Why you should NOT buy Telkomsel iPhone 3G… yet

First of all, let me just say I’m an Apple fanboy and iPhone is truly a holy device that just made me jizz my pants when his Steveness first announced it at Macworld January 2007. Now it’s been like 2 years and 2 months since the words “an ipod, a phone, an internet communicator” uttered from the long black-sleeve guy and Telkomsel finally announced it’s official launch in Pacific Place Mall on 20-22 March, 2009. Secondly, I’m not a Telkomsel user but my dad is.

A couple weeks ago Telkomsel had an online registration page where you could register to pre-order iPhones and given the opportunities to own the holy device earlier than mere mortals. Long story short, I signed up, confirmed my registration and ready to pick up my iPhone at my desired time, March 22 at 6pm, cos it’s Sunday and I would’ve known what to do from the launch on Friday. I came up to the information booth knowing that many disgruntled customers who:

• Thinks the offered plan was a bit pricey.
• Rather buy or stick with Blackberry.
• Only given the option to buy the prepaid plan despite already a Halo customer (some got mad and insisted to get the post-paid plan and succeeded).
• Waited in line for too long then decided to leave.
• Don’t have credit card but willing to pay cash.

Customers who actually got home with a brand spanking new shiny iPhone 3G simply put up with the above conditions. Since I’m no Telkomsel user but I do want the post-paid plan, my plan was to get the Turbo plan using my dad’s HALO, downgrade it to 2.2 (Telkomsel iPhone 3G comes with firmware 2.2.1, until this writing there’s no unlock solution for 2.2.1), yellowsn0w (app used for unlocking the iPhone 3G) it, and most definitely jailbreak it.

Aaaanyway, this guy in the tent said my dad’s Tsel number is not in the list of so-called ‘selected kartuHALO customer’ and told me to get the iPhone from GraPARI starting tomorrow, March 23. Well fuck, why was I not given this information earlier when the stupid emails told me to hurry-sign-the-fuck-up-so-u-can-own-it-on-launch-day. Here’s the quoted email:

Silahkan klik link di bawah ini untuk memilih waktu pembelian iPhone 3G pada saat peluncuran di akhir pekan. http://www.telkomsel.com/iphone/iphone_menu_conf.php – perlu diingat bahwa hanya mereka yang telah mendaftar yang akan bisa membeli iPhone 3G.

Did it say that only selected customers eligible for the post-paid plan? Hell no! I argued the fuck out of the guy whom I asked his full name but he only answered “Budi” and still wouldn’t tell me his full name. This Budi seems like a nice guy high ranking officer from Telkomsel and insisted me to buy the iPhone tomorrow from GraPARI which they have yet to check my dad’s Tsel number first to see if it’s eligible or not. I asked the guy to write the supervisor name of a specific GraPARI which I’m about to go to and eventually left the booth empty handed while everyone’s looking at me. I have become one of the disgruntled customer.

So I’ve been thinking and here’s a few things on getting the Telkomsel iPhone 3G now:

• Apple - Telkomsel deal isn’t exclusive and other carriers might also sell these bad boys and one specific XL’s executive can shove it up his ass.
• There’s been rumors that this year’s WWDC Apple will release a new version of iPhone. Rumors include a new video camera, background tasks, etc and of course the just-announced OS 3.0.
• Although there’s TONS of iPhone apps in the Apple Store, only a few local apps are available. Hopefully there are more and more high quality local apps so the rest of the world knows we have some pretty kick-ass developers.

Still wanna buy the iPhone 3G? You must be a rich fucker. Now that I’m at my inner peace, I sure as hell gonna wait till the new version comes out, pretty happy with my super slick 8900 for now. May the force be with you, assholes.