I was in London in April for a week. I was sitting down reading one of their free newspaper and there was a full page advertisement from Carphone Warehouse selling their 8GB 1st generation Iphone for 169 pounds (it was about RM1000 plus at the exchange rate then). It was a 100 pounds discount from its original price at 269 pounds. I think then they were clearing out all their old stock of the first generation 8GB Iphone.

I put down the paper and walked around the corner and there it was, a Carphone Warehouse shop in front of me. I walked in with my friend who has a British VISA issued bank card. I bought the phone with his card, no questions asked. On my last day, I bought another Iphone with another friend's bank card. They require that you have a british issued bank card so that at least they know you're staying there and you're going to use the phone there. You're supposed to take the phone home and activate the O2 account. A few days after the sales started, all the phones were sold out in the whole of UK. I saw a lot of foreigners buying it.

I took it home to activate on Itunes alright... all the way back to Malaysia. I walked through customs and I said I didn't have anything to declare. They didn't stop me then as I was with a VIP. I unlocked it with Ziphone for free (some idiot at Digital Mall wanted to charge me RM300 to unlock it). I'm using one of the Iphone now and I gave another one to my fiance. She's not using it, she just keeps it in her drawer to show off to people, what a waste!

Anyway, I prefer buying the Iphone in countries that has the 3 pin adapter (like Singapore and UK). I've seen some of my friends buying the ones from the US with the 2 pin adapter with US voltage. You'll have to get another wall adapter to charge it.

I personally think the Iphone is never coming to Malaysia because the profit sharing model that Apple uses is not in any of the local telco's interest. I don't think they would want to share their revenues with Apple.

I'm still holding on to my first generation Iphone. The only advantage I see the 3G model has is faster internet and I prefer to use the wifi connection as its free. Just waiting for a windows pwnage version so I can move on to 2.0 firmware. I'm itching to test pwning my fiancee's phone to 2.0 to just see what it looks like. I hope it doesn't brick the phone!