Posts Tagged ‘iphone’

iPad + Skype = Awesome!

August 12th, 2010
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So today I forked out the $2.99 to enable me to make unlimited calls from my iPad to landlines using Skype. And I must say it is awesome! In fact I just got off the phone with my dad and talked for about 15 minutes, call quality was near perfect. And no I didn’t hold it up to my head, I had the speaker phone on since the iPad has a great Mic and Speaker built into it.

I really think when my AT&T contract with my iPhone is up I’ll be cancelling it. After all, if I can make calls and do email, web browsing, etc with my iPad, what do I need an iPhone for? Sure you may say that Skype doesn’t work over 3G, but I think they fixed it… And if they didn’t we’ll there’s always the jailbreak option if you are into that.

Anyways, I just wanted to post that Skype and the iPad works great. It does cost $2.99 a month to make unlimited calls from the iPad, and if you want a real phone number so you can receive calls that’s an extra $6.00 a month, but for $8.99 you essentially are getting all the calls you need way cheaper then AT&T’s iPhone plans.

Anyone have any comments? Feedback on how skype has worked for you? Feel free to chime in!

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Goodbye iOS 4.0, hello Jail-brake 3.1.3

July 5th, 2010
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This morning I killed off iOS 4.0 on my iphone 3G. I have been using iOS 4.0 for months now as part of the developer program and my iphone has been a bit sluggish but I’ve dealt with it. The last few days however it has gotten unbelievably slow to the point I can’t even read a SMS message I received without waiting a minute for it to load up. When I try to make a call sometimes it will answer… Sometimes it won’t.

I remember the days of 3.0 where the phone was snappy so effective this morning I have downgraded my iphone 3G from 4.0 back to 3.1.3. The process is really simple as outlined by MacLife at this link
http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/downgrade_iphone_os_40

The files needed are linked as well, it makes the process very easy.

So what’s this mean for me in terms of features I’m losing? None. See After I restored back down to 3.1.3 I did the Spirit Jailbreak  which took all of 5 seconds and got Cydia installed. Now there are a number of apps that you can download for the iPhone that give you access to multiple exchange accounts, multitasking, wallpapers, etc. So all the features that were on 4.0 are easily reachable through jailbreaking. The only one I’m not sure about is the unified inbox, but to be honest I don’t really need that as I only have 2 email accounts I use on my phone, my personal one and m web administration one. If I wanted unified I could set google up to check both accounts for me and deliver them through one account so there is even a work around to this.

Apple’s really taking some good hit’s right now. I’m not a fanboy, I mean I love the products and often recommend them, however if something better exists I recommend that. Although in most arena’s apple is far superior from my experience.  But Apple appears to have gotten sloppy lately. With the Steve Jobs conversation being published, itunes hacks, iphone antenna problem, and more it’s really starting to show that they aren’t bug free. I hope that they turn this around because apple products still are superior to other’s on the market. But if they can’t contain this PR fiasco apple may go the way of Microsoft, still being around building software, but having to release patches constantly and always in react mode rather the being pro-active.

I’ll post some of my favorite Jailbreak app’s once I get the phone setup exactly how I want it. I’ve already got the jailbreak on the iPad 3G and it’s working great so I imagine most of the same apps will make it to my iPhone 3G.

Do you have any recommendations on what apps I should try out? Remember, I’m not looking to jailbreak to steal apps, only to gain access to features that should be available to me already. I don’t want cracked ipa’s that I can load without paying for, I am one of those ethical hackers. :)

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Chance Verizon get's iphone in January 2011 – Almost certain

July 1st, 2010
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In the business world I have learned you don’t get something for nothing, and when it comes to big corporations that have you under contract I have yet to find one company that will do anything for the customer. After all, you are stuck in a commitment why should they treat you right?

So when I heard 2 months ago that AT&T was going to allow all customers that had phones renewing in 2010 to be able to upgrade immediately to get the new iPhone 4 I had a suspicion that something fishy was going on. After all, why would AT&T, a company that so many say is notorious for bad service be willing to allow all these customers that had subsidized phones allow them to upgrade them early for only an $18 fee? At the time I couldn’t think of a reason. I figured maybe they were trying to get people onto the new limited plans but then learned that you can grandfather in your old plan so that wasn’t it.

