The Environmental Working Group (ewg.com) analyzed the radiation emissions from 1,268 cellphones.
Apple’s iPhone 3G has a maximum SAR of 1.39 W/kg when held at the ear. You can compare that to the 1.19 W/kg SAR for the iPhone 3GS. The lower the SAR the safer the phone is. The best phone was the Samsung Impression which had a max radiation of just 0.35 W/kg.
“The FCC limit for the head (SAR of 1.6 W/kg) is just two-and-a-half times lower than the level that caused behavioral changes in animals (SAR of 4 W/kg),” says the representative. “Thus, the brain receives a high exposure, even though the brain may well be one of the most sensitive parts of human body … and should have more protection.”
Here is a list of EWG’s top 10 phones, based on low and high emissions:
Geohot, the creator of purplera1n, has just released his own iPhone 3GS software unlock and named it purplesn0w. Who is purplesn0w for? If you own a jailbroken iPhone 3GS running firmware 3.0 and you want to unlock it to use it with another carrier (T-Mobile only in the USA), then purplesn0w is for you. Are you experiencing wifi/battery/other unlocking problems after using ultrasn0w? Then I highly recommend you try purplesn0w. Geohot says that it’s the best unlock out there.
purplesn0w doesn't run any deamon (resident app) on the iPhone, it just patches three files: CommCenter, lockdownd, and wildcard. You need an activated device in order to use purplesn0w, this is a minus.
Here is how to install purplesn0w:
Make sure you have an activated iPhone 3GS. If you have T-Mobile make sure you disable 3G in the settings.
Open Cydia, and add http://apt.geohot.com to your sources
Install the com.geohot.purplesn0w package
Watch for the success output in Cydia
Reboot your iPhone 3GS
Once you have followed the steps above, your iPhone 3GS should be unlocked.
Update: Geohot has also posted technical details of purplesn0w here along with the source code of purplesn0w. He plans to release an updated version of purplesn0w with hactivation support.
Medialets today released the results of JavaScript benchmark tests performed using the SunSpider test suite on the iPhone 3G and 3GS, the T-Mobile G1 running Android, and the Palm Pre running webOS. The use of the SunSpider suite for benchmarking studies enables cross-platform comparisons among the devices, as they all utilize WebKit-based Web browsers. In the Medialets study, the iPhone 3GS outperformed the Palm Pre by a factor of three and the T-Mobile G1 by over a factor of five.
Notably, Medialets also tested the iPhone 3G running both iPhone OS 2.2.1 and OS 3.0, revealing that iPhone OS 3.0 provides a nearly three-fold improvement in performance over OS 2.2.1 running on the same hardware. The shift to the iPhone 3GS increases performance a further three-fold.
Here's an extremely easy way to enable tethering on your iPhone 3G and 3GS (even on AT&T!) by just visiting a site on your iPhone's Safari. No jailbreaking needed. Here's where you go:
Then scroll down to the Tethering & Internet Settings, then choosing your country and provider. This works for both AT&T and T-Mobile, and will let you install the appropriate configuration. Just be careful though, that AT&T doesn't officially sponsor this and might charge you extra for using tethering while you're not supposed to.
And if this disables visual voicemail on your phone, just go and reset your network settings, and it should be fixed. If that doesn't work, try updating your phone with an older version of the AT&T carrier settings.
On August 22, 20 new countries will start offering the iPhone 3G for sale. Here's a list of the countries that are expecting launches that Friday (and their associated carriers, in parentheses):