The iPhone 4s is a World Phone (supports GSM/CDMA) and upto 3G for data. It has a Micro SIM Card slot and can be used overseas. To unlock the phone, the carrier (Verizon etc.) will request/authorize Apple to unlock the iPhone and permit it’s use overseas.

Here are instructions on how to go about it (without any jailbreaks etc.)

• Call Verizon’s Global Department at (908)559-4899 and tell them you wish to use the phone overseas
• They will only authorize the phone’s use overseas with Apple. This does NOT unlock the phone (No Unlock Code for the iPhone either)
• Now when you’re in a foreign country
• Power off your phone
• Insert the foreign SIM Card
• Restart your phone and connect to iTunes (or do it over Wifi) to have Apple unlock (“unbrick”) the iPhone for use with the foreign carrier
• You should be able to use the phone overseas
• When you’re back in the US, remove the SIM Card and the iPhone will default to Verizon

I recently traveled to India and used a Vodafone Micro SIM and as you can see in the top left corner of each of the images, my Verizon iPhone is now a Vodafone IN iPhone.

• Word of caution: Turn Off 3G and Turn Off Cellular Data, from Settings -> General -> Network
• I lost about INR 200 in a minute when I just connected my iPhone to my PC to charge it. My PC was connected to the Internet and Vodafone billed me for data usage. (my work email is insane)
• The rates for phone calls seem pricey. International SMS and Calls are pretty high too. I’m not sure if it’s the iPhone or just Vodafone.

So, this is just my theory (I don’t know how true it is, it’s just a theory)

• I believe Apple has created one device (iPhone 4s) that can be used with any carrier (the hardware)
• When you buy it (say in the US), they’ve already set the country and the default carrier (on the software/firmware)
• Now, when you’re in a foreign country (and assuming the phone is unlocked/unbricked) you can use it with a local carrier based on the SIM
• The Unlock Process is controlled by Apple, based on your carrier’s authorization
• If the phone is Not Unlocked, your carrier can make HUGE Bucks and charge you exorbitant rates for foreign use
• When you’re back in your home country (say the US), the phone will automatically default to the carrier that was set on the phone

If you’re a podcast listener and had an Android phone, you would know Google Listen is unavailable on the Apple AppStore. I started looking at alternatives and found PocketCast! A wonderful app that has a better collection of Podcast feeds and the ability to muanually add Feeds from a URL.

Then I read the “You Guys Are Millionaires Right?” post from ShiftyJelly, the creators of PocketCast and instantly purchased it for $1.99. It Streams, downloads, even plays videos and notifies you on new ones from your podcast subscriptions and does a lot more!

I’ve built Android Apps and I know it’s not as simple as you think (even though I’m a Java Developer) and I know it takes quite a bit of dedicated effort to come up with a really useful and good quality app. Building iPhone apps is much more of an effort and costs more since you need a dev license and can only develop on Macs.

PocketCast is really a cool app, so do upgrade to the full version by paying the $1.99 please. Of course, Apple’s going to get a cut from it – but really you don’t think twice before buying a $5 beer or coffee, do you? So help these guys out, especially if you’re in the software industry, listen to podcasts and own an iPhone.

Content and subject for Chinese, Japanese, Korean (CJK) and other language characters showing up garbled or with question marks ????

Gosh! I know – What a pain! But, there’s a solution! Simply set the encoding to UTF-8 and not ISO8859_1 or any other encoding format.

Found a good post from Isocra Consulting that solves this issue.

Properties props = new Properties();
// put in your SMTP host in here
props.put("mail.smtp.host", "localhost");
Session s = Session.getInstance(props, null);

MimeMessage message = new MimeMessage(s);
message.setFrom(new InternetAddress(from));
message.addRecipient(Message.RecipientType.TO, new InternetAddress(to));
message.setHeader("Content-Type", "text/plain; charset=UTF-8");
message.setSubject(subject, "UTF-8"); //IMPORTANT

// Either use setText() or setContent()
message.setText(body, "UTF-8"); //IMPORTANT
// message.setContent(body, "text/plain; charset=UTF-8"); // ALTERNATIVELY USE THIS

Transport.send(message);

Yes. I switched to the iPhone 4s.

Three years back, I had the Blackberry Storm and last year I switched to Motorola Droid 2 Global (Android) and what a pleasure it was. This year, going to the iPhone 4s it’s even more pleasurable. I really have to give it to Apple for making it so intuitive, simple and clean (hardware and software aesthetics). Android still feels a little too geeky. So with HP/Palm and the Web-OS story I think there are only two choices at this point. The iPhone 4s or Samsung/HTC Android phones (Sorry, I will probably not go with the Motorola for a while now). So here’s my review and a comparison in general between the iPhone and Android phones.

