I’ve got the Neocell 4 and everything’s good, but one problem is with the iPhone dock that I installed into the Lexus. The problem is that the dock was for the Neocell 3GS but not the brand new Neocell 4. iPhone 3G / 3GS docks won’t work for iPhone 4′s because the design of the dock is just different. But iPhone 2G docks WILL work for iPhone 4′s.

So I found one of the Neocell 2G’s old docks and immediately put it to good use.

I did the same thing with the iPhone 2G dock that I did with the iPhone 3G / 3GS dock. I covered all connectors and spray painted it a tan color and also spray painted a protective paint coating on. Here’s the result. (It was raining when the pictures were taken, and these pictures were taken with an iPhone 3G.)

Looks pretty tight, right? But I didn’t stop there. This presented another problem. Before the Neocell 4, the dock could be used for my wife’s iPhone, my mother’s, my best friend’s, etc. When they road with me and wanted to charge their 3G or 3GS iPhone’s, no prob. I’d just take the Neocell 3GS off the dock and drop theirs in.

But now I can’t. Only iPhone 2G’s and iPhone 4′s can work in this dock. And ain’t no one I know has an iPhone 2G, and I’m the only one that has an iPhone 4 (I feel so special, haha) so that means this dock is exclusive to only me.

Man, I don’t want that. I want everyone to be able to dock into the Lexus. I knew people had successfully “modded” iPhone docks to work with other models of iPhones, but the result was HORRIFIC. I mean **** right fugly.

Man, I ain’t puttin some fugly thing into the Lexus.

I’m pretty skilled with a Dremel, so I figured I’d give it a shot. I had a Hong Kong knock off iPhone 3G / 3GS dock that didn’t work, so I decided to see if I could modify it clean enough to pass as a clean, non fugly dock. If I could on this dock, I’d try it on one of my OEM Apple 3G / 3GS iPhone docks. But…

The plastic couldn’t hold up. As you see, it didn’t turn out right. If the very front could stay in tact, this would have worked. I would have coated the “new inside” with it’s own wall-type structure, painted it and that would have worked as it would fit all generations of iPhone.

But it didn’t. The front chipped apart under the stress of having the inner curved parts surgically removed with my Dremel.

So I decided to on something better. I decided to install a second iPhone dock into the Lexus, and this one would be for 3G and 3GS iPhones.

I did the same thing as I did for the iPhone 2G / 4 dock, I masked off all protective areas (including speaker port holes) and painted it black and then sprayed on a protective coating. Check out the pics. (These pics were also taken while raining, but taken with the Neocell 4.)

As you can see, the dock blends in perfectly with the glove box (the little “white” you see on the dock is the reflection of light). The sync cable’s pretty noticeable, but if the white against black keeps annoying me, I’ll order a black sync cable. I’m leaving the cable lose and not hiding or installing it into the interior anywhere so that if someone, such as my wife, wants to use her iPhone while charging it, the cable be unplugged easily (and just as easily, plugged back in).

But that’s not the best feature of them all. Check out the video (recorded with the Neocell 4)…

As you can see, I installed it in such a way that the glove box can actually CLOSE while an iPhone’s sittin’ on the dock charging. I mean, that’s some groovy-*** **** there.

So yeah baby, I’m happy now to have two docks in the Lexus.

Peace, JbB

So yesterday I got the Neocell 4. Here’s the unboxing photos… (all of them were taken with an iPhone 2G by the way)

The box arrives from FexEx.

I ordered it from AT&T online on 08/25/2010 and it arrived on 08/27/2010.

Using my trusty transforming key knife to open it.

Whoh… there it is.

Come to papa…

Careful… careful…

Slowly I lift the lid…

‘Freak. There it is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah…

Damn, I’m lookin’ good.

Slowly lifting the protective screen…

Beautifully smooth glass there baby.

There’s the back with the screen protector on. Look at that big *** camera.

Taking the back off, love that reflective text.

There’s the accessories, neatly packaged in the box there.

Booting the Neocell 4 for the very first time.

There we go, now it needs activation. No prob.

The Neocell 4 sittin’ pretty in the Neocell 2G’s dock.

It’s a perfect fit.