Then this morning on the way to work I was listening to TWIT (This week in Tech with Leo Laporte) and was hearing them talk about upgrading early and how that was a nice surprise and then I remembered seeing a bloomberg article earlier in the week where they reported Verizon will be selling iPhones come January 2011.

Well, you put the pieces together and it’s almost certain that Verizon get’s the iPhone. See if your contract was up near the end of 2010 you may not renew immediately, and many iphone and other phone customers are in that boat. And as soon as people hear Verizon confirm they are getting the iphone people will choose not to upgrade the phone on AT&T and let the commitment run out. Then when Verizon launches the iPhone there would be a mass exodus to Verizon from AT&T.

Think about it, a few weeks back AT&T raised the rate of early termination to $300+ if you ditch your contract early. AT&T allowed everyone to upgrade to the new iPhone “just because” which locks them into a new 2 year contract bringing them through 2011 and into 2012 of AT&T bondage.

So it’ll cost you more to get out of your contract, oh and you are stuck in it until middle of 2012. Meanwhile, Verizon is rumored to start selling the iphone in approx 6 months. Is it just me or do the puzzle pieces fit together and hint that yes indeed verizon IS going to be getting the iPhone?

I could be wrong, and personally I don’t care if Verizon does get it. If they do I’m sure I’d switch if I wanted the new iphone. I know my wife loathes AT&T as she can’t use her blackberry without dropping a call. (Although I have the same issue with my work issued Verizon blackberry.)  But anyways, I know verizon iphone rumors are all the craze but it really seems like everything is falling into place for this to happen, and happen soon.

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Finally, a company releases a prepaid MyFi! But it's a little late…

June 30th, 2010
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You may remember my infamous post I wrote back in April 2010 where I was complaining about the idiocracy behind Sprint’s customer policy where even if you bring your own device you MUST sign a 2 year commitment. Yes, even though you aren’t getting a phone at a reduced cost (because you already owned it) Sprint will still require you to be in a commitment and pay early termination fee’s should you decide to leave… I callit infamous because I had the CEO’s office calling me trying to explain the policy, but  it still makes NO sense. You can find that post here (http://www.jeremy11.com/?p=1320).

Well the main rant I had was because I had bought a MyFi device so I could get my wifi iPad online anywhere without having to upgrade to the 3G model. After Sprint rejected me and I couldn’t find any prepaid solutions that would work I decided to sell the wifi ipad and buy a 3G ipad and have been loving it ever since. But that doesn’t mean I have forgotten about Sprint and their stupid policies.

So, with that being said I wanted to let you know that Virgin Mobile has just released a prepaid MyFi which is exactly what I waslooking for. The Myfi through Virgin will cost you about $150 for the device which is similar to the cost of the Sprint or Verizon model and run you anywhere from $10 for a few days of service to $60 for 5GB a month… Wait a minute, that 5GB plan is the same price as sprint and without a contract! So yes, why would you sign up with Sprint with a 2 year contract when you can get the same exact plan contract free? If you would like to learn more about Virgin Mobile’s plan here’s a link to the MyFi page on Virgin’s site. -> http://www.virginmobileusa.com/phones/mobile-broadband-2200.html 

But why in my title do I say it’s a little late? Well if Virgin offered this at the time of iPad launch I would have gone this route. But they didn’t, so I had to change my plan. I now have the 3G ipad which is great. The cool thing about it, and everyone is always saying “get the wifi and use a myfi to get it online, then you can hook up 5 devices to it as well and get them all online.”

