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Taking Unlocked Phone to Genius Bar

A

aspenboy

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 31, 2008
74
0
My iPhone has a touchscreen with an unresponsive band near the top. I am planning on taking it to the local Genius Bar at the Apple store tomorrow morning to see if they can fix it or replace it.

Does anyone have any advice on what to tell the Apple genius? The touchscreen problem wasn't caused by the Pwnage. I don't have the Cydia or Installer icons on the Springboard so there's nothing obvious to let a genius know that it is unlocked/Jailbroken. Is there any way for him/her to figure it out? Also my phone is not activated through AT&T. Will they care?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks!

Chris
 
Why don't you just restore it back to the official firmware. Get it fixed or replaced and then jail-break it again? That way you would not have to worry.
 
they run diagnostics on your phone in other words to check if its jailbroken and they will ask for you at&t cell number so expect the worse if something but they should replace it it really all depends on the genius
 
I was always under the impression that you can hide a jailbreak, but you can't hide that you unlocked your phone. So I don't think they are obligated to fix your phone. I hope I am wrong for your sake.

Hopefully someone else will chime in and say if that is true or not.
 
staccato83 said:
I was always under the impression that you can hide a jailbreak, but you can't hide that you unlocked your phone. So I don't think they are obligated to fix your phone. I hope I am wrong for your sake.

Hopefully someone else will chime in and say if that is true or not.
Click to expand...

you know what also sucks even if you bought an official unlocked iphone from italy or Hong Kong you still wouldn't be able to get to get it replaced in the states or anywhere else besides the country you bought it from :(
 
If I restore it to the original firmware, then the phone isn't activated. I don't have an AT&T sim card for the iPhone, so when I restore it (which I have done) it shows the iTunes logo and a USB connector. Should I bring it in to the store in this state? I want to be able to demonstrate that part of the touchscreen doesn't work, but not show that it has been unlocked and jailbroken.
 
The only thing I can think of is for you to restore your phone to the original firmware and take it in to the Apple store unactivated. You can say that your friend just gave it to you since the screen wasn't working and you wanted to get it fixed before you signed up with AT&T.

I think this is dishonest and wouldn't do it. But that is up for you to decide.


EDIT: That plan will probably not work if YOU purchased the phone from Apple. Your name will obviously be in the computer as the owner of the phone.
 
I recently took my dad's old phone to the genius because it wouldn't receive calls.... He had said forget it and just bought a 3G, but wanted it replaced so my sister could have it. I took it in unactivated and the genius replaced it but said not to expect it ever again and that they weren't supposed to do it..... Maybe they will say the same to you....
 
So do people think that a restored, unactivated phone (showing only the iTunes logo and USB cord) is better to bring in than a jailbroken phone?

If they can tell if has been unlocked, then I guess I'm better off with an unactivated phone. I think I can show that the touchscreen doesn't work using the emergency keypad.
 
Bringing in an unactivated phone is way better than bringing in a jailbroken phone. As soon as they see that your phone is jailbroken, they are going to send you on your way. They will say that your screen is broken due to the jailbreak (which is highly unlikely).
 
If it is not an software problem, than apple will give you a new phone... They dont fix hardware problems at apple store, they send your phone to be fixed somewhere else and give you a refurbished/new (from the white box) phone...

If your phone is still under warranty and have no signal of water damage or dents, they will replace at no cost, otherwise you will have to pay.

What I would suggest you is to make a full restore and take it to apple store unactivated, without your sim card. Just say that you already know that they will exchange your phone and you made a full restore just to make sure that all you personal data is not in the phone, because they will keep your phone.

Of course you will only be able to do that if you can show to genius the unresponsive band with the phone unactivated, maybe using the emergency dial mode..
 
I think I read in one of the iPhone forums that someone had an experience at the Genius Bar with a Genius who had his phone unlocked. Ironic. :)
 
thanks for the suggestions everyone. this has been a helpful discussion.
 
You could try to do a mail in repair. They will send you a loaner phone and ask you to remove the SIM card form your phone before sending it in. Make sure you roll back the unlock and do a fresh firmware restore before sending it in. That way they will only be looking at your hardware, not the phone account.
 
ilfn143 said:
go to wal-mart buy a paid as you go at&t phone with sim for $25, take out the at&t sim put it in your iphone to activate it.
Click to expand...

I don't that that will work, at least it didn't with the original iPhone. I could take an iPhone SIM and use it in other GSM handsets, but not the other way around. There is some flag on the account that iTunes looks for during the activation process that stops this from working.
 
You could try using "Make It Mine," to add the AT&T logo to your status bar.

If they check for athenticity of your phone number though, that may not be enough.

Another thing that you could do is restore it, and tell them that you restored it hoping that the problem would go away, but it never did, so you virginized it.
 
Back from the Apple Store and it didn't work. I restored it and said that it was my friend's. The Genius wanted the phone number and last 4 digits of SSN to 'verify' that it is on the AT&T network. I said I didn't have it so he told me that I would need to get it before he could help me.

Wonder if I could sign up for AT&T service for 1 month and have a real official, active iPhone before I go into the store and then cancel after 1 month or even less time.
 
This thread makes me curious.

I hacked my old iPhone and gave it to my girlfriend to use on Tmobile. I use my 3G on AT&T and have it jailbroken, but always figured I'd restore it to factory if I have to take it in. But for her, I hadn't really thought about it.

I guess since the baseband is unlocked I could take my 3g SIM card and pop it in the old iPhone, tell them I'm using it as backup or something, and ask them to fix/replace. I'd have to make sure to keep the SIM in that case though, and not sure they'd do anything for me.
 
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