Buying an iPhone 3GS in Amazing Thailand

[LadyboyCrush]

(Snick @ Aug. 05 2009,15:38) The iPhone 3GS went on sale today for pre-order, pick it up in 3 weeks.
I check out the website for details, all in Thai, click on the English link and get to a page where it says "iPhone 3GS" in English everything else in Thai.

Decide to head over to the nearby True store to register. Get there and ask the attractive girl at the counter to register me for the iPhone, 'Mai Dai' . She can't register me, the home office never sent her the codes to access the employee website. She then suggests I register on the Internet. I ask if I can use the computer, she says 50 Baht, one hour -- this is a True Internet Cafe.

I then go to another counter to pay and they say 'Mai Dai', we are out of 1 hour cards. "Would you like a 20 minute card for 20 Baht ?". Grrr I would have gotten that in the first place if I had known.

Log into the computer, the password is '00OO00O0O', eventually I figure out which are zeros and which are Ohs. I am then asked to register my name and passport number as part of the Thai requirement that all internet access be logged.
"Jose Cuervo","007" and I am in

immediately I am brought to the True page to sign up for an iPhone 3G (not 3GS), a few clicks and I find the 3GS link. Click on 'order now' and get a big Red
"SSL Certificate Expired" Warning, couple of clicks in firefox to tell it to accept the certificate anyway (mind you, this is True's online store, on the day they start selling the iPhone 3GS and they let the certificate expire !)

Finally I get to the registration page, click on English. Start to fill out a form
Identification:   [x]Thai Id   [ ]Passport
click 'Passport' and it immediately unclicks itself and 'Thai ID' remains selected. Try and enter my passport number, and its not accepted - must be 13 digits.

I call the girl over who I talked to in the beginning and say I can't sign in. She says no problem I got the internal registration system working 10 minutes ago. Grrrrr, but stay silent-she is really cute.

Head back over to her desk and start the registration, its slow going, I'm the first person to have registered here. Finally its done, I pay the deposit, tell her to sign me up for plan 'A' (there are 4 plans plus buying the phone outright - the plans are insanely confusing).

She say "ohh, this is to buy the phone outright. We are not accepting pre-orders for people planning on using the phone with a plan." I explain that that is not what heard, she calls someone. Gives me a charming I dunno look (she is getting more and more attractive, must be the color in her cheeks coming out from dealing with Farang).

I ask for my deposit back, and give her my number to call me when she straightens things out.

Get back home, get a call - "you, can register for phone now with plan"

Guess I'll go back this evening and see what more can happen.......

I think it is safe to say:

"Steve Jobs would NOT approve."

What a bunch of bozos. TIT.

[LadyboyCrush]

(Snick @ Sep. 10 2009,21:20) yes the 3gs is faster, I can now do a side by side comparison !
The 3gs also has double the internal RAM memory, which prevents those annoying 'out of memory please restart your iPhone message'. There is also a new accelerated graphics chip, which will probably become more important in the future as new games start to utilize it.

In my long history of iPhone usage / hackage, I have never once had one tell me to restart itself for any reason...

if only bricks could talk...

[Snick]

Observations

First off the iPhone 3GS is great, its a video player, a music player, I got dozens off apps and games, the camera and video works great (in the daytime), G3 service (sometimes), etc..

Its not a replacement for a camera, even a cheap camera, there is no zoom and no flash.

The True service is pretty good and I would give it a 'B'

Good Points:
The plan includes free access to True's WiFi network, and this is pretty extensive I get Wifi in parts of Sukhemvit, at Paragon and Central world malls etc. The access itself is automatic, no signing in or anything.
3G actually does exist, and I got sporadic access in the Siam center area AND in Nana/guess. Problem is its not consistent. I may get it for 10 minutes, then lose 3G for 10 minutes -- very random.

Bad points:
True's network doesn't seem to interconnect to well with other Thai networks, and I have been told that I am sometimes unreachable when someone tries to call. Also an occasional SMS messages have been delivered 10 hours late !
I am hoping these are just rollout problems and will quickly be fixed.

All in All, I'm glad I got it, being 2 weeks late wasn't that big an issue. I do wish there was a 64GB version...I've already filled the 32gb ( BTW, do NOT let itunes choose which music to put on your iPhone, or you'll spend hours deleting crap later).

Now I just have to wait till next June, when the new new iPhone comes out and I can start bitching about being locked into the 3GS for another year.

[dummy_plug]

You don't like the camera? I thought the pics, and especially the video, were very decent and far more than sufficient to use as a daily snapper for pics to load online or make vids on YouTube. It's not going to replace a real camera or dedicated video cam but I thought its pretty good.

[Snick]

A lot of people asked me if the iPhone I got was unlocked, it is !

I tested it today , put it a DTAC SIM and it worked fine (as a phone - did not try anything data related).

This is a legit iPhone, brought from TRUE with a 2 year contract and it IS UNLOCKED out of the box.

[Snick]

Random Update:
Just found this link about Thai Language tools for iPhone.
I'm downloading some of them now.

http://womenlearnthai.com/index.p....sebooks

Still wish I could get a babel fish

[deepthroat]

Good God - 28500 baht is nearly $860 US for the same 32GB 3GS I can buy on the Apple site in the US for $299!

They must have had a price drop here recently - I spent $400 on my 16GB 3G phone just last summer (3 weeks before the 3GS was released - DOH!)

