First Gen iPhone Unlock / Sourcing (non subs) [Post these questions here ONLY !!!]

cdebru · 29-03-2008 01:34PM

Bob24 wrote: »

It's OK in the way that it works fine and a lot of people did it with no problem (it was the first software to be able to unlock the 1.1.3 OOB iPhones)

The only thing you need to know is that as part of the unlock process the unlock software will downgrade the bootloader of the phone (the bootloader is more or less the same as the BIOS for a computer). If you do it with ziphone it is not possible to go back (ie you can not put your phone back in the same state as it was out of the box) whereas a tool like iPlus uses a different method and will give you that option. Then it is arguable whereas it is useful of not ...
The 2 main arguments are:
- if you want to try to use the warranty and the bootloader is the wrong version Apple will know that you have unlocked it. But in my opinion it is not very important as anyway they can tell it hasn't been activated through iTunes, plus if it is broken most likely you won't be able to restore it
- in the future the could easily detect the unlocked phone remotely by comparing the IMEI number and the version of the bootloader. It might sound a bit too big brother-like though ...

There are other issues with ziphone other than the bootloader downgrade

including
Ziphone uses a ramdisk to do everything which increases the chances of corruption

The guy does not check his code and even when errors are pointed out to him he does not correct them or seem to even understand them.

stendec · 29-03-2008 03:16PM

I have sucessfuly unlocked my new US iPhone using iLiberty+. Smooth going except I am getting a "SIM Faliure" message when I try and use my Three SIM card. Then in the top left of the screen there is a message "Invalid SIM". My friends O2 SIM card from her Blackberry works perfectly in the iPhone!

Do I need to get another type of SIM card from another mobile carrier?

monkeyfudge · 29-03-2008 03:26PM

Three are the only network that won't work with the iPhone.

You'll need to get a sim off one of the other networks.

Dman001 · 29-03-2008 04:30PM

Where can I walk into a store and just buy the iPhone without signing up to a contract. Can you do this in the UK or France or is the US the only place I can do this?

Creamy Goodness · 29-03-2008 04:35PM

the only place you can do it on this island is O2 stores in the north.

apple stores in the US will allow you to do this so.

not 100% sure about France/Germany/Austria.

Bob24 · 29-03-2008 05:28PM

You can't buy one in France, Orange will want to to sign the contract in the shop.

Pacifico · 29-03-2008 05:31PM

Who is the best pay as you go provider to go for with the iPhone? ie cheapest EDGE charges & ease of set-up

MeWantBroadband · 29-03-2008 06:22PM

Pacifico wrote: »

Who is the best pay as you go provider to go for with the iPhone? ie cheapest EDGE charges & ease of set-up

The only people with Edge are O2 if I am not mistaken. 3 is all 3G. Vodafone went direct to 3G, so they only have GPRS & 3G. I am not sure about Meteor.

vinnycoyne · 29-03-2008 08:21PM

Mr.S wrote: »

Meteor has EDGE aswell, but their prices are a joke.

If you're on bill pay, you can sign up for 250MB for a tenner a month.

shamrock65 · 29-03-2008 11:10PM

i have an iphone unlocked here in ireland since last november got the mms settings working on it yesterday for the first time thinking i had the last piece of the jigsaw put in place i now find i cannot ring a uk number or any foreign number? should there be any settings i need to change ps i am on the vodafone network contract not pay as you go

regards

Bob24 · 30-03-2008 01:28AM

Mr.S wrote: »

Meteor has EDGE aswell, but their prices are a joke.

3 are the only one to have decent prices for data access on pay as you go I believe (you can get a data bundle), but unfortunately they don't have EDGE and their simcards don't seem to work in an Phone as it is not 3G.

So Basically you have to get a contract and get a data bundle. O2 and Meteor offer it with EDGE.

higster · 30-03-2008 01:53AM

lackofcolour wrote: »

If you're on bill pay, you can sign up for 250MB for a tenner a month.

