iPhone 3G unlock revised, now with less beta
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Jan 2nd 2009 4:23PM
posted Jan 2nd 2009 4:23PM
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as a tmobile customer this is great news but not helpful considering i'd have to pay an arm and a leg for the phone.
can i buy an att phone and downgrade it to emergency calls only?
buy an iphone for emergency calls?
buy an iphone?
its not too bad, get a refurb for $100 and then an etf for $175.
unrelated but is the antenna still in the bottom of the phone? i always got terrible reception with the iphone 2g, is the 3g any better with regular reception?
It's not so bad. You can buy a refurbished phone (8GB $149), activate it and keep for one month ($70) and then pay the early termination ($179) for a total of ~$400. That's about the going price for an unlocked smartphone.
yeah, good price for Smartphones, not a good price for a featurephone like the iPhone though :p
@ Graham Wellington
The iphone 3g is the 2g iphone. Do you not mean you had bad reception with the 1g iphone?
I don't understand why the iPhone gets such a bad rap. I got one and I love it.
yeah, i was going buy just the data type and not the actual generation. but anyway the 2nd gen, does it have the antenna in the bottom and is the call signal reception as bad as the 1st gen iphone? that was my only real problem with the 1st gen iphone i had.
@ George
The First-Gen iPhone is 2G, the Second-Gen iPhone is 3G, but this is in the GSM term 3G, not 2nd or 3rd Generation.
$500 after etf , activation, first month charge etc,.3g phone that would only work onedge speed,.dee dee deee
yes, lets avoid his question in every way possible xD
If You want to unlock ANY iPhone 3G and use it with ANY GSM carrier just buy hardware SIM unlock from http://321iphoneunlocking.com or other... you just put their ultra thin SIM (ITS LIKE PAPER) with your 3rd party SIM and unbelieviably it works.its simple as that people, dont need to "crack" your iphone or anything
A lot of the people who couldn't get it work the first time have said this does work.
No difference here, just as buggy, drops calls constantly and won't let me hang up. This is on the AT&T 3G network, too. The moment the program is uninstalled it's fine.
@dan uh, this unlock is for using the phone with unsupported carriers, it is not needed at all for using AT&T and will probably cause the issues you described.
the year is now 2009, its now time to move on, the iPhone had it's hurrah.
its competition has shown it to be dated and less than what it once was.
Please lets move on the better phones and stop harping on the past. the iPhone was lets look fordward please.
how about you look whatever direction you want and stop worrying about which way the rest of us want to look. for a start, you can look away from this post. please do.
Haha, have you ever used one? Best touchscreen around, games are awesome, it revolutionized the "cell phone." Nowhere to go but up from here.
" it revolutionized the cell phone."
you said it, the past, its time to move fordword.
guys have you played with the Touch HD, I have played with an iPhone and its nice, fast and smood but after playing with the Touch HD it takes the iPhone feel dated as it makes other phone I've had
all I am saying is lets not dwell on the past
Honestly, what phone in the US is even remotely as good right now? The Storm? ha.
The Touch HD launched a couple months ago. Why are you looking at the past?
Let's look forward to macworld starti g Monday
I thought this is why Engadget Mobile exists.
Yes and no... what we try to do is select the widest-appeal mobile stories and bring them to Engadget proper, while mobile enthusiasts can get the deeper material on Mobile.
@ Chris
Pretty cool. You're probably the only ed on this blog that actually responds in the comments section after posting. Your colleagues should learn from you...
Does this mean I can get an iphone for the sprint network? I tried the website for the devs but beside looking rather unsightly it has no simple straightforward info......
Umn... no...
Sprint relies on a completely different kind of hardware, called CDMA. The iPhone is GSM. you can use it on AT&T or T-Mobile, or in another country.
No. Sprint and Verizon use CDMA and the iPhone uses GSM. Two completely different and incompatible technologies. These are hardware differences and no software will ever allow one to be used on the other.
Rich
The iPhone 3G supports HSDPA, which is CDMA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Speed_Downlink_Packet_Access
This allows the iPhone 3G to access some networks in Japan, which use versions of CDMA instead of GSM. Maybe it can be made to work in the US too. It would probably take efforts from Apple to make it work though, I don't think hackers could rig it up.
@Hackettman: No. CDMA is a method of dividing a bandwidth spectrum up into multiple channels. It is used by both cdmaOne/CDMA2000, the network technologies that most people mean when they say "CDMA", and UMTS, which is the 3G successor to GSM. Japan has two UMTS networks, DoCoMo and SoftBank, the latter being the official carrier for iPhone 3G in Japan.
The two technology families share a channel division method. They are otherwise fundamentally incompatible at the hardware level. No amount of Apple software magic is going to make an iPhone 3G run on Sprint or Verizon.
@above replies:
kudos for taking time to explain, find helpful links etc.
i wish more people on here would reply such as this, rather than shooting people down for asking questions.
I love iPhone's interface and its shear simplicity and lacks of functionality. However, after a year, iPhone 3G has not prove worthy, at least to me, to throw away my beloved 2G.
