iPhones in Sealed BoxIt was a pretty normal Thursday morning. I got up, had breakfast, went through a little chaotic morning commute and when I arrived at the office, I was getting ready to count the hours before 5:30 pm. About half an hour before lunch, my phone rang, I answered and it was Jesus calling telling me the package containing my iPhone is ready for pickup. OK, it was really some guy from Johnny Air Cargo but for me he is the savior and the bearer of good news. I broke the silence of our extremely quiet office by exclaiming a really loud ‘YES!’

I can’t seem to remember the events that happened after that. Next thing I know, it’s seven o’clock at night and I was sitting at my desk, preparing to do one of the rituals of Apple fanboyism–unboxing an Apple product. I did not get the fancy black iPhone box since mine was a refurbished unit (I use the $50 I saved for shipping!) but a rather plain and simple sealed white box.

Package contents are the same and looks very pristine. All accessories look like they weren’t touched by human hands and the phone itself is shiny and flawless. It makes you wonder what form of magic Apple uses in their refurbishing process.

I am sure you have read a review somewhere before, seeing this is a 3-month old product so I’m not going to review it. But let me talk a bit about the unlocking process. Unlocking this thing is not hard at all though I can see how average folks would cringe reading about it. I followed every step on Hack the iPhone I am used to tinkering stuff so I was pretty confident. However, I did feel like iTunes is a ticking timebomb as I was dreading that Apple would push the new firmware 1.1.1 out anytime so there is no room for errors while my firmware is still 1.02 (it went out after I unlock my phone so I consider myself really lucky). After going through it all, I let out a cry of joy as I see the signal bar comes to life with SMART (my carrier) right beside it.

iPhone Unlocked

Everything, save for visual voicemail works perfect: calls, SMS, YouTube, WiFi, EDGE, etc. And I was pretty surprised that Smart’s EDGE is actually not bad. I love every part of it and I am willing to forego with the stuff that it doesn’t have. I ditched a 3G phone for this and I absolutely have no regrets. The intelligent keyboard is pretty amazing. I followed iPhone guy’s advice to trust it and next thing I know, I am typing with 2 fingers faster than I have ever done with a numeric keypad. I did compromise typing in Tagalog and TXTspeak though as obviously it only knows English words. Now my friends probably think I am a pretentious English-speaking bastard.

I am using an iPhone, I still cannot believe this. I am hearing loud gasps everytime I took it out in public and that is something I should probably get used to.