The Firehouse

There news have made several rounds already, but there wasn’t any specific guide on how to get MMS and network tethering working on the new 3.0 iPhone 3G firmware, released to developers a few days ago.

Several guides have been posted, but they all more or less copy & paste what is found in the original instructions, for example, CrunchGear posts this but doesn’t credit the original source. It’s not their fault, as these kinds of stories get posted and reposted so much it is hard to know where they originated. Anyway, here is a guide to make your iPhone 3G send MMS and tether on Movistar Spain. All images are thumbnails, click on them to see a larger version.

Warning: Before you start, remove any Bluetooth pairing between your Mac and iPhone – the pairing needs to be done after this procedure in order for the Blueetoth PAN network adapter to be recognized. Make sure you remove the pairing on both your Mac and iPhone.

1. Update your iPhone 3G to firmware version 3.0

Unless you are a registered iPhone developer with Apple, you don’t have access to this firmware. Don’t even ask – if you are a developer, you already know where to get it. Simply extract the firmware image to your desktop or other folder, and Option-click the ‘Restore’ button in iTunes’ ‘Summary’ tab. The rest is self-explanatory. As I’ve reported before, it’s better if you setup your iPhone from a previous backup after the firmware upgrade completes, rather than as a fresh new device.

2. Download the updated carrier settings file for Movistar

For your convenience, download this file, Telefonica_es.ipcc, which contains updated settings which enable MMS sending (not tested receive yet), and tethering on your iPhone. Save the file to ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Carrier Support.

The file adds the MMS APN configuration, the tethering mask (-2) to the Internet APN, and various settings that enable MMS and the editing of the APN on the iPhone’s Network Settings.

3. Update the carrier settings

With your iPhone connected over USB, Option-click the ‘Check for Update’ button in iTunes’ ‘Summary’ tab. Browse to ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Carrier Support and select the file Telefonica_es.ipcc. The update takes only a couple of seconds.

4. Reboot your phone

5. Enable MMS and send a test message

Go to Settings -> Messages on your iPhone, and turn on the MMS Messaging option:

On your Messages application, you will see a new icon when you write a message:

Tap the icon to bring up a menu which lets you take a new picture, or select an existing one. Results for taking a new picture are flaky, and for me they didn’t work, so I just took a picture using Camera and chose it later:

Type any text you want to add and hit Send. This is the result:

6. Tether your iPhone to your Mac over Bluetooth

First, you need to pair your iPhone. From the Bluetooth menu on your Mac, select ‘Set up Bluetooth Device…’. Choose ‘Any device’ from the options, and follow the normal process, entering the PIN code when requested. After your device is paired, leave the ‘Use this device for networking’ option checked. You will get a message telling you a new network device has been added, ‘Bluetooth PAN’. Go to Network Preferences to see the new adapter:

7. Connect to the Internet

Simply click the Bluetooth menu, and the Connect to Network option in your device name’s submenu:

The iPhone’s screen will shortly show a blue bar at the top indicating you tethering is active:

That’s it! I ran a DSL speed test on the connection, and this is the result:

Quite impressive!

So I went ahead, ignored all good sense, and updated my iPhone 3G to the new iPhone 3.0 Beta, released by Apple to developers a few days ago (I’m a registered developer, so I have access to the firmware).

The first two restores, which I did not choosing to configure from a 2.2.1 backup, caused the phone to become almost unusable. There were bugs everywhere, such as:

• Headphones not recognized, needing a reset.
• Failed connections to Exchange email accounts, and a few times, the complete loss of contacts and emails on the phone. Connectivity with Exchange is clunky.
• Safari text input freezing.
• Phone not allowing dialing, the keypad frozen.
• Ringtones playing back broken and with awful noises and sparks.
• Slowing down of the whole UI, needing a hard reset.
• Connection to a dock resulted in ‘Accessory not recognized’ messages (yes, I use the latest dock model).
• Screen stuck in the Search page, needing a hard reset to fix.
• All icons on the home screen disappearing, including the dock ones, needing a hard reset to fix.
• The Network options menu gets highlighted in blue for a few seconds until the options screen loads, as if the UI was frozen.
• Sometimes the headphones are not recognized when plugged in, or the phone thinks they are still connected after unplugging them, it seems the plug/unplug interrupt is getting lost somewhere, or not processed.

