I think Balthisar means that he wants to use his iPhone to make phone calls over a wireless network, but he doesn’t want to sign up for a data plan, which costs extra money. If that were possible (buy an iPhone and use it to make phone calls, but not sign up for the data plan), I would be carrying an iPhone right now instead of a cheap cellular phone and an iPod touch.
You can use it as a phone and iPod touch and only carry one device.
I understand that you are required to have a data plan when you buy a new phone because the phone is subsidized. But for them to force you to pay for a data plan after the contract is paid off is outrageous :mad:
I have heard that if you ‘unlock’ an iPhone you can somehow hide it from AT&T (and not pay for a data plan) but my son broke my old iPhone :rolleyes: before I had a chance to try it.
You can, or could at one time, do that by creating a fake APN profile. You have to jailbreak and unlock it first though and I believe it throws an error at certain times, like maybe when disconnecting from wifi or something. If jailbroken/unlocked, you can also get a t-mobile account and use the SIM for the iphone. For some reason I’ve only heard of pre-paid accounts being used for this, not sure if a contract account would work, but you can walk in the t-mobile store and they will supposedly help you, they don’t care if it’s an iphone. Anyway, it’s possible, but may not be feasible for everyone.
Oh I’m so frustrated. I got the iphone and my computer isn’t reading it via the firewire connection. I connected it using the other iphone’s usb connection the other night when I transferred information, but for some reason it’s not seeing this connection.
I’m also struggling iwth the whole sim card issue… grr…
I upgraded from a 3G iPhone to a 3GS. I was able to use the SIM card from my old iPhone in my new one. The old one I can use like an iPod Touch on my wireless network. So yes, you can use the iPhone on a wireless network for data. As long as you don’t need it to make calls, it is fine for this purpose.
My 3GS is jailbroken and unlocked right now so that I can use it with Telcel (Mexican cellular carrier). But I also have a family plan AT&T service at home, with an unlimited data plan for the iPhone (which I use). The second phone on the family plan is my wife’s Sony-Ericsson, with no data plan (although it has a rudimentary web browser). She also has an iPod Touch (which I originally bought for my use as a Palm OS PDA replacement).
So, when I get ready to have an iPhone 4, I’ll naturally want to give her the iPhone 3GS, so that a single device can replace two devices. What I don’t want to do, though, is add a data plan to my otherwise dirt cheap AT&T plan.
I don’t think FakeAPN is needed any more, though. I’ve read (but not tested) that by just leaving off “Cellular Data” in the settings, AT&T won’t pick up that it’s a smart phone, and won’t automatically add the unneeded data plan.
And Anachronism, that’s exactly what AT&T forces upon you.
Okay, iphone has been reset, updated, activated. The sim inside is a dead one, which is fine.
I can connect to my home wifi no problem.
Now I’m interested in jailbreaking and unlocking this thing, because even if I sell it that’s how it’s worth more.
But first I want to fix the screen. How do I know how much needs to be replced? It’s got some pretty big cracks and a big ol’ chunk of it gone near the top. But everything WORKS perfectly - touch, view, everything.
So I looked around on Ebay and i found one “LCD Touch Screen Digitizer” very cheap but it says “touch screen/touch pad only, LCD Display screen not included” - I assume this is exactly what i want, because if the LCD were busted I would know it, right?
Sounds like all you need is the ‘digitizer’ but as I said above, Ifixit.com is the place to start with repair info - they have how to repair tutorials and offer parts and tools. You can see what they offer and then decide if you want to go with an eBay purchase.
I am not experienced with jailbreaks, but it appears to me that an updated (to 4.2.1) iPhone is somewhat problematic to jailbreak right now - it looks like it is not reversible at this point (something about needing iPad firmware to work). Perhaps an expert will wander by and educate us all.
I’m not an expert, just experienced. For all but the oldest hardware, 4.2.1 is a tethered jailbreak (I’ll describe that in a bit) for all iOS devices. It is reversible, but to make it reversible, you have to first jailbreak before upgrading, and save your SHSH blob (Cydia can do this for you easily). Then if you actually want to install an older firmware, you have to use non-Apple signature servers. All in all, if you’re patient, it’s not all that hard to do, and I don’t consider it a problem.
What is a problem, though, is the “tethered” jailbreak. It means that if you ever want to turn your phone back on (such as after powering it off or rebooting), you’ll need to plug into a computer and re-jailbreak it. I’ve been there, done that back in the 3.xx days, and it wasn’t fun. I guess for an iPad, no big deal. But for my phone? I’ll never go tethered again. Consequently, I’ve not bothered to update my firmware beyond 4.01 or so.
So I’m looking into the options if I decide to jailbreak/unlock this phone.
It looks like data is ridiculously expensive.
100MB for $20 on ATT (Prepaid is all I"m interested in) but 100MG is nothing, isn’t it? A few facebook visits, a couple of texts, check my email 5 times, go to googlemaps once or twice and BAM I’ve eaten up 100 MB. Or not?
I have Virgin Mobile $25 unlimited talk and text right now, with an LG Rumor touch. I HATE IT. I hate the phone, the only thing I like is the keyboard. I’d happily bail on it if I could get the iphone working for that price.
Any tips, advice?
What do you hate about your LG Rumor?
Everything. I hate the software, I hate the way the touch works (it is terrible, except for hte fact that it does perfect portrait/landscape adjustment at all times. But since I barely use it, who cares?), I hate the fact that it’s locked down tight so that I can’t use my own music for ringtones and notices, I hate the tones it has, I just can’t think of anything about it that’s good. None of the very few apps work…it’s just shit. Pure shit.
I only have it because I wanted something that would be a mobile calendar/reminder- but since I can’t assign my own sounds that’s useless, and the calendar app is horrible, not least because the touch is horrible.
It’s crap.
So, if I understand this - if I have already upgraded to 4.2.1 without saving the ‘blob’, I am out of luck?
It looked to me as if you could do a 4.2.1 jailbreak by first installing the modem firmware from iPad 3.2.2 software, but that step was not reversible.
FYI re AT&T and data plans for iphone: if you unlock and then go to an AT&T prepaid, not only do they not force data on you, they won’t LET you BUY data in increments! I did, and they undid it and told me forget it, phone and text only. If I wanted data the only way I could get it was contract.
Which seems really stupid to me, and that’s why I’m going to T-mobile.