Thomas Gericke

Hi there!

After years of mostly indoor activities, I’m glad to now know new peole, who prefer the opposite: outdoor activities. There’s this very special woman who reminds me of what life’s really about. And she does it very patiently. After she told me a lot about it, we planned to go geocaching today.

Geocaching is some kind of modern paper chase. On http://www.geocaching.com/, you will find tons of caches (so-called for treasure) in your area. In every case, you’ll get GPS coordinates which will lead you to the cache or (in case of multi-caches or puzzles) to the starting point. Normally, you need to have an appropriate GPS device to get to those coordinates, but you may also enter latitude and longitude into some map-service and simply get a map of the destination.

Now, you have to go to this certain destination and search for the cache. It may be a small capsule, a tiny box or a larger container – depends on the type of cache. Usually, the cache is hidden, so you’ll have to look carefully. It may be in a tree, under a bridge, behind a fence, and so on. If you don’t find it, there’re hints for every cache on the website.

There always is a logbook in the box and sometimes a “treasure”. You may log into the logbook to verify, you’ve really been there – so take a pen with you. But please, but the cache back to exactly the place where you found it.

Since I have an iPhone 3G (with GPS), I downloaded the Groundspeak’s Geocaching iPhons Application for 7.99 € – totally great stuff and worth the money! See some screenshots below:

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You may search for caches near you or at a certain place. The map or a compass will guide you to the designated coordinates. And it’s absolutely accurate! This is how we hunted and found 2 caches today.

Geocaching totally is fun and I can truely recommend it!

I will totally do it again.

T.

Hi there!

This totally makes me sick. About a week ago, I renewed my contract with t-mobile and got an upgrade from my old iPhone to a new 3G iPhone with 16GB memory. Well, nice, nice.

I was told, the “old” contract would be cancelled within the next few days and the new contract would begin right after the other one stopped. But the new phone would work instantly with the old card. Well, and it did. Everything worked quite fine.

Just until last Sunday, 2009-04-12. On Sunday, my iPhone told me for the very first time: “Could not active cellular data network“. Well, at first I thought there might be just a coverage problem. Then I remembered, the contract needed to be switched and maybe there would be a short service outage.

Then I forgot about the problem for a while. Until today. I tried data networking and it didn’t work. So I called the service this evening.

There’s one number burned in the very back of my brain. It’s the T-Com service hotline:

+49 800 33 0 1000

I called this number and all the fun began. This hotline is voice-guided, which always makes me very, very happy. You can shout from the deepest point of your lungs to this conversation partner and she will never ever be mad about it.

She asked me, what my call was about. I said: “INCIDENT!”

She did not understand.

I shouted: “OPERATOR!”.

Well, she agreed to connect me with an operator but she first needed my phone number. After I told her my number, she said: “This is a cell phone number. I need a land line number.”

Just as I was about to destroy everything I could reach with my free arm, she said: “If you don’t have any number, just say ‘next’.”

“Hell, next. Neeeext! N – E – X – T !!!”

“Please be patient, the next operator is reserved for you”, she said and I smiled. Nice, nice. BUT: after 16 (sixteen!) minutes, a male voice said: “All operators are busy. Please call again later.” *Click*

What the hell?! Okay, okay. I remained totally calm (will clean up the broken dishes later… [just kiddin']) and called the same number again. “Incident. *ARGH* OPERATOR! NEXT!” And I got connected to a women within less than one minute.

I told her about my problem and after she listened about 2 minutes to my hole story, she said: “You have to call T-Mobile, there’s the number 01805 …”

“Stop!” I said. “I definitely WILL NOT call a service number which is NOT toll-free.”

I could see her shocking face on my iPhone as she searched on her computer and finally found another number, which I immediately called:

+49 800 88 55 400

Funny thing: the man who answered was responsible for DSL and leased lines and had absolutely no idea about cellular networking. But he agreed to pass me on… to his manager or whatever. And this funny person told me to call the toll-free cell phone service number:

2202

Well, I called this number. Three times in 5 minutes!

The first guy told me to active the Airplane Mode. As I told him “but this will interrupt our call”, he said: “no, no, we will stay connected, I know this for sure!” Oh my God, what a freak. As I tapped the “Airplane Mode” button, my iPhone said — guess what — “this will interrupt your current call”. Well, ehm… eh?

