Buying a unlocked iphone

Mattitude

Mattitude

Mattitude

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18 Jul 2007
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476
Location
England, Berkshire
Right basically with xmas coming up and all that my dads gf has come to me seeking advice about getting a iphone for my dad. She cant just walk into O2 and buy one as he is on a company contract with O2 and the company wont pay £260 for the phone, so she wants to get one "sim free" which to my knowledge does not excist right now.

I do know that you can get the iphone unlocked and i have looked on ebay and seen many of these phones on there. Now is it really going to be so easy that come xmas day he opens up the iphone clips in hes current O2 sim card and everything will work?

I mean email, GPS, calls and texts? will he get unlimited internet usage? even with a sim card which didnt come with the phone?

This is all going on a fully unlocked iphone already activated.
 
He will still only get the amount of internet usage/minutes/texts that he gets with his current SIM, as thats what is tied to his account.

In theory you can buy an unlocked iPhone but if he accidentally updates it (which sounds like it would be quite easy to do in iTunes), it will be relocked.

If he aleady has an O2 sim card though, why does it need to be unlocked. The iPhones are all locked to the O2 network, so unless you can get one cheaper off of the bay, just get it from the O2 shop.

EDIT: Just had a quick look on bay and the sim free ones are over £300. Just go to the O2 store and pick one up.
 
Yea thats what i thought but apparently she went into O2 and well sometimes i guess you get a muppet who dont know what hes talking about who spoke to her talking about the activation process which right now i cant even remember what it was all about but basically O2 said they cant sell the phone alone as it has to be sold with a new contract and as my dad has a contract she walked away. Only concern i have is she will buy this phone and he will start looking at websites not on a free wi-fi and using the o2 network and run up a bill.

so basically if she goes to O2 buys the phone he will technically be able to activate it using hes current sim and have unlimited useage? or will she have to change hes current contract to some iphone tarriff?
 
You still have to unlock the iPhone to use an 02 SIM, PAYG or other contracts.

Buy a normal iPhone from Apple / O2 / CPW and just google "Unlock iPhone 02 PAYG" and follow any one of the plethora of guides.

The iPhone is tied to the iPhone tariffs, and as such.. WONT work with any old 02 SIM.

FYI: Activation is done via iTunes, you sign NOTHING in store.
 
EVH said:
*snip*
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Justin's correct, but you don't need to unlock it for it to work with an O2 SIM, it only needs to be jailbroken.

It's not the simplest process, but it is fairly straight-forward if you follow a good guide.

You'll need to download a few files and have wifi access, the whole process takes about 15 minutes.
 
defo worth the hassle, its a great phone. As mentioned, the UK iPhone's are now 1.1.2 and at present you can only unlock them to run with an exisiting O2 pay monthly or O2 PAYG sim. (and that involves you restoring it to 1.1 appying the unlock then updating to 1.1.2)

The whole process is a bit fiddly, it took me around 30-mins from start to finish to get it working. I paid £30 from the most popular UK site and within 10 mins they had emailed me all the details on how to do it, and that way I get free updates for life.

So its up to you really, you can either go into any O2 shop and buy it, take it home and unlock the thing, or buy one thats been pre unlocked already, be wary of people selling 1.1.2 iPhones that will unlock to ANY SIM, becuase as far as im aware this is not possible.

oh also worth sticking to iTune 7.4, it doesnt have the auto update feature that a lot of people are whinging about, its not a huge deal, the file it downloads is 120meg so you have plenty of time to catch it and disable it.

Oh, 1 final point, your not running Vista 64bit are you, iTunes doesnt support it, its a complete pain, luckly I have a works laptop that is Vista 32bit, its still a bit crash happy but it works.
 
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kidloco said:
The whole process is a bit fiddly, it took me around 30-mins from start to finish to get it working. I paid £30 from the most popular UK site and within 10 mins they had emailed me all the details on how to do it, and that way I get free updates for life.

So its up to you really, you can either go into any O2 shop and buy it, take it home and unlock the thing, or buy one thats been pre unlocked already, be wary of people selling 1.1.2 iPhones that will unlock to ANY SIM, becuase as far as im aware this is not possible.
Click to expand...

You can have an older US iPhone with an earlier firmware and still update it to 1.1.2 and be unlocked for all sims. Any UK iPhone will have the new bootloader and so will not be able to be unlocked to all networks via a software method as of yet. (Although you can get a turbosim and use any sim but thats another thread altogether!)

No need to pay £30! Thats daylight robbery for someone who is probably just copying and pasting from the myriad of jailbreaking sites that are about.
 
Just remember though that the package will be for the SIM in the phone that it is using.

You won't get the unlimited data via Edge or free access to the Cloud Wifi, so stay off the Internet with the iphone. You won't get the fee minutes and text, you will get whatever is on the SIM that you insert.
 
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