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iPhone Gems: CountDown, Galactic Bowling, Ramp Champ Packs + Super K.O. Boxing 2

iTunes Guru — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to this week’s gaming edition of iPhone Gems. Today, we’re looking at four different but very interesting new games: a number puzzler, a bowling game, an update to a Skee-Ball title, and a cartoony boxer.

Our top pick of the week is Super K.O. Boxing 2 by GLU Games, and if you already have Ramp Champ, there’s a very compelling new In-App Download level pack for that title called the Halloween Pack. Read on for all the details.

CountDown: DownToZero

It has been touted by some as the spiritual sequel to Drop7, a stylish, number-focused puzzler that has remained a low-key iLounge favorite for months. CountDown: DownToZero ($2) by Hondune Games isn’t quite as impressive, but it’s a good enough title to merit some attention. The idea: there’s an eight-block-wide well that numbers fall into from the sky. You touch numbers in sequence to remove them from the well before it fills completely with blocks.

What’s novel is the matching process: you need to touch one number and then continue to swipe in the direction of additional numbers that subtract from the first one to equal zero. Any two matching numbers will thus work—4 minus 4, 2 minus 2—but you’ll only score in the thousand-point range making such simple matches. It’s in longer matches, such as 4 minus 3 minus 1, or 6 minus 2 minus 1 minus 1 minus 2, and combinations of quick 2- and 3-matches that you can rack up points and survive. In Endless Mode, the game starts you with only 1, 2, 3, and 4 number blocks, but additional numbers are added as time goes on, and a Clear the Board mode begins with a full well and higher numbers right away.

We liked CountDown’s relatively clean presentation. Three skins are offered, the best of which has nice, modern-looking glowing blocks with small particle effects as they fall and match, but sound effects are minimal and music is non-existent. The chief problem is that the pacing’s not quite right for all players yet, as the game starts at a fast clip and doesn’t give novice players a chance to master the strokes before they’re swimming in the pool. Adding higher numbers as the game continues is a great idea, but the initially brisk speed of falling blocks prevents the challenge from becoming as intellectual as it could be; fast swiping quickly takes the place of deliberate thought. With additional development work—more and more stylish skins, better audio, and a more gradual progression of the game’s speed—this could be a truly great number and block puzzler. As-is, it’s fun for those who want something that’s mentally stimulating, and are willing to learn by making mistakes. iLounge Rating: B.

Galactic Bowling

Of the thousands of iPhone and iPod touch games now in the App Store, the vast majority aren’t direct hits or near-misses, but rather big misses—the equivalent of throwing a dart at a dartboard and watching it disappear into thin air rather than even hitting the wall or floor. Galactic Bowling ($5) by Perpetual FX Creative is a near-miss, the product of an apparently creative and talented art and design team that lacked for only one thing: a really good bowling user interface.

What Perpetual FX has come up with is an interesting premise: 11 completely 3-D polygonal characters and 11 different bowling lanes set on Earth and on various imaginary planets in outer space. The characters aren’t fantastic, but they’re diverse in appearance, with two male and two female humans, then seven weird-looking aliens, some with oddball items that they carry around for whatever reason while they’re bowling. Shaniqua from New York carries a boom box. Max from Australia has a surfboard. The Jar-Jar Binks-like Cest has a rocket launcher or something. They add nothing to the game, but they’re there. By comparison, the lanes—particularly the off-Earth ones—are designed with cool obstacles, such as flames and vortexes that appear at times from holes in the lanes, destroying or changing the location of your ball mid-roll. Corkscrews and even multi-path courses such as three-line lanes are, if not brilliant, really smart little additions to the bowling concept, making good use of the iPhone’s wide display. Notably, the game’s one-on-one Campaign mode takes you from level to level in a split-screen simultaneous mode so that you don’t have to watch passively as your opponent takes turns, another nice touch.