There we go, now I’m restoring this “iPhone” with the Neocell 3GS’s data.

Not too much longer now.

Syncing the Neocell 3GS’s data to this “iPhone”…

The Neocell 4′s rebooting…

Now it’s virtually the “Neocell 4″.

Peace, JbB

So for those of you that remember, last year I sold the Neocell 2G on eBay. Well now I’m selling the Neocell 3GS on eBay starting today. The auction should end Sunday, August 22nd. There’s no reserve!

Why’em I sellin’ the Neocell 3GS? Because I’m getting a new AT&T account (I’ll explain later) and, with it, an iPhone 4.

It should be interesting to see the outcome of this auction, considering the results of the last auction. I’d love it if the Neocell 3GS went to one of my readers like the Neocell 2G.

The Neocell 3GS is still rockin’ it and lookin’ sexy as ever. In fact, it’s much better than what it was before.

I removed the wood and gold plating from the front. The gold and wood plating on the front was perfect. But I had to keep it protected, so I used an Invisible Shield on the front. The Invisible Shield caused a problem, because of the “levels” between the gold to wood to glass caused there to be bubbles in the Invisible Shield. That caused cleaning problems and caused problems with the smooth “feel” of the iPhone. So I took it off and realized it was much better plain on the front.

The back gold and wood plating was great, but the Invisible Shield on the sides annoyed me. So I made a custom shaped Invisible Shield for that back that only covered the back plating perfectly, so that the sides still feel nice ‘n’ smooth.

I don’t have a design plan for an iPhone 4 yet. Not really sure what I’d do. I’m gonna’ continue with the whole “gold” theme. Just like with the Neocell 3GS, I’ll get the iPhone 4 and then decide on what to do with the design.

I’ll keep ya updated on how things go.

Peace, JbB

I’m sellin’ my baby… Yep,  it’s true, I’m finally sellin’ the original Neocell on eBay.

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

Gee… this sorta’ feels like deja-vu. Seems, not too long ago, I was talkin’ about the “iPhone Killer” Palm Pre. We all know how that turned out. But tonight, curiosity got the best of me and I headed down to the mall to the Verizon Wireless store to check out the Motorola Droid myself. I wanted to check it out also because it had the new Android OS on it.

Let me start out by saying I wasn’t impressed… not at least compared to any version iPhone, including the 2G. Let’s start by talkin’ about what it’s got. It’s got a 550 MHz something processor, not too impressive compared to the iPhone 3GS’s 600 MHz, but I still think 550 MHz is fast. It comes with a microSD 16GB card for it’s hard drive space, which considering it’s being sold for the same price as the iPhone 3GS 16GB, that’s not bad. You can swap the 16GB microSD card for a 32GB microSD card, which outta’ run you about $100, so you can in a sense turn it into a 32GB phone for about $300 total, the price of an iPhone 3GS 32GB. So although I hate messing with “removable storage” in smartphones (all those days with Pocket PC SD cards), this is ok for the Droid. Another good thing is the screen, it’s nice and big and doesn’t contain too much crap on the front of it.

Everything else about it falls short compared to iPhones, for two reasons… the phone (hardware) itself and the OS (software) itself. The phone… I like the screen size of it, it makes pretty good use of real estate, and doesn’t look too ugly, but you realize that everything goes down-hill from there, compared to an iPhone. It has pointed corners, so it don’t feel right in your hand. Fact, I’m positive you’d stab it into your skin by accident a few times and would curse the **** thing. It don’t feel anywhere as cheap as the Google G1, but it does feel cheap… the Palm Pre feels more solid if that tells you anything (and I thought the Palm Pre felt cheap compared to iPhones).

They were smart by hiding those stupid “D pads” that are found on all Google Android phones in the actual slide out keyboard, but that’s another problem with the device… the keyboard. Well the fact that is has a keyboard is a problem. The fact that the keyboard slides out via landscape mode makes typing on it a lot easier than a Palm Pre or Blackberry, but it’s still a slow pain. But the fact that it’s a landscape keyboard, where the phone’s screen normally is portrait is a problem right there. When your doing things on your phone, in portrait mode (like you do on an iPhone, Palm Pre, Blackberry, ect), and you need to type in an address, because you slide out the keyboard from the side, you have to then use the phone in landscape mode in order to type **** in. Then, when you close up the keyboard, you gotta’ rotate it to use it back in portrait. Although the keyboard is easier to use than the Palm Pre, I’d rather have a Palm Pre style keyboard that slides down and out from the bottom.

