It’s crazy that the majority of iPhone owners out there, I’d say about 95%, put their sexy, sophisticated $500-$700 device into a cheap plastic or rubber case. People seem to think iPhones are delicate things that’ll break instantly if they aren’t placed into a cheap, ugly case. iPhones are extremely durable. Cases aren’t a necessity.

iPhones Are A Sexy Tank

Want proof? This person in this video foolishly was taking video at the EDGE of a pool. No, not “near it” and carefully holding it, but actually NEAR the edge turning around like a fool and drops it into the water… and it still works!

This next one is a torture test from PC World. Now, I have to inform you, at the end of this video the guy manages to drop the iPhone 3G from 7 feet straight onto it’s face and, of course, it breaks the glass (after already bein’ dropped five times). It’s not a pretty sight to watch…

But the point is to illustrate how durable iPhones are. They survive falls, water, acts of God, etc. Most “tech” people will scream “Get a case for your iPhone! Oh my God, you need protection!“. Man, ‘freak that.

10 Reasons To Avoid A Case For Your iPhone

Cases are bad because:

• Prevents you from using a dock
• Prevents you from easily rubbing off smudges
• Collects dust, grime, sweat, etc in between
• Removes the amazing “feel” of holding your iPhone
• Gets in the way when using headphones
• Adds bulkiness
• Prevents fitting and slipping into tight pockets, purses, etc
• Some cause overheating and discoloring
• Removes the elegance of an iPhone
• Makes your state-of-the-art iPhone look cheap

Think about all those reasons there. Now what are the reasons to put your iPhone in a case?

• Protects edges from getting scratched from drops

That’s about it. I would say “protects back from getting scratched”, but that’s not true. I’ve seen people show me scratches on the back of their iPhone caused from sand getting in between the case and rubbing scratches over time. Also, the most important area you want to protect (also the most durable) is the screen. Cases don’t protect from the majority of scratches that are caused to screens.

Full Body Screen Protectors Are The Key

The real way to protect your iPhone, front to back, is with a full body screen protector. I’m talkin’ about the kinds from InvisibleShield or competitors.  They offer protection to your device in almost every retrospect. But let’s compare screen protectors against cases.

Full Body Screen Protectors:

• Doesn’t prevent you from using a dock
• Doesn’t prevent you from easily rubbing off smudges
• Doesn’t collecs dust, grime, sweat, etc in between
• Doesn’t remove the amazing “feel” of holding your iPhone
• Doesn’t get in the way when using headphones
• Doesn’t add bulkiness
• Doesn’t prevent fitting and slipping into tight pockets, purses, etc
• Doesn’t cause overheating and discoloring
• Doesn’t remove the elegance of an iPhone
• Doesn’t make your state-of-the-art device look cheap

Full body screen protectors completely protect your entire device. Not to mention they allow the full beauty of your iPhone to show through because they’re invisible. You can even use just a front screen protector without protecting your body. Or you can use nothing at all and, naked, if you have common sense and know how to protect your iPhone.

I’ve dropped the Neocell 3GS without any protection (naked, no gold or wood plating, no full body screen protection, nothing) on the concrete (it bounces three times) and there isn’t a scratch on it. iPhones are a sexy tank.

Here’s a tip for removing the sharp edges that will (not if) form using a full body screen protector.

How I Protect The Neocell 3GS

I have gold and wood plating on the front and back of the Neocell 3GS, and sure… that wood and gold plating will protect parts of the Neocell beneath it, but screw that… what’s gonna’ protect the plating itself? So I use a full screen protector on the front, over the plating and screen, and one for the back (it’s custom shaped to only protect the plating, the sides are actually naked). Without the protection, I’m sure the iPhone itself would be fine, but the gold plating would be messed up or ripped off or bent and look horrible.

So are you going to let people tell you that a full body screen protector  is good enough for a 24K gold plated iPhone, but it’s not good enough for you? Please… It’s more than good enough.

Don’t Drop Your iPhone Stupid

Now please, don’t be stupid and start dropping your phone, whether it’s naked, screen protected or case protected. Just because I’ve dropped my phone, people online have dropped their phone (hey, who hasn’t), dson’t start bein’ stupid and start dropping your phone. Sure, iPhones are sexy tanks, but it’s a ‘freakin’ work of technical art. Treat it that way. If you do, it’ll last a lot longer and have a much higher resale value.