This afternoon I decided to restore once again, and this time setup the phone from a previous backup. Things are more or less normal so far, some of the bugs above are not happening, although I’ve not extensively tested them. This being a first beta, it leaves out some of the features announced in the keynote, mainly:

• No MMS for now. There isn’t anything special about the SMS menu other than the new icon, and copy/paste (which is awesome, with one caveat). The MMS enable/disable option is present in Settings though.
• There is no paste into Safari. For example, if you get a UPS tracking number through email, try to copy it, then paste into UPS’s tracking site loaded in Safari…nothing happens. Safari seems to just pick a block of content to copy, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to paste into form fields.
• No Notes sync that I can see in this release.
• There is zero information in the documentation about the WiFi auto-login feature. Is it WISPr? Is it some custom thing for AT&T and other partner networks? Time will tell.
• Copying a single photo by holding your finger on it doesn’t work. The popup comes up, you tap ‘Copy’, and it remains highlighted for a few seconds. There is no paste available in, for example, an email after that. You can copy/paste into an email by clicking the action button and selecting the image, then the Copy button.
• Bluetooth tether – while the iAP profile is present, and you can set it up on OS X, the connection to the phone fails. I assume there will be an OS X update to include the iPhone in the DUN devices list.

iPhone 3.0 is very promising, adding features long missed, and long present in other phones, but for now it’s not even a stable platform to develop on. Unless it’s my particular phone that is screwy of course.

I already wrote about the extreme lack of support for most of Bluetooth’s possibilities in the original iPhone, but it seems Apple has improved things a bit with the release of the iPhone 3G.

Looking over the PICS again, the Phonebook Server Equipment (PSE) mode in the Phonebook Access Profile (PBAP) is now supported, which means that phonebook download, browsing and other functions are available, but not contact uploads, which would require a Phonebook Client Equipment role in the profile. A very clear and simple explanation of PBAP can be found on Microsoft’s MSDN Library.

All this mumbo-jumbo means that carkits such as the Parrot MINIKIT SLIM can download and use the iPhone’s contact list for training-free speech recognition and dialing, which is very cool and works wonders! For those interested, PSE makes support for vCard 2.1 and 3.0 mandatory.

Additionally, Hands-Free Profile 1.5 is also supported on top of the much more limited Headset profile in the original iPhone. They still don’t support inband ringtones, for reasons that escape me, as it’s not like you can steal the ringtones in hi-def over speech-quality Bluetooth. In any case, a good step in the right direction!

I’ve been fighting with Movistar over the last couple of weeks over the iPhone’s simlock that keeps it tied to their network, as I want to be able to use other SIM cards when I’m travelling. I don’t want to break my contract with them, but even so I offered to pay the cancellation fee in order for them to unlock my iPhone. In the contract that I signed, the cancellation fee applies to the service, not the terminal, meaning that if I cancel the service before the 24 month commitment, I have to pay a penalty. Nowhere does it say that the terminal needs to be locked to Movistar for the commitment to remain. In other words, they care about the monthly fee that offsets the lowered terminal price, they could care less about the phone itself.

So far, events have gone like this:

Day 1: Called 609, the Movistar customer service line, and asked about unlocking my iPhone. I proposed to pay the cancellation fee even though I was actually keeping my contract. The reply was that I needed to go through 12 billing cycles (eg 12 months) before they could unlock my iPhone.

Day 2: After rechecking my contract over and over, I found no clause stating the 12 billing cycle requirement. Second call, I am told the same, that there is no way to unlock the phone before 12 months have passed.

