KingdomOfRats wrote:
Am want an iphone,does anyone know how long it will be before they start offering them without contracts/the top up type?
Also,do they work with styluses?
And about the hacked version,sisters' boyfriend said he heard chris moyles[?] saying on the radio that he has got one,and it's working on another network.
Am had heard that they won't work if they changed to work with another network but now it doesn't seem so?.
The iPhones definitely don't work on another without a 2 year contract out of the box, and don't work on carriers other than AT&T US, O2 UK, Orange France and T-Mobile Germany, but using 2 firmware hacks on the older iPhones you can fix that "problem".
The first hack is the jailbreak. If you have any experience with UNIX / Linux, the iPhone's root user runs inside a BSD jail (similar to a chroot jail) so that only the phone's media partition can be accessed, not the root one. This is to prevent people from installing applications or otherwise having control over the phone they purchased. The jailbreak essentially fixes this problem (you get full access to the phone), which then enables you to add or remove applications from the phone. This also enables you to get around activating the 2 year AT&T contract through iTunes. (EDIT: Forgot to mention that the jailbreak may also be performed on the iPod Touch as well to allow you to install applications, including all the missing iPhone apps except Phone and Text.)
The second hack is the baseband carrier subsidy unlock. Basically, the iPhone will only connect to the SIM if it is one of Apple's approved carriers. Otherwise, it rejects the SIM card and you get no phone service. This hack essentially makes the phone approve ALL SIM cards instead of only Apple approved ones.
Once you have both of these hacks applied to the phone, you can swap the SIM card whenever you want and have no problem connecting. This can even be a SIM from a prepaid phone if you want.
Currently I'm using a hacked AT&T iPhone on Fido in Canada (so...Rogers network), and have no contract. I just went to the AT&T store in Detroit (I live in Windsor), bought the phone telling them it was a gift so they wouldn't try to get me to agree to anything in store, took it home, jailbroke and unlocked it, popped in my Fido SIM and I was good to go.
However, it is important to note that Apple is constantly working to break these hacks, so if you have a hacked phone, don't update or restore it normally or you'll end up with a brick. Also, don't go out buying phones unless you're certain about the hackability of them, as all of these updates get applied in stores. Basically, do a lot of research before buying one, unless you're willing to buy one pre-hacked (and even then, make sure you don't update), or want to use it on an approved carrier under the approved contract terms (in which case you shouldn't have any problems). And it goes without mentioning that hacking your phone voids the warranty.
19 Dec 2007, 7:55 pm
