My Big Fat Unlocked-iPhone Experience!

Since I have written a few articles about the ‘hallowed’ iPhone recently, I thought I had better put my money where my mouth is and take the plunge. So here is my experience with opening up a brand new 1.02 8Gb iPhone and getting it running on the New Zealand Vodafone network…inspite of Apples ‘bricking’ attempts!

No, I didn’t buy an already-unlocked iPhone from a parallel importer for NZ$1299 (USD988). Instead, I got a business contact to buy it directly from an Apple Store on his recent trip to the US for NZ$557 (USD399 + 24.35 Sales Tax). This meant that I had to go through the whole process from right-out-of-the-box to working-in-my-pocket. Here’s how it went:

Opening the box

Like any other Apple product, the packaging is superb - everything safely wrapped in cute little cellophane packages. Even the box ‘feels’ nice. As soon as I got the phone in my hands it seemed smaller, smoother somehow than I had imagined - which was a pleasant surprise. Turning it on (no initial charging required), I was presented with ‘Slide to unlock’ and ‘Activation Required’ messages.

Activation

Using a Mac, I used the iNdependence utility. When I started the program, it sat there patiently with ‘waiting for iPhone’ in the Status field. (As recommended, I first killed the iTunesHelper App.) The first time it detected the iPhone, it then helpfully informed me that I first had to ‘pair’ it with iTunes, so I quit iNdependence and started iTunes. iTunes detected the iPhone and said ‘Ready to Activate with AT&T’ - done. I then quit iTunes and restarted iNdependence - at which point it now allowed me to click the ‘Activate Phone’ button. A simple click and a wait of around 20 seconds later, the iPhone is Activated on the AT&T SIM delivered in the iPhone. The iPhone could now be used as an iPod and PDA. So far so good.

Jailbreak

The next step (as guided by iNdependence) was to Jailbreak the iPhone, and install SSH, SFTP and SCP. Both processes involved simple button clicks, and a bit of waiting as the iPhone cycled through various reboots via restore mode. But nevertheless, the process was straight forward and informative when something wasn’t quite right. So, up to this point, I had burned about 20 minutes in total.

Installing Apps

Here’s where it started to get a bit trickier. Now that SFTP was installed, I could now start a Secure FTP session via TCPIP - which meant that I first had to get the iPhone wireless working, and then check what IP address had been assigned. Once I figured that out, I started my YummyFTP App on the Mac, entered the default root password (dottie), and literally dragged the AppTapp and SIMFree Installer Apps from my Mac to the iPhone /Applications directory. (AppTapp is not needed for unlocking but it gives you access to some great third-party Apps.) Now I was ready for the final stage - time so far, 45 minutes.

Unlocking

I chose to use the ‘cost you money’ software unlock solution from iPhoneSimFree, who only sell through resellers. The other 2 options are the TurboSIM hardware solution or the freeware AnySIM software solution. Both of these seemed to me to have a few downsides:

TurboSIM - complicated to setup (unless you pay extra to have it done for you) and apparently somewhat fragile. To buy the ready-to-go version here was NZ$299 (USD228) - a bit expensive for me, but the main advantage it has is that no software ‘hacks’ are made on the phone itself.

AnySIM - while apparently this solution works fine, early 1.1.1 experiences seemed to indicate that iPhoneSimFree users were better off.

Overall my gut said financial motivation is always better for support, so I went with iPhoneSimFree via FreeIt4Less.com, which cost me NZ$79 (USD59.95). It took about 12hrs to register my iPhone’s IMEI number before I could complete the rather straightforward unlocking process on the iPhone. iPhoneSimFree have a PDF tutorial for download here that explains the details. The last step in the process was to put my Vodafone SIM in the iPhone and re-activate with iNdependence . (I also then changed the default root password!)

So total time - about 1 hour with a 12 hour wait in between. Total cost NZ$635 (USD483). Everything now works (except Visual Voicemail which is Network dependent) and EDGE (Vodafone NZ only supports GPRS and HSDPA). Otherwise, the end-product is a delight to use, and was a reasonable cost - albeit that I still need to get a case and better headphones. Considering that the Nokia N95 is retailing here at NZ$999, I am pretty happy.

And even if I was permanently stuck on the 1.02 firmware, the user experience is so much better than anything else I have used that I think I could live with that. However, it looks like 1.1.1 may not be that far away.

Update: To set the iPhone to correctly call Vodafone Voicemail from the Voicemail button, dial the following code from the phone: *5005*86*phonenumber# and then press ‘call’. (So for Vodafone that means *5005*86*707#’call’) I haven’t managed to get the ‘voicemail waiting’ indicator to work yet…

Update 2: See my more recent article on upgrading the firmware to 1.1.1.

Originally from TechGripe! by Brett Ryland (10 October 2007).