I have moved back and forth between wanting to sell my original an iPhone and upgrade to a 3G, and just wanting to stay where I am.

Originally, Rogers data prices in Canada were too high, so I was going to stay put. Then they announced good pricing, so I listed my iPhone on eBay — it ended at $330, which is almost as much as I paid for it new. But the guy never sent the money… and then Pwnage 2.0 came out.

Now I’ve decided I really am satisfied with my first gen for another year. See Pwnage can jailbreak both the 3G and the original iPhone, but it can only unlock the original iPhone. The 3G remains carrier locked — which means a 3-year contract with Rogers if I want one. No thanks!

So now I have somewhere between the best of both worlds. I’m on a local carrier, but with no lock, and complete freedom to go elsewhere (although, there’s no in-country competition right now.) Location services suck on the original iPhone, due to the lack of real GPS, but everything else is pretty much the same now that I have the 2.0 firmware. And boy, am I glad I have it.

• If you haven’t jailbroken yet, its pretty easy (although not as easy as 1.1.4) and totally worth it — especially for first gen iPhones. Check out Lifehacker’s Pwnage links and tips here.

The AppStore is awesome. Its truly great. I thought they’d have a hard time showing up Installer.app and the jailbreak community’s efforts, but I was wrong. There’s a ton of fantastic content on the App Store (and some crappy stuff.) Each unique little App I get makes my iPhone that much more delightful — and I haven’t even downloaded any of the non-free apps (although there are a few I’ve got my eye on.) Here are a few of my favourites:

• WordPress is great. Buggy, and low on features, but a solid first release. I love that I can blog pictures from my phone now!
• Remote is SO cool. I can’t wait until some more AppleTV 2.1 hacks are done, so that I can upgrade that and control it from my phone!
• The Google app has some very neat interaction with Location Services.
• Singing that song you can’t think of the name to on your iPhone and having Midomi find it for you is really cool.
• LifeChurch’s YouVersion Bible contains not only multiple versions of the Bible, but it lets you see other people’s thoughts on different verses and makes for a pretty neat experience.
• And Bubbles and PhoneSaber keep our 1.5 year old son entertained for minutes! That’s pretty amazing, given his attention span.

I really think Apple has something here. Its always been obvious that the iPhone would revolutionize handsets, and even push stubborn carriers into the future a little bit (visit ruinediphone.com to see how the backlash forced even Rogers to grow up a bit). But this application delivery model is very solid, despite the iPhone’s flaws, and I think RIM and Microsoft (never mind Palm) will be hard pressed to follow suit.

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