Can I use the 3GS without a contract?

[ryanflucas]

I'm wondering, in case the new iPod Touch being released doesn't seem feature packed enough, can I use an iPhone 3GS without the contract? If I bought one used or however, could I just not activate it with AT&T and essentially it would become a iPod Touch? If I could, does the WiFi still work like the Touch? Can I still buy an Applecare for it and take it to the Apple Store for repairs?

I'm assuming of course I can't walk into an AT&T store and buy a 16GB 3GS off the rack and walk out without a contract?

 

[abijnk]

So yes, you can use an iphone as an ipod touch, but honestly, if you are never going to activate it as a phone, you will never know the difference (except for a camera, but it seems fairly certain that is going to be remedied soon enough).

If you still want to use the iphone instead then yes, you would be able to use wifi and it would operate exactly like an ipod touch.

As for the AppleCare question, I am not sure. I was under the impression that you could not take an iphone into the genius bar that isn't activated on an approved account (i.e. and AT&T account in the U.S.), but I might be wrong.

Honestly, though, I don't know why anybody would buy and iPhone instead of an iPod touch if they didn't intend to use it as a phone, you're not going to get any more functionality.

 

[firewood]

If you can get an activated 3GS and just don't put a SIM card in it, no cellular service will be needed, it will work just fine as a deluxe iPod Touch.

 

[ryanflucas]

I was thinking of GPS capability and internal microphone. Is the GPS feature true GPS or is it tied to the AT&T account?

 

[jackiecanev2]

Wirelessly posted (BB 8900: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A400 Safari/528.16)

I sim-swap a lot; the GPS works for my iPhone sans sim using the Navigon app.