Though the graphics engine runs at a fluid frame rate and looks pretty good by iPhone 3-D standards, alongside decent to good stage-specific music, there’s a problem: the gameplay feels really off from moment one and never gets better. You’re supposed to tap repeatedly on a right-bottom power meter, then tap on your character to roll the ball, with tilting and other adjustments that can impact the ball’s direction while it’s in motion. For a variety of reasons, this interface never feels good or right; Perpetual could have just cloned the power meters from earlier iPhone bowling titles we’ve reviewed and been just fine. The weak controls contribute to a sense that you’re never totally in command of what happens on the lanes, so even though there are those corkscrews, vortexes, and flames, they too often feel like eye candy or nearly random elements inserted just to mess up your game. That’s a shame, as having lanes with obstacles is a great idea—there has to be a way to preserve these smart new additions to the bowling lanes while making them feel fun. The developer tries to throw in other elements, such as a laser gun to zap extra pins off the lane, but they don’t really work.

Ultimately, Galactic Bowling is at least a B+ caliber game visually, and an A in ambition for the price, let down by C-quality gameplay. We feel strongly that the developer should spend the necessary time to completely fix the control interface for this title, as it has all of the other elements necessary to be a truly novel bowling game. Only after those fixes are complete should it consider releasing a sequel; with even better characters and backgrounds, plus an improved control interface, it could have a huge hit on its hands. iLounge Rating: B-.

Ramp Champ: Halloween Pack and Voyage Pack

Non-trivial issues aside—the reasons it missed our high recommendation when we reviewed it in August—the Iconfactory’s Ramp Champ is amongst the very best games released for the iPhone and iPod touch this year. Rather than using the 3-D graphics found in earlier, competing titles, this rendition of Skee-Ball-style “arcade bowling” uses impressively drawn 2-D artwork and offers a diverse collection of themed “ramps” with amusingly rendered still and moving targets. Ramp Champ ships with four themed ramps, and now offers eight additional ramps in packs of two via In-App Purchase, Apple’s tool to let developers charge extra fees for new levels. We covered the first two-packs called “Adventure Pack” and “Challenge Pack” in our initial review; now Iconfactory has added “Halloween Pack” and “Voyage Pack” for $1 a piece.

Halloween Pack is the more impressive of the two new offerings, bringing ramps called Trick-or-Treat and Grave Danger to the mix. Trick-or-Treat presents you with a house that initially looks abandoned but can be hit with balls to open its windows, triggering costumed kids to walk around in front. Besides hitting a high score, your goals are to hit challenging skeleton targets and/or enough other objects to produce an elite type of candy treat. Grave Danger presents a static graveyard with what initially appears to be a plain collection of gravestones; as you play, you learn which stones release white ghosts, who can be hit to make blue ghost targets appear, or skeletal hands, which make an organist target appear. Both of these ramp designs use fixed background graphics, but funny evolving targets that reminded us of the better moments in Iconfactory’s prior Happy Place and Ninja Attack add-ons; their spooky music is also spot-on. Collectively, they’re a great additional purchase.

By comparison, Voyage Pack is somewhat less impressive. Plunderin’ Pirates is a pirate ship-themed level that has the requisite seafaring music and a multi-level wooden boat with both stationary and moving targets. Its objectives are clear—reveal a mermaid and a skeleton—but achieving them through a combination of shots on the boat and into the water below is more an exercise in precision than fun. The unrelated other ramp, Star Struck, consists of a series of three changing backgrounds that depict a retro-styled rocketship journey to Mars. Here, the targets—people running around and flying—are relatively boring, and both the dreamy music and backdrops are fairly bland, but the fact that the art changes is enough to keep the ramp from being forgettable.

All four of these new ramps offer new challenges that fans of this game will appreciate, and to the extent that you’re looking for a way to extend the life of this already good title, purchasing either or both packs is a simple, cheap way to do so. That said, Halloween Pack strikes us as the best of the packs yet released—worthy of our high recommendation—with Voyage as the least appealing, and our underlying concerns about Ramp Champ’s controls still remain unresolved. With greater precision in the swiping mechanism, this could be a mandatory purchase for all iPhone and iPod touch gamers; as-is, it’s very, very close. iLounge Rating (Halloween Pack): A-. iLounge Rating (Voyage Pack): B.