Well I recently jailbroke my iPhone 3G mainly because I wanted multi-tasking and apple left us 3G owners in the dust when they only released multi-tasking to the 3GS and 4 owners. I can say first hand after being afraid to jailbreak for the first year and a half I had the phone for fear of bricking it, I found my fears to be unfounded. The jailbreak of my 3G iphone took literally 15 minutes and all I had to do was push a button and the system did the rest. I now can multi-task and it makes the 3G phone so much better! Yes at times the phone gets REALLY slow, but generally that’s because I forget I have a lot of programs running in the background. When I remember to close a program after I’m done with it the performance doesn’t get impacted much at all.

Anyways, once I jailbroke my iPhone and saw how easy it was I pondered the idea to jailbreak my iPad. Now I won’t say I did this, it’s all “theory only” of course. But technically once the ipad is jailbroke I would be able to install the MyWi application on it (not to be confused with the hardware MyFi I mentioned earlier) and now can use the 3G ipad as a MyFi device and connect multiple device to it and share it’s 3G connection without having to pay for a MyFi service plan which costs about $60 for 5GB, reminder yes you are paying for the iPad plan and if you signed up early you have “unlimited data” but it’s only $30, half the price of a MyFi 5GB limited plan and the iPad has a  much larger battery which can last many more hours then a myfi! Once again, I’m not saying I’m doing this but it is technically possible.

So if you don’t want to jailbreak this new Virgin MyFi is the way to go, I highly support companies that work to offer Good service and not lock customers into contracts with no way out other then paying expensive early termination fees.

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Jeremy11 is now available on Amazon's Kindle Store!

April 18th, 2010
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Today’s an exciting day, Jeremy11.com has now been made available in the Amazon Kindle store under “blogs”. (http://tinyurl.com/jeremy11-kindle)

So you might ask yourself, why would I want to subscribe via the Kindle? Well the answer is simple, if you have an offline reader like the kindle, Amazon’s kindle store allows you to read the latest posts directly from your kindle and get the latest content pushed right to you!

I realize the demand for a mobile subscription to Jeremy11 is extremly limited, but I wanted to make it an option to my reader base to see if that was something that was of interest. And I’ll continue to work to post interesting articles, my thoughts and reviews, etc on a more frequent basis.

As always, if you are one of the hundreds of readers I have daily that hit my site and you’d like my take on a particular topic or item please let me know, you can add a comment to any blog post or shoot me an email.

To subscribe to my blog using a kindle device simply go Amazon.com and browse the kindle store, you can search for “Jeremy11″ to find my listing. Or to make it even easier you can click on the following link! http://tinyurl.com/jeremy11-kindle

Now I did find out Amazon’s Kindle store “blogs” are not available to view on ipad’s, iphones or other devices running the kindle app which is a shame since I don’t own a Kindle but do own an iPad with the kindle app… I do hope Amazon opens up the blog market to allow blogs to be read on all devices, until then you can subscribe but it’s a kindle only version for now. If you want the RSS version to read when you are online you can find the link to the right near the top of the page.

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iPhone GPS – AT&T Navigator vs Navigon

March 2nd, 2010
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I’m going to make this short.

I’ve bought several GPS apps for my iphone in a quest to find the best one available, and out of the three big names (AT&T Navigator, Navigon and TomTom) My personal feelings are Navigon with Traffic Routing is the BEST of all three.

AT&T had issues keeping me on track. While on the interstate it would often show me on the road next to the interstate and tell me to make a U-turn…. Ummm I don’t think so!! And the phone was mounted to my front windshield so it wasn’t like it didn’t have a good signal. Also it was extremly slow at rerouting when I did go off course. By the time it found a new route I was already passed where it wanted me to turn and got stuck in “reroute cycles”. I had to slow down to let it get me a good route.

TomTom – Starts quickly and really isn’t bad, I like it. If they would implement real-time traffic into the app I would probably use it over navigon, but they don’t have that and I live and work in Nashville and real-time traffic has been very valuable for me. Because TomTom is playing catch up in terms of functions they still have more work to do.

Navigon – The best app I have found so far. It takes a minute to load up, but it routes and reroutes you quickly, the signal for me always seems to be right on and I love the real-time traffic routes. Navigon also has google search built into it, however I still search google maps before going into the app, find what I want and then add it to my contacts. Just habit and it seems to be faster for me then using navigon to do the searching. Regardless, Navigon is my pick for iphone GPS app.

