Unlocked iPhone?

[TimJim]

So lets say some person or some site figures out how to unlock the iPhone and you get an iPhone and do the method to unlock it. So now you have an unlocked iPhone, how would you go about activating it with another service? Which services would be able to handle it?

 

[PlaceofDis]

you wouldn't have to activate it, just put a new SIM card in there. and since it uses SIM cards and runs on GSM any carrier that uses GSM would be an option. but certainly not all of the 'features' would work. like the visual voicemail since that relies on a special server at AT&T/Apple.

 

[brasscat]

So lets say some person or some site figures out how to unlock the iPhone and you get an iPhone and do the method to unlock it. So now you have an unlocked iPhone, how would you go about activating it with another service? Which services would be able to handle it?

You couldn't use all the functions on the phone (like virtual voice mail, push mail) with an unlocked phone. You could probably activate it like a normal cell phone, obviously not using iTunes. But I'd like to hear about their experience when the first knucklehead tries this eventually.

 

[unity]

The phone is hard coded to ONLY work on AT&T. A T-Mobile sim card, for example, will not work in the phone.

I am betting someone is working to crack that as we type.

 

[marksman]

I wonder how many T-Mobile Engineers are secretly working on trying to unlock the iPhone so they can accidentally leak it into the wild.

 

[pianoman]

i believe there are pictures circulating around the Internet that show what happens when a non-AT&T SIM card is installed in an iPhone. the result is an error screen telling you to reactivate using iTunes and a compatible SIM card.

 

[Cov]

this may be a dumb question... But I thought the sim card on these was internal and as far as I know no one has been able to make one work after reassembly. I know ifixit.com had pics up of a dismantled one but said that it wouldn't work after they put it back together. So how are they planning to get to the sim?

 

[pdpfilms]

this may be a dumb question... But I thought the sim card on these was internal and as far as I know no one has been able to make one work after reassembly. I know ifixit.com had pics up of a dismantled one but said that it wouldn't work after they put it back together. So how are they planning to get to the sim?

Nope, there's an easy-accessible SIM slot on the top.