SHIFTEE Velasco is one of those who are itching to try the Apple iPhone, which combines a mobile phone with the company’s iconic iPod music player, even before its debut next year in Southeast Asia. “I just want to be a braggart,” he says blithely.

After learning that iPhone users in the Philippines can now directly use the popular mobile phone on a local network, Velasco, 23, ordered one from the Apple online store. Local users have started using the iPhone after it became possible to access a local mobile network—without using a roaming arrangement with exclusive US provider AT&T—by cloning the iPhone’s subscriber identity module (SIM).

A cyberpunk, who requests anonymity, says he uses a rewritable SIM called a “SuperSIM” to copy data from both the iPhone-provided AT&T card and from a locally provided SIM that are now integrated in one. The “SuperSIM” is then slotted into the iPhone that is hoaxed into reading it as an AT&T SIM, although it now runs on a local network like Globe Telecom, Smart Communications or Sun Cellular.

Hackers in the Philippines spread like wildfire after someone who calls himself “Dubeditions” posted on a web site forum that he succeeded in hacking the über-peddled Western technological sensation that has had gadget enthusiasts salivating since its release earlier this year in the US.

Apparently, some people who took him seriously found out to their pleasant surprise that his technique works. This writer spoke at length to one such party.
Someplace in Quezon City, Dubeditions will unlock iPhones at P7,000 per phone for Globe subscribers and P14,000 each for Smart and Sun network users.

The Filipino hack is the third reported. George Hotz, 17, of Glen Rock, New Jersey, made headlines earlier when he claimed he consumed 500 hours doing a “hard” unlocking of his iPhone. Later, an outfit identified as SIMfree has claimed to have done the first “soft” hack of the iPhone. It means the method doesn’t entail the opening of the phone and fiddling with its insides that would immediately void its warranty and perhaps result in its permanent damage.

The Filipino hacker’s method is something of an in-the-middle technique. Dubeditions manipulates the phone’s lock through the SIM instead of opening the phone or using a computer.

But, Apple, which also manufactures the Mac computer, the iPod digital music player and runs the iTunes online store, has warned against using unlocking software to allow them to use the handset outside the US.

“Apple has discovered that many of the unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs available on the Internet cause irreparable damage to the iPhone’s software, which will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed,” the company noted earlier.

The Cupertino, California-based company strongly dissuades users from installing unauthorized unlocking programs on their iPhones, saying users who make unauthorized modifications to the software on their iPhone infringe their iPhone software license agreement and cancel their warranty. “The permanent inability to use an iPhone due to installing unlocking software is not covered under the iPhone’s warranty,” the company pointed out.

Hoopla

HOWEVER, such a warning doesn’t disrupt the iPhone hoopla in the Philippines. Elbert Cuenca, three-year chairman of the Philippine Macintosh Users Group, estimates there are now over a thousand users of the iPhone in the Philippines. In the first two ballyhooed days that the iPhone was on sale in the US, Apple said it sold 270,000 of the gadgets.

Cuenca relates he already saw unlocked iPhone units sold in Greenhills Shopping Center in San Juan, where one stall even sells an unlocked unit for P50,000. “I was even informed that people are taking into the country unlocked iPhone units from Hong Kong and Singapore,” he adds.

In Velasco’s case, he only spent almost P27,000 for the purchase of a 4-gigabyte iPhone and the shipping expenses made out by Johnny Air Cargo. It took him a week to wait. From the Apple online store, they delivered Velasco’s newly purchased iPhone to the freight firm’s branch in Manhattan, New York, then to its SM Megamall branch in Mandaluyong. Johnny Air Cargo charged him $30 for the package, $10 for the handling service, $25 for the pickup service, and $7.8 for the value-added tax.
”It’s better to get straightaway from the Apple online store than some stalls in the Metro,” says Velasco, “because it’s a lot cheaper. And I’ll have it unlocked later on.”

This is the same elbow room for Berna Madlangbayan, 26, who directly acquires iPhones from the Apple online store and sells it here at P30,000 per unit. She says most of her buyers are young professionals, adding that she intends to set up stalls in some shopping centers to expand her marketplace.

“In the gadget-geek realm, these tech-savvy folks always want to have the latest and the greatest” technological marvels, be they computers or mobile phones, Madlangbayan reveals, saying that it’s up to her customers where to unlock their iPhones.

