This morning I called up Apple US tech support (+1800-My-iPhone) via Skype and explained the problems I was experiencing with my iPhone. The first person didn’t really want to help me, so he transferred me to another lady who was more than happy to try and fix it.

Let me explain, I did not brick my iPhone as some people have said, and it still is not working — albeit sometimes it’ll obey.. I have been having this issue out of the box, so I’m assuming it’s a hardware fault. She got me to restore it to factory state, which I had done a number of times before to no avail, and as I told her I had not activated it with AT&T she said that if I could get it back to the US that they’d replace it (rather than service it) for free. Of course, I told her I was on an extended holiday (I should’ve said vacation) in New Zealand for the next couple of months hand had planned to use international roaming.
She was very nice and even offered me the chance to refund my money because I called within the first 14 days of purchasing it, even though by the time I get it back to a store it’ll be well after the two weeks.

So anyway, it looks like I’ll be FedEx‘ing it back to the states for a nice $180NZD. There goes the money I was planning to get a Canon Powershot S3 IS with. =\

I’ve also been playing around with it while it has been working. I found a bit of info on http://iphone.unlock.no/ about changing the number formatting from US style to whatever I want. I managed to get some NZ formatting action in there, so throw the attached file (ABPhoneFormats.plist) in /System/Library/Frameworks/AddressBookUI.framework/, restart your iPhone (hold down the power button and slide, then once off turn it back on) and enjoy some New Zealand number formatting on your iPhone!

[Download: abphoneformats.plist]