"Issues with the Saudi iPhone" series returns. Last time we talked about the lack of Arabic in the Apple iPhone and now we finally have Arabic support on iPhone 3.0 software. Let's talk about another major issue with the iPhone 3G in Saudi Arabia: Mobily. Some can say that UAE's Etisalat have similar issues. The locked iPhone 3G Mobily employees from day 1 continue to claim that the iPhone 3G sold by them i ...

One of the features of the iPhone 3G is "visual voicemail" which lists all of your voice messages and play them in any order that you want instead of sequentially. On Mobily's website visual voicemail is listed as an iPhone 3G feature. However on this official knowledge base article Mobily doesn't have visual voicemail supported. Is this false advertisement or is Mobily actually working on visual voicemail? ...

Mobily Connect is Mobily's broadband Internet service which is available for all Mobily customers. The current iPhone 3G bundles are very limited so it's best to increase the bandwidth by adding Mobily connect packages. You can add packages to your current iPhone 3G packages. So if you have a 99 package (99SR monthly and 200MB bandwidth) then added a 1GB package then you will pay 199SR and get 1.2GB bandwid ...

UPDATE: We just added a guide on how to enable tethering on iPhone 3G with Mobily (and even STC). iPhone 3.0 software was finally released yesterday and one of the new features is "Internet Tethering". Enabling tethering with Mobily is not possible according to this image: I contacted Mobily's support and the employee told me to install "pdanet"! PDAnet is a jailbroken application for the iPhone! Let me say ...

I am subscribed to the iPhone 3G 8GB Postpaid 99 bundle. I paid 2,255SR for the iPhone 3G and 99SR for the first month, even though it's a postpaid plan I PREPAID. That's the first oddity. Now I got a bill for 146SR which includes what's called "package rental monthly fee" of 123.75SR and 31.88MB internet usage for 65.4SR?! Haven't I paid for 200MB in this plan? What's going on? And what is this "package re ...

This is the first of a series of posts highlighting the issues with the Apple iPhone 3G in Saudi Arabia by Mobily. We hope it will help Apple and Mobily to improve the iPhone 3G experience in Saudi Arabia. Update: Apple will preview their next iPhone OS update, version 3.0 in a few days. We hope for Arabic support soon! Update: iPhone OS 3.0 now officially supports Arabic language! It is a shock that the iP ...

There are many people complaining that the iPhone 3G's screen is yellow (Arabic forum post, and another example on how bad Mobily employees are handling the iPhone 3G!). Looking back at July 2008 news when the iPhone 3G was first released we find the following article: ...

We reported earlier about new Mobily iPhone 3G bundles, the new bundles had an asterisk on each one with "* Conditions and terms apply" in the footer. What Mobily did not reveal was what those terms and conditions are. You had to go to a Mobily store and ask them. But apparently most customers can only get the original 99SR bundle. That's what Yousef Raffah did. He went to the Mobily store in Jeddah where h ...

Update: The iPhone 3GS from Mobily is unlocked too. You can use STC's SIM cards. I have been receiving e-mails stating that Mobily employees are claiming that the iPhone 3G is locked to the Mobily SIM cards. Other employees claim that the next iPhone 3G shipments will be SIM locked. We and others tested the iPhone 3G and we confirmed that it is not locked to Mobily SIM cards. Apparently that was not enough. ...

Mohammad Nahdi blogged about his experience on the first day of the iPhone 3G release in Saudi Arabia by Mobily. The blog post which is in Arabic titled "iPhone and Mobily... a world of oddity" talked about how the staff at the Riyadh branch of Mobily had no knowledge about the iPhone 3G. When he asked about their iPhone 3G bundles he was not given a brochure but a folded piece of A4 paper with the prices p ...