Keeping up with an old habit of mine to dive headfirst into the device I currently use I have not failed with the Iphone 3G so far. I have installed OS 3.12, jail broken it with some help from Farhan Chawla and have found ways and hacks that might generally help many Iphone users. I am sure you can find these if you search around a bit and do some trial and error on your own also, but why bother when you can ask me?
Issues of Lag
An Iphone is exactly like your computer, which means it runs on an os..and when you hit that home button to back out of an app it does not close the app, but leaves it running for some time in the background. The solution? You open an app you wanna quit, then you press the power button on top till the slider appears to switch the phone off then press the home button and keep it pressed till u see the home screen come back, do this with the messages section, safari, some games and messengers and you will be amazed at the upgrade in speed.
No push notifications?
When you jailbreak a phone the push notifications do not work, for the unchartered traveller this means that those funky messages from fbook and twitter and msn messenger and sms do not appear in your home screen. You have to go into the app to see them which stinks and defeats the whole purpose. Well here is the fix but you have to pay for this, sorry trust me the money is worth it specially for people who complain that I phone does not and cannot do what a bb can..once u turn this on..boy you will be shocked. Its available here
Jail breaking and upgrading (supported till 3.12)
Its simple, plug in yout phone to Itunes let it update the os, the phone will go into brick mode or no service mode after all is done then you just download blackrain from this guys page and click make it rain once its installed. Thats it!! the phone will then reboot and you will see the pic of geohot, your phones ready to run now..and it will, no wifi issues no nothing.
Multitasking
Oh so you still think an Iphone cannot multi task?? Well..let me show you how moronic that idea is lol. Go into cydia, search for an app called backgrounder and install it, then search for an app called Kirikae and install that. Now all you have to do is set your home button for double tap to put current running app into background via settings and you are all set to run multiple apps at the same time.
Rock
Cydia is slow…turtle slow, so when you can, download and install rock from inside the blackrain app (usually a black drop) icon in your appscreen or from the web. Rock will set you free, does everything cydia can and is super fast. It wil lalso save all your apps and settings online incase u need to login from another device and make it all good again. It raaawks!!
App of this week (recommended)
It had to be of this week since there are so many bloody apps that it will change frequently. Its called ustream broadcaster, and yes you guessed it!! It does what your desktop ustream does from your itty bitty Iphone guys, its unbelievable how fast it is over gprs but wait till you run it on wifi!! Plus its free and in your appstore, just search for ustream!!
Faisal,
I would not have jailbroken the iPhone, though I do understand if this is due to carrier issues. I have been a iPhone user from the start in 07′.
Here is my suggestion for a good iPhone experience. As you continue using the phone, you will experience a lag of the device. This can be either due to playing games (yeah, we all do end up playing games on the iPhone, the graphics are amazing). You can either restart (reboot) the phone or install an application that will free up RAM. My favorite application to clear up RAM is System Activity Monitor. This is a must for the iPhone!
My other favorite applications for the iPhone are:
1). Star Walk (for the astronomy enthusiast)
2). Bing (best search app and much faster than Google)
3). AppBox Pro (bundle of applications)
4). TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design video presentations)
5). Wordbook (dictionary)
6). Epocrates (useful for those in the medical field)
7). Farm Frenzy (great time management game)
I would also recommend TUAW by AOL, very useful to keep up with Apple development.
I hope the above helps. Btw, I am the same Salman that placed the Obama bet with you…:) Though I do not comment on your site, I do read your posts regularly. Keep up the great work!
Few other applications that I would highly recommend as well:
iQuran Pro (free version is available as well)
iPray Pro (free version is available as well)
To help you better type using the iPhone, install Genius
All the best!
There is a total sub-marketplace inside of the area of the cellular mobile phone market area connected to the jailbreak or unlocking of the cellular phones so that they can be utilised on any cellular network, and current Supreme Court decisions in the USA handed down have confirmed that the jailbreak market is legal and reputable. That is, finish-user consumers are quite inside their legal rights to do what they want to their mobile cell phone handset to enable the phone to perform on other network carriers which is commonly recognized as jailbreak or unlocking the network block.
Learn how to Jailbreak your iPhone