Question about giving iPhone to friend.

[Dott]

Hi there,

I've been searching the forum for a while now for an answer and i'm slightly confused by different things I've read so I thought I would just ask and see if anyone knows.

I currently have a 3G iPhone on the Vodafone network in Australia. It is not jailbroken and is the current version 2.2.1.

When the new iPhone is released (when/if/whatever) I would like to give my current 3G iPhone to my friend who lives in England. Is this possible?

What would my friend have to do to be able to use it in England? Would they only need to use an 02 sim card. How about 'activation' etc? Could someone provide me some steps that I'd otherwise need to follow for it to be used it in the UK. I'd like to keep clear of jailbreaking etc if possible this person isn't tech savvy.

Cheers.

 

[Moi un Mouton]

If the phone is locked to Vodafone Australia, it will not work in UK unless it is first unlocked. Your friend would most probably have to buy a piggy-back SIM since 2.2.1 is not currently unlockable with software methods.

If the phone is already factory unlocked (I'm not sure if this is the case in Australia) then an O2 SIM card will work ok in the UK, as will any other GSM SIM card - Orange, T-Mobile, etc

 

[ennui84]

If the phone is locked to Vodafone Australia, it will not work in UK unless it is first unlocked. Your friend would most probably have to buy a piggy-back SIM since 2.2.1 is not currently unlockable with software methods.

If the phone is already factory unlocked (I'm not sure if this is the case in Australia) then an O2 SIM card will work ok in the UK, as will any other GSM SIM card - Orange, T-Mobile, etc

Could it be downgraded so that it could be unlocked via yellowsn0w? If so, how?

 

[Moi un Mouton]

It is the baseband that has to be downgraded to make yellowsnow work. It is possible to downgrade the baseband to version 2.28 only if the bootloader is currently version 5.8. The hacks section of this forum has plenty of info on how to do that. See this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/686316/

If it's Bootloader 5.9 I'm afraid you can't do it. Probably it will mean waiting a while until 3.0.is released and the Dev Team have unlocked that.

 

[Dott]

Hi again.

So is 'unlocking' the iPhone the same as 'Jailbreaking' it? Will my friend still be able to use it with iTunes and update it as per normal when it is 'unlocked'? Are these two things the same thing with alternative names?

Cheers.

 

[qnc]

They are 2 separate terms for 2 separate processes.

Jailbreaking is the process of modifying the iPhone OS for read/write status. This allows installing 3rd party apps that are not apple approved as well alot of tweaks the modify the look of your phone i.e. winterboard.


Unlocking is the process of modifying the bootloader and baseband. Modifying the security checks that only allow the SIM of a certain company and tricking it to accept any SIM as valid.

You can jailbreak an iPhone without unlocking it.


You can not unlock an iPhone with out jailbreaking it first. Software unlock of course.