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Freeing the iPhone

July 7, 2007 12:01am
by Chris Nuttall

Jajah_iphone So what if you don’t want to use the iPhone as a phone?

A perverse notion perhaps, until you add up the cost of the minimum $60 a month voice and data plan that is provided by AT&T.

It comes to more than $1,400 over the two-year minimum period, meaning buying an iPhone can be a $2,000 commitment.

Hence, some iPhone owners are talking about ways round activating their phones, from bent paper clips to hackers’ code.

The bent paper clip method involves removing the SIM card from a friend’s activated iPhone by pushing the clip in a small hole to spring the SIM card. This is then put in your phone to be resynced and activated again on iTunes. The SIM card can then be returned and you will have an iPhone that cannot make regular calls but will have a wi-fi connection for surfing and iPod functionality. Eventually, someone may come up with a solution for Voice over IP calls using the wi-fi connection.

The hacker’s way in was discovered by DVD Jon, who earned his moniker after cracking the copy-protection codes on DVDs. He posted details on his blog this week and commenters reported success using his method.

I wonder if a third, even easier, way is to cancel your AT&T contract within the 30-day grace period. The phone line may be deactivated, but you will still have the SIM and hopefully an unlocked iPhone, although syncing it with iTunes could alert Apple to its deactivated status.

Most people will stick with AT&T, but Jajah is touting how you can avoid expensive international roaming charges by signing up for its service through the Safari browser.

Meanwhile, many people have had the same problem as me in connecting to their wi-fi networks. Reading Apple forums, the iPhone appears to have a problem resolving DNS addresses in many cases. I followed advice to manually change my DNS address to 4.2.2.2 and am now surfing at broadband speeds.

July 7, 2007 12:01am in Consumer Electronics, Digital media, Internet, Mobile, Software | Comment

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