Inside CNET Labs Podcast

The cat and mouse game continues between Apple and the Dev Team, a group of guys who are passionate about freeing Apple handheld devices from the company's short leash. The Dev Team has been jailbreaking new Apple firmware for years, and it just did so again--though this time around it seems Apple is still taking the decisive lead.

The team announced Friday the availability of PwnageTool 3.13, which allows for jailbreaking and unlocking the iPhone 3GS running the latest firmware, version 3.1. Currently only a Mac version of the tool is available, but the Windows version will be out soon. (Keep in mind, however, that you download and use the PwnageTool at your own risk.)

A jailbroken iPhone can do a lot more than what Apple wants it to do.

(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)

The tool creates a custom firmware from the version 3.1 firmware released by Apple. To install it, you put the phone into recovery mode (turn it off, then plug it in while holding down the Home button) and use iTunes to restore the phone with the custom firmware (hold down the Option key while clicking on the Restore button).

The custom firmware, apart from jailbreaking, will not upgrade the baseband--the chip that connects the phone to a service provider--and therefore still allows the phone to be unlocked.

But there's a catch here. The tool only works with the iPhone 3GS that has been jailbroken with the firmware version 3.0 or 3.0.1. This means if you buy a new iPhone 3GS that already has version 3.1 on it or you have updated to version 3.1 using iTunes, there's still no way to have your phone jailbroken. There's even a rumor that there might never be one, unless a new exploit is found.

If this is true, it seems Apple has finally been able to gain significant ground in stopping the practice it claims could pose a threat to national security. And for thousands, if not millions of iPhone 3GS users who rely on jailbreaking and unlocking to use their phones with the service of their choice, this is sad news.

So far I've tested four flat-fee GPS applications for the iPhone with built-in offline maps: Navigon, iGo My Way, TomTom, and CoPilot Live. They all have pros and cons, but they share a few common shortcomings: a lack of real-time traffic, no support for text-to-speech (except for Navigon with its recent update), and outdated maps.

AT&T Navigator's real-time traffic works well most of the time, even where 3G signal is not available.

(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)

I've just finished testing a GPS navigation app that offers all of those previously unavailable features: the AT&T Navigator (version 1.2i.5). The catch? It doesn't have built-in maps (meaning you will need a working data connection to download the maps in real time) and it requires a monthly subscription of $10. The app itself is free.

This is one of the first GPS navigation applications made for the iPhone. It's actually a product by TeleNav and is also available for other cell carriers, including Sprint and Alltel.

Unlike the other aforementioned apps that take an hour or so to download using Wi-Fi, the AT&T Navigator has no built-in maps and therefore is a snap to install on the iPhone, even via a 3G or Edge connection. This makes it a perfect quick add-on when you suddenly need a GPS navigator.

The app also launches very quickly, taking just a second or two on my iPhone 3GS. When it can (more on this later), it also picks up GPS signals very fast. After about a week of use, I can say I really like the real-time traffic updates--which warn you both onscreen and audibly--and the text-to-speech features. This is especially helpful when you are in a unfamiliar town.

However, I found out that the traffic updates are available mostly for freeways only, unlike Google Maps, which offer them all the way down to street level for major cities.

Since I got my iPhone 3GS a couple of months ago, I've been wondering when I would really benefit from its highly anticipated faster 3G capability. I finally got the answer, and as it turns out, the wait is far from over.

AT&T announced Wednesday details of its rollout plans for High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) 7.2 3G technology. This is the next generation of 3G, and it offers up to 7.2Mbps data connection speeds (as opposed to the 2Mbps and 3.6Mbps of the current 3G).

(This is, of course, just the theoretical number. Typical real-world downlink and uplink speeds will likely be less than that depending on location, device, and overall traffic on the local wireless network at a given time. Nonetheless, this promises a significant boost. HSPA 7.2 is part of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) family of technologies, which include GSM, UMTS, and the Emerging LTE technology. HSPA 7.2 offers backward-compatibility, meaning it also works with existing 3G and 2G devices at the lower device-specific speed.)

According to the announcement, the new speed will be available by the end of the year. Unfortunately, it's available only in six cities in the U.S., including Charlotte, N.C.; Chicago; Dallas; Houston; Los Angeles; and Miami. This means the rest of the country, including the San Francisco Bay Area where I am, must continue to wait.

The iPhone 3GS is a HSPA 7.2-compatible smartphone from AT&T.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)

It's unclear how long the wait will be for the rest of the cities, but the company says it plans to deploy HSPA 7.2 in 25 of the nation's 30 largest markets by the end of 2010, and to reach about 90 percent of its existing 3G network footprint with HSPA 7.2 by the end of 2011.

While this is rather sad news for me, for most people it won't mean much, as chances are your phone is not compatible with the higher 3G speed. Currently, the iPhone 3GS is the only HSPA 7.2-ready smartphone I know that AT&T offers.

However, AT&T assures that it will offer more compatible devices with the rollout of HSPA 7.2. The company expects to have six HSPA 7.2-compatible smartphones in its device portfolio by the end of the year, as well as two new LaptopConnect cards.