I was thinking maybe I should upgrade but then I saw Snick's comment about a new generation of iPhone in June. I'll hold out.

Should I buy a couple or 3 iPhone's from Apple and bring them with me in February?

[kahuna]

(deepthroat @ Dec. 07 2009,14:39) Good God - 28500 baht is nearly $860 US for the same 32GB 3GS I can buy on the Apple site in the US for $299!

Should I buy a couple or 3 iPhone's from Apple and bring them with me in February?

Aren't those locked phone with English keyboards that require a long-term service contract with AT&T?

[Snick]

Yea - he is comparing outright purchase price with "plan" price
A real comparison is
True: 5000 Baht down, 2000 Baht/month for 2 years (1200 Baht after that), Unlocked
ATT: $200 or $300 down, $80 to $100/month for 2 years , phone is Locked

If you just plan on buying the phone outright, then I think its cheaper in USA at $700.
note: I using True's introductory rate, it may be different now.

After spending a few weeks in USA, I can say using the iPhone in Central Bangkok is BETTER than USA. less missed calls and I can't remember getting a no signal in Bangkok (happens ALL the time in USA).

[pacman]

I took my iPhone to LOS last month but I had a sneaking suspicion that using it wouldn't be so straight forward.

Sure enough the phone was locked so I put my sim card into the Sony Ericson I bought with me & popped the iPhone into my room safe.

3 days later & the screen on the SE is broken. Down to Tukcom in Pattayatai I go to get the iPhone unlocked. Actually I asked around about replacing the screen but the tech knew that there wasn't a spare in Pattaya nor one in Bangkok.

He seemed genuine & I had no reason not to believe him. I am glad I met him because when I asked how much to unlock an iPhone he quoted half the going rate - i.e. 400 baht instead of 800.

20 minutes later & it was done. Interestingly he didn't open the phone, he just plugged it into his laptop & downloaded a software mod. He assured me this didn't void my Australian warranty.

Back home I was told that the first time I plugged my phone back in for new upgrades, the mod would be detected & deleted.

Never mind, the iPhone performed faultlessly in Pattaya & I was connected to the net everywhere I went. I guess that was via wi-fi, I really can't tell but I was pleased with the speed of the connection, it wasn't much behind what we have here.

One app I will recommend to Snick & others to download is WhatsApp, an SMS type messaging service that goes via the web not the phone company you are connected to. It will only work between iPhones but I was able to send (& receive) many texts to a mate home in Oz for virtually nothing.

If for no other reason than that alone, it was worth having it with me. I also look forward with interest to the new model due out next year. Though given the iPhones complete dominance of its market sector, it may not be an Apple product I buy to replace this. All other mobile manufacturers are pulling out every stop to surpass it.

[ezflip]

Almost exactly what happened to me last summer. But no one knew how to unlock mine as the 3Gs model wasn't even available in Thailand at that time.

Managed to unlock it myself, doing exactly what your guy did. Saved myself the cost of a few beers in the process.

Never had a problem with it while in LOS. The gps saved my ass a few times too, thank god.

I did forget to top up my sim card and I had to pass my phone to Cindy so that she could translate the recorded message. She laughed at me

[Guest]

unlocking the iphones is easy, but would affect warranty if you had to take it back to store,
if this happens just plug into itunes and a simple restore will put phone back to normal.


stevie

[kahuna]

(parada @ Dec. 07 2009,23:13) unlocking the iphones is easy,  but would affect warranty if you had to take it back to store,  

Not in the USA...It is not against the law in the USA to unlock a phone nor does it have any impact on the warranty...

I have had two phone replaced by AT&T that were unlocked in Thailand and subsequently went bad...Never a problem...never a question...

[azza33]

Finally decided to purchase the 16gb iphone 3gs

Apart from the lack of manuals and some registration frustrations in trying to get into the itunes store- i rate the phone very highly.

Poor points to consider are battery life if using the net a lot (quite poor), and camera has no zoom or flash.

Overall a great new toy - now i understand why Pacman was so excited about getting it

[dummy_plug]

(kahuna @ Dec. 08 2009,11:51)

(parada @ Dec. 07 2009,23:13) unlocking the iphones is easy,  but would affect warranty if you had to take it back to store,  

Not in the USA...It is not against the law in the USA to unlock a phone nor does it have any impact on the warranty...

I have had two phone replaced by AT&T that were unlocked in Thailand and subsequently went bad...Never a problem...never a question...

Kahuna,

It's not against the law to unlock a phone (FCC regulations actually), but in Apple's TOS for iTunes there is verbiage against unauthorized modifications to the software, which is exactly what all these cracks/hacks to unlock the iPhone are doing. Earlier on, Apple was being more aggresive and releasing updates to the software that would "brick" phones with non-original code. The updates would find unauthorized code and then scramble the system so the phone would be useless. Tales of this can be found searching "iphone brick" on Google. I'm not sure about OSX 3.0 and if it is still the case, but I would be wary about unlocking my iPhone using such a method. From what I've read on the net it seems there's a good chance out there that you could be stuck with a very expensive paperweight potentially.

Then again, it seems like you have had better success. Given AT&T's track record for customer service, or lack thereof, I'm shocked you had such a hassle-free experience. i used to use them and for issues of a far less serious nature I was given the 3rd degree!