Samsung Galaxy Gio - Unlocked on Rogers

If you have read any of my previous posts you have no doubt seen what I have had to go through in order to make my hand-me-down iPhone 3G work in any sort of acceptable way. If I am not mistaken, I have posted 2 or 3 entries here on how to make the phone 'liveable'.

Well, today (actually Feb. 18, 2012) that all comes to an end, I am leaving my iPhone 3G for a Samsung Galaxy Gio. In your head you are probably saying, Galaxy Gio? Why would you choose some low-end hardware and not a Samsung Galaxy S II or something like that?

Well... you have to remember, I get hand-me downs because I am not able to commit to a 3 year contract for one of the nicer, newer models and I also can't fork out $600 - 800 on a cell phone (I am not sure how anyone can because of how fast they become outdated). So let me tell you how/why I bought this phone.

Backstory:


I have had this phone ever since I have upgraded my wife to the iPhone4, just before the iPhone4S and have been on a daily basis living with the fact that I only ever really have about 40MB of usable memory that gets eaten up quite rapidly by just one app.  Over time, when using it, it is not uncommon to wait 2 - 3 minutes for an app to load, have to load the app 2 - 3 times as it would crash shortly after the load screen or just completely lock up the device using up all its available memory. With such a low amount of RAM it then becomes a concious effort to load only a certain amount of apps, or in a particular order, which started to drive me nuts.

I had tolerated this for quite some time, but the final straw came when I was trying to discretely write something nice in an e-mail to my wife for valentines day on my iPhone3G. I had spent a good hour pecking at the small virtual keys to pump this e-mail out only to have the phone freeze just before the completion of the message and the app close automatically due to memory constraints wasting all the effort (mainly typing on that keyboard). I couldn't take it anymore... so I began devising a master plan on how I can fix my particular problem, but on the cheap.

Research:


So being hell bent on replacing the phone, I began searching around for a way to keep my existing SIM and service, but get a new Android or iOS phone.

OK, you caught me... I didn't even look at the iPhone because I loved my tablet and I wanted the same experience on my phone. So given that I want an Android phone, what are my choices here in Ontario, Canada?

• Rogers
• Telus
• Bell
• Koodo
• Virgin Mobile
• Fido
• Wind
• Moblicity
• Public Mobile

And when you really boil it down there are only 6 choices since Fido=Rogers, Virgin Mobile=Bell, Koodo=Telus, so the search was on for a decently priced Android phone from any of these companies or even on-line via eBay or Kijiji.

One thing I noticed rather quick was that it was more or less impossible to get any of the Android phones released in the last year or two because they were all tied to 3yr contract commitments of $50+ or they were  $500 - 700 to buy right out. As I mentioned previously, both of these choices are a problem for me and I had to immediately rule them out. Instead I would have to find a way of getting the phone I want, but in an affordable way.

Then, I remembered an ad for Public Mobile that I had seen them around where they were advertising a $100 android phone, but it was from some obscure Chinese manufacturer. I wasn't really into buying a phone from a manufacturer I hadn't heard of, but it did give me the idea of going to one of the bigger carriers in search of a pay-as-you-go Android phone. My first thought was to go to Virgin Mobile, they always seemed to be so cool and friendly </sarcasm>, so I poked around their website and found some Android phones available priced around $199. 

I had a device in mind and decided first that I would talk to a Virgin representative to find out if they could unlock the phone for me if I bought it right out. Their response was essentially the primary reason that I didn't buy the phone and went looking elsewhere, it went something like this:

• Me: Hi Virgin, just wondering if I spent money with your company and purchase a phone outright, would you be kind enough to provide a network unlock code so I could use it with my existing plan?"
• Virgin: Hey there! We definitely want to help you with unlocking your phone if you purchased it from us.
• Me: OK, so how does this work. If I buy a phone from you, would you essentially hand over the unlock key with the phone so I can use the phone I purchased outright any way that I want?
• Virgin: I am happy to tell you that if you purchase a phone from us, you can definitely have it unlocked. There is just a few things you should know before getting your phone unlocked.
• Me: Alright... what's that?
• Virgin: Well, first... if you buy the phone outright from us, you need to create an account with us for at least 30 days and the phone needs to be active. This will either be a regular plan or a month-to-month, and you may have to pay early cancellation fees if you go on one of the regular plans.
• Virgin: Second, you need to provide us with $75.00 for the phone to be unlocked. Please bear in mind that if you send your phone in for warranty unlocked it will be returned to you locked, you will then have to pay another $75.00 to get the phone unlocked again.
• Me: That's insane. So you are saying for a phone that I paid full price for cannot be unlocked unless I pay you for 30 days of phone service that I don't want just so that I can later pay you and additional $75.00 to unlock the phone (most likely out of my site without providing the code)? You have to be nuts!

