I’d like to take a break from all the current Bangkok Bullshit and talk about my new toy just to cheer myself up. No it’s not the new Canon 550D I just sold my G10 for, it’s iPhone 4.0 Beta.

I just paid Apple B3,000 yesterday. Why? Because thanks to my I-cannot-wait-for-anything attitude, I decided to coerce an iPhone Developer acquaintance to give me the latest OS 4.0 to play with. What we both didn’t know was that my device would have to be registered as a dev iPhone before I could play.

The result was a bricked iPhone that could not be downgraded (because it has been forbidden by Apple), or activated as I did not have a developer account. So I signed up Saturday morning, paid, only to be told in an email that their operating hours are Mon-Fri 9am-5pm, meaning I wouldn’t get a verification until they’re back at their office.

Saturday was not the day to be iPhone less, considering the political situation. I was stuck with a crappy Nokia with lagging Opera Mobile browser that gives fonts the size of an ant’s footprint. And Sunday morning I had to do my social media work on the go so I really had to get my iPhone back.

So I begged my dev friend again, now to add my phone onto his device list and voila I’ve got iPhone 4.0 Beta. Thanks!

And it is beta alright.

OK I’m not complaining. The new launch animation is suave. The multitasking is still confusing but welcome. Wallpaper is..well not new if you have a jailbroken iPhone. The dock now looks like Mac OSX dock. Mail inboxes are unified, although when you used to be able to “delete”, it’s not “archive” and you’d have to go to All Mail to delete them.

The biggest thing for me has to be the folders. Hold onto the app icons until they wiggle, then drag one on top of the other, and the phone will guess what you’d like to call the folder. Great concept, as of late my phone has recently acquired its 9th page, and it was a pain to try to find something. My nine pages are now two.

Folders function has two big flaws. The first is that you cannot add more than 12 apps in one folder. And since I have about 20 photography-related apps (I know what you’re thinking), I have to split them into three folders: Photography, Photo-editing and Video. And the bigger flaw is that, right now you cannot sync applications as iTunes still doesn’t know whatta fuck folders are. Result? Folders gone, back to nine-page iPhone at every application sync. And I just spent twenty minutes rearranging folders and apps.

My developer’s account is still not approved. Once it is, I might as well just dwell into the world of iPhone development and learn Objective C if I have the time, the determination and the patience to do so, that is. I heard there’s a class somewhere. Mahidol?

So there, the price you pay to be an iPhone slave. At least I can show off. And that’s the most important thing.