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iPhone hardware call recorder puts function over form

By: , IntoMobile
Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 6:49 PM

iphone-call-recorder

There are iPhone apps that allow you to record phone conversations for blackmail your personal records (SpoofApp and Recorder 10 are good examples), but they apparently weren’t up to snuff for DIY gadget hacker Adam Byers. The currently available iPhone apps require that you jailbreak your iPhone, pay by the minute for call recordings and can only record calls originating from the iPhone [credit to Adam for the clarification]. That just wasn’t going to cut it. Instead, Byers took it upon himself to craft his own hardware solution to the iPhone call recording problem. The end result is a big black box that obviously puts function over form, but allows you to record both sides of an iPhone conversation relatively easily.

The only catch here is that you have to make your own iPhone call recording “Black Box” yourself. If you don’t know your way around a wiring diagram and a soldering iron, we’d suggest you stay away from this mod. Those of you with some electrical engineering experience will probably still find this mod to be too much of a hassle (jailbreaking your iPhone is soo much easier). The five remaining DIY hackers out there can find instructions for making an iPhone hardware call recorder here.

Just remember, recording phone conversations isn’t exactly 100% legal everywhere. Make sure you keep that in mind before recording a phone conversation.

[Via: Gizmodo]

About The Author

Will Park

Will hails from The City of Angels - Los Angeles, California. He spends his time playing with his numerous gadgets and looking forward to seeing what future holds for mobile technology. An avid promoter of a fully "digital" life, he promotes the widespread adoption of truly mobile, paper-less living. He dreams of the day when he can go completely digital. No more snail mail, paper receipts, bound books, notepads/spiral notebooks, credit cards, hard currency. He's a digital warrior - fighting for the converged life. He is an idealist and a realist - he has a perfect view of what the world should be but knows that the world is not perfect. Can we ever hope to see Will's dream become reality? We'll see...

  • Vince

    Please, somebody get Adam B Google Voice account so he can record his frickin’ conversations…

    (If only there were an App for GV…:)

  • Adam

    Just a couple of clarifications: The apps that you list here and that I list in my post will record both sides of the conversation. I think the point that you meant to make was that they require that the call originate from your iPhone and they both charge per-min fees for calls and save you recordings to a server you have no control over.

    Also, jailbreaking your iPhone may be easy the first time but having to keep up with the arms race between Apple and the hackers seems like more of a hassle than making this breakout box.

  • Adam

    @Vince Google Voice is great and I do have an account – but calls have to originate from you Google Voice number, it announces that the call is being recorded and the recording is put on a server you ultimately have no control over.