Getting Prepaid Mobile services in Manila (Philippines)

As always, whenever travelling, my advise is to not use your home country's mobile/cellphone international roaming services. Unless money isn't an issue for you, international roaming charges are absurd and even more so when combined with data roaming usage. Not only will you get charged whenever you make a phone call while roaming, but receiving calls is also as expensive. And if you are using a smartphone and forget turn of international data roaming (and happily receiving your push notifications!), then you're in for a big surprise when you return home.

My wife recently travelled to the Philippines for work and I quickly went and do a search on the internet for advice and tips regarding mobile/cell services available in the Philippines. There are basically 4 big/popular service providers and they are Globe Telecom, Smart Communications, Sun Cellular and CURE (Cure's website not working, no idea why?).

iPhone 3GS random shutdowns on iOS4.01, iOS4.1 and iOS4.2.1

I use to be able to use my iPhone 3GS until the battery runs dry and I get the battery running out popup message starting at 20% remaining and below. At that time, using the iPhone was a really enjoyable save for the bad battery life. Then came iOS4.01 and I hesitantly upgraded to it. I say hesitantly because if given a choice, I would not have upgraded it. My upgrade was made because of the increasing number of apps that do not support iOS3.x and most of them wouldn't even let you install it if you do not have iOS4.x. You can see my blog entry on Why I think iOS4.01 firmware sucks.

My iOS4.01 experience was still ok until I upgraded to iOS4.1 the moment the greenpois0n and limera1n jailbreaks were released for it and oh my... did I regret it. All other displeasures aside, the most horrible thing about it was that my iPhone started to shut down randomly whenever it is under intense use. By intense I mean by playing a game (e.g. Angry birds, FIFA 11 or even Bejeweled 2), or typing constantly on Whatsapp, using Safari or even taking a video. The shut downs usually happens when the battery is down to between 80% to 40% and it is totally random. If I leave it and not do anything except for receive and making calls, then I'm safe (or at least I think I am).

Read on...