BigDiver

Started developing my first iPhone App, it is going to be a sort of a game/funny app.
Having some difficulty adapting to the programming model, but that is always the case when taking on a new language, and SDK.

The project is coming along nicely and I hope to have it ready in the next couple of weeks.

For a newbie like me the book Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK
was a huge help and save a lot of frustration with good examples and simple approach.

Hope they can help you as well.

If you are considering the option of buying a 8525 cellphone, please stop, take a deep breath and check your self in the nut house. I am sure you’ll find me there!

This has got to be one of my worst decisions ever, and believe me I have made some bad mistakes over the years.

Top 10 reasons why the 8525 sucks bad:

1. Some times you need to press the Answer button several times to do what a phone is designed to do, which is take calls. Sometimes it does not work at all and the call goes to voice mail… fun!
2. Battery DRAINS out so fast you wont be able to say hello after you checked your email
3. Phone does not detect the charger, and needs to be reset in order to start charging
4. When running Windows Mobile 5 it hangs so many times a day that I lost count
5. Looses bluetooth connection to headsets and car handsfree
6. Soooooo slooooowwwww when you open the keyboard and the screen rotates
7. Bulky as hell, might as well buy a brick
8. Phone dialing is hard, screen keys are too small
9. With the standard software the phone connects to the internet automatically, so watch out if you are roaming
10. ActiveSync goes into a loop some times and syncs the same stuff over and over

With the new AT&T firmware version for the 8525 they added an annoyingly loud startup video. To disable it use a Registry editor and change the following key

HKLM\SOFTWARE\HTC\StartupAnimation\Enabled

from 1 to 0.

Reboot your 8525 and the animation should be gone.

I just bought a Cingular 8525 phone and the thing would not work in any Latin American country where I often need to travel on business. After spending over 2 hours on the phone with Cingular (calling international, thank you…) they told me that the phone was bad, that the operators in Brazil would not support their phone and a bunch of other nonsensical explanations. Well after having them ask me to remove the battery and SIM card for the 8th time I gave up on support and started searching the web for more intelligent beings…

I found this page that covers this topic for the BlackJack, and half way down you can find the hack that works on the 8525.

The fix is very simple and all you need to do is to enable the Band selection tab on your Phone settings application.

Get a registry editor for your Windows Mobile (free, or commercial) and change the following:

• Open Key \HKLM\Software\OEM\PhoneSetting\
• Change value “ShowUMTSBandPage”= dword:00000001

Cingular defaults the ShowUMTSBandPage to 0 which hides the Band tab, and creates all this mess. Incredible how such a small change can cost them, and us, so much time and money!

Here’s my unsolicited advice: STOP crippling your phones on purpose, your customers are not that stupid.

Now goto Start > Settings > Personal > Phone > Band and change:

• Network Type from Auto to GSM, and
• GSM/UMTS Band from Auto to GSM (900+1800)+UMTS(2100)

If you get an error when pressing the Ok, just change to the Network tab after you make the changes and then press the Ok button.

Reboot the phone and you should now work in GSM only networks. The settings shown above are the ones that worked for me in Sao Paulo Brazil.

An important “side effect” of changing your phone from UMTS to GSM is the battery time. Once in GSM mode the battery lasts twice as much. I now have my 8525 in GSM mode most of the time and switch it to UMTS when accessing the web or email.