It’s almost 2 months now, since I got my hands on the awefuly popular Apple iPhone. Through the popularity fog and entirely new iPhone interface, so far the experience have been amazing… but, at the end of the day I have to say that I have mixed feelings about this lovely gadget. I wanted to have one very desperately and thanks to recent price cuts I was able to get one through my colleagues in USA. When I told them about getting me an iPhone, they were skeptical about getting it unlocked and working here in India. But I was dead sure about it. While buying one for me, my colleague was so impressed by the demo at Apple store that he bought another two for himself. Then, to my surprise my colleagues decided to gift me the one I ordered. That was really sweet of them.

By the time I actually received it, I had already raved about it to everyone and everyone was more anxious than me to see the almighty iPhone. After I got my mitts on it, I just activated it. Mine was running 1.0.2 firmware and with rumors floating around net about 1.1.1 unlock coming soon, I decided to play the waiting game. After all everything except phone was working and I was happy. But after a week and half, my patience started to give in. So it was time to hand-over the phone to YoGi for unlock. He was waiting for this chance only and went to work on it and got it unlocked using IPDT’s anySIM unlocker.

I’ve to say that it is indeed a revolutionary device and one of it’s kind. It’s not perfect though, as there are few shortcomings regarding texting (which is by the way a huge drawback considering the usage of SMS services in India), crippled bluetooth and tight locked file-system. But there is no doubt that it’s going to change the way cellphone manufacturers thinks about usability of their devices. It will take some time to get used to for many people, as the cellphone interface is nothing like you’ve used before. It will change the way you think and use cellphone interfaces but without making it complex. The UI is nothing short of beautiful, very intuitive and easy to use and most importantly fast… very fast. I’ve used Nokia regular and symbian smartphone before, then few Sony-Ericsson phones. Sony-Ericsson made Nokia phones feel like sluggish as hell and iPhone made even SE phone feel like slow-mo’s. I’m not unhappy with iPhone, but if at all I decide to switch to any other phone in future it’s going to be a very very tough choice to make.

YoGi is already pestering me to switch to the 1.1.1 firmware, as he thinks he can handle the unlocking of the same. When I decide to give in to his nagging, we will be writing a short review on iPhone soon. I know it would be yet-another-iPhone-review, but still it would be help for people like me who want to get iPhone unofficially before launch. Most importantly people here in India are still baffled by the whole iPhone mania.