I have as of today cancelled my AT&T Navigator which I thought gave me 30 days free trial but guess not and removed TomTom from my phone to free up an additional 1.5 gigs of space. When Tomtom releases their next update perhaps I’ll re-install it and give it another test drive. If you want a solid GPS app, go with Navigon, you can’t go wrong, and no I do not work for or get any kick-backs from the company, this is simply a review by a happy customer of the different products that are available. I have NOT yet tried magellan, i think I’ve spent enough money and they were last to the party so they missed out. Sorry guys, want to lower the price dramatically I’ll try it out, but not at your full retail price.

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Jeremy11.com – take me with you on the go + Twitter

April 3rd, 2009
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I know most of you don’t have an i Phone, or even an ipod touch. How can you live with yourselves using those other branded devices that are so primitive?

Anyways, I do know that I have an iPhone and so do some of the other visitors to my site, so I took advantage of the fact I totally annihilated this site yesterday by deleting over 5 gigs of data some of which turned out to be vital, in addition to blowing away the database that actually runs this thing. So while I was rebuilding it I was busy implementing some new plug-ins that would allow this site to be optimized for mobile browsing on an iPhone or ipod touch.Yep, you can now take me with you on the go!

So, with that being said, below are 3 screen shots showing the new optimized site that you will see from the iphone/touch.

The site will be by default set to the mobile version, you can however scroll down the page and turn it off to see the regular site if you choose. This way you have control over the version you are seeing.

The first page you’ll see will be the main page that shows my latest blog posts sorted by date with the most recent at the top. Simply tap on the post you want to read and it will take you to the full post in an optimized, mobile window.

Also, along the top under the Jeremy11.com heading you’ll see “menu”. If you tap on it you’ll see some more icons, these will match the pages that are available on my normal site, pages like Maps, Social Me and Email will be available through the Menu’s button. (Second screen shot above)

Lastly, I try to categorize my blog posts, but it doesn’t always happen. So along the top of the page you’ll also see “Categories”, tap on it and you’ll be able to see all the categories I have defined on my site. Tap the one you want and you can browse all of the posts that I put in that bucket. (Third screenshot above)

Still can’t find what you are looking for? No problem, tap “Search” and you can search my site by key word.

If you would like a better view of the new pages for the iPhone/touch click on the image above for a larger view, or simply visit Jeremy11.com on your iPhone or ipod touch to see it for yourself!

Oh and if you don’t have an iphone or touch, you can still take me with you by subscribing to my RSS feed on your mobile device using whatever RSS feed reader you prefer. I personally loved Viigo when I had a blackberry as they have a very nice Blackberry app that is very slick. You can get to their site at http://viigo.com/home

So, once you have an RSS reader installed, just point it to my my RSS feed which is  http://www.jeremy11.com/?feed=rss2

Also, I know Twitter has been in the news alot lately with more and more celebs signing up and “tweeting”. Ellen is one such. I’ve been using twitter for over a year now, you might have noticed in the upper right corner of my site I have a text bubble, this is directly connected to my twitter feed. So it’s interesting that everyone is acting like this is brand new, even one of the radio morning shows I listen to just discovered twitter. But it is interesting and I’m glad so many people are signing up, heck even members of congress are using twitter while at government functions! So if you’d like to follow me on Twitter to get SMS or email alerts  whenever I make a post you can sign up on my twitter page at the following URL

http://twitter.com/jeremyhaggard

Thanks for stopping by! Oh and if you have any topics you think I should discuss feel free to leave me a comment or shoot me an email. I’m always looking for new stuff.

To leave me a comment click on the “+” that is at the top right of every post, looks something like this little icon to the right (but don’t click on that one it’s only a picture! The real one is at the top right of this post). You can then leave me a comment.