I can’t stress how much of a horrible solution that is. I mean, why would you want to use a device with your only form of entry, the keyboard (yes, there is no on screen keyboard) hidden from you? I mean, I can pretty much tell you mostly everyone will use the phone with the keyboard out, in landscape mode, the entire time. That’s a horrible solution because you can then no longer use it with one hand.

Other issues with hardware… the “d pad” was really hard to use, and I tried repeatedly. Problem was that you can push in the center as an action, like “clicking” for a link, or move it down to navigate down. But it’s so flat that you have to focus really hard on not clicking center when you want to move up, or not clicking down when you want to click center. It’s a horrible experience and a horrible little pad. But, Motorola was smart because the Google Android OS seems to require all phones to have a d pad, so Motorola said (I assume) “Fine, we’ll put in on the keyboard and make it as minimal as possible”. So that’s why it works so horrible, because it’s really thrown in there and not meant to be used.

The device has buttons placed all over the device in a stupid, “customer must have buttons” method… but that seems to be required for all Google Android phones (****, all phones in general, besides iPhone). So as far as buttons, it’s the best Google Android phone I’ve seen so far to minimize button placement.

Software now… the new Android OS. Let me just tell you… for being two years old and with clear inspiration on how to do an OS right (the iPhone OS), the Android OS is a real piece of crap. I mean it. How is it that this Motorola Droid phone has more memory and CPU power than the original iPhone 2G and have a new refined OS and still have horrible scrolling visual effects? I mean, this phone has close to the power of the iPhone 3GS but doesn’t have a smooth frame rate between “swapping” through home screens? You swap the home screen, similar to the iPhone in visual effect (the page moves left or right) and it’s choppy. All this processing and visual power and you can’t even get something as smooth as the first generation iPhone 2G, running the first iPhone OS 1.0 version? I expected that from the Google G1 (the first Google Android phone) and the Android OS, when it was at version 1.0, but not this… I can’t stress enough of much of a failure that is in my books.

The OS itself just feels like junk. It feels like a Pocket PC’s OS. The way you open apps is also bad. I mean, it’s like the Google G1, not much as changed… and that’s the problem, not much as changed. I like the Palm Pre OS much better for handling opening and managing apps (of course, nether can hold a candle to the iPhone OS). The Palm Pre OS, although not as good as the iPhone, was enjoyable to use. The new Android OS isn’t enjoyable. As you see from one of the screen shots below, I loaded up theneocell.com. Funny how the browser is loading the theme reserved only for mobile Safari. Browsing web sites and interacting with links was a joke. The Palm Pre even handled loading sites much better.

Just to show the quality of the apps, from both Google and Motorola… the music player, included in a screen shot below, doesn’t even have a way (I checked) to play by genre. Are you kidding me?? That’s the only way I play my music is by genre, so they clearly don’t care about us, the consumer… they simply care about getting people’s money.

In all, I was really disappointed in the “Droid”. I ain’t gonna’ look down on anybody who gets a Droid, if I were on Verizon, the Droid would be my choice of phone… and I’d choose it over any Blackberry on the market, and I’d choose it over any phone offered by T-Mobile… so in short, the two best phones besides iPhones would be the Palm Pre and Motorola Droid

Would I rather have the Motorola Droid or Palm Pre? Well the Android market has a measely 10,000 apps compared to iTunes 100,000 apps… but Android’s 10,000 apps is so much larger than Palm’s App Catalog of only 300 (all these numbers are current by the way). The Palm Pre is a much more solid device, more solid OS, but it’s hardware specs (CPU, RAM, hard drive) are much weaker than the Droid and without those apps… if I had to choose the Pre or Droid, my choice would be for the Droid.