But if you got a rugged lifestyle or know your gonna’ be somewhere that you may possibly drop your iPhone, like mountain bike riding or some other thing, then I recommend you take your full body screen protected iPhone and put it into a full body case. No, none of these crappy “body” cases, a full body case, one that covers everything, including your screen. They aren’t meant to be dropped, they don’t have rubber, it’s plastic all around. If you drop it hard against a jagged rock or something while biking, it will crack the case. But it will hopefully protect your iPhone. And if it happens to fall on a sharp rock directly on it’s face, the front screen of the case will shatter and but hopefully not implode to damage your screen. It could try to gouge your screen, but your full body screen protector would hopefully protect it. The special screen is in direct contact with the screen of your iPhone and allows you to still control the screen with your fingers (but it’ll feel like touching cheap plastic instead of smooth glass).

And most important, when your done doin’ your crazy adventure or done working your construction job, take the case off (make sure to wipe any dust, dirt or sweat out). After all, just because you work 9-5 laying fiber optics, don’t mean you gotta’ have a dirty, cheap lookin’ phone when you head out to dinner that night.

So please, no more crap like this…

Peace, JbB

Well they’ve updated their search site to include nice, big, fat text that’s easy to see ‘n’ read. Nice. Also the list of suggestions, although still as weird and goofy as ever (“Why is my poop green”), are also nice and big.

But there’s still a major problem. If you need to add text to the end of a search you already made, but the end of the text was beyond the area you could see, you can’t reach it. This was a problem before, and is still a problem now. At least we have the option now to “x” out the text in the search box, but that can be a big pain for anything long and complex. And the text field, of course, doesn’t support auto-correction, so that can make retyping your text a “orivlem” (problem).

But over all, I think this is a great update. Now I wish they would release an app or mobile site to allow us to edit and create Google Docs.

Peace, JbB

It’s a really great effect. The “storm” will start raining more or less, and the same with the thunder. Thankfully, you can adjust the randomization. I personally hate the “wind”, it makes it sound like your in a tropical storm. So I set the frequency of the wind from 0% to 20%. I’m glad they have this feature, because if they didn’t, randomization would be too… random.

You can also change the pitch of the rain, in case you wanna’ suite your speakers to make the rain sound more natural. I leave mine along because the rain sounds are perfect.

What’s also really great is the price; currently it’s only $0.99. ****, can’t go wrong with that. I think it was more last year, but I can’t remember. Point is, I usually don’t recommend app you gotta’ pay for. But this app is something I’d recommend to anyone. $0.99 is an amazing price for all you get with this.

Keep bringin’ that rain, baby.

Peace, JbB

I first listed it up more than a month ago to sell on eBay. It sold fine, but the person who bought it was jack *** from Nigira who phished an eBay account of an American. Of course this bidder was the highest bidder because they were willing to “pay” anything. The SOB then sent me a fake email from Paypal, stating that “you have received the money” from Paypal, trying to get me to send the item without actually, um… receiving any money! Yeah, come on.. of all people, I am not the person to mess around with.

So it didn’t sell. So a few weeks ago, I tried again. This time, within an hour left of the bid, someone accidentally placed a bid too high. No big deal because the person retracted their bid immediately. But eBay’s system decided to… be lazy, and not actually retract this person’s bid, even though it clearly stated it was retracted. So when it came down to the last few minutes, the person who retracted the bid was the highest bidder. Way’ta go eBay, the world’s number one leader and pioneer of online auctioning. Clearly I’m not going to force this person to pay what the item “sold” for, because it was never meant to be sold to that person.

eBay has a “second chance offer” system, where you can offer an item to the second to highest person who bid on it. It gets offered at the person’s maximum bid. In other words, the highest amount they were willing to pay. Fair enough. I offered it to the second highest bidder…

The highest bidder retracted the bid (reason wrong price entered), so you can be the winning buyer for your $***offer if you want.

I sent the message out within 10 minutes of the bid ending, so the person should have been jumping for joy. But what’s the person do? He gives me his answer a day later…

if i do the second chance offer…..will u express mail it to me for free. to ….los angeles california…///??? thanx

The shipping was set for only $5, but not only did he not wanna’ pay the $5 (it would have been about $10 standard shipping to California, he wanted free shipping  which would have been much more expensive). Wow, what a moron. My answer…

No, it will be the standard shipping. I need your answer within a few hours or the item’s going to relisted for a new seven day auction.

Of course the guy doesn’t even bother responding. In addition to this, I had to answer so many stupid questions sent to me via eBay. Questions you shouldn’t even be asking. (I was polite and responded to every one of them.) Questions like “how many 3gs  u have like that for sale”, “i have 2g iphone i want os 3.1.2 how did u do that???”, “Do you have a buy it now price”, etc.