Day 3: I call them again, this time threatening to cancel my contract, in which case I would still be paying the penalty I was offering to voluntarily pay, but they would be left without the 21 months of commitment I had left, never mind the 9 months that supposedly had to pass before they could consider unlocking my iPhone. The maths are so obvious that it’s hard to see why they resist: I offer to pay around 350€ and keep my contract which runs at a monthly minimum of 60€, giving them a total in 12 months of 500€. Otherwise, I pay 350€ and they lose the extra 150€.

Day 4: I get a call back from customer service, telling them that they cannot unlock the iPhone 3G. I ask them to repeat that. “We do not have any means to unlock your iPhone even if we wanted to, Apple will not allow us to request unlock codes, as this terminal was released exclusively with Movistar“. WTF? In other countries you can unlock your iPhone through iTunes, after the operator gives you an unlock code, and they also have the device on exclusive country-wide deals with Apple – what gives?

Next step will be to contact Apple tomorrow and see if this is actually true. If it is, next step will be to start a formal procedure with the goverment department that deals with consumer issues.

Just curious, why Apple should again change the icon that represents the current data network attach mode. I now see either the blue square with 3G in it, or this, when in GPRS coverage:

Note that this is GPRS, and not EDGE – it would be interesting to see what the icon for that is now, maybe a squiggle?

It’s with surprise that I read a post on The Register and another on TUAW regarding the iPhone 3G’s speed, or lack thereof. The way 3G networks operate has some fundamental differences compared to GPRS or EDGE, the so-called 2G or 2.5G networks. A word of caution before you proceed, if you are a tech purist – I am explaining this in the simplest terms I can find, so don’t be offended by over-simplification.

“Scotty, we’ll need everything you’ve got.” ^[1]

Let me bore you with a primer on the “old” technology. In the very old days, packet data didn’t exist on GSM cellular networks. Each GSM frequency (also known as physical channel) would be split into eight full-rate (remeber the old EFR hacks?) timeslots, or sixteen half-rate. Voice was digitized using a vocoder, and transmitted to the cell tower using one of the timeslots. The tower then passed it along the switching network, to be terminated at another GSM terminal, or sent out to the PSTN where it could also be converted back to analog for further relay to landline phones. SMS would be sent over the control channel, thus not taking up timeslots for voice calls.

When data was first introduced to GSM, it was in the form of circuit-switched calls, the equivalent to the analog modems used in the early internet days. Since this was the equivalent of dialing a landline modem, the network could only provide one timeslot, and a brute rate of 9.6kbps (yeah, imagine the iPhone running on that!).

Then came GPRS, which brought packet-data to the phone, allowing the adjoining of several timeslots into one single packet-switched call, theoretically giving rates of 56 to 114kbps, which in reality could be as low as 9.6kbps, as cell operators would prioritize voice calls over data. The same occupation time of a timeslot on voice could earn the operator up to 10 times more than the same slot used for data. Thus, in the days when cell density was very low, and voice capability scarce, it was not uncommon to find that a tower would have only one timeslot reserved for GPRS and the rest for voice, sending you back to switched-call speeds.

I am the EDGE! ^[2]

When new modulation schemes and tighter timing capabilities made it possible, GPRS was upgraded to EDGE, which is an acronym for Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution. The theoretical maximum speed a packet-switched connection could now achieve was raised to 236.8kbps, with an upload speed of 59.2kbps. The upload and download speeds can be balanced to give a more symmetric connection, but this is rarely used.

Remember that we are still talking about chopping up a finite resource, a radio frequency channel, into smaller chunks, each of which can now carry data at increasing speeds, and also be aggregated to boost the overall transfer rate.

Slow? Twelve minutes? Hannibal, I had to say hello! ^[3]

One day in some lab, a fool invented CDMA. Well, not a fool, a very clever individual – just that the use of CDMA has been taken out of its initial expectations.