In terms of Apps, you pretty much have a similar spread on both. However, I do miss Google Listen (the best Podcast app for Android). Until I find a good workaround, I will live with iTunes.

Primary Requirements whether an iPhone or an Android based phone

• The Phone aspect (for making/receiving calls) must work and be accessible easily and fast
• When in the gym or running on the trail, I need my music and be able to skip !!! (Motorola Failed BIG time on this)
• Podcast Apps
• Text/E-Mail support
• Good Fast Browser
• Needs to be a world phone

In my opinion, the iPhone wins in all departments (except Podcasts), only because eventually after time Android phones just seem to get slower!
OK – now here are my observations.

Why you would get an iPhone (4s running iOS 5.0.1)

Positives

• Simple, easy and intuitive with beautiful fonts and overall appearance
• You want a phone that just works every time and any time and is fast and spiffy
  (My Motorola Droid 2 fell short on this – gradually took too long to get to the phone to make calls etc.)
• You have an iPad as well and you’re part of the Apple ecosystem
• You want a smaller phone that you can hold easily in your hand
• You want a phone that integrates with your car, with your receiver at home and has a plethora of accessories
• You need a World Phone (Note iPhone 4s supports GSM/CDMA, while the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is only CDMA)
• Voice mail is awesome (I would never listen to Voicemail on my Android)
• Battery Life – You can tweak certain things to increase the life (also a negative, because it needs the tweaks)

Negatives

• You don’t drop your phone and you’re not clumsy with it (The iPhone fared pretty bad on the drop test – Gorilla Glass – Yeah Right!)
• You don’t care about Adobe Flash (Note: YouTube, NetFlix etc. run great)
• You don’t care about the Free Google Navigation (Google Maps works just fine)
• You don’t care about Google Listen
• You don’t care about Siri
• As a developer, you don’t mind writing Objective-C and be stuck to a Mac
• You don’t mind not having Chrome to Phone
• Battery Life – You can tweak certain things to increase the life (also a positive because its better than Android, for me)

Why you would get an Android Phone (Samsung/HTC – I can’t say great things about Motorola until I forget the pain I went through)

Positives

• You need 4G LTEL – Samsung Galaxy Nexus supports this
• You’re a podcast enthusiast – Google Listen is the best
• You can’t stand iTunes
• You can see the file system with your USB cable connected and easily transfer music
• You want a bigger screen
• You love Google and how seamlessly it integrates with Android
• As a Java developer, you want the choice of what OS you want to develop code on and developing Apps is relatively easy
• Pretty damn sturdy (My Motorola fell several times and didn’t even get a scratch)
• NFC support (which not too many places accept at this point)

Negatives

• A fraction slower navigating the phone (Not the browser or downloads etc. just the OS itself)
• Just too geeky and not a very simple user experience (compared to the one button iPhone)
• After about a year, the phone just doesn’t perform like it did when it was new
• Battery Life – Gosh my Motorola Droid 2 would be completely drained before I got in my car at the end of the day
• Really easy to build apps that are malicious. You could accidentally download them. There’s source code out there that teaches you how.

Overall, I wouldn’t disagree with folks who claim that Android 4.0 available on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is probably the best out there, but it’s still a tad bit geeky. However, it’s not a World Phone which is a requirement for me. Now, Looking back at my Motorola Droid 2 – I just felt that whenever I really really needed something – Like Music or GPS – it needed a hard reset using up 5 minutes.

For simplicity and everyday use, and guaranteed to provide the same level of exceptional usability all year round – I went the iPhone! It just works!

I needed to clear user list under submitted tab and found some meta-data information under ~/.p4qt/0001Clients/WoskpaceSettings.xml

$ cd ~/.p4qt/
$ grep -IR stringToRemove
# in my case
$ vi ~/.p4qt/0001Clients/WorkspaceSettings.xml

Even though this is not a very common use case, you might need to do this and like just about anything with Linux, there’s a bit of a pain here as well.
The easiest way is to access the Disk Utility and see the Mount Point and just cd to that mount point. For example, cd /media/RHEL_6.1/

Otherwise, follow the steps below or read up on mount and umount (unmount)

Depending on the OS, most likely the cdrom will be at /dev/cdrom, the USB will be at /dev/usb etc. But may change.

# Login as root, then follow these steps
$ mkdir /mnt
$ mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
$ cd /mnt/cdrom
$ ls

# To unmount, use the umount command
$ umount /mnt/cdrom
$ ls