I’m watchin’ the keynote video of Steve Jobs, when he introduced the iPhone for the first time to the world. Haha, funny, back then it wasn’t “the iPhone” but just “iPhone”. As in, “Here’s one of the great things about iPhone…”. I guess back then, they were referring to iPhones like people do to “Apple” or “Macintosh” or “Windows” or “Microsoft”. Of course you wouldn’t call Windows “the Windows” or OS X as “the OS X”, as in, “The Windows is better than the OS X.”. But, iPhones being an object, you add “the” to it, like you would with a Ford Mustang. “Let’s take the Mustang out…”, but not “Let’s take Mustang out…”, as a Mustang is an object, but Ford, isn’t. “Ford’s stock is dropping…” and not “The Ford’s stock is dropping…”. So people at Apple were looking at iPhones more as an idea, dream, entity or whatever… rather than looking at it like the rest of the world, as an object (a phone). So it’s funny to hear him incorrectly say “iPhone” instead of “iPhones” or “the iPhone” or “an iPhone”.
But my main point was on price… can you believe what they used to cost?? Signing up for a two year contract, a 4 GB iPhone would cost $499… and an 8GB iPhone would cost $599! Again, this is AFTER signing a two year contract! Holy s…
When I look back at myself, shelling out $299 for a 32GB 3GS iPhone after signing a two year contract, I feel… well, blessed to be able to get a device such as this for the price I got. Paying $499 for a 4GB iPhone seems so crazy. But then I think back on it… buying a 4GB iPod and a smart phone back in 2007 did cost $499, so I guess it wasn’t such a bad move… for people who had money and probably didn’t have real life **** to worry about.
What’s really funny is, if you ever see someone who has the tell tail silver-metal backing of a 2G iPhone, and you happen to strike up a friendly conversation and they tell you that they have a 4 or 8 GB and their the original owner, just know how much money they threw down for their iPhone. I used to look at people with pitty, like “4GB? That sucks…” and feel sorry for them, telling them things to make them feel better, like “Most people don’t even use that much space on their iPhones anyways.” or something. Now, if their the original owner, I’m just gonna’ look at their either rich (or money stupid) *** and be like “I gotta’… *sniff*32GB 3GS here…”.
Peace, J
I’m gonna’ be straight with y’all… I was never too impressed with voice control for iPhone 3GS’s.
I remember having an argument with a friend about iPhones back before I had gotten the Neocell. I wasn’t an iPhone owner, but my bud, who had Sprint for whatever stupid reason, and had just gotten a Samsung Instinct, which as we know, is nothing more than an iPhone clone. I knew a little about iPhones, and when I had mentioned how much I respected iPhones, he mentioned that I outta’ get a Samsung Instinct, that iPhones were crappy and over rated… compared to his phone at least.
I heard him out and checked out info on his phone… I quickly discovered that it was a piece of crap compared to iPhones. One of his only argue points was that iPhones don’t have voice control. What I explained to him was that, with other phones, like my then current Motorola Krzr, you needed voice control because the user interface was nothing like the ease of use of iPhones. My exact words were “Man, did you see how the contacts thing work on iPhones? You simply flick your finger to scroll to your contacts dude.”.
My explaining to him was that my current phone (the Motorola Krzr) had a more advanced voice system than his phone (being able to launch apps via voice, ect), and yet iPhones blow all current phones out of the water. I said “There’s a reason they don’t have voice control… they don’t need them. Why speak to some goofy computer voice that’ll miss understand most of what you tell it when you can actually ‘touch’ what you need to do in a few seconds??”.
Well that was my thinking then and, once I heard the announcement of the 3GS’s voice control, that was still my thinking. But now that I have the Neocell 3GS, I can give my experience with it.
As far as the quality of the voice, it sucks. I mean, everything Apple puts into the iPhone is just the best, top notch quality… since the 2G, all the way to the 3GS. But the voice quality is so average, not compared to other phones, I mean compared to the best that’s out there. The best that’s out on the consumer market, that I’ve experienced, is the computer voice system used in TomTom GPS’s, like my 910. You can’t tell a computer is speaking it sounds so realistic. With the iPhone’s voice system, it sounds like a woman is trying to do an imitation of a robot. In other words, it sounds like a female robot speaking to you… but not in a cool way.
Now, I (believe) I understand why they did this. They did it because the voice speaking system of Tomtom’s is very advanced and, if they used the same kind of system to run in the background of iPhone 3GS’s, it would slow the system down too much. That, there, is the reason 2G and 3G iPhones never had voice command… it would slow down the system too much (iPhones do, remember, run a full version of OSX). So we, as users, would choose a fake sounding voice with a fast system over a realistic sounding voice with a slow system any day.
