On Thursday last week I was doing my final prep for heading to India. One issue remained. How to use my 3G iPhone in India. While I always have a trusty Nokia as backup I wanted the freedom to choose. To my knowledge the iPhone is the only phone AT&T won’t unlock for you if you are traveling overseas for a short period. I’d requested this back in July and was turned down. The result I’d been following developments
for unlock solutions fairly carefully.
I had bought a couple of RebelSim cards. They are junk and I’d never do any more forcing than I already did to insert it in my iPhone. YellowsnOw the new software hack to unlock your iPhone works perfectly. So in a little more detail
iPhone 3G Unlock:
I’d read about Alec Saunders experience using a Rebel sim card to unlock his iPhone. So just before Xmas I ordered mine. I was a little skeptical. I should have saved my money as it turned out the iPhoneDevTeam delivered on their software unlock on New Year’s Day.
The Rebel Sim is a thin sliver that goes between you SIM Card and the phone. You simply put it in the tray.
All their videos now show it inserted with an extra piece of tape too. I tried. I really tried to insert it. Even got it over the little black bus thingy. And then couldn’t force it or push it home. So I pinged Alec. I then learned that he’d had to have his iPhone disassembled and put back together to get it out as he hadn’t used the tape. So this is totally buyer beware. A couple of cards and crap gizmos cost me about $60 bucks with postage. This is a foolish and potentially dangerous way to unlock your 3G iPhone. I’m glad I didn’t damage mine.
So I turned to QuickPwn. I’d used it before to jailbreak my 3GiPhone and then restored to factory as “unlock” wasn’t available and some of the “beta” official apps that I am running and testing for others didn’t work. So I downloaded the latest version. It identified my 3G iPhone. Pressed go and then the various buttons. Bingo Cydia was installed again. I then updated Cydia and then added the source for Yellowsn0w. Inserted my India SIM. Perfect. I can confirm it is sending and receiving calls on my Vodaphone India prepaid card without problems or issue. Plus even those beta programs that didn’t work last time are working. So nothing appears compromised. I’ll probably restore it when I get back to the US. However PDAnet makes it easy to use the iPhone as a temporary modem and that’s mighty attractive for some occasional use.
One other observation. The number of unofficial programs in Cydia are growing. Apart from the menitioned modem there are video camera solutions, ways to keep apps running in the background (expense of
battery life etc.)