What are my thoughts on Droid’s impact? I think it’s horrible compared to the iPhone in every way, but I think the Droid’s gonna’ be a hit. Verizon’s network doesn’t suffer the amount of data AT&T suffers from all the iPhone users (us iPhone users are bogging down all of AT&T’s network, causing dropped calls and slow 3G connections for all customers, especially in metropolitan areas such as Tampa, Fl.). So, people are gonna’ see “great” reviews for the Motorola Droid and even greater review’s for Verizon’s network (which has virtually no one on it to bog it down). So I have a feeling, unlike any other “iPhone Killers” of the past, that this device will be different. I think, although it’s clearly inferior to any iPhone, a large number of people will flawk to it… until, however, a new iPhone is released next year that regains that attention and sets the record straight of just how far ahead iPhones are from any other phones.

But I’d love to end up wrong and have this be just another over-hyped “iPhone Killer”. We’ll have to see.

Peace, J

I’m here to tell you all how to remove those sharp tiny little corners and wrinkles that form in your full body Invisibleshield. In an earlier post, I just applied a full body Invisibleshield on top of the new gold and wood plating of my new iPhone 3GS.

Problem with full body protector shields are the very tiny little wrinkles and corners that raise up. Sure, they’re very tiny and hardly noticeable, but when you feel your iPhone in your hand, it scratches and scrapes against you. That beautifully smooth, silky feel of your iPhone goes away. It’s replace with a rough, unpleasant feel. You just wanna’ poke and push at the corners each time you pick up your phone.

But there’s a way to remove those tiny little “nubs”. First, give your shield protector a few days (a week even) to fully cure to make sure all edges fully work themselves down naturally, but also spend some time trying to work them down by rubbing the edges against a table or other hard, flat surfaces. Then, get some nail clippers (the smaller the better) and simply snip those tiny little nubs off.

And… that’s it. Just take some nail clippers and very carefully clip those horrible little nubs off. No matter how professional of a job you, or someone else does for you, you will have sharp edges on the back of your iPhone, but now you know how to take care of it. Feel free’ta share your experience with Invisibleshield or other shield protectors.

Peace, J

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

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

So here’s the deal… since the Neocell isn’t jailbreaking for some reason, I have the option of either selling her for a pretty penny in order to pay for the cost of a new 3GS through AT&T (either paying $200 or $300), or give it to my girl like I’ve been planning and having her use the “old” Neocell and I’d have a new one (a 3GS). But ****’s changed recently with AT&T.

Here’s the first new thing… you don’t have to sign a new contract (my girl’s standpoint) if you want to take an existing phone over to AT&T and sign up for new service. That’s pretty cool. But, AT&T only does “cool new things” to mask some “bad new thing”. So here’s the bad new thing… they force ALL smartphone customers to pay for a data plan for their phone. That means my girl would have to pay for wireless data, something I’m not sure she’d use enough to justify the price.

Another new thing, to me at least, is that they’ve dropped the price of data for 2G iPhones, paying only $20 for unlimited internet compared to $30 (considering your getting only half the speed, it makes since). So that’s a cool new thing, but what did I say? AT&T only does “cool new things” to mask “bad new things”, so the bad new thing is they also force you to pay for a text messaging plan, whether you want it or not. The minimum is $5. So, in actuality, they’re forcing all 2G iPhone customers not in a contract to pay $25 a month for internet and a few text messages. That’s bull ****. So what this means for my girl is… I’m not sure if she’d be willing to pay all that extra money to switch to AT&T to use the Neocell.

And here’s the other new thing… as I’ve mentioned before, new shipments of iPhone 3GS’s now are unjailbreakable. This is the part that effects me. What I’m trying desperately to do is find out if I can get my hands on a 16 or 32GB 3GS that doesn’t contain the new baseband. If I can, I’ll be a happy camper. If I can’t, I’ll be ******.

I’m not sure if this info is right, but apparently new shipments of 3GS’s have 3.1.2 already installed (this is after talking to an AT&T corp. sales rep.). This may mean that any new 3GS’s that come from a store that only contain OS 3.0… will not have the patched (unjailbreakable) baseband. In other words, if I get my hands on a new 3GS from an AT&T store that doesn’t have OS 3.0, then it can be jailbroken.

So that’s what I’m still trying to figure out and research… I’ll keep ya updated on what I find.

Peace, J