Super K.O. Boxing 2

Nintendo’s Punch-Out!! is the de facto standard for cartoony boxing games, and we’ve already reviewed quite a few iPhone titles that have attempted to emulate it both figuratively and literally. Super K.O. Boxing 2 ($5) from Glu Games is the latest and best Punch-Out!! wannabe to date, a hand-drawn 2-D title that does so much visually and sonically to create its own novel spin on Nintendo’s series that it can almost—almost—be forgiven for delivering less in the gameplay department.

You control KO Kid, who unlike Nintendo’s Little Mac actually has the physical build to look like a real boxer, and generally occupies the same place at the bottom center of the screen. Glu has simplified the controls to give you one combined left dodge/up button, one right dodge button, and one block button as a joystick alternative, plus left and right punch buttons and a super, powered-up punch. We never warmed to the loss of the joystick, but really liked a couple of other control tweaks: best is a ten-count mechanism where you only get up if you succeed in touching an on-screen number as many times as you have stars floating around your head; also notable are punches that are thrown coming out of defensive dodges. Super K.O. Boxing 2 mightn’t feel as smooth and responsive as Punch-Out!!—the only reason the game falls short of our high recommendation—but it has its own appeal. A three-circuit set of challenges contains 17 up-to-three-round fights, spread across 12 sometimes repeating boxers.

Where this game succeeds in an almost staggering way is in aesthetics. GLU’s boxers are nearly as cool as the ones from Punch-Out!! titles, with a notable 50 Cent parody character called 15 Cent, a fat cowboy named Big Gip, and the Indian Chief as just some of the game’s early opponents. El Bulli, a Spanish matador-type, and the Japanese Shogun look almost good enough to be Nintendo character designs, while others—including the primitive, hairy giant Ka-Rak Ubones—are different and original. They’re animated simply, without the cel-shaded polygonal art that we’ve seen in other console and handheld boxers in recent months, but look pretty good; each has his own background, as well. In-game sound effects and music aren’t memorable, with a little crowd noise, simple punching sounds, and a simple beat as you’re fighting, but they’re good enough.

The overall audio and visual experience GLU has assembled is so strong that we were on the edge of A- and B+ ratings for Super K.O. Boxing 2. Accustomed as iPhone owners are to comparatively mediocre boxing experiences, most will be very impressed by this title, and have at least some fun playing through the challenges of the fights; starting with the second circuit, the boxers actually become difficult to beat, and their Punch-Out!!-like strengths and weaknesses become more pronounced. But there’s no question that the magic balance of gameplay Nintendo has delivered in its titles is not quite here, as GLU needs to actually interrupt fights on occasion with dialog boxes to teach you skills, and other fights feel like they should be interrupted because your opponents’ weaknesses aren’t telegraphed enough by their animations. For the $5 asking price, and given the quality of the art and characters in particular, this is a game that boxing fans will really enjoy—the best boxing game in the App Store today. Were it not for the higher water marks set years ago by Nintendo in controls and gameplay, Super K.O. Boxing 2 would be more than just an aesthetic standout. iLounge Rating: B+.

Hundreds of additional iPhone app and game reviews are available here.

Sixteen things you should know about iPhone MMS & Tethering

iTunes Guru — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Although iPhone OS 3.0 introduced MMS and tethering capabilities to the iPhone, support for these features has not yet been made available on all carriers in all countries. Notably, Apple’s original iPhone partner, AT&T was one of the few iPhone carriers in the world to not provide MMS support at the time of the iPhone 3.0 launch, and remains one of the few major carriers not providing any kind of tethering support.

Note that you can find a list of the various iPhone carriers around the world and which features they provide in Apple’s Support Knowledgebase article, Locating iPhone Wireless Carriers

With AT&T finally beginning their rollout of MMS support, we hope that tethering will not be too far behind. To this end, we offer some tips and insights for our readers on what to expect from these features and how to get the most out of them.

MMS

MMS, short for Multimedia Messaging Service is an expansion of the SMS text messaging service to allow multimedia content such as pictures, video clips and audio to be sent over the cellular network between compatible devices. Although the iPhone itself provides a number of methods such as e-mail support for sending content, the advantage of MMS is that messages can be sent to many other non-smartphone devices—phones that may not even be capable of receiving e-mail or accessing the Internet.