So ok, that’s the quality of the sound… so how about the quality of the system to be able to understand commands? Well that’s one thing that’s as good of quality as everything else on iPhones. It’s one of the best systems I’ve used for understanding phrases, including in loud, harsh environments. I’ve had the Neocell understand me, even while someone was stupidly talking in the background at the moment.
But remember my thoughts on voice command not being needed for the iPhone? Well that’s pretty much true… but there are some major exceptions, mainly when you have the Apple ear buds in. That, then, makes voice command great. You just hold down the middle button of the headphones and speak your commands. I mean, when you have your iPhone out in your hand, it’s just as quick to touch what you need most of the time than it is to speak it. But when your phone’s in your pocket and you have the ear buds in, that’s a completely different story. Then using voice command is so convenient… and fun! In fact, when I’m out somewhere with the headphones in, I have full control of the next or pause commands from the button control on the headphones… but I’ll rather just speak my command because it’s that much cooler.
Some complaints I do have though… your not able to play by genre. Honestly, when do I ever play by artist, album or… playlist?? Please. Not having “Play genre…” is a huge thing. And also, for my contacts, voice command doesn’t seem to recognize any contacts that don’t have “mobile” or “home” numbers attached to them. Basically, it won’t dial any business entries. I don’t know what’s up with that.
So back to the point I made at the start of all this… is voice control needed for iPhones? I’m gonna’ say no… I mean all you 2G and 3G users, ya ain’t missin’ much not havin’ voice control. But, having voice control, is it useful and a good feature to have? Surprisingly, yeah, it is.
What I would LOVE to have would be a voice speaking ringer system, like a really old (and really bad ***) Sanyo phone of mine had back in the day. It would be great if they added a voice speaking system for contacts, where if someone called you, your phone would make a ring sound, then speak “Call from John Appleseed…” or “Call from John Appleseed’s mobile” and repeat until you picked up. That would be crazy tight.
Peace, J
So now that I’ve got the Neocell 3GS and I’m able to run jailbroken applications with ease, such as Backgrounder., you’d think I’d now use SBSettings since I have twice the CPU power and twice the memory for my iPhone 3GS 32GB, right? Wrong. Here’s why…
SBSettings is a great little jailbroken app, for those of you who don’t know, that allows you to swipe across the top of your phone to turn off and on very important things, such as your wifi, bluetooth, adjust your brightness, ect. But the problem is that SBSettings has to run in the background 24/7 of your iPhone, whether your using it at the moment or not. As I’ve said before, SBSettings will slow your system down. But this was for 2G and 3G iPhones, which for any’a y’all that didn’t know, are the same exact speed (everything, but internet of course). I’m a public advocate, I guess you could say, for keeping your jailbroken speed as close to non-jailbroken devices. So I tell any and everyone I know not to use SBSettings because of the impact it has on your speed.
But now a select few, including myself, have iPhone 3GS’s. Twice the memory, twice the processor power, yada yada yada… Does this mean “Yay, me gets SBSettings now…” and everything’s fine and dandy? Freak no. It’ll just slow down some of the speed advantage you have of your 3GS. Now, unless you wanted to buy a 3GS just to run apps like these, regardless if your 3GS is slower than other 3GS’s… fine. But I know the majority of you out there rockin’ a 3GS got it for the speed, among other things. SBSettings will, of course, eat into your speed.
And here’s another reason not to get SBSettings, or Bossprefs for that matter… being able to turn wifi on or off don’t work. Nope… didn’t work for the Neocell 2G, and it doesn’t work for the Neocell 3GS. I mean, for me, that’s the whole point of using SBSettings or Bossprefs is to turn bluetooth and wifi off. If I can’t turn off wifi from either app and have to go into the settings section of the Neocell to turn wifi off, I might as well turn bluetooth on or off while I’m there. I mean that’s the point of the apps, so for me, functionality of the apps is straight up broke.
So should you use SBSettings? It’s your choice… but if it ain’t good enough for the Neocell 3GS, how are you dissin’ your own 3GS and saying it’s good enough for you? (And if you’ve got a 2G or 3G iPhone, it’s not even a choice because you will become sluggish). Don’t make your 3GS be like the crappy stick figure below…
Peace, J
So I’m here at the mall in Tampa, Fl. about to activate the old Neocell 2G (soon to be the new Foxxycell) for my girl at AT&T. We gotta’ then head home to see if it can be activated and, hopefully, jailbroken. I’ll keep ya updated.
Peace, J
