Ok, I dont have any solid theory, I did however find one thing strange. When we see people rushing in to him, from an overhead view, the position of the body wasnt in a position I would expect from a fall. He's on his side, with one leg pointing from him. Just from a fall I would expect the body to be flat on the back or the stomach, and both legs pointing straight down (as if you're just lying in bed). His position looks like he's been rolled onto the street, so that one leg is chuffed out, therefore stopping the body to fulfill the comlete roll over to the stomach.

I'm not sure about this though. It's basically CSI type stuff, and it might not mean anything at all.

As I saw it, it was because he realized Sherlock was not a "normal" person any more. He simply had to step up his game even more, and the only way to win over Sherlock at that given time was to bite the bullet.
That's why he says "Thank you" several times just before he shoots himself. Because he came to the understanding that he was actually dealing with a worthy foe this time, even if he had his doubts before, he didn't any more.

Very good chipher.

The first thing I thought of when looking at it though was just hexadecimal (16 based scale), since hexadecimals are written in groups of 2's, so my guess was that it was ASCII codes translated to hexadecimals, and then applying the normal ceasar chipher to it to make it into "normal" letters instead of codes.

Well, I wasnt that far off anyway in my initial thoughts, but I see that its already been cracked so.

To be honest, it doest feel like Sherlock at all.
It feels more like "Tony Stark set in victorian London".

While Robert Downey Jr. is a funny guy, he plays the same type of character in whatever he is atm, just riding the wave.

I think however the second film was better than the first one, but that doesnt say much for it either I'm afraid.

Ok, here comes my take on it.
Technically it would be fairly easy, but with a big caveat.
This requires hacking into the phone system.

Given that he knows where Lestrades phone is (at the press conference as he knew Lestrade would be there), a simple triangulation by the mast connection would give all locations of the phones that are connected to those masts. From that he can simply surmise that the attendees will be within a certain proximity of Lestrades phone, specially if they are all clustered (to avoid phones on another room and such) and send a text to all those phones.

We know however that Sherlock is at least adapt with some computer skills (he breaks Watsons password). It is quite a step to go to being able to hack the phone network though, so its a big nut to swallow, but I believe that would be the best way to be able to send to all the phones in one room.

Another way would require to know who was present, which he of course could get from the newspapers if he had contacts there, but he would have to know all the papers attending. Even if this would be the easiest technically (no technical knowledge required), it would be harder to get all of the numbers of all the phones in that room.

Ok, one thing I reacted to when rewatching the episode.
Now its been a bout a month+ since I watched it the last time though so my memory can be blurred/incorrect.

In the intro we see the victims in distress taking the pills, but the pills are in a small vial with 2 pills in it.
This would mean either that the cabbie is lying to Sherlock in the end, that he was cheating with an antidote, and poisoning the victims even if they chose the correct one, and he's simply not so smart as he portrais himself. As there is no visual cues on the pills, and no way of telling them apart he simply wouldnt know which one was the poison and which one was the sugarpill. He also coulnt have played the game as he did with Sherlock as he wouldnt be able to put them on the table, and influence their choices with body language, subtexts and so on that he tries to with Sherlock.
or
its a mistake from Mr. Moffat and co.

It is of course possible he had containers with 2 pills of the same type in each, so he brings a total of 4 pills to each victim, but that just sounds redundant to me, and unlikely.