So there I am, bringing my new purchase out of it’s box, happy as Larry. This shiny new piece of tech joy was going to bring something special to my daily life.

I log myself into my home WiFi thinking I’ll quickly download some apps to tide me over. Maybe a game or two. Seems like a good idea. It’s what everyone is doing these days.

‘Would you like to update to the latest version of the OS?’ the new object of my geek fascination chimes at me within seconds of connecting. I think, ‘why not?’, after all I am a little obsessive about keeping my PC software up to date. Thirty minutes ensue… it’s a rather large update.

My new communications hub runs it’s reboot cycle and chimes the Taiwanese equivalent of that ubiquitous and ever annoying Windows welcome sound. All well and good so far. Now I can really start playing around. But all things have a sting in the tail…

It turns out that having bought my device in China, like many goods here, that it was a device imported from a closer Asian market. This phone was originally registered and branded from T-mobile in Thailand. What this means to us as the average consumer is that these so called ‘grey market’ goods are best investigated fully before a purchase. Of course it wouldn’t be so bad if mobile operators didn’t practise such restrictive region based marketing but that’s another discussion. The point here is don’t buy these goods unless your prepared to lose a few features of suffer a degredated experience along the way. You were warned.

UPDATE: due to my superior phone skills I was able to do some serious tweaking and get my new Desire updated to the latest and greatest version. Go me.