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Thank the lord for the iPhone Dev Team! Tonight they uploaded a video demonstration of an iPhone 3G running unlocked and jailbroken (video after the break). I currently run an unlocked and jailbroken iPhone 3G and I’m very much looking forward to the newest release with OS 3.0 compatibility. I’ll be getting an iPhone 3G S this weekend, and I’ll be giving the unlocked iPhone 3G to my brother for use with T-Mobile. Be sure to check back later this weekend for pics (and perhaps video) about the process and how it all works!

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Does the internet feel different this morning? Apparently it should. Today Opera took the wraps off its newest web browser, Opera Unite. For those not familiar with Opera, it is a web browser that has recently made its name with the increase in popularity of Opera Mobile / Mini. Opera is also the engine powering the Nintendo Wii and DSi web browsers. While their client software for mobile devices and game consoles has gained popularity, their desktop browser seems to have fallen off the map a bit. Apple’s Safari is fast as ever, Firefox continues to get better, and even IE isn’t half bad anymore. Throw Google Chrome into the mix, and the browser market may be too crowded for Opera. Click on to find out!

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Well lookie lookie here. That’s the first dual core Atom 330 based netbook I’ve seen yet. Thanks to Overclockers.com for the heads up. Netbooks have become quite popular, and my personal favorite is the Asus Eee PC 1000HE. Ubuntu Netbook Remix makes a great fit for it, but if I had one complaint about the netbook, it would be that it bogs down during multitasking. It’s a great music player, video viewer, web browser, word processor, etc. Try to do three of those at once and you have a problem. That’s where the Atom 330 should help out. Packing twice as many cores as the N270 / N280, these should really help to blur the line between netbook and notebook. Initial thoughts are that this thing is speedy! Judging from the language on the link, I doubt this netbook will come stateside any time soon, but keep your eyes open for a mainstream computer maker to produce one of these in the near future.

NICE! I should receive my 32GB white iPhone 3G S by this upcoming Friday. I’l actually be on vacation until Sunday, so I won’t get to open it until then. Looking forward to it – watch this blog for first impressions!

After some reflection on the WWDC keynote, I couldn’t be happier about the release of Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard. From the early impressions of the pre-release they gave out at the show, it appears that everyone is seeing very nice performance increases across the board. Upgrading to Snow Leopard will be a fresh of breath air to all macs (Intel only). And to make matters even better, they priced this so low that there really should be no excuse for any Leopard owner to not upgrade!

However, one thing that really bums me out is the lack of any mention of Hybrid SLI. Hybrid SLI is an nVidia technology that allows the discrete graphics card on the motherboard to pair up with the integrated graphics chip at the same time, giving a big boost over using just one or the other. With the new Macbook Pro lineup announced by Apple, half of their Pro laptops have two graphics chips in them at the same time (the integrated 9400M as well as the 9600M GT). The integrated chip is designed for those who care more about battery life than performance, and the 9600M GT is for gaming. Not only do you have to log out of the system to switch between these two chips (at least you did in Leopard – no word about Snow Leopard yet), but you also lack the ability to run them together in Hybrid SLI mode. Windows users can do this! Why can’t we? The performance gains are quite significant and the hardware is there to do it! If Apple snuck this in, then I have no idea why they didn’t mention it at the Keynote… Bummer… Hopefully they can add it in 10.6.1….

The hype is over. The Palm Pre has been released, and I did my first impressions of the phone a few days back. Surely nobody will argue that WebOS is great, that the screen is beautiful, and that this is the first real competitor to the iPhone yet, but how does it actually hold up in daily usage? My girlfriend has been on the road for the past couple days, and she’s not completely impressed with what she sees…

Battery Life

Simply put, the battery life appears to be awful. After a full day of occasionally checking email, making a couple calls, and surfing the web a bit, the Pre was at 8% battery at 9PM. Perhaps this can be improved with software, but this experience happened two days in a row. Reports on the internet are that this battery could be WORSE than that of the T-Mobile G1.

Dialing 911

She has dialed 911 twice by accident. In one case, the cops actually called her back to see if there was an emergency. How did this happen? Well if you lock the phone with a pass code, and accidentally double tap the emergency call button, it dials straight out. The emergency call button is right next to the zero and sometimes the clicks don’t register perfectly, hence the double tap out of frustration, hence the call to 911.

Sluggishness / Responsiveness

We loaded 3 gigs of music on the Pre’s internal memory, and she feels like it’s a bit more sluggish ever since we did that. Has anyone else noticed this? She’s not doing any heavy multitasking. She gets rid of all the application cards. It just seems like it has slowed down since the music load. Also, sometimes the screen taps don’t register quite right. The water droplet effect is helpful, but it doesn’t happen until AFTER you clicked, when it is too late.

Anyone else out there have other negative first impressions? She has 30 days to take it back and her old Centro still sitting on her desk…

Yesterday, Apple announced the iPhone 3GS. It looks exactly the same as the iPhone 3G, but the guts have been overhauled to make it twice as fast in nearly all respects. Interestingly, Apple is keeping the original iPhone 3G around at the $99 price. Pundits are saying that this is a huge move by Apple to attack the low end of the market. Is it really? If you check Apple’s website, you need to dig around to find the product page for the original iPhone 3G. It’s not very prominently featured. I believe they are just selling this until they run out inventory or until a couple manufacturing contracts expire. Once the inventory dries up, perhaps after the holiday season, I’m guessing the only option will be an iPhone 3G S until WWDC 2010. Apple doesn’t want to play in the $99 space any longer than they need to. What do you think? Am I right or wrong? Leave a comment!

Today’s the big day! Palm unleashed the Pre upon the world. Read on to find impressions of launch day and the device!

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