1. MMS is an extension of the normal Messages app

You won’t see a separate MMS app. The existing Messages app is also used to send MMS messages once the feature is enabled. The quickest way to determine if MMS is supported is to look for the little camera button to the left of the text entry field. This button is used to browse your photo library to send pictures and videos via MMS.

2. A carrier settings update is required to enable MMS

The iPhone hides all MMS-related features unless MMS has actually been enabled in the carrier settings file. These files are specific to each carrier, and the MMS settings are not enabled for carriers that don’t support that feature. This means that when a carrier adds support for MMS they must also send out an update to their carrier settings file. These updates are distributed through iTunes, so you will need to connect your iPhone to iTunes in order to receive the updated carrier settings.

iTunes checks for carrier updates for the iPhone in the same way that it checks for firmware updates. If the carrier settings update is not detected automatically, you can force iTunes to check for it by clicking the “Check for Updates” button on the iPhone Summary screen in iTunes. Note that since the carrier settings update process is the same as the iPhone OS update process, you will also need to have already downloaded and installed the latest iPhone OS update, otherwise you will be prompted to install that first before receiving the carrier update.

Also keep in mind that once MMS is enabled by your carrier, MMS support can be toggled on or off in the iPhone Settings app, under Messages. If you’ve received the carrier update and still aren’t seeing MMS options appear, be sure to check these settings.

You can confirm that you have the actual carrier update installed on your iPhone by going into your Settings app and choosing General, About. The “Carrier” information will show the version of the carrier settings file that is in use. For the AT&T MMS carrier update, it should read “AT&T 5.5”

3. The original iPhone will not support MMS

Unfortunately, users who are still toting the original first-generation iPhone will be left out of the MMS club. The exact reasons for this limitation are unclear, but the bottom line is that MMS support requires an iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS, and there’s no reason to expect that Apple is ever going to introduce this capability to the original iPhone.

4. Sending video is still limited to the iPhone 3GS

Even though iPhone OS 3.1 provides the ability to store video files in your photo library on all iPhone and iPod touch models, the ability to actually send video files out via MMS is still restricted to the iPhone 3GS. If you’re using an iPhone 3G, you’ll find that the “Sharing” button that normally appears in the bottom-left corner for photos is conspicuously absent when viewing videos, and videos are simply omitted when browsing the photo library from the Messages application.

5. MMS is not just for pictures and video

Although photos and videos are the primary content of MMS for most users, the MMS specification actually supports just about any file type. On the iPhone, you can also send voice memos and contact information via MMS by tapping the sharing button in the respective application.

6. MMS messages will scale down content

MMS was not designed with the intention of transmitting large files over the cellular network. Further, many of the cell phones which support MMS have much lower-resolution screens and lower memory capacity than the iPhone. As a result of both of these factors, the content you send via MMS may need to be resized and trimmed to fit within these constraints.

Specifically, expect photos to be resized to a maximum resolution of 1024 x 768 and videos to be scaled down to 176 x 144 with a frame rate of 10fps and an 8khz audio track.

Further, longer videos and audio recordings may need to be trimmed prior to sending. The iPhone will notify you if this is the case and give you an opportunity to trim the video or audio-clip on-the-fly. The maximum length of an audio or video clip to be sent over MMS appears to be approximately one minute.

7. You can send MMS messages to e-mail recipients

Sending of MMS messages is not limited only to phone numbers. Once MMS is enabled, you can enter an e-mail address in the TO: field to send an MMS message to an e-mail recipient.

On most carrier networks, the recipient will receive an e-mail with a web link to view the received MMS content.

Since the iPhone includes a built-in e-mail client, and MMS content is significantly scaled down when compared to e-mail attachments, we can’t see too many reasons to use this capability, but it’s there nonetheless.

8. You can send MMS messages to non-MMS users

If you’re sending an MMS message to a phone or subscriber that does not support MMS, the recipient will simply receive an SMS message with a web link to view the received MMS content, similar to how sending an MMS via e-mail works.