I couldn't believe it! Full price for a phone and I am still somehow locked into the vendor? They are milking customers for every last dollar... I did some further reading and found that it was seemingly worse with other providers. So now that I was put off from that Virgin Mobile exchange, I went hunting on-line for pay-as -you-go phones from other carriers. My next stop was Koodo, for the Samsung Galaxy Ace.

The phone looked great and looked like it would do everything that I wanted... I was literally moments away from buying one before deciding that I need a bit more information on how it would work to unlock the phone. Lucky that I did because Koodo doesn't use the same radio frequency as its parent Telus or Rogers and Bell, which is 850Mhz. Koodo uses 900Mhz & 2100Mhz for their 3G signals which would have essentially meant that I would be stuck with a phone that only ever had a 2G (edge) signal. So before you buy that phone MAKE SURE your current providers UTMS/HSDPA+ frequencies match those of the phone you are buying (in my case 850Mhz). 

Now that I am aware of the frequency issues, my choice of cell phones was restricted only to what Telus, Rogers and Bell could offer me (since they all use 850Mhz for 3G). Rogers is pointless, because they clearly do not want you to have a smartphone without a contract as there isn't a single Android pay-as-you-go phone, which leaves only Bell and Telus. Telus had the LG Optimus One and Bell had the Samsung Galaxy Gio. Once you compare the 2 phones, the Samsung Galaxy Gio clearly comes out the better looking and more functional of the 2 Android phones, so I bought that one. The fact that I also got an extra $50 off the $129.99 price didn't hurt my decision making either. 

Unlocking:

I was very excited about the purchase of my new phone and couldn't wait to start using it, but it is definitely not going to be on the Bell network (since they have terrible pricing and also since I already have a plan). Initially, I spent a good day looking all over the internet on how I could unlock the phone for free, but with no luck, it seems as though secret of unlocking cell phones is like the secret behind a magic trick and it is closely guarded and can only be known to magicians.

So rather than go free, I thought instead I will put up some good money to get it done right the first time... which eliminated almost every single site that offered unlocking for less than $20 (they were probably mostly scams anyway). After much research I eventually narrowed my selection down to these companies: 

• www.cellunlocker.net
• www.mobileincanada.com
• www.foneszone.co.uk

In the end I chose www.cellunlocker.net because the website was decent, it had a support forum, a phone number and an order tracking system. I assumed they couldn't possibly rip me off if they invest so much in providing support. So I got PayPal ready to go and gave them $32.99CAD, which is the cost of unlocking a Samsung Galaxy Gio. They said that it would take 1 - 3 hours to provide me with the unlock code via e-mail and after payment I waited patiently for that e-mail that was the key to freedom, not entirely confident that I would ever receive it.

2 hours later, I did. I shut off the phone, put in the non-Bell SIM card and when the phone asked my for the network unlock key, I punched it in and was ready to go on the Rogers network in seconds.

Note: If you reset your phone to factory after unlocking, you have to re-enter the code to unlock it as the restore puts it back into a locked state.

Using the phone:

The difference between the Gio and the iPhone3G was like night and day. Once I got some applications on the phone I was launching the Facebook mobile app and within seconds (not minutes) I was in looking at content. It was the same for all the applications that I had tried as well.... I was sooooo happy.

Happy, that is, until I tried to load all of the programs that I had on my tablet and then quickly discovered that I was out of memory and could not install any more apps. Bummer!

It was only then that I realized that the Samsung Galaxy Gio only had a total of 180MB of internal memory for apps. And despite me telling it to install all the apps to the 16GB micro SD card I had in the phone, the internal memory just kept coming down. So, I went to google in search of a solution.

Initially I found a utility called 'DarkTremor A2SD' which supposedly tricks the phone into thinking that the SD card is actually the internal memory of the phone. But in order to use this, or anything else useful I needed to 'root' the phone in order to get things going.

