The new Blackberry 9000 is known by a few names; it’s also called Blackberry Bold and most infamously the ‘AK’ (Apple Killer).

The latter was surely coined from within their own circle of followers since it’s not very likely to live up to it. This is mainly due to some blatant weaknesses caused by rigid adherence to unreasonable beliefs, such as the CEO of RIM and his aversion for touch screens.

It wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve even rigged the 9000 to scan and blacklist all fingerprints that come into contact with its screen. Although the display quality has gotten nothing but good reviews, it’s just too small. In fact, it’s one of the smallest of all smart-phones and a whole inch smaller than the iPhone. It seems that they could easily have removed a row of buttons (talk, end, scroll ball) by giving them touch screen support, this would allow the screen size to be increased quite easily. The full QWERTY keyboard turns out to be much more improved than the previous 8800 version, although it remains a little bulky and compromises the size of the display (as mentioned above).

If it’s interested in competing with the iPhone one of the first things to do would be to improve the camera, but according to the specs released, they stuck with 2 measly mega-pixels. The only noticeable advantage over the iPhone is that it includes 3G. So if the new iPhone is as near to being released as is suspected, it will leave the Blackberry with quite a bland taste in comparison. The Blackberry 9000 will be released sometime this summer as soon as it goes through carrier certification.

My iPhone was one of the first, I bought it from the US and it was already unlocked, but the unlock was one of the early patches so not all of the functions worked. I have been meaning to update it since I saw a friends iPhone with all the cool enhancements that have been made since my old version.

I searched on Google and found a vendor selling a unlock solution, what I got for my 17 UK pounds was a PDF file with instructions to download a free program that unlocks the iphone.. I guess I was not cheated as I got what I wanted, but it’s a bit cheeky selling a link to free software!

Using the software was easy, just one click and it was done, now I have all the latest features and I’m upgraded to the latest firmware.

Map location works fine with DTAC, it pinpoints my location to within a few hundred meters, not as accurate as GPS but it’s still impressive.

This morning I had a delivery from Fed-Ex, nothing unusual about that except this one had kept me awake at night in anticipation since I placed my order on eBay.com for my sim free iPhone.

I won’t go into the nitty gritty of how much this sucker cost me, but let’s just say that it was expensive by any standards, especially when you consider the cost of shipping. My real concern was that It may be intercepted by customs, I have had that happen before and It takes all day to get it sorted as technically your need a licence (costing 1500 baht) to import communications devices.  No problems with customs getting my iPhone today.

I should point out here that this iPhone is unlocked, most of the ones on eBay are locked to AT&T which would not work in Thailand at all.  It cost more than a standard iPhone, and I should say here that I have no idea at all about how to unlock a iphone, either for use in Thailand or elsewhere.

Like all Apple products the iPhone is very nicely packaged, it’s obvious from the start that this is a very high quality product.

I slipped my AIS sim card into the iphone, switched on and after a moment and an impressive startup I now have a working iPhone in Thailand.

I’m going to play with setting up my email, browser etc.  I have already made a couple of calls to check that it’s all working and it seems to me to be very high call quality indeed.

One problem that I need to get sorted is that my AIS prepaid sim charges me 1 baht per min for data transfer, this thing seems to be using the data connection all the time so I need to get that changed to an unlimited plan, perhaps DTAC will be a better option.

Now that we are close to the US release of the iPhone, many of us expats here in Thailand are looking forward to being able to buy one here. I know I am.

Looking at the spec it should work fine in Thailand straight out of the box, the reason for this is that the iPhone uses GPRS/EDGE rather than 3G/HSDPA/EV-DO/CDMA or any of the faster data services and THATS GOOD! Thailand has virtually wall-to-wall EDGE service across the country, and even where there are holes in the EDGE network it will fallback to GPRS.

I spoke to Tim at EdgeThailand.com the other day. Tim had been importing and selling all the latest gadgets for years and I’m confident that he will have a batch of iPhones for us here in Thailand within days of the US release..he did not confirm that, but he did not deny it either.

I will be interested to see what the UK spec iphone will have, there is no EDGE in the UK and GPRS whilst it’s ok for fallback is still a bit too slow. Anyone importing “grey market” iphones into Thailand will have it easy if they source them in the US.

Expect to see a review here soon after US launch!

For a couple of months now I have been using a Blackberry Pearl, but as I have a Prepaid AIS Sim Card I have not been able to use data services.. not until today.

Usually I leave my phone switched on all the time, but last night I had a headache so I decided to switch off my phone and go to lie down for a couple of hours. When I woke up I forgot to switch my phone on and did not do so until midday today. Immediately I switched it on I got an SMS message from Blackberry with the following message:

From: BlackBerry
Subject: Registration
Your handheld has been registered with the wireless network.

Hmm, surprising as I’m not paying a subscription.

Then I noticed that the edge logo was uppercase EDGE, I had never seen that before as it only happens when a BlackBerry has data enabled, also the normal message that says “Data Connection Refused” was not there.

I switched the phone off and on a couple of times, and still my phone registers on the data network with no active subscription, Im totally baffled as to why.

I went to the AIS BlackBerry website to look for more info, but none is available. I guess they are just testing something on the network or there is a problem that is allowing unsubscribed BlackBerry handsets to register, but whatever the reason I’m getting data service on my prepay sim as confirmed by the diagnostic utility.