However, the app doesn’t enable emoji instantly. You’ll need to do some hardwork – type in 9876543.21 into the application.

Once done, go to Settings > General > Keyboard > International Keyboards > Japanese. A new option for Emoji should now appear. Turn it on and enjoy! A friend of mine verified this to be working on her 2G iPod touch with firmware 2.2.1.

You can get the application from the iTunes Store here. It’s free at this moment!

Thanks to Water Lou for the heads up.

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Not much of a fanfare, but the cat is finally out of its bag. Yeah, that is firmware version 2.2.1. There’s not much fixes to shout about, but Apple’s official release note showered love on both Mobile Safari and Camera Roll.

Mobile Safari gets some stability improvement ‘injection’ with this update. Also fixed is an issue where some images, when saved from the Mail application, do not display correctly in the Camera Roll. The iPod touch version of this update calls the Camera Roll as “Saved Photos”, and comes with an additional fix for an issue that caused some Apple Lossless (ALAC) audio files to skip during playback. Since this is a minor bump from the previous firmware version, there appears to be no other major fixes. However, as we all know the mighty Apple, they might have hidden some other fixes or improvments or features in between the code.

Reader reports say that the recent emoji hacks are still working after the update, so I’d say it’s practically safe to update your device to 2.2.1 not working anymore if you update to 2.2.1 and then install Frostyplace. I’d strongly suggest that you install Frostyplace first and have your emoji enabled before updating. Thanks to reader Sassoverde for highlighting.

If you have previously unlocked or jailbroken your device, then updating to the new release will break them. Ars Technica stated that this update might mess around with your iPhone’s baseband and thus, may affect your unlocked unit. Confirmation is needed here. Unlockers please wait for a while (I am sure team yellowsn0w is now hard at work) and let the rest do the guinea pig test, eh?

Getting the update is easy. Simply plug in your device, then launch iTunes and click on the “Check for Updates” button from the device screen. iTunes should then ask if you would like to download and install the update, or just perform a download. I like the Download Only feature as it allows me to save the updater file for sharing with friends later. Although this is a minor update, the download is weighing in at about 277.7 MB, but I’d say it is worth every byte of it for stability’s sake.

Again, the iPod build ID for this version is a little bit different. iPhone users should see build ID 5H11, while iPod touch users 5H11a. On the iPhone (presumably), the modem firmware is now upgraded to version 02.30.03.

Oh ya, if you have to ask. There is no copy and paste, no MMS and no kitchen sinks included in this update.

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One of the featured updates that came with firmware 2.2 for the iPhone and iPod touch is the ability to use something called ‘emoji icons’ when composing messages. Emoji icons is the Japanese version of smileys (some call it emoticons) that we MSN/AIM/Yahoo! Messenger users are very familiar with.

However, its only available to iPhone customers in Japan.

Bummer no more. There are now a few methods to get Emoji icons on your iPhone and iPod touch. Yes, it’s available on the iPod touch too, all thanks to the almost similar firmware that Apple utilizes on both devices.

The easiest method is also a paid method. Well, I know some of you might be turned down when hearing the word ‘paid’, especially during these trying times. But then, paid also means that its an easier path.

Here’s what you do: get this $0.99 app called Frostyplace from the iTunes App Store. The app is a Traditional Chinese (other sites say its Japanese, but no, it isn’t) Macintosh news website RSS Reader. Play around with the app by tapping around everywhere, including the bottom two icon tabs. Next, activate the Settings app and go to General > International > Keyboards > Japanese. You should now see the Emoji option enabled. Turn it on, quick! The next time you are in the SMS application, tap on the globe button on the keyboard and you shall see a selection of beautiful Emoji icons.

Another method to try is the free method. This is what you do. Download this vCard file (right-click and choose Save As…). Don’t worry, this harmless file is basically an electronic version of your business card, read  more about what vCards are here. You can either download the file directly from Safari Mobile (check out One More Tap Mobile at the same time!) or email it to your email account on the iPhone/iPod touch if you are currently stuck to a computer. Next, choose Save Contacts when you open the file from within your device. This shall create about 27 new contacts in your address book. You might want to create a group for these contacts. Similarly, launch the Settings app, but go to General > Keyboard > Japanese and enable the QWERTY keyboard option. In any app that make use of the keyboard, tap the globe to get the Japanese keyboard. Then begin by typing “e” and you shall see a list of Emoji icons available. That’s it.

Both methods worked wonderfully on an iPhone, but it’s going to be a little more difficult on the iPod touch, since there’s no way to individually choose an emoji icon. But then, it’s free so no complaints here.

Note however that its basically advisable to avoid using Emoji icons when sending an email, unless you know that the other end is using an iPhone or iPod touch to read your messages. Read more about this and other quirks related to Emoji icons over at Apple’s Support site.

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If you have been following this development, note that contrary to what was posted earlier, the tool does indeed work with the latest firmware version, 2.2, which contains the latest radio baseband.

Things to note before attempting to modify your iPhone 3G:

1. the unlock tool only works with baseband 02.28.00, which is provided by the recently released firmware version 2.2
2. the unlock tool is designed as a daemon (background process), thus there’s no GUI
3. version 0.9.4 has been released which relieves the need for a one-minute delay upon resetting the iPhone
4. you’ll need to jailbreak your iPhone in order to run the unlock tool

Head over to both the iPhone Dev’s site for further reading, and yellowsn0w to download the tool.

If you like, check out this step-by-step instructions, as posted by the guys over at Crunch Gear.

Hack at your own risk!

P/S: No, this will not work on your iPod touch 2G

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I was basically stumbled upon the first tip, where tapping on the status bar (the top of the screen, where the signal strength, time, battery level, etc indicators sit) will make scrollable content scroll to the top immediately. Handy in situations where you’ll need to go back to the top of the page in an instant after browing thru long web pages or email conversations. I wonder if its possible to add another one that lets you scroll to the bottom of a page immediately.

Another notable tip is the Home button trick. Firmware 2.2 for the iPhone brings an added use to the Home button which goes to the Home screen upon double-clicking. You can now set it to show the phone’s favorites, launch the Music app or show the iTunes controls. However, on my iPod touch with firmware 2.2 (5G77a), there’s no such settings screen to configure these. Instead, I only get the iTunes control when I double-click the Home screen.

Hit the post to check out the rest of the tips, including how to configure AIM mobile forwarding for those who use the AIM service to chat.

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