9. Check your plan

Different carriers bill for MMS messages differently. Some carriers simply count MMS messages as text messages and include them in your text messaging plan, while other carriers charge for MMS messages separately and may offer MMS-specific plans and packages. Further, many carriers will happily allow you to send MMS messages even if you’re not subscribed to the appropriate plan and just bill you a per-message charge for any MMS messages you send or receive.

The bottom line is that you shouldn’t assume that MMS messages will be included in your text messaging plan. Be sure to check with your carrier to confirm how they handle billing for MMS messages and whether you need to add any additional plans or features for MMS support.

Note also that if your carrier charges separately for received MMS messages and you don’t wish to subscribe to an MMS plan, then you may wish to disable MMS support entirely by going into Settings, Messages on the iPhone and toggling MMS messaging off. Depending on your carrier, disabling MMS will result either in received MMS messages being ignored entirely or being received instead as text messages with a link to a web page where the MMS content may be viewed.

Tethering

iPhone OS 3.0 also introduced the ability to use your iPhone as a wireless “modem” to access the Internet from a computer. While AT&T has yet to introduce support for tethering, carriers in several other countries, including Canada and most of Europe have already been providing tethering support for some time. Here are some things to keep in mind if you’re interested in setting up tethering.

10. The original iPhone does not support tethering

As with MMS, the original first-generation iPhone does not provide tethering support either. Since the original iPhone is limited to GPRS/EDGE network speeds, tethering performance would likely be so slow on the original iPhone as to be a source of frustration for many users.

11. Enabling Tethering

As with MMS, a carrier settings update is required to enable tethering from your provider. Tethering options will not appear unless they have been enabled by your carrier. Note that unlike MMS, tethering is disabled by default on your iPhone, and you will need to turn it on if you plan to use it. This is done from the Settings app, under General, Network, Internet Tethering. The option will appear here either as “Set Up Internet Tethering” or simply an option to access the tethering settings and switch tethering on or off.

Note that when enabling tethering, the iPhone may check with your carrier to see if you have a tethering package. In this case you may need to contact your carrier to have your account provisioned for tethering.

12. You’ll need iTunes for USB tethering

If you’re tethering via USB, you will need to have iTunes 8.2 or later installed on any computers that you want to tether from, as the Windows or Mac OS X drivers for tethering are included in the iTunes installation. With iTunes installed and tethering enabled on your iPhone, it should appear as an Ethernet network device and immediately go into tethering mode as soon as you connect it to your USB port.

13. Bluetooth tethering

Tethering over Bluetooth does not require iTunes. Instead, the iPhone uses the standard Bluetooth Personal Area Network (PAN) profile. This requires that your computer hardware use at least Bluetooth v2.0 and support the PAN profile. All recent Mac computers provide PAN support, as should most recent mainstream Windows computers, although actual Bluetooth capabilities may vary widely with the wide diversity of Windows configurations available.

14. Check your plan before tethering

As with MMS, tethering may or may not require subscription to a separate tethering plan, and may or may not be billed separately from normal iPhone data usage. As out-of-plan data usage can get frighteningly expensive, be sure to check with your carrier as to their tethering policies before enabling and using tethering.

AT&T’s plans for tethering in the U.S. are not entirely clear as they have not as of yet announced the availability of tethering support. In Canada, Rogers and Fido are currently providing tethering data usage included in any iPhone data plan over 1GB per month until the end of 2009, at which point they may begin charging separately for it. In the UK, O2 requires that you add a tethering “bolt-on” package for an additional cost.

15. Keeping track of your tethering usage

If you’re using iPhone OS 3.0, you should note that your tethering data usage may not be included in your normal data usage screen, particularly if you’re with a carrier which tracks tethering usage separately from normal iPhone data usage. In this case, the “Cellular Data Usage” only includes data usage from the iPhone itself, and not data used while tethering.

iPhone OS 3.1 adds an additional section below the normal data usage summary to track your tethering usage separately.

