I’ve got the Memorex Minimove sitting on my desk, usin’ it has a charger for the Neocell, and also as amplified speakers. It matches everythin’ really well. What’cha think?

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

The new Neocell 3GS. What can I say about it, but “andale, andale, ariba!!” Yeah baby. The speed of my new 32GB 3GS iPhone is so amazing. You have no idea how amazingly fast the speed is. Let’s start by comparing the speed of 2G / 3G.

We’ll take the old Neocell for example. Being jailbroken with OS 3.0, I couldn’t run Pandora in the background for very long without it crashing (closing in the background from running out of memory). And we’re talking about doing simple things, like typing in the WordPress app. In short, running a program in the background such as Pandora would crash in about two minutes or less… and if it didn’t crash, it’d make the system so sluggish while running something in the background it wasn’t even worth it.

Now we compare the same settings and systems for the Neocell 3GS. I’ve been running Pandora in the background 70% of the time I use the Neocell (including driving places) and Pandora hasn’t crashed once. Not one single time. I’ve even ran it in the backgound of some intensive applications. I’ve been running Pandora in the background while the Tomtom car navigation app runs with zero lag, as well as in the background to some video games, such as Geodefense. You heard me right… not once crash or even lag since I got the Neocell 3GS.

I can’t believe the speed this baby’s got. It’s amazing. Now, for those of you who have a 3GS and are jailbroken, don’t be temped to go out and load it up with all this jailbroken garbage like Winterboard of SBSettings (you heard me right). Having a 3GS is like upgrading from a truck to a sports car. Don’t go loading up that sports car with a trailer full of wood. That sports car will still be faster hauling wood than your truck was, but it’ll no longer be as fast as a sports car. Don’t go loading up your 3GS with jailbroken garbage, or you will make it no faster (even slower) than a non-jailbroken 2G or 3G iPhone.

Peace, J