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Will Jailbreaking Help me with this?

S

southpaw17

macrumors Pomeranian
Original poster
Mar 22, 2007
65
0
I am located in the U.S. and bought my 3gs back in July i think. Now I am moving to Australia for a while and want to be able to keep in touch with people back home via call or text. Mainly text though. I have checked with AT&T but they do not have international texts and I would be paying $0.50 per text and that's not going to happen. Is there anything I can do as far as jailbreaking so that I can use it to contact America from Australia?
Thanks
 
southpaw17 said:
I am located in the U.S. and bought my 3gs back in July i think. Now I am moving to Australia for a while and want to be able to keep in touch with people back home via call or text. Mainly text though. I have checked with AT&T but they do not have international texts and I would be paying $0.50 per text and that's not going to happen. Is there anything I can do as far as jailbreaking so that I can use it to contact America from Australia?
Thanks
Click to expand...

Over Wifi or do you need cell service?

If you have never upgraded to 3.1 you can still unlock your phone so you can buy a prepaid or month by month plan in Australia and use that SIM in your phone. Otherwise you can use wifi and keep your phone in Airplane Mode but with Wifi turned on.

Then you can make cheaper calls with Skype, iCall, iSip or something like that over Wifi and send your free texts using TextPlus (Only works when sending TO us phone numbers, but that sounds like it'll be fine for you).
 
ViViDboarder said:
Over Wifi or do you need cell service?

If you have never upgraded to 3.1 you can still unlock your phone so you can buy a prepaid or month by month plan in Australia and use that SIM in your phone. Otherwise you can use wifi and keep your phone in Airplane Mode but with Wifi turned on.

Then you can make cheaper calls with Skype, iCall, iSip or something like that over Wifi and send your free texts using TextPlus (Only works when sending TO us phone numbers, but that sounds like it'll be fine for you).
Click to expand...

I would prefer cell service. Would textplus allow me to send like real texts or would it only work for someone else with textplus?
 
southpaw17 said:
Will this enable me to call and text the u.s. cheaply?
Click to expand...

Depending on the plan you get with a cell phone carrier there. You can also use skype on iPhone to make cheap phone calls over wifi, or use 3gunrestrictor and do it over 3G. International texts are never cheap, you should do email, or twitter, or perhaps an iPhone app like Ping! (if they have iPhones).
 
jmann said:
It works regularly. But you don't have a dedicated number to have people send you texts to. It is temporary. You would have to initiate the SMS conversations.
Click to expand...

Yes. That's the only disadvantage. You can, however, leave conversations open and have people reply to them.

Another option is using email to email to SMS gateways (Use an email with push, either Google with Gpush or google sync or Ymail!). Anyone you want to get texts from you can just send you a message to your email (just have them put the email address instead of a phone number and tell them to trust you. ;) Make it something easy to remember.

Then when you get their first message you can just reply with TextPlus.

I do this in the US just to save money. :D
 
dhlizard said:
Calls & basic texting (not a Cydia app) require a cell phone carrier. Wifi won't work for these.
Click to expand...

It was suggested that he use an Australian carrier and he asked if he can make calls and texts... So yes. That does require a carrier. :p

Also, you can use Wifi to make SIP or other VoIP calls. I think some VoIP services even offer SMS. So that would be an all in one Wifi only solution.
 
Thanks for all of the great replies. It's awesome. I have about a month before I leave, so I have some time to figure all this out.

Another question: if I do jailbreak and then unlock my phone, and get an australian plan and sim card, will I be able to use my phone normally in australia?

Also with text plus: If I start a conversation with someone, they can just text me normally and it will appear as just a normal text conversation?

Thanks for all the help. This is actually a huge relief because I had no idea what I was going to do about all this.
 
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