16. Your tethering speeds may vary

Your maximum Internet connection speed while tethering depends on a number of factors. The most obvious of these is your carrier’s 3G network speed in your area, which can range from 1.8 mbps through to 7.2 mbps or even higher. Most AT&T areas are limited to 3.6 mbps, although AT&T has begun rolling out 7.2 mbps service in some areas. In Canada, Rogers and Fido provide 7.2 mbps speeds on most of their 3G network.

The next consideration is your iPhone model. The iPhone 3G provides a maximum 3G throughput of 3.6 mbps, while the iPhone 3GS provides a 7.2 mbps maximum.

Whether you are using a USB or Bluetooth connection for tethering will also make a difference. USB is significantly faster than even the fastest 3G network speeds, whereas even the fastest Bluetooth implementation is limited to 2.1 mbps.

Of course keep in mind that all of these are maximum speeds, and real-world usage scenarios may result in significantly lower speeds based on network congestion and other factors. Time of day can also make a noticeable difference, since network speeds are affected by the number of users who are currently using the network.

Since the same 3G hardware in the iPhone is used both for internal data and tethering data, you can get an estimate of what kind of performance you can expect from tethering simply by downloading an iPhone app such as Speedtest.net (iTunes link) and running a test over your 3G connection.

iPhone OS 3.1: ‘Policy Requirement’ error when adding Microsoft Exchange account

iTunes Guru — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Symptoms

When using a Microsoft Exchange account on an iPhone or iPod touch, the following error message may appear:

Policy Requirement
The account "______________" requires encryption which is not supported on this iPhone.

Products Affected

iPhone, iPod touch, iPhone 3G

Resolution

iPhone OS (beginning with the iPhone OS 3.1 update) can enforce the Exchange ActiveSync mailbox policy requiring encryption on the device. If your Exchange Server administrator has selected this option, only devices that support device-level encryption are allowed to sync Mail, Contacts, and Calendars.

To reestablish syncing, have your Exchange Server administrator change the mailbox policy to no longer require device encryption.

Additional Information

Note that iPhone 3GS supports device encryption.

Managing Exchange ActiveSync with Policies

Important: Mention of third-party websites and products is for informational purposes only and constitutes neither an endorsement nor a recommendation. Apple assumes no responsibility with regard to the selection, performance or use of information or products found at third-party websites. Apple provides this only as a convenience to our users. Apple has not tested the information found on these sites and makes no representations regarding its accuracy or reliability. There are risks inherent in the use of any information or products found on the Internet, and Apple assumes no responsibility in this regard. Please understand that a third-party site is independent from Apple and that Apple has no control over the content on that website. Please contact the vendor for additional information.

Using a Gmail account on multiple devices

iTunes Guru — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Symptoms

When using a Gmail account on multiple devices, including your Mac, PC, iPhone, or iPod touch, the following alerts/errors can appear:

Mac or PC: "Too many simultaneous connections."
iPhone/iPod touch: "The user name or password for [account] is incorrect."

Products Affected

iPhone, Mac OS, iPod touch, Windows, Gmail

Resolution

These alerts do not indicate an issue with your mail application or email account settings. Gmail has a limit of ten simultaneous IMAP connections per account, and checking your account from multiple devices in a short period of time can exceed this limit.

If this occurs, quit or exit any email applications you are not actively using. For more information on this issue, see this Gmail Help Center article.

Important: Information about products not manufactured by Apple is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute Apple’s recommendation or endorsement. Please contact the vendor for additional information.

iPhone: Understanding the call-forwarding icon

iTunes Guru — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Symptoms

iPhone Software 3.0 allows you to see if Call Forwarding is enabled by displaying in the status bar:

In rare instances, this icon may not appear after turning your iPhone off and on, even though Call Forwarding is still enabled.

Products Affected

iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS

Resolution

Try turning iPhone off and then on again.

To check if Call Forwarding is enabled, tap Settings > Phone, and then tap the Call Forwarding option.

iPhone OS 3.0 lists all ‘From’ mail aliases defined for Exchange accounts

iTunes Guru — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Symptoms

Customers with multiple email aliases defined in Exchange will see all of their aliases listed in the From field if they tap the From field when composing a message:

Note, however, that although customers can select a different alias from the list, only the default alias is used for messages sent via Exchange.