Same package with o2 is 7.50

Basq · 30-03-2008 10:21AM

iPhoneDev Team have released a video of the iPhone Pwned project in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siuKQw6L6Rk

Those crafty kids on the iPhone Dev Team have already hacked the 2.0 firmware, but now they're getting ready to release the oh-so-creatively-named PWNED tool, which takes iPhone hacking to the next level by patching the bootloader to let you load any firmware image you want -- even images not signed by Apple. That means custom patched firmware can now be loaded directly from iTunes, which simplifies the jailbreaking / unlocking process tremendously, and also means that a patched version of the 2.0 firmware is coming soon. We're putting the tool through its paces right now and we'll have a hands-on with it (and the Dev Team's patched 2.0 firmware) as soon as we get it all working, but check out some highlights after the break, and hit the read link for more info.

gandalf43 · 30-03-2008 01:26PM

Hi guys....
Not sure if this has been posted before....I'm off to New York next week and want to pick up an iphone...can I buy one over the counter in any Apple store without any contract to AT&T..I've heard that Apple stores will only take credit card payment too...how true is this?..Can anybody who has bought one recently in the US enlighten me please...thanks
gandalf

su_dios · 30-03-2008 02:37PM

gandalf43 wrote: »

Hi guys....
Not sure if this has been posted before....

Try the thread a couple of posts down. The one with 5000posts. Covered to death

Creamy Goodness · 30-03-2008 02:55PM

gandalf43 wrote: »

Hi guys....
Not sure if this has been posted before....I'm off to New York next week and want to pick up an iphone...can I buy one over the counter in any Apple store without any contract to AT&T..I've heard that Apple stores will only take credit card payment too...how true is this?..Can anybody who has bought one recently in the US enlighten me please...thanks
gandalf

about the credit card thing, completely depends on the humour of the SA. they are meant to take credit card only.

gandalf43 · 30-03-2008 03:37PM

su_dios....Apologies.....found similar posts
Cremo... Thanks.Looks like I'll need my CC

So there should be no questions asked and I deffo don't have to activate the phone there and then ?...
thanks again guys

swingking · 30-03-2008 04:30PM

Apple might as well stop trying to lock their new firmwares

MeWantBroadband · 30-03-2008 05:38PM

Acquiring the target
Went up to Newry. O2 only had 1 8GB model, and I wanted a 16GB. Therefore I would suggest ringing the O2 store ahead, especially if you want 16GB.

Headed on up the road all the way to Belfast, and it was the same story up there, so I had to settle for an 8GB as I did not want to drive up again soon. O2 had none, Carphone Warehouse said they would have to mail order it.

O2 stores will sell you an iPhone without signing a contract, but there are not supposed to do that officially. I said I was going to unlock it, and yer man made the "shush" gesture jokingly, but carried on.You have to pay by credit card. When putting through the order he asked for an NI postcode, but as I had none, he must have made one up.

At current rates I saved about €60, but the main point is to avoid being locked into the iPhone tariff for 18 months.

Executing the strike
The phone was on 1.1.2 for some reason, so I upgraded to 1.1.4 - the firmware version shown on the phone uses an internal Apple versioning scheme, so that can be unclear. I nearly missed this, from trying to guess what Apples versioning meant. Google it.

Unlocking with iLiberty was not too hard (is recommended approach at time of writing). However there is a good chance it will require you to put the iPhone in recovery mode yourself. This stumped me for ages. The instructions do not produce the recovery mode message. Someone here had the same problem, and his workaround approach did not do it either. I got the picture prompting you to plug it into iTunes, but never the message (with the yellow triangle) to say it was in recovery mode.

However, everytime I connected the iPhone, iTunes said the phone was in recovery mode, so I figured it must be, and hit the button to tell iLiberty to continue. That worked fine, I have an activated, unlocked and jailbroken iPhone now. Thank to Cdebru, Bob24 and other regulars for all the info.

Debriefing
Signed up for bill pay today and the new O2 SIM says '3G' on it - works fine, I now have EDGE. EDGE is fast enough to be useable (way better than dialup), but is not speedy - have only tried it at home so far, so signal is so-so. I suspect the shop demo models are all using WIFI. I am now paying 27.50 which gives me 250MB/month on a 12 month contract. I was on prepay before because my voice usage is light.

