First of all, downloading and buying only takes a couple of clicks and filling in your iTunes password (which is a good thing).

The apps/games installed on my iPhone are:

Bomberman
I have always been a big fan of Bomberman and there is no gaming platform where I didn’t get this game. I must say that the game look nice, but I expected better. The controls need some getting used to, but that is just a matter of time.

Aqua Forest
I saw this game/play-thing in a youtube movie a couple of days back and I just needed to get this. It’s some sort of water simulation, with gravity and all. You can draw on the screen, where you want water (or obstacles) to appear. It’s fun, but it has no ‘mission’ or anything.

Aurora Feint The Beginning
This is actually a nice game, which is a sort of iZoo. You make lines of 3 or more icons in a vertical or horizontal row. This game adds another dimension by letting you turn the phone 90 degrees and involving gravity and stuff. Really really neat.
The more points you score, the more stuff you unlock and the more options you get (I think ).

Twinkle
A location based twitter client, where you can see people chatting in your own neighborhood. It looks really nice and it is easy to use. I did come across a couple of bugs, causing the application to hang and even restarting my phone.

Remote
Does this need explanation? You can control any iTunes on the same network with this, as long as your iPhone is approved for that iTunes. It’s very nice when you are using a media-center (like me) and you don’t always want to turn on the TV just to play some music. Too bad that iTunes cannot be started remotely, so that still needs to be done by turning on the TV or logging in via Remote desktop.

Jive
Also a sort of iZoo kind of game, which also includes making lines of 3 or more from the same type. It looks pretty neat and friendly, with comic animal faces.

To sum it all up, till now the AppStore rocks! Hope they will release some turn-by-turn navigation soon. That would make the phone extremely cool

You can see the list in the full articly, or just click ‘more’.

	1. Motorola M3188 (May 1999) This. was my first mobile phone. Sure it looked like a fridge and it could only store it’s numbers on the SIM card. I think I got this one in 1999, with a prepaid card and I think the provider I used was KPN.
	2. Bosch 509 (August 1999) This was my next cell phone, I bought it for a small price at my work. I worked in a computer shop and they were send to our shop because we made some huge order. This cell phone was a sort of revolution for me, because it was nice and ‘small’….
	3. Nokia 3210 (March 2000) My first (of many) Nokia, this phone was released and quickly after that someone dropped my phone under a falling table (yes really!). So insurance paid up and I could actually but this beauty.
	4. Nokia 8850 (June 2001) When I started working at my first REAL job in 2001, as a software developer, I bought this phone from my first salary. It was small, cool and of course a good phone to show off . The phone at the time set me back a good fl. 1700,-, which is about EUR 775,-. Which is about $1100. It had a nice phone book in it to store 250!! numbers. Too bad this phone was full of bugs, the screen was broken 3 times, the keyboard malfunctioned a lot and I finally gave up on this beautiful phone .
	5. Nokia 8310 (Januari 2002) When I came back with my 8850 for the 5th time (in 2002), they gave me a choice to trade it in for this phone. I still don’t know why I did it, but I did. It was good phone and it never failed on me. It has been used by my dad for a couple of years and I think it finally died in 2006.
	6. Nokia 7650 (November 2002) A phone with a color display! I of course had to have it! And so I did get it in late 2002. The phone was large and it basically sucked…
	Sharp V801SH (May 2003) I wanted a clamshell, what more can I say…. this phone also sucked.. This phone eventually disappeared because it was lend to someone, but I don’t know who.
	7. Nokia 6610 (November 2003) Quickly switched to this phone, because the previous one sucked too much..
	8. Nokia 7610 (June 2004)
	9. Nokia 6230 (October 2004) It was paid for by my employee, bills and phone itself. It died when I left it in my pants in the washing machine. Phones can’t handle that kind of water .
	10. Nokia 6230i (June 2005) Supplied by my employee again, I promised to keep this one alive. I kept it till I switched employee.
	11. Qtek 9100 (March 2006) My first (and at the moment last) Windows Mobile phone. It was a new experience and I really like the Exchange push mail support, but it was not stable enough for me.
	12. Nokia 6681 (October 2006) Great phone, very stable and I installed TomTom on it, which I used a lot!
	13. Sony Ericsson W850i (July 2007) Got it July 2007 and since it was my first SE phone, I had to get used to the menu system a bit. But that didn’t take long and it probably was one of the best phone’s I had. I was very stable and had almost no problems.
	15. Apple iPhone 8GB (January 2008) I got it because I liked the GUI a lot. I still use it (as it is only one month old at the moment) and I must say that this is the easiest phone to use I ever had. The battery lasts only 2 to 3 days, but that is something I am willing to trade for the usability of this phone.
	15. Apple iPhone 3G 16GB White (July 2008) The successor of the iPhone, finally including 3G, GPS and some cool improvements.

