AT&Tease me..

After a recent trip to Austria where I couldn't use the smart part of my iPhone - not without paying a crapload of money to AT&T - $20/MB for roaming data, vs $30 for 1GB with a prepaid SIM, I decided it was time to get my phone unlocked. I thought that since I'd had it for 18 months and paid AT&T roughly $1500 ($250 for the phone and another $70/month for the minimum plan), so they would be willing to unlock it for me. This was the case with other phones I had had. But I thought wrong. Very wrong.

My first call to AT&T went exactly as I expected. I called and got Monique (her real name). I explained that I wanted to get the phone unlocked so I could use a prepaid SIM. She understood the problem, and when she realized I had an iPhone, directed me to Apple. I was certain she was wrong, but agreed to call Apple anyway. Monique thoughtfully gave me their number.

The Apple support person thankfully didn't laugh at me. Together we laughed at Monique, and the Apple lady explained to me that Apple has a contract with AT&T (hey, me too!) and they cannot legally unlock my phone. Worse, if I get it unlocked, they will not support me (as if telling me "nope, we can't do that" is some sort of 'support'). Blah blah blah...

Back I went to AT&T. Thankfully, the next person I got at AT&T was more competent - Apple cannot unlock my iPhone. But she went on to say that Apple makes the iPhone ONLY for AT&T and they can't be unlocked, ever.

I pointed out that numerous other cell providers around the world sell iPhones that aren't locked to AT&T, but she assured me that AT&T is the only one who can sell iPhones. I pointed out that there are numerous web sites detailing how to unlock an iPhone illegally, but she maintained that the phone could not be unlocked, ever. Deaf ears. At this point, I have to wonder if tech support training includes some sort of "defy logic" lessons.

Eventually I gave up, and just emailed AT&T support to express my dissatisfaction with their policy. I received a near-immediate response - thank you for your service, we value you as a customer, but we're not going to unlock your phone for you, blah blah blah. But wait, it got better. The support rep actually suggested that if I have a different phone, they would work with me to unlock that. Did I miss something? How does unlocking a different phone help me get data when roaming on my iPhone.. Right, it doesn't.

And that, my friends, is why my next smart phone will probably not be an iPhone from AT&T. I don't travel outside the country all that often, but when I do, I would really like to use my phone. If I want to "need" a second phone for travleing, why would I bother with a GSM phone to begin with...

Amusingly enough, I just read on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (it's so cute that they still go by "weblog") that an unlocked iPhone is available from Apple for $699 (sort of).

iPhone 3.0 observations

I installed the latest iPhone OS (3.0) on my iPhone 3G the other day. Yeah, yeah, why do I even bother with such an old phone, why not upgrade.. I'm cheap, that's why :) Sure, I'd like to have all of the cool new features that the "3G S" includes, but I can't see paying $500-$600 for them, so for the time being, I'll live without the ability to record videos and a compass.

But I digress, this is about the OS, not the phone. Like I said, I upgraded to 3.0 the other day. The upgrade went well for the most part. There was an issue with iTunes and the phone talking after the installation/reboots, but those were related to iTunes on Vista I think.

Way back when the first announcements were made, I thought I would see these features:

• Cut/Copy/Paste
• MMS
• Stereo Bluetooth (aka A2DP)
• Ability to send multiple pictures in a single email

But, of course, AT&T said no to MMS (sure, they didn't say "no", they said "it'll take us time." - might as well have said "no").

I "found" cut/copy/paste accidentally. It wasn't quite as nice as I would have liked - but in truth, I'm not sure what I'd like - ideally, I could make some sort of swiping gesture to select text and then the next tap would make the little popup guy appear. Maybe it works like that and I'm doing something wrong, but mostly it works.

Stereo Bluetooth I've not seen though. Perhaps because I don't own a pair of stereo bluetooth headphones - that's a combination of "what's the point?" and "I'm cheap" and "oh, is it supported now?" - but I saw nothing in the Bluetooth configuration that looked any different than it did before. Maybe I'll pick something up at Frys just to test this.

This leaves emailing multiple pictures at one time. It took me a while to figure out how this worked. I usually select a picture and then while looking at it, click the "email" application. With 3.0, tapping on the "email" button while looking at the Camera Roll lets me select any number of pictures that I can then "share" (which means email). Pretty cool, but as with earlier versions, a scaled down (800x600) picture gets sent rather than the native resolution (1600x1200).

But here's something cool I noticed - if you select a bunch of pictures using the email button from the camera roll and then "Copy" them, you can open up the email application and paste them into the body of a new email and magically, they get sent in the native resolution, and even have "real" filenames (if you consider "IMG_0102.JPG" and such a real name anyway).