I searched everywhere for instructions and eventually came across this site. It provides the correct update and instructions on how to root your S5660 (aka Galaxy Gio) phone. The process, to my surprise, took less than 5 minutes and required absolutely no technical knowledge... simply shut off the phone, turn it on again holding the home button and then apply the update to the phone from the SD card (the file has to be in the root).

First problem solved... the next problem was to get DarkTremor to work. I did find something on the marketplace that was a GUI for DarkTremor, but it required scripts and an EXT3 partition on the SD card to work (and possibly updates to the init scripts). Though I did install it and messed around with partitioning  the SD card I could never get things 'Just Right' in order to have DarkTremor GUI to open and let me start tricking my phone. I did contemplate going to SimpliGio or GioPro v1.4, but I didn't have a lot of time to sort through the complexities of flashing my ROM and I really didn't want to risk losing the phone I just purchased... so I opted not to proceed. Instead, I began searching for a replacement program that would do the same thing, but easier and LUCKILY I found the program 'Link2SD' which does the same thing as DarkTremor A2SD, but much, much simpler. So I downloaded it from the market and installed it on my device.

Once installed I thought things would a bit more straight forward, but I still kept getting errors about the 2nd partition despite the fact that I had partitioned the poor card every which way I could think of. It was when I stumbled across this article that things made perfect sense (since Link2SD was always looking for a 2nd partition)... You have to make a FAT partition first, followed by an EXT2 (or probably FAT) partition for the apps. Once I did that, Link2SD worked for a charm and has been saving internal space on my Gio like crazy.

Summary:

This by far was the best deal that a person could get on a brand new Android phone without being tied to a specific carrier and a 3yr contract. The phone is fast, has good programs, takes good pictures, has expandable storage, has a changeable battery and uses a standard MicroUSB cable to charge.

I am loving the phone and do not miss for a second my iPhone3g. If you want a good performing phone for a good price, don't hesitate to do this. I didn't have any problems with www.cellunlocker.net, so I recommend using them to unlock your phone.

iPhone 3G performance tweaking

Since I have recently given up on the benefits of running iOS3 via Whited00r on my iPhone 3G and I am now on iOS4 I needed to find a way to tweak my phone to get back some of the performance that I previously had. Running Whited00r on my 3G gave me a pretty good idea as to how I could get this performance back... and then some. So this post will be dedicated to tweaking the 3G to get some of your speed back on iOS4 and some neat features thanks to some great programs made available to a jail broken device.

Requirements:

• A jailbroken 2G/3G/3GS, running iOS4. 
• Multifl0w: Expose type multitasking for the low price of 4.99 at Cydia () 
• Backgrounder: Available for free via Cydia. 
• iFile: Usable version available via Cydia. 

Post-Jailbreak: 

After putting your device back to iOS4 you will need to jailbreak your phone, to do that, I recommend you restore your device back to iOS4.0.1 and use jailbreakme.com. It is dead simple and always works, it is also way more reliable than the other untethered jailbreaks. Once you complete the jailbreak, you will need to do some minor tweaking to get your background wallpaper (if you care), but NOT mutli-tasking. I have found over time with the iOS version of multitasking keeps a very looooong list of applications that were previously used and despite what people might say I am convinced (but with no proof) takes up a ton of memory (and only we that are stuck with older phones would notice). Rather than rely on this method of multi-tasking we will let 'Backgrounder' do the work and leave the Apple multi-tasking off.

So if you don't already by this point have Multifl0w, Backgrounder and iFile, just hop on over to Cydia and grab them. Now if you have iFile, use it to navigate to '/System/Library/CoreServices/Springboard.app' and locate the file: N82AP.plist. If you are using iFile you can select the file and then click the 'Text Viewer' and then click the 'Edit' button. Add the following lines:

<key>homescreen-wallpaper</key>
<true/>
<key>multitasking</key>
<false/>


Once you are done click 'Save' and then power off your phone and power it back on again for the configuration changes to be read by your phone. Now that all the necessary programs are installed and configuration completed, we can proceed with the software configuration. 


Multifl0w: 


Multifl0w doesn't really need to be configured anywhere but Activator, so there is not much work to be done here. The sole purpose of using Multifl0w is so that we have a task switcher available when we have disabled the native iOS utility. It is possible that there are other free ways to do this, if there is, let me know. But the interface for Multifl0w is quite nice, so it is most likely preferable. 


Backgrounder: 


Backgrounder will be one of the 2 icons that will be placed on your phone once the installs have completed. Before we get into any extensive configuration (via Activator) we should take care of how multitasking is done. 


