Be Excellent To Each Other

It appears that you can get an iPhone for £169 as long as you don't mind doing a bit of unlocking.

http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/171022/i ... 9-from-to/

See the The Register pretty much every week, grimmers. Or http://www.google.co.uk

I got one at the old price, just over a month ago. Not on contract of course. It's a good gadget, the only downside was the price but £169 is pretty reasonable IMHO.

Where did you get that from?

Carphone warehouse.

I was reading about the Jesus Phone on a Mac forum this morning.

The point isn't to unlock it, I think. The point is that it's cheaper than an 8gb iPod Touch...

Having an iFone on a PAYG contract screams 'poverty'

I think you're all mental. My phone makes calls, my computer plays games, music, radio, movies etc. far better than an 'all in one' device can, and I rarely find myself needing all of these combined features as I plod to Subway and back, or the train station and back.

You don't listen to music while commuting? Fair enough, but hardly mental if people do.

You can get an 8gb iPod Touch (effectively) for £169 now, and it might even do other stuff besides

I don't commute on public transport, I rarely buy gadgets or new things in general, but I have not regretted buying this for one second. It's just so handy to have a *usable* internet on you at all times, and it's always charged up because it's your phone.
I've even been reading ebooks on it because on the odd occasion I have half an hour to kill and no access to a computer, I typically don't have a book with me.
The fact that iPlayer works on it properly, unlike on my desktop is icing on the cake.

Yeah. I have 3+ hours a day commuting (to somewhere 30 mins' drive away, sigh...), and if it wasn't for my iPod (and sometimes also DS) then I'd go batshit insane(r).

Incidentally, Sainsburys have some Sony noise-reducing headphones for £20 that are good. Not the greatest sound, but very good, and the noise-reduction (despite only being white noise generated) does work very well. Which goes well with having to catch knackered old Arriva Wales trains at 8am after a hard night's drinking.

I hate my phone and would throw the fucking thing in the cut if I could.

My phone ran out of battery charge two weeks ago and I have not yet plugged it back in

I have no idea what that means, but it sounds really dark and terrible. Poor phone.

Oh, and it's got Skype on it now. Which is nice.

So let me get this straight.
You get the phone, on £35 contract, for £x. You make sure to take out the £5 insurance, then cancel the contract.
The insurance pays it off.

Is that all? Does that mean that my missus can just jam her Orange sim card in it and be away?

Err, no, you walk out of the shop with a phone for £169*, and no contract. I didn't go for insurance either.

*Do not connect it to iTunes and sign up for an O2 contract at this point*

Then you use a utility such as iLiberty to activate, jailbreak and unlock the phone for any sim. It's a one-click process now and takes about 10 minutes and a bit of nailbiting, and then you can bung your Orange SIM in and away you go.

*£269 in my case but I'm trying not to be bitter.

I would be WELL UP For getting an iPhone - my current contract expires any week now - except that an 18 month minimum contract is paaaaaaants, 'cos I'm hoping to move country before then. Hmm. HMM. Hmm. Oh, except that the idea of using my existing SIM is attractive. Kalmar, if someone were to do this, and not get an O2 contract, what effect does that have on the phone? How does that 'stop you from doing stuff' - does it mean you must never ever ever connect it to iTunes, or anything?

I am also planning to do this very soon.
But I can't see where it says the iPhone is £169 and you don't have to take out a contract. All I can see is £169 with a contract.

No, everything works as normal, I connect mine to itunes, buy stuff on itunes from the phone, no problems there. And you've got all the 3rd party extras that come with jailbreaking, there's a growing library of apps to install, which is just a one click operation from the phone.

The only thing you'd have to watch out for is if an upgrade to the firmware comes out and has some killer new feature that you really wanted (like, the map location thing that was added). Then you'd need to restore and do the original process again.

Well, there's a carphone warehouse just up the road from my work. I'll drop in there tonight.

Much more info here: http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/171022/i ... 9-from-to/

I'm going to split this iPhone conversation into a new topic, I think.