CDMA stands for Code Division Multiple Access. Contrary to GSM which uses TDMA, or Time Division Multiple Access, and divides the spectrum into timed slots for use by one mobile station at a time, CDMA allows ALL stations to talk to to the tower at once, with each given an individual code that is embedded in all transmissions. Then, using this code, the tower and terminal can tell who’s traffic it is amidst all the noise.

OK, it’s hard to imagine – let’s try a practical example. Imagine a room full of people, all talking at once to a host. The host gives each member of the public a phrase book in a different language, which they must use to translate what they want to say to the host. The host can then attempt to figure out who is saying what by figuring out the language of each utterance, and translating it back to the original. Sounds complex? You bet! The size of the room was also increased, whereas GSM used 200kHz of spectrum for its eight timeslots, 3G/UMTS using CDMA uses 5MHz, 25 times more spectrum, to achieve a theoretical maximum 14Mbps throughput. In practice, 3G HSDPA has only been able to achieve 7.2Mbps download so far, with HSUPA trying to improve the upload speed.

Before going further, if we compare the transfer speeds of each technology, EDGE can receive 1.18 kb/kHz, compared to 1.44 kb/kHz for HSDPA. Nothing to write home about, considering the huge costs this technology is having, I would say!

Stop it already, tell me what’s wrong with my iPhone!

What is basically wrong is that you have a beautiful screen on a beautiful mobile phone, capable of rendering full-size web pages…but you are sharing your internet connection with all your neighbors. In essence, 3G is allowing everyone to take a piece of the spectrum and use it to send and receive voice and data. This means a single 3G tower can handle a huge ammount of voice traffic, as it uses fewer resources, but when data is also added, it can be strongly degraded. I would venture that operators still prioritize voice over data on their 3G networks.

The key issue to remember is that the download rate is “per tower”, not per user. So, if two users using HSDPA are on the same tower, they will each get a maximum throughput of 3.6Mbps. Divide even further, and the more users you have the worse experience everyone gets. Further add tons of voice calls into the mix, and you have what The Register and TUAW describe in their posts – frustration. The blame may be at the iPhone’s radio, but from what I have been experiencing in Spain, Telefonica’s GPRS network provides almost as good speed as 3G in the very busy Barcelona. Why? Because my GPRS connection is getting better, as more voice traffic is dumped on the 3G networks, and I have more slots to myself!

Movie quotes:

1. Scotty in Star Trek, first series.
2. Aeon Flux in, well, Aeon Flux.
3. Face in The A-Team.

It seems Apple is tripping over itself with every update they push. I installed 2.0.1, even though there are reports of problems, on my Telefonica Movistar 16GB iPhone 3G a few minutes ago. After the update, the iPhone shows a red dot on the Phone button, as if there was voicemail waiting, but with no number inside it:

Next, iTunes reports that an update to my carrier’s network settings is available, and wether I want to install it. I say “yes”, and greeted I am by an error:

Is it me, or is Apple failing to push out quality stuff?

If anyone knows exactly what the “network settings” are, feel free to comment. This was pushed to my iPhone by iTunes a few minutes ago, without further explanation.

Today I finally managed to get my hands on a 16GB black iPhone 3G. It almost didn’t happen, and the story is long, so maybe I’ll write another post about it – but suffice to say that it has been yet another day of missinformation, lack of professionalism, and general crappy image given by Telefonica Movistar.

To be honest, the thing that had me intrigued was how much one would have to pay were the contract terminated before the 24-month commitment was over. It turns out that it’s 400 Euros if you have the 20 + 15 contract, and pay 200 Euros for the iPhone at the store. So, for 600 Euros you should get an unlocked iPhone 3G. I think by law operators are forced to unlock your phone if you pay the termination fee, but I am unsure about this – anyone know for sure?

Just got off the phone with OtterBox, who confirm that they don’t have plans to make an Armor case, the fully waterproof case for iPhone 2G, in a version compatible with the iPhone 3G. This is sad news, as I was looking forward to taking my iPhone with me while on watch, but it’s looking like I will have to look for alternatives. Nothing would have looked better than a ruggerized iPhone in the middle of a big fire.