Open Backgrounder by clicking the icon. You will be presented with 4 choices: - Global - Overrides - Control (via Activator) - Documentation You will first want to go into the 'Global' section and configure how Backgrounder is going to behave. Configure it in the following manner: 


Global: 

• Backgrounding method: Forced. We want to make sure that we aren't using anything that would try and use the native multitasking.
• Fall back to native: Off. This will ensure that every application you load will by default quit when you go back to the home screen. We want to make sure that the apps we want to keep are forced into the background by us.
• Background state (there are 2 settings): Enable at launch, disabled. We want to make sure all applications are set not to stay in the background at launch. Stay enabled, On. We want to make sure that if we select something for the background, that it stays enabled until we say otherwise.
• Indicate state via (there are 2 setting): Badge, on: This will tell you on the app icon whether or not it is backgrounded. Status bar icon, on: This will show that there are backgrounded apps in the status bar. Activator should come with the installation of Backgrounder, so you should see an 'Activator' icon both on your home screen and in your settings.
• Minimize on toggle, off: This will prevent the app from automatically minimizing when you put it in the background. 

Overrides:

If there are some applications you do not want to follow the default rules, you can specify them here. By default this will put in iPod, Phone, Safari and Mail so that they will default to the regular iOS backgrounding they seem to have even if multitasking is not enabled. I recommend deleting everything but phone so that you have control over what is lingering in the background, also, iPod seems to screw up the multitasking so this fixes it.

Control via Activator:

This defines how you want to enable an application for backgrounding. I believe by default this is 'Short Hold', which is what I have left mine as. So any time I want to put an app in the background I just have to hold the 'Home' button for half a second and it will tell me that the app is now enabled in the background.

Activator:

This configuration can be complicated or easy, depending on how tweaked you want your phone to be. I, for example, have enabled the following:

• Hold status bar = Open settings.
• Double tap status bar = SBSettings (highly recommended) 
• Swipe from bottom left = Hootsuite for messaging 
• Swipe middle = Camera 
• Swipe left = Opera 
• Swipe down from top = Mail 
• Power button double press = Respring 

But to make things simple, I will just describe how to enable multifl0w here:

• Open Activator by clicking on the home screen icon. 
• Select 'Anywhere' 
• Under the heading 'Home Button' select 'Double Press'

Summary:

This configuration has saved me quite a bit of trouble and made my system a lot more responsive. Does wonders for the 128MB of awesome RAM the device has.

There are other good programs that are really good as well... you can check them out here: http://jailbreakzone.com/2011/09/30/cydia-10-tools-to-start-with/

I highly recommend Manual Correct, SBSettings and Action Menu.

Whited00r no more

You could call it a beta test or a test drive perhaps to explain my short time spent with Whited00r, 12 days to be exact. It's not that I don't like Whited00r, I certainly do, but I had 2 specific reasons why I did not want to keep using the custom OS.

Initially, when I had installed Whited00r, I was wowed by the speed gain that I had received on my device vs. the previous iOS version I had installed (4.0.1). I was jumping around between applications quickly, sluggishness was gone and multi-tasking was setup really well and I literally had no problems at all and not a single care in the world. So I continued for days, very happy that I had a functioning and non-sluggish phone before I ran into problem #1.

Problem #1:

I have a set of applications that I use on a regular basis (as of course everyone does) that I really like to have and because I had to setup the phone from scratch, they weren't synced back on, so naturally I wanted to re-install them. Up to this point I really never did have a reason to open the Apple app store or even care that it was not there (knowing that I only had the Whited00r version called 3store). But when I dug into it a bit, I found that it was kind of a pain to get Apple sanctioned apps back on my phone because (as previously mentioned) I had synced back my previous Safari bookmarks and lost any that Whited00r would have provided me. But before I fixed my link to the Apple app store, I thought I would take a look through the 3 store and try it out to see how it worked. I found 3 applications that I actually wanted to install:

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Citrix

So I went ahead and tried to install them via the 3store. Once I did, I was a bit put off by the way that it does the install... not to say it was bad, but wasn't what I thought was an ideal experience. When you go to install anything or search for anything, 3store essentially just does an internet search (with additional keywords on top of yours) for .ipa files. You end up getting directed to rapidshare or some other service like that to download the .ipa file, which made me sort of appreciate the walled garden of the Apple app store... not knowing if these .ipa files had been tampered with. Eventually though I had everything installed that I wanted from that store, but was not quite finished. So I took another couple hours to figure out just how I could get a good working link to the actual Apple app store, which I had updated my previous post with for those who ran into the same problem. Once I was finally in I went looking for the other apps that I use most often:

• Netflix: Essential for those times when you are too lazy to pull it up on your TV/PS3/Tablet or computer.
• Hootsuite: Essential for those who frequent both Facebook and Twitter... if only they could add G+.
• Orb: To access some of my home content while I am out, much like slingbox.
• GoTasks: AMAZING task manager that syncs back to your Google Tasks.
• Podcaster: So I can (sans-iTunes) wirelessly download all my tech podcasts. Good... but memory hog.

But then ran into problem #2.

Problem #2:

None of the apps I wanted/needed are available on iOS3, which is something that I did expect going into this. The problem is, for me, maybe you too, that despite the speed and refinements offered by Whited00r I spend everyday looking at someone that doesn't have any app restrictions (wife) and asking myself  "Do I want performance, or do I want my apps?"... eventually the apps won out as I could no longer resist the temptation to get them back, which really does say something about apps doesn't it? It is no wonder people are always stuck upgrading to newer hardware because the software is sooo compelling that you can't afford to be left behind... I am actually dreading the day when the iOS5+ apps start to dominate the Apple app store.

So... here I am, back on good old iOS4.0.1 (why 4.0.1? because http://jailbreakme.com is easy and doesn't mess up applications the way that GreenP0ison or others do, you know... mail link to page and then Springboard kacks on you). The performance doesn't seem to be as terrible as I remember it to be... but at least I have all of my apps back.

Whited00r: Saviour of old iOS devices

If you are like me, you don't have a huge budget to spend on new phones, especially in my case where I am provided a work phone and cannot justify purchasing a new phone at a $50-60/month cost with a 3 year commitment. So you end up stuck with older hardware, as I am stuck on Apples 2009 2nd generation iPhone3G feeling a bit left behind and very envious of people (including my wife's) iPhone4G/GS.

So as Apple would like, I followed the upgrade path... from iOS3 to iOS4, coming full stop at iOS4.2.1 where Apple then abandons those of us with older hardware. The abandonment is not so bad, but the forced upgrade to iOS4 and what the conspiracy theorist in me thinks was the deliberate introduction of performance issues with our older hardware to coerce help us decide to purchase of newer hardware. Almost everyone I know that had an iPhone3G felt that iOS upgrade to their iPhone was unbearable and with the newer, shinier and faster iPhones beckoning to them, the easiest thing to do to fix this problem was to go out and do your bi-annual hardware upgrade (mission accomplished Apple).

Of course, this isn't a great fix for me, since I don't have a cell plan and leaves me to suffer with my iPhone3G (iOS4.2.1) that is running about as fast as a 1998 PC... but what can you do?

I have tried to survive with the iPhone3G by doing this:

• Jailbroken the phone on iOS4.2.1: But the system was horribly unreliable. Simply clicking a link or trying to share something would crash it.
• Jailbroke the phone on iOS4.0.1 using jailbreakme.com: This I have found to be the most reliable jailbreak.
• Disabled multi-tasking, enabled multi-tasking.
• Set the processor to 600Mhz from the original limited 400Mhz.

No matter what I did to this phone it was at best sluggish, even when the multi-tasking and wallpapers disabled like Apple wanted. There seemed to be nothing that I could do to address this, so I was starting to accept the fact that I had to continue to use this hobbled piece of hardware never to run more than 3 apps at any one time.

But one day, while watching my feeds I had seen a Life Hacker article come up stating that I could have iOS5 like functionality and performance on my old iPhone3g, which definitely caught my attention. When I went to the site it was describing something called Whited00r.
When reading through the article in more detail and the Whited00r web site, it seemed too good to be true (and in some ways it is) but it seemed fairly easy to install. So after an entire day of trying to convince myself that my phone is already setup and that Whited00r is not worth the trouble I took the plunge and downloaded the software to get ready to install. Yay will power.