I put it up for a third time, and at this point I’m starting to get really disenchanted with eBay. But by eBay, I mean the people on there. But for the listing, nothing goes wrong and it sells. I go down to ship it out and realize that the shipping from Florida to Massachusetts is more than the $5 shipping. Great. Not only that, but I then realized “Hey, don’t feel safe sending the Neocell 2G out without any kinda’ shipping insurance.”. I realize I’ve now gotta’ pay the extra shipping and insurance outta’ my own pocket. I emailed the buyer, letting him know what the tracking number was, and also that I spent my own money insuring it, etc.

Man, at this point I’m feelin’ really disenchanted with dealing with people. Friend and family that knew the issues I was dealing with also felt the same way. Such a shame…

But today I get a letter in the mail from the person I shipped the Neocell 2G to. I said “Man, I ‘freakin’ swear if this is some kinda’ crap complainin’ about somethin’… I ain’t havin’ it. I’m so sick of this eBay crap!”. The letter…

Re: IPhone

Dear Mr. Baird:

Thank you for the Iphone. Enclosed please find $10.00 too cover the extra postage in mailing the item.

God Bless.

(signed)

And you see what’s included inside the letter. So that makes me feel better about the “human condition”, at least regarding eBay, haha. The person who bought it is a long time reader of theneocell.com (referred to me a “J”, which is what I used to sign these posts on theneocell.com months ago).

So even though I had to deal with attempted theft by international criminals, system screw ups and greedy non-buyers… the auction turned out to be a success. And most important, it seems the Neocell 2G is going to a good home, which is really want I wanted the most. I’ll miss ya baby…

Peace, JbB

Because of that, jailbroken OS 3.1.2 works better than ever. In fact, I now have full working push notifications. And get this, I didn't even have to apply some "push notification fix" to it or nothin'. It just works. For the first time ever, I've got working push notifications.

So then I thought to myself... when a jailbreak is released for OS 3.1.3, why upgrade? I mean, the update offers virtually nothing of value. The only thing closest would be better battery level accuracy monitoring for 3GS's. Ooo, big deal... Why bother possibly messing up everything that's right with OS 3.1.2 to upgrade to an OS that'll give me no benifit at all?

Na, screw that. For the first time since getting the Neocell 3GS, everything's working perfect. I'm not freakin' that up for some stupid bug fixes... bug fixes that don't even affect me. Screw OS 3.1.3.

So what about you? Well there are a group of people who are experiencing issues getting tethering to work. If your not jailbroken but have issues getting tethering to work, then go ahead and upgrade to OS 3.1.3 and hope that it fixes tethering for you. If your jailbroken and can't get tethering to work, wait until a jailbreak is released for OS 3.1.3 and then upgrade and hope that fixes tethering for ya.

A word of caution though... we don't know yet if this update actually blocks tethering profiles from being installed at all. So my real advice is to wait out upgrading for a good, long time, until you start seeing people like me confirm whether or not tethering works for OS 3.1.3.

But I won't be upgrading at all, and my personal advice to you... unless there's something wrong with your OS 3.1.2, don't bother updating.

Peace, JbB

OS 3.1.3 is released today by Apple. It fixes very, very minor security bugs. If your jailbroken, you know the deal. Never, ever, update until your given the green light from the jailbroken community. But if your not jailbroken, I say wait off updating for a few days. Here’s why I’m so concerned…

“A memory corruption issue exists in the handling of a certain USB control message,” said Apple’s advisory. “A person with physical access to the device could use this to bypass the passcode and access the user’s data.”

This could fix the hole that Blackra1n uses to jailbreak iPhones. So just wait off for a few days until we get word. If you aren’t jailbroken, but there could be a 1% chance you may be interested in jailbreaking, don’t update. There’s a chance this could affect your phone’s ability to jailbreak.

Just be cool.

Peace, JbB

There’s no fix if you experience this issue. You get that? There-is-no-fix… The only way to get this issue fixed is for Wordpress to update the app fixing the bug. Problem, from the release of Wordpress 2 to today’s date, they’ve released app updates and none of them have fixed the bug or even addressed that it exists.

People have said online that you can hit “publish” as soon as you start your post as a workaround to this problem. That’s a stupid idea because that makes your post LIVE for people to read while your still writing it, typos and all. And also, you must be online at all times to save this way, which includes the same option of saving it as a public draft. You want to keep your posts saved as a local draft, and then publish once it’s finished. So this isn’t possible with this “saving bug”.

So now, I’m typing up my posts with the Evernote app and then copying and pasting the text into the Wordpress app to post. I’ll have to switch to Wordpress 1 or choose another blogging app. This sucks.

What kinda’ issues are the rest of you facing? When did this start happening and have you found any work around or… anything? If you another blogging app for Wordpress, what do you think? I wanna’ hear from ya.

