Thread: Is using or buying iPhone in India is safe and worht it?

I have been hearing a lot of news about using iphones in india where they have hacked it to suite indian mobile providers. There have been reports that some have even started using it. I saw that SBI credit card has also started selling iphones through their credit card service, although it was illegal. Can i buy iphone for now? What do you suggest. I have also heard that iphone can make it unsuitable to use if it is used anywhere else other than U.S. that too if changed the provider other than at&t?

I have been using smart phones from UK which I normally get free with a one year contract from companies like t-mobile, vodafone and 3g UK and all I have to do to use them with another provider in India is pay 5 pounds to get the phone unlocked and I can use it here in India after that.
There is nothing illegal about it and I am not sure when it was but a UK court said it was legal for some one to get a phone unlocked to use it with another service provider.

A friend of mine has an iphone and he uses it with idea here at Newdelhi, got it for 21000Rs.
You can get an iphone for 18000-20000 now from Gaffar market at newdelhi.

You asked two questions.

a) Is it safe to buy iPhone in India or legal to use a hacked/unlocked iPhone in India?
b) Is it worth it?

The answers are:

a) You can buy an iPhone in India from the "parallel" market but there is no official support. If you hack or unlock the iPhone, then again you are not entitled to any support. But then again very little can go wrong with these Apple products.

b) The answer to this is very personal and subjective. I like Apple products a lot. iPhone will be great for you as you get a phone + iPod in one. But I am quite pissed off about some of Apple's policies - they do not have an iTunes store in India; nor can you have an iTunes Store account if you are based in India, iTunes to iPod interface is a one way street - you cannot extract music out of iPod, etc. Personally I think that iPhone is more a hype than anything.

Originally Posted by just4kix

You asked two questions.

a) Is it safe to buy iPhone in India or legal to use a hacked/unlocked iPhone in India?
b) Is it worth it?

The answers are:

a) You can buy an iPhone in India from the "parallel" market but there is no official support. If you hack or unlock the iPhone, then again you are not entitled to any support. But then again very little can go wrong with these Apple products.

b) The answer to this is very personal and subjective. I like Apple products a lot. iPhone will be great for you as you get a phone + iPod in one. But I am quite pissed off about some of Apple's policies - they do not have an iTunes store in India; nor can you have an iTunes Store account if you are based in India, iTunes to iPod interface is a one way street - you cannot extract music out of iPod, etc. Personally I think that iPhone is more a hype than anything.

I have to disagree. I've been using an iphone here for the last couple of months and I am EXTREMELY satisfied with it.
While it's true that you won't get any official service on the phone, if you handle it well enough, nothing will go wrong until your battery eventually runs out.
And yes, it does piss me off that Apple has no itunes store here.
But the iphone is worth the hype, trust me. I've been watching movies on it, listening to music, playing games, reading books, browsing the net, checking mail, making doodles etc etc etc...
The only problem is that you need to be quite computer savvy (which I'm sure most of us are) and have to take a risk of trial and error. A couple of things I installed hung the phone. All it takes is a restore but you need to know how.
My recommendation is to buy it.

tell me one thing, when apple gonna launch the Iphone Officailly in india?

might as well ask when the next generation iPhone will be out while you're at it...
apple is a very secretive company and nobody knows what they're going to sell till they actually launch it. so we can only speculate that it MIGHT be sometime after June since that's the time the next generation software will be launched which includes an app store. And that's the time most people are speculating a 3G iPhone as well.