reactivating old iphone

[silvar48]

Please help! I have an old iphone and wanted to purchase a new 3G for my wife without signing a new contract. I was eligible for the upgrade so I went for it, got the new 3G. Immediately they deactivated my old iphone and activated the new 3G. I want to reactivate the old iphone with AT&T and unlock the new 3G to use with T-MOBILE. Any ideas on how to get my old iphone back with AT&T?

 

[quikadanquik]

3G cannot be reliably unlocked
there are ways through hardware but none through software yet
there really isnt any reason to unlock a 3G anyway as it will only be able to get EDGE on companies other than ATnT

 

[TEG]

You cannot unlock the 3G, nor does it work at 3G speed for T-Mobile. To use the old one, just put any at&t SIM in the SIM tray*, like the one from the 3G.

* If you want to use PayasyouGo, you will likely want to unlock or Activate through iTunes using all 9s or all 0s for an SSN and signing up for a GoPhone account, or simply buying a GoPhone and swaping SIMs.

TEG

 

[silvar48]

i think I was misunderstood. I mean an iphone 3G.

When I put the ATT card back in the old phone everything works except the phone itself and I don;t get the ATT logo on the upper left corner

 

[TEG]

Use the iPhone 3G SIM in the other iPhone, then connect that iPhone to iTunes. iTunes should kickover the Activation process and get that phone back online.

Regardless, the iPhone 3G cannot be unlocked through Software, and the hardware solutions are expensive and not reliable.

TEG

 

[silvar48]

thank you for your help. How come there are so many iphones 3G being sold on ebay as unlocked and so many videos about unlocking the iphone 3G if there is no benefit to using it on other networks?

 

[megamanbnmaster]

thank you for your help. How come there are so many iphones 3G being sold on ebay as unlocked and so many videos about unlocking the iphone 3G if there is no benefit to using it on other networks?

The ones sold on ebay are most likely hardware unlocked (where Apple unlocked it themselves) and shipped from Hong Kong or Australia or somewhere that is illegal to sell locked phones. Most of the videos are fake in terms of unlocking and they don't actually show steps to "unlock" the iphone 3G. It shows steps to jailbreak, bot not unlock.

There is also a second method. You can buy a sim card thing (turbosim? i forgot what its called) where you cut part of the sim card and then piggyback the chip onto the simcard before using it.

Those are the only two ways to currently use an iPhone 3G on another network. As like what a previous poster said, even if you use an unlock chip or buy an unlocked phone, T-mobile's 3G network is useless and you can't connect due to different frequency spectrum and therefore the iPhone 3G will work just the same as an original iPhone