One More Tap » 2.2.1

Spell Your Numbers, Get Your Emoji

xcool — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 02:20:38 +0000

That’s right. Here’s another one that claims to enable Emoji, systemwide! Try Spell Number by Water Lou.

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.

Get Emoji for iPhone 2.2.1, Really!

xcool — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:32:50 +0000

Missed the chance to get Frostyplace when it was offered for free? Or, did you upgrade to firmware 2.2.1 only to find out that you can’t use the Frostyplace trick anymore?

Erica Sadun of Ars Technica submitted Freemoji to the App Store, hoping to give everyone a free alternative to enabling the much sought-after feature, but it was denied immediately by the iPhone Developer Program, citing violation of Section 3.3.4 of the iPhone SDK. Freemoji violated the golden rule of accessing data outside of the application’s “sandbox”. The sandbox mentioned here is a set of fine-grained controls that are imposed to limit an application’s access to files, preferences, network resources, hardware and etc. As well all know by now, Apple sets a very strict rule as to what an iPhone application can and cannot do.

I scanned the Ars Technica comments thread and found mention of an app called Typing Genius – Get Emoji that is said to enable Emoji icons, even if you have upgraded to firmware 2.2.1. I am not sure how an app like this, with Get Emoji in its title, managed to slip thru the App Store’s verification process. Regardless, if the claim is true, then owners with the latest firmware can fret no more. Typing Genius – Get Emoji looks to be a better alternative to most of us English-speaking crowd when compared to Frostyplace and warrants the $0.99 investment.

At this moment, user reviews posted in the iTunes Store did not indicate if Typing Genius – Get Emoji really does what it claims – enable Emoji support. The author does mention the claim in the application’s description. I would love to try it out and report this to the world, but I have already upgraded my iPod touch 2G to firmware 2.2.1. I’ll leave it up to you guys, my readers to verify this claim.

I’d appreciate your report in the comments area if you tried it and have Emoji enabled for your device. Thanks!

UPDATE: Mattie just buzzed over at the imobForums to inform that Typing Genius – Get Emoji does indeed enable Emoji for his wife’s device which is running firmware 2.2.1. Great news indeed!

iPhone OS 2.2.1 Released – Improves Stability

xcool — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 02:38:25 +0000

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.

One More Tap » 2.2.1

Spell Your Numbers, Get Your Emoji

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