-Jeremy

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Posted in Gadgets, The house

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iPhone 3.0 Software Update – woohoo

March 18th, 2009
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Yesterday at 12:00pm CST / 10:00am EST Apple had a news conference on iPhone software update 3.0. Currently they are running on 2.2.1 I believe.  I have an iPhone and think it is the coolest gadget in the world. I can’t tell you how nice it is having everything in one place, from a phone to email to internet to music to camera to video games to financial software and stocks to some of the weirdest time wasters ever. But i no longer carry a utility belt of gadgets with me.

But sadly the iPhone had limitations. For example, copy and paste didn’t exist. How prehistoric is it when the iPhone can’t do that? And lots of other hold-ups as well that limited it’s true claim to be the end all/do all of the techno-gadget world.

But, as of today most of the limitations are a thing of the past. Ok, not yet but they did announce it is coming soon to the masses. And to the developer’s which I am gladly a member of we get to play with iPhone 3.0 immediately! :) A perk to being a true geek.

So what is new you ask? I won’t bore you with the list of hundreds of enhancements so I’ll stick to my favorite ones.

1. Copy/Cut and Paste. Very cool to finally be able to copy a URL and stick it in an email. Also copy text on a webpage and SMS it to a friend. And you might say “copy paste is a feature?, what’s so big about that?” Well, just about everyone these days copies and pastes on a computer, and since the iphone is literally a handheld computer when you are browsing the web or chatting its nice to be able to grab pieces of text.

2. MMS. No not M&M’s, But multimedia messaging. This was a serious black eye on the iPhone.  After all, the phone that can do all couldn’t send a simple MMS message with a picture on it? Nope, we were all stuck creating emails and sending media as attachments. And now we can receive MMS messages from friends and family. My family for one likes their MMS.  And I have grown to live without as I had a blackberry 8370 before the iphone and it too couldn’t do MMS. So I am glad the iPhone is adding this as it’s a feature I have missed for years.

3.  Voice Memos. It’s just a neat idea to have a voice memo recorder so you can leave yourself quick audio reminders on where you parked, what you need to do later, etc. And then you can even send the audio file as an MMS message for friends or family to listen to.

4.  Global search. I used to have 8 pages of applications…. But I removed most of them because I had a hard time finding what I was looking for quickly. But then again when you have 128 applications to thumb through who wouldn’t? So it’s nice that apple put in a search feature that allows universal searching of not only applications, but text in emails and itunes song titles that are in your library. As of last night I reinstalled every app I have downloaded now that I will be able to find things easier!

5. Landscape Mode. Yep, push a button and your iphone turns into the iShovel a handy landscape tool. Just kidding. Apple finally gave key apps like mail, notepad and stocks landscape mode to allow you to see more, bigger. Plus the keyboard now works in these apps in landscape mode .

6.  Sharing multiple photos. This would have been nice a few months back when I graduated from college and my sister was snapping pictures with her iPhone. Later I asked her to send them to me and she did, but it was one at a time. I had like 15-20 emails. Which I then had to go through one at a time and save the pictures. But with Apples new multi share process you can now email multiple photos at one time. Very cool.

7.  A new youtube app, I use youtube on the iphone when I’m really bored but it is nice to see the new features of logging into your youtube account. I do have several videos online so it will be nice to have quick access to them.

8. Turn by turn GPS. I’m drooling over this one. The reason is because I have a gps unit in my truck. It’s a TomTom and I love it. But every time I switch vehicles, etc I need to move it. And half the time I don’t which means I have to rely on Google Maps which their GPS function for directions suck. But now that Apple is allowing turn by turn with a “BYOM” (Bring your own maps) for developers will mean companies like TomTom who reportedly already have an app ready they were just waiting on turn by turn to be allowed can begin selling software to allow us to have TomTom like guidance on our iPhone! So one more gadget I can check off of my list and use my iphone for.  I will say that I currently have G-Maps which isn’t google maps, it’s another person that released GPS software which works great, only thing lacking was audible notifications so I imagine they are busy adding that into the app now that apple is allowing it.

9. Push. Yep apple FINALLY got real cloud pushing working. I’m not going to bore you with the details, but basically it will allow much better flow of information to your phone when you aren’t using it, so that your phone is always up to date and current with latest data when you look at it.