Products Affected

iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS

Resolution

Using the default mail alias for all sent messages is expected behavior for Exchange. Customers can ignore the additional mail aliases; by default Mail will display the default From alias.

iPhone 3GS: Re-calibrate Compass

iTunes Guru — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Symptoms

In Compass or Maps, iPhone 3GS may display the message "Re-calibrate Compass. Wave in a figure 8 motion."

iPhone 3GS periodically displays the message to re-calibrate Compass.

Products Affected

iPhone 3GS

Resolution

iPhone 3GS has a built-in digital compass that works just like a magnetic needle compass. The accuracy of digital compass headings can be affected by magnetic or other environmental interference, including interference caused by the close proximity of the magnets contained in the iPhone earbuds. The compass may need to be calibrated from time to time. iPhone 3GS alerts you whenever calibration is needed. To calibrate, hold iPhone 3GS in your hand and move the device in a figure 8 motion until the calibration screen disappears. The digital compass should only be used for basic navigation assistance and should not be solely relied on to determine precise locations, proximity, distance, or direction.

Additional Information

Some areas have more magnetic interference than others. For example, your car’s dashboard may have a high level of magnetic interference. If you wish to mount iPhone 3GS on a car’s dashboard and use Compass or Maps, do not wave the device in a figure 8 to calibrate. Instead, mount iPhone 3GS, open Compass or Maps, and disregard the message to calibrate. iPhone 3GS will eventually re-calibrate after several turns. Note that it may need to periodically recalibrate while you are driving, depending on the level of magnetic interference present where you have it mounted.

iPhone: Using custom APN and unable to use Cellular Data Network services after upgrading to iPhone OS 3.0

iTunes Guru — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Symptoms

After upgrading to iPhone OS 3.0, you may be unable to use some Cellular Data Network services, such as:

Cellular Data connection for Internet services
Visual Voicemail
MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service)

You may also see this error message: "Could not activate cellular data network: You are not subscribed to a cellular data service". This can happen if you edited the Cellular Data Network settings—the APN (Access Point Name) details—either manually or with the iPhone Configuration Utility prior to installing iPhone OS 3.0.

Note: This issue does not affect phone services (making and receiving calls or sending and receiving SMS messages).

Products Affected

iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS

Resolution

If you did not edit the Cellular Data Network settings prior to installing iPhone OS 3.0 on your iPhone and you are unable to use Cellular Data Network services, try turning off and then turning on iPhone. If the issue persists, contact your carrier about the availability and provisioning of these services on your wireless account.

If, on the other hand, you did edit the Cellular Data Network settings, these settings will be reset to the default values after updating to iPhone OS 3.0. You will need to edit the settings again.

Additional Information

For additional information about Cellular Data network services, see the iPhone User Guide.
Editing the Cellular Data Network settings is only available on authorized unlocked iPhones or with carriers that allow modifying the APN details.
If you edited the Cellular Data Network settings incorrectly or unintentionally, tap Settings > General > Cellular Network and then tap Reset Settings.

iPhone: Time zone unexpectedly set to Cupertino after restore

iTunes Guru — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Symptoms

After restoring an iPhone running iPhone OS 3.0 or 3.0.1, the time zone may unexpectedly display "Cupertino", and the time on iPhone will be appropriate for Cupertino, USA.

Products Affected

iPhone

Resolution

Updating the iPhone to iPhone OS 3.1 resolves this behavior.

vCard sent from iPhone using MMS is received as text file

iTunes Guru — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Symptoms

vCard is a file-format standard for electronic business cards. iPhone uses vCard to send Address Book contacts through email or MMS to other computers, phones, or other electronic devices. If you send a vCard through MMS with iPhone to a device other than an iPhone, it may result in the following:

The device may receive the Address Book contact or electronic business card as a text file rather than a vCard.

The information in the received vCard may appear as garbled text on the device.

Products Affected

iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS

Resolution

Check with your phone manufacturer or vendor to verify if your phone model supports vCard 3.0, the format in which iPhone sends the vCard.