Peace, JbB

A recap for those new to the site, the Neocell was my first iPhone (the one for sale), a 24K gold and wood plated iPhone 2G 16GB. There’s a pic of me ‘n’ my “new baby” the first week I got it.

I was in a contract with T-mobile at the same, so the very first thing I had to do once getting the Neocell was jailbreak it to work on T-mobile. I had a choice between an iPhone 2G 16GB or an iPhone 3G 16GB. The reason why I went with an iPhone 2G is because of me bein’ on T-mobile, it’s impossible for 3G iPhones to access T-mobile’s 3G network. So why pay more money on a 3G iPhone if I can’t access the 3G speeds. So a 2G was a perfect choice for me. See, I did my homework before hand. This is how theneocell.com got started.

About 9 or 10 months later, once I was out of my contact with T-mobile. it became time for me to upgrade to an iPhone 3GS. So I’ve had the Neocell 2G sittin’ and lookin’ all pretty on my desk for a few months. I’ve put off sellin’ it because, well… it’s my baby. Hard to sell somethin’ that means so much to ya, ya know?

I remember all the great and wild comments I’ve gotten from people. There’ll be times I’d be out somewhere, messin’ around on the Neocell 2G and I’d look up and see a chick starin’ at me. I’d say to myself “If she’s checkin’ me out, she’s got a weird way of staring at me…” and then I’d realize “Oh, she ain’t checkin’ me out, she’s checkin’ the Neocell out.”. I’d get the same reaction from guys too, I’d look at a guy and think “What the ‘freak you lookin’ you??” and realize “Oh… the Neocell. It’s cool, it’s cool…”. It would happen out with people too, someone would ask “What was that guy lookin’ at?” and I’d say “Oh, my phone…” and they’d go “Oh… I thought he as a weirdo or somethin’.”

One thing I had to get used to (which I still get now with the Neocell 3GS) is that people will mistake the Neocell 2G for other phones. My banker, who sees me about once a week, regonized that I had a new phone instantly and asked “Wow, that’s awesome looking… is that the new Blackberry” (talkin’ about the Blackberry Storm). I got offended and said “Blackberry? Does this look like a Blackberry??” and showed him the Apple logo on the back. His response, “Oh, I didn’t think it was the iPhone because it has that… what is that, wood?”. That was the first time I realized that people will sometimes not recognize it as an iPhone because it’s so unique. So now, when I get “Wow! I love your phone! What type of phone is that? The new Blackberry / Palm / Droid / Nexus One??”, I take that as a compliment and simply say “No, it’s an iPhone…”.

I remember one person who checked out the Neocell 2G, they asked if they could feel it. I said sure, and they said “Ooo, I feel the wood…” and then they leaned in and sniffed it! I said “Whoh, what’er you doin’?” and they said “I wanted to smell the wood…”. I looked at this woman strangely and had to say “Yeah… sorry… it… it don’t smell like nothin’.”. Haha, wild.

Made a lotta’ memories with the Neocell 2G, I’m gonna’ miss it.

Peace, JbB

But, right now, all old comments made on the theneocell.com before today aren’t up right now. It’ll take a few days before they become integrated with the new system. So chillax if you don’t see your comment, they weren’t deleted or nothin’.

The new system’s up and runnin’ though, so feel free to leave comments.

Peace, JbB

How to Activate and Enable Free Internet Tethering on iPhone 3.0

1. Open Safari
2. Visit either http://help.benm.at/tethering.php or http://www.iphone-notes.de/mobileconfig/
   
3. Select your country
   
4. Select your service provider
   
5. Tap Install to install the new profile
   
6. Select Install Now to install and download the new profile
   
   
   
7. Now go into your iPhone Settings -> General -> Network -> Internet Tethering (look, internet tethering setting, yeah baby)
   
8. Turn Internet Tethering On
   
9. When it talks that junk about bluetooth, just tell it USB Only if your connecting your iPhone via cable.
   
   
10. Now that tethering is turned on, just connect your iPhone to your computer and your set (yeah baby)
    
11. There’s one last thing to do (something that other web sites seem to leave OUT)… Your iPhone may / will act screwy, so go to Settings -> General -> Reset ->Reset Network Settings. After the short reset, iPhone should be able to be used for MMS, Voicemail and Internet tethering.
    

And there you have it. Nice ‘n’ easy like Georgia Weezy, am I right?

If you found this useful, follow me on twitter @ twitter.com/johnBbaird .

Peace, JbB

Update: Tethering does in fact work for OS 3.1.2 jailbroken or unjailbroken, and there’s the proof.