That sums it up, hmmmm, I am not very loyal to my phones, but I hope my iPhone changes this…

What I first noticed is the nice finish the new 3G has. I think I like the plastic more than the aluminum finish on the 2G. The phone has a different back, than the 2G, but fits better in your hand.

After I activated the thing, I started screwing around with it. I was especially interested in the AppStore and the Exchange support.

AppStore:
I think the AppStore is nice and clean. It is easy to find the stuff you want and it is easy to install. I got a couple things installed, just to test it out and it seems to work flawlessly. There are a couple of nice things you can download from the store, for example the ‘Remote’ application.

Exchange support:
This was about the first thing I tested. Mainly because I wanted to import my contacts. Well it was easier than I tought. At the first attempt it tried to get my server-hostname on itself. But that failed and it asked me to enter the hostname myself. After I did that, the phone started to sync and within minutes my contacts and email was on my phone! Woohoo, pushmail is one of the greatest things about Exchange. Except, somehow I cannot get my iPhone to push the subfolders defined in my email account.

I think I am missing something here. I don’t know if others got it to work, but if you do, please let me know. The phone is connected to an Exchange 2007 server.

GPS:
The phone has an amazingly fast GPS fix. In matter of seconds it determines your position and sometimes it even works inside?? Very nice work. This morning when I was driving to work I started the Google Maps application and let it find my position. It kept updating that and I got a nice satellite map to show me where I was… Nice! And thanks to 3G it downloaded the satellite images really really fast.

I ordered my iPhone last saturday (July 12th) in a store in Belgium. I wanted to purchase my iPhone without a subscription and in the Netherlands that isn’t possible yet. When I ordered it, they told me that the phone would be SIM-lock free but that it wouldn’t work outside Belgium (que? I tought it was SIM-lock free?). So, I ordered it anyway, because I thought the dev-team would have hacked the phone by now… (and yes… released the hack!).

Yesterday (July 17th) they called me, to tell me that the phone has arrived, but they told me again that the phone wouldn’t work outside Belgium. They were really trying to get me to cancel my phone. They even offered a compensation for if I wanted a different phone.

So I denied their offers and told them that my family-in-law would probable pick it up later on the day. They warned me that when I didn’t pick it up today, it could have been gone the next day…. *sigh*. Customer-friendliness is not to be found there.

So, my parents-in-law picked it up (thanks again ) and yesterday evening my girlfriend brought it home with her.

So, there I was… excited as hell, hoping that those Mobistar b*tches would be wrong…

Inserted my VodafoneNL SIM in my iPhone and connected it to iTunes. iTunes didn’t start wining that my SIM wasn’t supported and just asked me to register the phone! After a small restart of the iPhone it just said VodafoneNL on the top left and I was ready to rock and roll! (3G style!).

So in short: Mobistar lies to their Dutch customers. I think they just don’t want dutch people to pick up Belgian phones or something. But then they should have limited their sales to Belgium only.

The belgian iPhone 3G is SIM-lock and country-lock free! I have tried it!

Since last friday there have been stories that de iPhone dev-team will be releasing their PwnageTool soon, so that we, iPhone 2G users, can finally upgrade to firmware 2.0 without risking our phones to get locked again. I am eagerly awaiting the release of that tool, because I can’t wait to try out the AppStore and finally some Exchange support.

There also have been some interesting stories on the dev-team’s blog, where they describe different parts of the hack and are already showing off their nice little tool. As it seems, they added a jailbreak for the iPhone 3G also, although it’s a shame that they postponed the release of their tool for that.

The blog of the iPhone dev-team.George Hotz’ blog

On the links mentioned above, you can follow a long discussion about the dev-team, George Hotz and more iPhone ‘scene’ people. There has been some serious shit throwing in that scene the last week.

Video of Bootneuter 2.0 running on an iPhone 1st genVideo of firmware 2.0 running on an iPhone, unlocked and all

Also, I found loads to forum posts about people that already upgraded to firmware 2.0 on their 1st gen iPhone. When their phone was unlocked before, they are screwed at the moment. There is no way to get back to 1.x firmware at this time. *Good Luck*

It will be a white 16GB version and I got it from Belgium, which automatically means that it is sim-unlocked. There are rumours of the phone being ‘country-locked’, but this hasn’t been proven yet. I wonder when my phone arrives…..

I once made the mistake, not buying something when the product came out and I had to wait 2 weeks(!!) before I was able to get one. I am talking about the Xbox 360 now.

Well, what I wanted to post is, there finally are some nice iPhone 3G unpacking pictures. Check them out here.

I am definitely getting one of those, the minute pricing is known all over the world. Pricing in Belgium is currently at EUR. 525,- for a model without subscription.