10.  Developer heaven. I haven’t made an app on the iphone yet. I have made hundreds in my head but apple hasn’t got the technology working where I can feed my thoughts to it to produce the app. But with the inclusion of over 1,000 new API’s I will definitely be creating some apps in the near future. Start out with a free one or two and then I have a few ideas for some apps that I think would definitely be worth the $0.99. So maybe I can make a few bucks.

Anyways, that’s all I’ll mention, there are literally a ton more improvements like peer to peer  gaming, shake to shuffle, notes sync, safari auto fill,  etc. I’m very excited with the latest changes and am anxiously awaiting Apple getting me access to 3.0 software. I got an email from them last night but have to call and have my account fixed before I can download it and actually play with all these new features. By the end of today I should finally be on 3.0.

The funny thing is you will hear a lot of complaining from the iPod touch users since the update to 3.0 will cost them $10 whereas the iPhone users get it free. But then again iPhone users are paying a monthly fee so really it isn’t free. But it’s bound to happen. All I can say to those iPod users who will complain is you don’t have to update! 2.2 works great! But many of the features you will want, and soon most of the apps will only support 3.0. But you have at least 6 months to a year as 3.0 will not be released until Summer 2009 to the public. So, take the next few months and save a few bucks a month. $10 is not a lot for the onslaught of new features.

If you want to see the iPhone March 17th event you can find a video of it here -> http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/0903lajkszg/event/index.html

Oh this is funny! I kid you not this picture is real. Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef who is a former Taliban ambassador who spent 4 years in Guantanamo LOVES the iphone.

One quote was “I’m using the Internet with it. Sometimes I use it for the GPS to find locations.”

Locations for suicide bombings I suppose. Not so sure that is the best endorsement Apple could get for their “Jesus Phone”. Hmmm, I wonder if the Taliban take offense to it being nicknames the “Jesus Phone” Seems like  a conflict of interest.

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iPhone sketch – this is very funny.

March 6th, 2009
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Ok, I am an iPhone owner. Yes I love my iPhone because it does just about everything. I have apps to track my finances, I have the app called logmein to remote my computers from the phone, heck I even have DVR remote which allows me to use my iPhone to control my Tivo! This phone is iCool. :)

Well I saw this sketch and thought it was hilarious and thought I would share it.

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iPhone can't see me…. But I can see it….

January 19th, 2009
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Ok, I for the last few days have been having some weird issues with my iPhone. I hate to say “issues with my iPhone” because I love this thing. So of course the issue isn’t with the phone, it has to be some outside interference. Right?

Correct!

A while back I put on a skin on the front of my phone to protect the screen from scratches, dirt, etc. The screen worked well however lately when I hang up from a phone call I have to literally reboot the phone in some cases to get the darn main screen to come back up. That or wait a few minutes and it finally clicks over. I really don’t talk on it to much so I don’t much find this to be an issue…. Until tonight.

See our house is on the market and we have it listed at a fair price considering the huge fence we installed, etc. So I’ve been on the phone with my realtor back and fourth after getting one heck of a lowball offer and every time we get done talking the phone just hangs. It’s a bit annoying. So I finally removed the skin I put on the screen and magically the phone is perfect again. 

I did some research and really don’t know what happened but I read that the phone has a proximity sensor that disables the screen when it detects your face, this way battery power is saved by turning the screen off when it is next to your ear. After all you don’t need to see it if it’s attached to your ear. right? Pretty genius of Apple. 

Apparently what happened is the sensor was being impacted by the skin and it couldn’t tell where my face was and always thought my face was next to the phone, therefore the screen was always turned off. 

Now this isn’t an Apple problem (of course not how dare you think it might be!), it is instead the third party, japanese skin that I purchased for $0.01 (not a typo) and $2.99 shipping on eBay. Apparently you get what you pay for, I learn this time and time again.

So, if anyone else is having iphone issues where after a call the screen stays dark and appears to hang, remove any cases or third party items you have put on the phone and try it to see if that corrects your issue. For me it worked.

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