Grim... You might want to head over to the MacFormat forum - http://www.macformat.co.uk - which has a bunch of iPhone owners who've hacked their phones.

Just play dumb, let them tell you about connecting it to iTunes and all the rest of it. The guys in my shop went on at length about how you're only allowed to buy one per customer because of some illegal pirates "box breaking" them, which is illegal and invalidates your warranty*, but don't worry, a very large percentage of iPhones end up getting unlocked, nobdy has gone to jail yet.

[*] May be true. Well, you're going to have difficulty getting a not-officially-activated phone repaired by apple, put it that way.

Alternatively, do what I just did, and order it online (from CW). Supposedly there is free next-day delivery. Note: the process involves them asking where you have lived for the last 3 years, and asks for bank account details so as to setup a direct debit. Note also that I didn't make a mistake and choose a contract, it just 'does this anyway'. I don't have any problem with providing any of these details (obv. I didn't use 'primary' details), but be forewarned. The advantage of doing this, anyway, is that you can entirely skip the whole 'So, which contract d'ya want!?' bit.

Oh - and I also bought a £10 "headphone adapter" because its 9mm jack is extra deep within the case, or something similarly gnggh-worthy. And a nice case for it.

Ace.

I'm already with o2....

Could I go and get one of these and use with my existing SIM without going through all this 'Jailbreak' stuff?

And what're the chances of it all going pear shaped and ending up with a 170 quid paperweight?

Jailbreaking is to run the 3rd party apps.
You will need to activate the phone to use your existing SIM (as you only normally get activated by signing up for the contract). I believe, but am not 100% sure that you can then use the phone with your O2 (contract) SIM just by activating and without changing the baseband or anything.

However, it will certainly be an easier process to do the whole "activate/jailbreak/unlock" process anyway, because that's what the existing tools are set up to do with the least hassle.
You are actually messing around more to do steps individually and you need to know what you're doing then.



Fairly small. However if it subsequently goes faulty, you appear to be on your own a bit. But hey, the new model might be out by then

Oh, before anyone does the unlocking process, be wary of Ziphone. It's a popular utility and has worked for thousands of people, no doubt, but the creator of that appears to have built it by ripping off other peoples works, releasing it hastily and not giving them any credit (adding a GUI essentially). It also downgrades something in a non-software-reversible way and doesn't seem to be the most stable of things.

Just check what people are using today on hackint0sh.org or elsewhere. I used iPlus (command line mac util) which has now become iLiberty (GUI for all platforms), and would recommend that.

kalmar, were you ever on WoS? You're excellent.

He/she is.
One more question from an annoying lazy person - do I have to use iTunes to get music / video onto the thing? I don't like iTunes

Thanks CUS, you are excellent too.

I featured in a thread involving Vauxhall Corsas on WoS. For some reason I was defending them. Can't remember why now.


Grim...: Yes, if you want to do it the very easy and superbly integrated way. I believe there are other ways but TBH, I didn't like iTunes either until I used it with a proper iPod, and then its worth became apparent.
Please don't blame me if you end up hating the entire thing though.

This is all really tempting to me now. And there's an o2 shop right on my way home from work.

Thanks for the advice Kalmar, I checked out some of the mac forums Craig Grannell mentioned too.

Very, very tempted.

This, really. Especially if you have a Mac, it's just so much more effortless and sleek that way. Hoorah for my old Powerbook.

Hmmm... I used Ziphone on mine with no problems at all - seems utterly bloody wonderful to me! You just click 1 button and it jailbreaks, unlocks and activates the phone in one hit.

For the uninitiated, it works like this:

The iPhone is not like other contract phones. All you do to get hold of one is walk into a Carphone Warehouse/O2/Apple Store and buy it in much the same way you would an iPod. The idea is that you get home, fire up iTunes, plug in the iPhone and set up your contract over the 'Net.

