flash, press the ‘Clear Names’ button and then hit ‘Flash’ again.

Step 4. Party. You just flashed your k700c!

Notes. I noticed in SETool 2 there was an option to change the CID, but it seemed too easy, just a dropdown box. So I went with Davinci because I figured, if I really screwed up, I could just pay for credits and use Davinci to flash my phone. Also I got really tired of waiting on people on SE-NSE, esato, and GSMForum to reply to my questions, so I decided ‘No Regrets’ and started pushing buttons. And you know, it worked.

And the other good news is that they’re doing 26 new episodes of ”Futurama” for TV and we’re hammering out the deal now.The original plan was to have the DVD’s first but that’s no longer the case.I’m totaly jammed dude.

I’m so excited. It’ll probably be years before we see new episodes, but I’m still totally jammed. Now if only Clone High, Mission Hill, Home Movies, Lucy, Daughter of the Devil, and Undergrads would return.

Update! Seems it wasn’t true, http://billywest.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=2020&KW=billywest

Guys, I’m sorry I gave inaccurate info on the cartoon.I was told on one end that the TV show was a go but DXC enlightened me (with a hammer) that this was not the case.I think there is a Futurama project as in DVD’s but I appearently had bad info.But I do live to give good Futurama news to people.So I must’ve died or something.

All eyes on the skies,

Billy

HEY GUYS —-Please forgive me but I’m getting different information than what I was given about Futuarma. DXC told me that this info was not true right now –I think the DVD’s are happening at some point,but I’m terribly sorry about the misinformation! Please help me to tell all the posters about this.I’ll find as much accurate info as I can!

Thanks, Billy

This is why you should buy printers with good crossplatform network drivers.

Also the White Stripes suck.