I think even if you have a regular contract Southern-bought iPhone, you would want to Jailbreak it anyway. For example, it cannot read your contacts off the SIM card (which other phones do), but there is an app you install on the phone that does that (see this thread). You have to use WIFI or else EDGE to install apps - installer will not install stuff of your computer.

On the other hand, when you unlock it, O2 is the main provider you would use anyway, because of their EDGE support.

Pity all this info has to be stuck into one GODZILLA thread. What would it take to create an iPhone sub-forum - for the chance of getting a different mod atleast

monkeyfudge · 30-03-2008 06:04PM

5000 posts now... eeep...

Perhaps even a stuck and locked thread that is updated with the latest info and doesn't allow clutter of questions and answers... leave that for here.

longtimer · 30-03-2008 06:13PM

Today my mate offered to sell me an unlocked iPhone for E300. Not sure how it's been unlocked or anything yet but I just wanted to know if generally the amount of unlocked iPhones going around at the moment are working? On any network?

Also does the iphone/iTunes constantly try and update to this new version that locks the phone or is t easy enough to just buy the phone and never update?

Thanks

bindybandy · 30-03-2008 07:30PM

cdebru wrote: »

BTW iliberty+ is available now it is more straightforward than iplus I gave a link to it earlier today

HI, well just back from the states and used iLiberty + to unlock, jailbreaka and activate and everything looks perfect. I must have forgot to tick the box to install the installer thingy as i do not have that icon on springboard - would it be safe enough to tun iliberty again and just tick "jailbreak" and choose to install the installer this time? I can't seem to be able to install that app by itself so jailbreak seemed the only thing safe to tick?

Thanks

Creamy Goodness · 30-03-2008 07:54PM

basquille wrote: »

iPhoneDev Team have released a video of the iPhone Pwned project in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siuKQw6L6Rk

does this mean i can update my bootloader back to 4.6 after using ziphone which downgraded it to 3.9blank or whatever it's called.

blobert · 30-03-2008 07:57PM

My friend is over in the states at the moment, was thinking of getting him to pick me up an iPhone.

My question is this, are they a standard price in US apple stores?

How much do they charge for an 8gb/16gb ones? Is it the $399/499 on the Apple website or is that price only if you sign up for a contract?

He's coming back tmw so a swift response would be appreciated.

Thanks

Creamy Goodness · 30-03-2008 07:59PM

the price on apple's web store is the price in apple retail stores. there's no special price for signing up for contract or not.

those prices you quoted don't include sales tax so add approx. 7% to that.

Basq · 30-03-2008 08:07PM

Cremo wrote: »

does this mean i can update my bootloader back to 4.6 after using ziphone which downgraded it to 3.9blank or whatever it's called.

Yeah, I did the same. Downgraded to the 3.9 BL.

I'm not sure if it'll work but i'm sure we'll need to wait and see.

JTMan · 30-03-2008 08:33PM

MeWantBroadband wrote: »

Acquiring the target
Pity all this info has to be stuck into one GODZILLA thread. What would it take to create an iPhone sub-form

Agreed ... Mods - The number of iPhone threads and posts is getting out of hand here - The size of this thread makes it impossible to find information. Now is the time for iPhone sub forum.

swingking · 30-03-2008 10:11PM

here here !!

su_dios · 30-03-2008 10:32PM

Two points to note.. You won't be able to buy in AT&T stores without contract, and theres a shortage of 16gb and in some stores 8gb also at the moment. All the 16gb are in the at&t stores too

cdebru · 31-03-2008 12:16AM

Cremo wrote: »

does this mean i can update my bootloader back to 4.6 after using ziphone which downgraded it to 3.9blank or whatever it's called.

No

There are at least two bootloaders on the iphone one for the main OS and one for the baseband the one that Ziphone downgraded is the baseband bootloader the one that pwnage alters is the OS one AFAIK

First Gen iPhone Unlock / Sourcing (non subs) [Post these questions here *ONLY* !!!]

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First Gen iPhone Unlock / Sourcing (non subs) [Post these questions here ONLY !!!]