So I got started installing the OS and a few minor hiccups (I will describe and mention how to skip them in the install process below), I was up and running. But rather than getting into a wordy review of the OS, I will boil it down to bullet points to make the information quick and easy to digest:

The Good:

• It is blazing fast: If you were tormented by the speed of iOS4, you will feel like you have a brand new phone.
• Multi-Tasking: It has it, but you have to do a bit of reading to figure out how it works, so let me save you the trouble. It is not 'ON' by default, that is to say that you can't just return to the home screen and expect the app you were just in to show up on the task bar. You have to hold down the home button for about 2 seconds, at which time you will see a "Backgrounding Enabled" dialog appear and now you will find the app in the task list for as long as the app runs.
• Includes Wallpapers: Not only do you get to use wallpapers, but you get a selection of all the wall papers that have been available on iOS (even 5).
• Includes iOS5-ish applications: This is something I found to be misleading on the site, both in regards to the version of Whited00r and also how it is described. You are NOT getting any iOS5 applications at all, but what you do get are reasonable substitutions:

1. An up to date version of Cydia
2. A video recorder application (Cycorder) that seems to work great.
3. A 'reminders' application, much like the one found in iOS5 (if not the same one).
4. HDR camera application that from my testing doesn't appear to do much (based on the pictures taken with my wife's iPhone4 HDR).
5. A working terminal. I don't know about you, but I could never get a working terminal running on my jail broken device, so this was refreshing.
6. A 'custom' application store. This seems to be designed about taking out some of the pain of not being able to run iOS4 applications. They do mention that they are only doing this with free applications. It also enables you the ability to install a .ipa file right on the device from the internet without having to connect your device to a computer.
7. An 'iCloud' type application: This application appears to be designed around storing your application and phone configuration in the cloud, but on Dropbox instead of apple's servers. You can store some phone configuration and application data there, though I am not sure whether or not it works. Would also recommend creating a new phone specific Dropbox account to store the data.

The Ugly:

1. No Apple App Store Icon. While you can still access the Apple app store, you can't do it as simply as pressing the icon on the screen. It will instead take you to something called '3Store' which is where the Whited00r folks are 'fixing' free applications over to work with iOS3. The only way you can access the app store is via a web link in Safari.
2. It is iOS3.13. Despite the fact that it looks fresh and new and is responsive, under the hood it is iOS3 based. This means that a whole lot of games and apps that you may be used to won't work. You might find some like Twitter, Facebook & Citrix in the Whited00r app store, you will have to live without some iOS4 applications.
3. Must setup as new phone: There are no backups. Many places in the forums and guides it mentions that things may go wrong if you try to restore the phone to a previous state. So you need to start from scratch.

Overall, I would say it is a no-brainer to do the upgrade to Whited00r if you are running an iPhone3G. There isn't a game or application that I can't live without if I am getting the kind of performance that I am now with the custom firmware. However, if you have many existing jailbreak apps, a lot of data and some games you can't live without then don't bother. You will be spending a lot of time getting all of that back on.


Installation:

The process itself was pretty straight forward, and is quite a bit less involved then performing a regular jail break. But there are some caveats, so I will outline the install process and add in a few steps to avoid any delays in your move to Whited00r iOS:

1. Go to the Whited00r download page and download the ipsw file (appropriate for the device you are installing it on).
2. Do yourself a favour (to avoid iTunes 1600 errors) go here and download iReb. Put your device in a Pwned DFU mode by following the instructions in the iReb application before trying to restore the whited00r .ipsw file.
3. Once in DFU mode, open iTunes and once it detects that there is a device in DFU mode, hold down the shift key (Windows), alt (Mac... I think) and click the restore button.
4. Select the whited00r .ipsw and let iTunes load the firmware onto the device.
5. Once done, ensure that you set it up as a new phone in iTunes and do not restore from back up.
6. Also, do not sync any of your book marks yet as the whited00r team has an app store link in Safari bookmarks. I made the mistake and had to find a web page that offered an app that I could download.

That's it... just 6 easy steps to get from sluggish iOS4.x to a very fast functional whited00r OS. Give it a try, if you don't like it, you can always go back to iOS4 (though I hear there is or will be a version of whited00r based on iOS4).

Note: I am on the hunt for a way to put the App Store icon back on the iPhone, so if I do I will be sure to mention it here.

Update1: Interesting article in the same vein as my blog entry:



Update 2: Found a reasonable work around to the lack of access to the app store. Just enter this URL in Safari "itunes.apple.com/it/app/dropbox/id327630330?mt=8". Before it fully loads, stop the browser and make a bookmark both in the browser and on the home screen. Only problem is that it loads Safari first, also you will always go to dropbox (though you can change that to what you want).