The rollout of HSPA 7.2 is part of AT&T's plan to invest some $18 billion this year, of which more than two-thirds is going toward broadband and wireless. Key projects of this investment include, in AT&T's words:

CoPilot Live's map view could use some cleanup and suffers some lag when switching between the vertical and horizontal positions.

(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)

CoPilot Live is the fourth turn-by-turn GPS application with offline built-in maps for all of North America that I have on my iPhone 3GS. After Navigon, iGo My Way, and TomTom, I thought there would be nothing new I could find in a navigation app. I was wrong.

CoPilot Live offers a quick way to switch between modes of travel, which include auto, RV, motorcycle, biking, and walking. This makes the app ideal for getting around town, especially, say, if you need to change from driving a car to walking. The Navigon app offers a similar option, but you have to dig pretty deep into the menu to change your travel mode. With CoPilot you can do this anytime, even in the middle of an existing route, just via a few taps.

CoPilot Live offers a quick way to switch between different modes of travel.

(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)

Another nice thing about CoPilot is the Live Services option, which includes Live Weather and Live Link. Live Weather lets you see local weather or weather in a different city. Live Link connects CoPilot Live users, allowing them to send messages or share locations. I wasn't able to try this out as I was the only one I know who used the app during the testing.

The Live Services option, of course, requires an Internet connection and is only available when there's a cellular or Wi-Fi signal. Unfortunately, the most anticipated feature that also requires an Internet connection, the real-time traffic option, is not yet available, though there's a placeholder for it within the Live Services section of the app. According to ALK Technologies, maker of the CoPilot Live, this service will be added via an update that's coming out by the end of the month and costs another $20 per year, on top of the current $35 flat fee for the app. No other flat-free iPhone GPS apps with offline maps currently offer real-time traffic.

Also missing is the text-to-speech feature, where the app would read out the name of the street. Nonetheless, the app has a wide selection of voices for you to choose from. It includes voices of 29 languages, each with a few options of accents, both male and female. It's probably the most versatile GPS app for the iPhone in terms of languages it supports.

Navigon shows an image to help you pick the right freeway, which is helpful but can be annoying, as the image takes up the whole screen for a few seconds.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)

I'm a big fan of GPS navigation devices. Actually, I depend on them. It's therefore natural that on my iPhone 3GS you'll find both the newest turn-by-turn GPS navigation applications, the $70 Navigon and the $80 iGo My Way. Both have just recently been released to the App Store. (In my car I also have the Tom Tom One XL.)

After about a week of using the iPhone apps in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as in a few other states, here are my impressions.

First of all, both Navigon and the iGo can turn your iPhone (3G or 3GS) into a decently dependable GPS navigator. They both take about 15 seconds to load on my iPhone 3GS and about the same time to lock in with a GPS signal when outdoors. This is much faster than the Tom Tom, which can take up to a minute or two. Overall, the iGo My Way seems to pick up the signal faster than the Navigon, but it also loses the signal more easily, especially when in a big city with lots of high-rise buildings.

My biggest disappointment with both is that they don't offer real-time traffic updates, which you can get anywhere in the States with Google Maps.

Both apps offer beautifully rendered 3G maps that can be viewed vertically or horizontally, and a very convenient way to enter a new address or find a point of interest (POI). They come with good databases of POIs, too. I was in a few rather remote areas and was able to find what I needed. However, the database is not very updated--twice, both apps took me to restaurants and bars in La Cross, Wis., that were no longer there. Unfortunately, you can't tab on the listed POI to call its phone number, which defeats the main purpose of the iPhone, which is, after all, a phone.

The iPhone 3GS during a talk time test. The "Watchmen" DVD is merely there to simulate a user holding the phone to their ear, thereby shutting off the screen. Music from the Zune is being played through both phone mics.

(Credit: Eric Franklin/CNET)

Last year I had a bone to pick with Apple for not including a call duration feature on the iPhone. Not a big deal to most people I'm sure; however, when it comes to testing talk time here in CNET Labs, I can't think of a more useful feature.

With last year's iPhone 3G, I was able to circumvent this inconvenience by tracking the phone's "Time since last full charge" duration. This number, as you might have guessed, tells you the amount of time that's passed since the phone was last fully charged. So, all I had to do was charge the phone fully, start the test, wait until the battery died, plug it back in, and check that number.

This worked fine last year, but with the current round of iPhone 3G and 3GS testing, I'm getting extremely varied results--so varied, in fact, that I can no longer trust this method.

No matter, though, since the latest iPhone OS 3.0 added a call duration feature. I figured I'd just set up the talk time test--which involves taping earbuds from a MP3 player to the mic of the iPhone and a landline phone, calling the landline phone, and waiting for the battery to die. Then I'd come back several hours later and have delicious results waiting for me (kind of like an iPhone-testing-results Crock-Pot).

Once again, I'm slapped back to reality as, unfortunately, the couple of times I've tried using the call duration feature on the 3G and 3GS I've had little luck. Apparently, if the phone's battery dies in the middle of a call, the duration of that call isn't saved on the phone.--yet another roadblock.