Nice. Glad we have a revision :)
Thanks.
btw... better be careful. I heard a scientist was getting involved in the iphone creation :) ha
http://www.weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/scientist-creates-iphone-death-ray-app/
Gotta get me some yellowsn0w.
I actually own a first gen but couldn't help myself.
whats the point??
bootneuter has been out for ages, yellowsn0w just takes space on your phone for no reason
What happened to the law that carriers had to unlock the handsets when you bought them, not being able to tie you to the carrier?
steve jobs has a way to grab everyone by the balls and will them to do whatever he wants.
that fact is true for every other phone on the market, funny how the iphone got exempt....
iphone changed the law.,the revolutionary!!!!!!!1
Hmm. The first version worked fine for me, but the updated version makes me phone get really hot, till it reboots itself. Removed it with Cydia and the heat issue stopped. Looks like there's still a bug or two to work out.
i tried to be cool.,and did this unlock .now i havent been able to use my iphone.,i feel like an idiot.,to make things worse att called me n told me i would get etf cuz i violated terms.,sux 175$ etf n cant even use iphone.i took it to apple store n genius bar wanted to charge me 90$ just to look at it. i havent made a call in 6 days.,i jusr wanted to fit in n not feel like an outcast.nowe i feel like a dee dee deee!!!!!!to make things worse i jusr found out that iphone is not a smartphone but a dumbphone or deedeedeeephone.;( does anyone have any suggestions.?
En Ingles, por favor.
My suggestion - be less incoherant.
my suggestion, stop drinking the haterade...
att can't look into the contents of your phone, they don't have the technology. and running this just to use it on att is plain....stupid.
Does the 3G unlock work for the Original 2G iPhone?? I have been trying to Unlock my Original iPhone for Months now. Everytime I try and insert the SIM Card, I get a different SIM Detected.
no.
Tried this one and it has the same issue was 0.9.1 had on my iPhone, it makes my AT&T signal drop to nothing randomly - in a 5 bar signal area. Also has weird issues with placing or receiving calls, and this is with my regular AT&T 3G SIM. Uninstalling the hack fixes it immediately.
IPHONE SUCKS JUST GET A VERIZON ENV2 MAN IPHONE 3G IS SLOW AND BUGGY
FIRST COMMENT!
"First comment"
I just HAVE to say it: Epic fail.
Wow, if Condom is your name, that probably makes you a dick!
Obvious troll is obvious.
you MUST be joking. The ENV2 is possibly the STUPIDEST phone i've ever owned! it's ridiculous how limited functionality is. you're officially a failure at life now.
"first comment"... what a clown.
on a more serious note rumor from vzw store mgr.,that nu nano phone will not have exclusivity rights to att only.its not part of iphone model contract negotiations that were made berween appl n att on sept of 2006.,so means sprint,vzw tmobile usa could soon see nanophone.,with no internet.,cool,cant wait tell me if u hear more.,Ü
To the person getting the insert sim card on the 2g... do this EXACTLY, and you will be unlocked.
Go to quickpwn's website... http://www.quickpwn.com/ , down load jailbreak 2.2... download the 2.2 firmware make sure it is for the iphone 2g. Google the 2 bootloaders and download them both...
Go to itunes, have the different carrier sim in it (don't worry itunes will yell at you). Hold power and home button through 2 restarts until it is in recovery mode, itunes will tell you it needs to be recovered...
DONT HIT RESTORE, HOLD SHIFT and then hit restore on windows. Browse to the downloaded firmware that you just downloaded... restore the iphone, when itunes tells you it is rebooting keep it connected, make sure to disconnect it really quick so it doesn' t try to activate the iphone.
Now control alt delete, and stop itunes, ipod service, bonjour, and apple mobile device from running, once they are stopped, reconnect your iphone and run the quickpwn jailbreak 2.2, follow the directions exactly (you will have to browse to that firmware you used in itunes, and to the bootloaders.) once it is done you will be unlocked and can put any sim card in it perfectly.
Or you could've just given the following link:
http://iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=1880
I would have given a link like that, but it seems like they always forget to tell you to put in the sim you want to unlock before you do the whole process, I didn't do that the first time and it didn't work, but once I did the whole thing with a T Mobile sim it worked like a charm
I have a Rogers locked iPhone and this one worked for me (On a PIN enabled SIM).
However if i reboot with the non-rogers sim it won't find the carrier. So i have to boot up with the rogers sim and then swap the sim and it finds the carrier instanly. Definitely a step in the right direction!
my phone makes phone calls.
caused my phone to randomly reboot while i was playing game and watch fireman :-(
ok that's it! uninstalling it until I can beat my high score of 238!
How to jailbreak and unlock iphone 3g with yellowsn0w if anyone is interested
http://www.iphone-hacks.com/2009/01/02/how-to-jailbreak-unlock-your-iphone-3g-with-yellowsn0w/
I am running firmware 2.2.1 on my iPhone 3G and have tried to run yellowsn0w several times but my iPhone is still locked!?!? Anyone have any ideas? Unlock iPhone 3G