I was a late adopter of the iPhone, not because I didn’t think it was rad and would suite me well, but because I would potentially have to switch to the carrier that screwed me out of more than a thousand dollars nearly four years ago. So, I figured it was better to live without the iPhone than to live with AT&T. Then I changed my mind.
It all changed last weekend; not to AT&T, just the iPhone part. I picked up a new iPhone, and the first thing I did was remove the evil AT&T sim card. Then proceeding to do the, not recommend by Apple, Inc., unlocking of my iPhone, and using it with T-Mobile. It’s been almost a week now, and I’ve no trouble at all. Here’s a breif version of what I did.
- Put in my T-Mobile SIM card. (notice in my case the AT&T card was already out, as of 1 minute after opening the box… and a cool box it is by the way)
- Simulated iTunes activating the iPhone by using iNdependence.
- Jail-broke the iPhone, and opened an SSH connection.
- Installed iPhoneSimFree on the iPhone via SSH.
- Ran the SimFree.app on the iPhone, and waited.Side Note: At this point all had gone really well, but this part of the process takes several minutes, and beads of moisture were beginning to develop on my forehead as I thought about the possibility that I may have just flushed several hundred dollars down the drain. Breath deeply… ahhh. It works.
- Removed SimFree.app from the iPhone, and began making calls.
- One setting did need to be changed to use the EDGE network though:
- Went to Settings > General > Network > EDGE
- Changed the APN to internet2.voicestream.com (depending on the area of the country you are in this URL may vary).
- Removed theUsername and Password (left them blank).
That’s pretty much all I did. There are several sets of instructions out there for doing this, one is at mostofmymac.com. I’d love to hear your success stories.