Flaws

ALTHOUGH there’s a faux activation of the iPhone, Velasco says his gadget doesn’t have visual voice mail and YouTube, which were available pre-unlock—strangely enough. “Or else, it’s good to go, and no one’s more sensible. Not Apple, not AT&T, not the local carriers who really don’t care,” he says.

One snooping flaw, according to Velasco, is that caller identification is unpredictable. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, seemingly because the iPhone requires a complete and precise format of numbers for the caller identification to work, he tells.
“The local implementation of this seems to be very poor as far as Globe is concerned, since some numbers carry the full prefix [+63917xxxxxxx] while some just need a leading zero instead [0917xxxxxxx],” he expounds.

Furthermore, Velasco doesn’t seem to have any trouble applying the updates to his iPhone even after his ersatz activation, saying there’s really nothing holding the “crowds back now; I completely anticipate to see more working iPhones here and somewhere else in the world, I think.”

But for a certain Lia, she shares through her blog site, www.gadgenista.com, why she doesn’t want to own an iPhone.

First, she points out that the iPhone doesn’t have third-generation (3G) technology. “Isn’t 3G supposed to be the newest technology in high-speed transfer?” she notes. “For a phone that’s supposed to be revolutionary, an iPhone should, at least, have 3G technology.”

The iPhone cannot record videos, she adds. “It can certainly take photos, but unfortunately for videophiles, [they’re in] great disappointment. With the boom of YouTube it’s just really weird why video recording wasn’t included in the iPhone’s features.”

Because the iPhone doesn’t have multimedia messaging services (MMS), Lia says it doesn’t have a place in the Philippines, where MMS downloads comprise a big share of the mobile-industry business.
”So how are we supposed to send photos to other people now? E-mail? Not in the Philippines, where data- transfer fees are absurdly high,” she notes wryly.

Lastly, activation of a phone plan is through iTunes; that’s how it is with AT&T right now. If Apple is going to apply the same process in the Philippines, Lia says the country should be given access to iTunes in the near future. For now, Philippine subscribers aren’t allowed to create iTunes accounts.

Velasco, on the other hand, picks up the cudgels for iPhones: “It does a lot of things so well” and so agreeably, he says, that a user tends to forgive its foibles, underscoring that the iPhone is still the “most sophisticated, mindset-changing piece of electronics.”

The phone’s software sets a new caliber for the mobile-phone industry, he says briskly. “Although it sometimes adds steps to common functions, the phone’s smart finger-touch characteristic, which eliminates a stylus and most buttons, works comfortably.”

Because the iPhone is so sleek and slender, Velasco says it makes BlackBerry and Treo devices “look fattened out.”

“The glass gets messy, but it doesn’t cut the surface easily,” he points out, relating he has walked around with an iPhone inside his pocket, and there was no mark on it.

Still, the end, in Velasco’s mind, is that iPhones are quick, beautiful, menu-free and bare-simple to manipulate.

Bidding war?

SLOWLY, but surely, the official iPhone launch is already heading to Asia. Apple has already partnered with the Spanish-owned O2 in the United Kingdom to be the exclusive telecommunications company to distribute the iPhone. The added bonus with this partnership is that the iPhone will have unlimited access to some WiFi hot spots around the UK.

The big question now: When the iPhone comes to the Philippines, which local telecommunications company will Apple partner with? No one knows, essentially. Globe, Smart or Sun might have a bidding war right now.

Jones Campos, Globe’s spokesperson, says in a phone interview that the company isn’t certain yet whether it will carry the iPhone, adding that the company normally announces handset-related issues close to official launch dates. Ramon Isberto, Smart and parent company Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. spokesperson, gives a similar response.

Whether there will be an authorized local telecommunication partner of Apple in the Philippines, Velasco says it wouldn’t impede his use of the highly touted Western technological marvel, nonetheless. “It’s about riding along with the thousands of tech-savvy folks,” he exclaims.

****

The forbidden fruit

SHIFTEE Velasco is one of those who are itching to try the Apple iPhone, which combines a mobile phone with the company’s iconic iPod music player, even before its debut next year in Southeast Asia. “I just want to be a braggart,” he says blithely.

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