iPhone unleashed

An iPhone (8GB) arrived a week or so ago from the US, it's very pretty. Unfortunately a US iPhone is the UK is as useful as a slim shiny brick.

A friend unbricked it (using the commercial AnySIM package - not recommended for beginners, even though it's commercial, it's far from easy getting an iPhone into an unlocked state) and then installed the AppInstaller.

AppInstaller is a nice piece of software that manages 3rd party iPhone packages, it checks back with a repository and then pulls in whatever's required. It can also check for updated packages. At the moment any dependency checking is manual, but they're bound to fix it.

Then put all the settings in for the UK network, and it all worked. Seems there's quite a few E.D.G.E. cells around, though speeds are no where near 3G which is a shame.

The user interface is fantastic, especially the two fingered zoom and the rotating screen depending on the orientation of the phone.

It even works as a phone pretty well.

As an iPod it syncs with iTunes, but can sync all your contacts (from Address Book on Macs or Outlook on PCs), these are then all available through the phone itself. Though you can add address book entries, it doesn't seem to allow downloading vCards into the phone - which is a real shame.

Calendar entries are also synced.

Though it's a nice piece or ergnomic engineering, the total cost of ownership on an O2 contract is going to be off-putting.