Two questions: UL without JB? & is UL necessary for 'authorized' Indian Service?

[nightfly13]

So I figured this should maybe be two threads, but they're related.

I'm using a 2-year old 2g iPhone that was given to me unlocked by a friend in Canada. I've since then used pwnage tool to create a few custom firmware packages that I've used to upgrade to 2.0 and now 3.0 (clearly I don't bother keeping super-updated).

I have two problems: it's stinking slow. My nephew who has a 3G says that he hasn't jailbroken his phone because it really slowed his phone down. The second problem is that it drops signal regularly. I live in India most of the year and I use Airtel, which is one of the two authorized iPhone telcos here (they sell 3G's (the plural of 3G, not to be confused with the 3GS) for $700). I have a full signal in my house (I'm within 1km from the tower) but my iPhone drops calls/signal regularly, roughly once an hour when sitting in standby, and half of my 5-minute calls will get dropped at random intervals. None of the other phones have signal problems. I figured this was a hardware thing, but I'm suspecting it might be related to my homebrew, older firmware.

So my first question is, if I just apply vanilla iTunes downloaded new firmware, will my phone be locked into... probably Rogers or whatever service provider it was originally intended for? Might it work with Airtel, the company I'm using that also sells iPhones here? I don't need Cydia or any of that, I just need my Indian SIM to work here and real App store apps are fine for me.

Second question: if I do have to unlock, must I jailbreak before I unlock? Again I'm trying to avoid funky homebrew firmware that might be slowing me down and/or causing the signal to drop intermittently.

Thanks for the input!

 

[dhlizard]

So I figured this should maybe be two threads, but they're related.

I'm using a 2-year old 2g iPhone that was given to me unlocked by a friend in Canada. I've since then used pwnage tool to create a few custom firmware packages that I've used to upgrade to 2.0 and now 3.0 (clearly I don't bother keeping super-updated).

I have two problems: it's stinking slow. My nephew who has a 3G says that he hasn't jailbroken his phone because it really slowed his phone down. The second problem is that it drops signal regularly. I live in India most of the year and I use Airtel, which is one of the two authorized iPhone telcos here (they sell 3G's (the plural of 3G, not to be confused with the 3GS) for $700). I have a full signal in my house (I'm within 1km from the tower) but my iPhone drops calls/signal regularly, roughly once an hour when sitting in standby, and half of my 5-minute calls will get dropped at random intervals. None of the other phones have signal problems. I figured this was a hardware thing, but I'm suspecting it might be related to my homebrew, older firmware.

So my first question is, if I just apply vanilla iTunes downloaded new firmware, will my phone be locked into... probably Rogers or whatever service provider it was originally intended for? Might it work with Airtel, the company I'm using that also sells iPhones here? I don't need Cydia or any of that, I just need my Indian SIM to work here and real App store apps are fine for me.

Second question: if I do have to unlock, must I jailbreak before I unlock? Again I'm trying to avoid funky homebrew firmware that might be slowing me down and/or causing the signal to drop intermittently.

Thanks for the input!

You cannot unlock without jailbreaking.

The only things you should install if you jailbreak are OpenSSH, Terminal and Cydia (Cydia to perform the unlock and OpenSSH as a safety measure in case Cydia errors out). Neither will slow down your phone. Be sure and change the root and mobile passwords in OpenSSH(you will use Terminal for this). Use Google to find out how to do so.

 

[vilasgn]

Okay, I have just (3 days back) unlocked someone's 2G iPhone for using in India. The person has confirmed that the phone working fine in India without any issues.

This is what you need to do.

1. Upgrade to the latest firmware 3.1.2.
2. Jailbreak with blackra1n. (Google Search for this). Install Cydia, Open SSH.
3. Use Bootneuter to unlock the phone.
4.***After using Bootneuter, I still had problem as the phone did not recongnize the SIM and showed connect itunes logo. There is fix for this problem. Search google. I think you have to delete "Lockdown" folder from iPhone by SSHing into it and then you should be good to go.

I don't have the link for that "Lockdown delete" part but you can find that by Google Search.

Make sure that you always backup your phone before doing above things.

The tutorials I found on internet about unlocking 2g phone on 3.1.2 did not talk about "Invalid Sim Card problem (the one mentioned above)" but I as well as many ppl on internet faced it. You might not face it but better to have the fix handy before you proceed.

You cannot unlock without jailbreaking.

The only things you should install if you jailbreak are OpenSSH, Terminal and Cydia (Cydia to perform the unlock and OpenSSH as a safety measure in case Cydia errors out). Neither will slow down your phone. Be sure and change the root and mobile passwords in OpenSSH(you will use Terminal for this). Use Google to find out how to do so.

So I figured this should maybe be two threads, but they're related.

I'm using a 2-year old 2g iPhone that was given to me unlocked by a friend in Canada. I've since then used pwnage tool to create a few custom firmware packages that I've used to upgrade to 2.0 and now 3.0 (clearly I don't bother keeping super-updated).

I have two problems: it's stinking slow. My nephew who has a 3G says that he hasn't jailbroken his phone because it really slowed his phone down. The second problem is that it drops signal regularly. I live in India most of the year and I use Airtel, which is one of the two authorized iPhone telcos here (they sell 3G's (the plural of 3G, not to be confused with the 3GS) for $700). I have a full signal in my house (I'm within 1km from the tower) but my iPhone drops calls/signal regularly, roughly once an hour when sitting in standby, and half of my 5-minute calls will get dropped at random intervals. None of the other phones have signal problems. I figured this was a hardware thing, but I'm suspecting it might be related to my homebrew, older firmware.

So my first question is, if I just apply vanilla iTunes downloaded new firmware, will my phone be locked into... probably Rogers or whatever service provider it was originally intended for? Might it work with Airtel, the company I'm using that also sells iPhones here? I don't need Cydia or any of that, I just need my Indian SIM to work here and real App store apps are fine for me.

Second question: if I do have to unlock, must I jailbreak before I unlock? Again I'm trying to avoid funky homebrew firmware that might be slowing me down and/or causing the signal to drop intermittently.

Thanks for the input!

 

[dhlizard]

Above poster overlooked this:
If you install OpenSSH, it is critical that you change the root and mobile passwords. You will need Terminal to do this.

 

[nightfly13]

Thanks guys - man I love the Mac Rumors community sometimes