He then told me to quit the call and to this Airplane-Mode thing. Cellular data networking should work after that. I tried and — surprise! — it dit NOT work!

I called the same number again, told the hole story to another guy and just as I was about to ask what to do now, the connection was terminated. What the hell?!

So, I called the same number again a third time and told the story again. It was someone with a foreign accent, but he was totally okay. He asked me to stay connected, he would talk to an iPhone expert. After about 5 minutes, he came back and asked if I ever tried to turn the device off and on again. OMG! Sure I tried it several times. He again talked to the iPhone expert. As he came back to me, he had no further idea.

His suggestion was to call back tomorrow at 8am to get directly connected to an iPhone technician. I agreed to that.

But I could not believe, this problem to be that unique. So, I googled for “could not activate cellular data network” and the very first link was. http://unfake.it/c4l

One guy posted, he simply reset his networking settings (Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset Network Settings). So, I tried this. And — TADA! — it works perfectly again.

My conclusion: T-Mobile should use Google as knowledge-base.

Hi there!

English // German

I have the very first iPhone, bought on 2007-11-09 in an T-Com store. Now, the display ain’t working correctly anymore. // Ich habe das allererste iPhone, gekauft am 2007-11-09 in einem T-Com Laden. Jetzt funktioniert das Display nicht mehr korrekt.

The device did not fell down, I did not hit it anywhere. I just put it in my pocket at work and as I got home, the lower centimeter of the display ain’t working anymore. // Das Gerät ist nicht herunter gefallen, ich habe es auch nirgendwo angehauen. Ich habe es auf der Arbeit in meine Tasche gesteckt und als ich heim kam, funktionierte der untere Zentimeter des Display nicht mehr richtig.

This unfortunately includes the buttons “Phone”, “Mail”, “Safari”, “iPod” and – of course – the lower buttons in each application. The 90% of the display do work absolutely correct. // Dazu gehören leider auch die Buttons “Phone”, “Mail”, “Safari”, “iPod” und – natürlich – auch die unteren Buttons aller Anwendungen. Die oberen 90% des Display funktionieren einwandfrei.

I know, my iPhone ran out of warranty, but it’s very obviously a well known hardware failure, which occurs quite often. // Ich weiss, dass mein iPhone bereits aus der Garantie gelaufen ist, allerdings ist das sehr offensichtlich ein Hardware-Fehler, welcher durchaus recht oft auftritt.

I found several websites and forums about that: // Ich habe darüber einige Webseiten und Foren gefunden:

• http://unfake.it/GzR (german forum // deutsches Forum)
• http://unfake.it/VVL (german forum // deutsches Forum)
• http://unfake.it/Q4E (english website // englische Webseite)
• http://unfake.it/0S3 (english website // englische Webseite)

The last one is probably the most important and interesting one. Quotation: // Der letzte Link ist wahrscheinlich der wichtigsten und interessanteste Link. Zitat:

“First the very bottom of the screen went out so I could not hit the space-bar on the keyboard, or change to the number/character screen. Then it got worse a few days later, now I cannot hit any of the main function buttons.”

This is proof enough for me. It must be a hardware failure and must have its origin in the fabrication. // Das ist Beweis genug für mich. Es muss sich um einen Hardware-Fehler handeln und dieser muss seinen Ursprung bereits in der Herstellung haben.

Now, I will print out those websites and I will confront T-Com in a store with those fact the next few days. I simply don’t want to pay for a new display, ’cause it’s really expensive. // Nun werde ich diese Webseiten ausdrucken und die Telekom in einem Laden mit den Fakten konfrontieren. Ich möchte einfach nicht für ein neues Display bezahlen, da das wirklich ziemlich teuer ist.

Does anyone have some more tips? // Hat noch jemand gute Tipps?

T.

Today, I got one of the very first iPhones… Usability is quite new to me since I never had an Apple or an iPod. But i like it so far

UPDATE:

After various complications getting my iPhone to work with my WLAN at home, this issue is now solved.

The one thing is still cannot believe is: no new software can be installed without hacking/breaking the phone. That’s really poor. I’d like to have several software such as IM installed.