However, if you want to unlock it, you instead get hold of Ziphone or equivalent and run that to do the whole jailbreak/unlock/activate process for you. At the end of the process, you take out the O2 SIM card it comes with and shove your own one in. My iPhone is being used with my work's Orange SIM, but I've also successfully used it with my personal O2 SIM.

It is the awesomeist phone ever, however uncool that statement makes me seem. The way it handles SMS messages it fantastic and one of those ideas where you wonder why no-one else thought of it sooner.

By the way, if anyone is tempted with the O2 contract (which is apparently not a bad deal if you're one of those people with busy and important lives and lots of friends, or if you like to talk a lot), then there's this - someone mentioned it at yakyak: http://www.quidco.com/blog/?p=161

Apparently giving you "100 quid off" the new "100 quid off" price, if you sign up for the contract. So it seems that you could get the phone for £69. (Excellent!)

Well, the Treo's been doing it for years.

Before anyone goes to buy one you should keep in mind the fact there is blatantly a new one coming, and soon. This price cut is a stock clear out before the 3G one lands. Now, even if you don't care about the 3G bit, it might well offer other upgraded bits as well, like a better camera or built in GPS or ultrasonic teeth whitener. So you may want to wait a few weeks and see what happens.

Although £169 is a pretty sweet deal.

Yes. Bear in mind that that offer is supposedly only available for a month (although they might well be fibbing about that). Either way, even when the 3G + whatever version comes out, your unlocked Mk 1 will still go for a pretty penny on ebay if you absolutely have to buy the new one.

If you jailbreak it and install MobileFinder and AVsomething-or-other, you can browse the filesystem and play any media file from anywhere on the flash disk. To copy stuff to it, you can install AFPd (Apple fileshare server) or an FTP server. SSH gets installed as part of the jailbreak process.

I've heard many bad things about iPhones and they don't look too great imo.
I've never owned an iPod and never would, so I wouldn't have to use evil iTunes heh

Well, I've got mine.

iTunes is evil, but I haven't heard any bad things about iPhones except from people trying to make excuses that their phone is better - for example, utterly invalid comparisons with the N95. They are absolutely gorgeous, and for the price a bargain.

I do really want one. Whether I can afford one is another matter entirely though.

Well judging by the O2 website you have until June 1st to save up for one.

There are bad things about iPhones - no mp3 ringtones, no MMS (picture messages), no fast Internet connection, etc.
I wouldn't say the comparisons with the N95 are invalid - the N95 has simply gone for function over form.

I used the ZiPhone unlocker (before I read Kalmar's post - d'uh) and everything went well.

HINT! Use iTunes to update the phone before you use ZiPhone, or you have to do the whole thing again.

Hm, by "bad things" I had negative experiences in mind rather than missing features, but yes, it's not perfect and anyone pretending it is is deluded. Thankfully, they aren't features I use - the lack of copy/paste is much more annoying.


The problem is when you get people spouting that the iPhone is rubbish because they're compared feature sets which is missing the point entirely. They're made very different trade-offs and complaining about one because it isn't the other is rather unfair.

Tell me about it. I'm a bit of a phone dummy, and just checked out the N95. Looks very nice indeed, but best part of 500 quid? Am I crazy, or is that a lot of money?

I'd argue that "user interface" is a feature, and one with a big fat tick in the iPhone's box and a much smaller one in the N95s.

(WinMob, which I have used on my phone for over 21 months now, has some sort of comedically oversized flashing red X in that box. With warning tape stuck all over it. And hazmat signs.)

There are things that would bug me about the iPhone, such as lack of GPS support, no A2DP, no MMS. I'm hoping these are all fixed in forthcoming software. I'm very likely to get one when the 3G model arrives.

That's an off-network no-contract price though. No-one with any sense buys phones like that, so there is no reason for them to be priced sensibly. N95 8Gbs are free now on 18 month contracts.

Join usss.
I believe you can do MMS from it, I've got swirlyMMS installed which claims to do it. But given that MMS is a bit pointless I've not tried it yet.

Sent from my iPhone.