iPhone 4 and OS 4.X Catch All

You should just need a Bell SIM, and it will work. I can't see that they would need the phone, or even need to know what phone it is. Part of the jailbreak and unlock process involves fooling iTunes into thinking that Apple have activated it, whatever carrier you use.

I did this with a tmobile UK SIM in a 3G that was locked to O2, without ever having a problem. My friend has the phone on a Pay As You Go SIM.

When you up or downgrade to an official firmware, you will lose the jailbreak and unlock and have to do it again.

Ah, okay that clarifies it. Thanks for all the help!

Dropped my phone this weekend (yes, alcohol was involved) and shattered the top left corner of the screen. I always keep my phone in a full case, except when I'm getting on and off my bicycle, as the handlebar mount I use for my phone doesn't work with the case on. Of course, as I'm removing my phone from the mount, that's exactly when it decides to fall onto the concrete.

Anyway, I ordered a replacement screen from the same place that my wife's backplate came from, and I'm going to repair it myself when it arrives (or possible screw it up beyond repair). Wish me luck

Do any of you guys get stupidly frustrated with iOS and the way it auto corrects your type and how difficult it is to add words to the dictionary? Also, I hate switching between apps. My frustration level is so high with this damn device.

Ulairi wrote:

Do any of you guys get stupidly frustrated with iOS and the way it auto corrects your type and how difficult it is to add words to the dictionary? Also, I hate switching between apps. My frustration level is so high with this damn device.

Coming from a Blackberry, I was and am a little annoyed by Apple's autocorrect system. Still, it does seem to LEARN as I go, filling in things for me that it must have gotten from my writings at some point. I don't know Apple's formula, but I think if you commonly misspell a word, if you double tap on it and then hit "replace" it will remember that correction for the future. I could be wrong, though. Would be much nicer to have an editable list of words like BB offers.

As for app switching, I guess I dont get that. Double tap HOME, select your app. It'd be nice to offer full navigation through gestures, but I guess that's coming down the road.

I turned off auto correct the instant I got an iPhone. I can't stand that crap.

Serengeti wrote:

Dropped my phone this weekend (yes, alcohol was involved) and shattered the top left corner of the screen. I always keep my phone in a full case, except when I'm getting on and off my bicycle, as the handlebar mount I use for my phone doesn't work with the case on. Of course, as I'm removing my phone from the mount, that's exactly when it decides to fall onto the concrete.

Anyway, I ordered a replacement screen from the same place that my wife's backplate came from, and I'm going to repair it myself when it arrives (or possible screw it up beyond repair). Wish me luck

And the surgery was a success! Took about 2 hours, as I was being very cautious. Apple uses 9 different lengths of screw inside the phone, so I was labeling each one as it was removed. Ultimately the new screen is in place and the phone is back operational!

Here's a shot of the old LCD, removed from the phone:

IMAGE(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q133/serengeti000/8e721933.jpg)

Serengeti wrote:
Serengeti wrote:

Dropped my phone this weekend (yes, alcohol was involved) and shattered the top left corner of the screen. I always keep my phone in a full case, except when I'm getting on and off my bicycle, as the handlebar mount I use for my phone doesn't work with the case on. Of course, as I'm removing my phone from the mount, that's exactly when it decides to fall onto the concrete.

Anyway, I ordered a replacement screen from the same place that my wife's backplate came from, and I'm going to repair it myself when it arrives (or possible screw it up beyond repair). Wish me luck

And the surgery was a success! Took about 2 hours, as I was being very cautious. Apple uses 9 different lengths of screw inside the phone, so I was labeling each one as it was removed. Ultimately the new screen is in place and the phone is back operational!

Here's a shot of the old LCD, removed from the phone:

IMAGE(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q133/serengeti000/8e721933.jpg)

I feel your pain. My 1 year old dropped my wife's iphone (don't get me started on her letting her hold it) and I bought a new screen from ebay and fixed it myself. Almost gave myself an ulcer.

Nomad wrote:
Serengeti wrote:
Serengeti wrote:

Dropped my phone this weekend (yes, alcohol was involved) and shattered the top left corner of the screen. I always keep my phone in a full case, except when I'm getting on and off my bicycle, as the handlebar mount I use for my phone doesn't work with the case on. Of course, as I'm removing my phone from the mount, that's exactly when it decides to fall onto the concrete.

Anyway, I ordered a replacement screen from the same place that my wife's backplate came from, and I'm going to repair it myself when it arrives (or possible screw it up beyond repair). Wish me luck

And the surgery was a success! Took about 2 hours, as I was being very cautious. Apple uses 9 different lengths of screw inside the phone, so I was labeling each one as it was removed. Ultimately the new screen is in place and the phone is back operational!

I feel your pain. My 1 year old dropped my wife's iphone (don't get me started on her letting her hold it) and I bought a new screen from ebay and fixed it myself. Almost gave myself an ulcer.

Great work, Serengeti! That gives me hope if I ever need to try that operation.

My one year old has been coveting our iPhones forever, so I gave her my old one which was wrapped in an Otterbox Defender. I guess I didn't need to worry about drops, as she immediately treated it as Her Precious and gripped it like her life depended on it.

Care to share any tips on how to go about replacing the screen? Mine has been shattered for months now as the screen is functional and the display readable, but, umm, me wants shiny! I have a 3GS and until now didn't even think about the possibility to replace the screen myself. I mean, the phone doesn't even look like it can be disassembled.

wanderingtaoist wrote:

Care to share any tips on how to go about replacing the screen? Mine has been shattered for months now as the screen is functional and the display readable, but, umm, me wants shiny! I have a 3GS and until now didn't even think about the possibility to replace the screen myself. I mean, the phone doesn't even look like it can be disassembled.

This site has great tear downs for mac products.

http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhon...

I used a youtube video. Can't remember which one exactly. For me the tear down was the easy part, it's getting it back together and working that's the trick.

iPhone DIY unlocking update:

So the other week I re-downgraded to 3.1.3, jailbroke it with Spirit, and unlocked it with ultrasn0w, the version that works for baseband 06.15.00 (my 3G's BB version). The next time I saw my parents, we went over to a Bell store, had a SIM popped in and... no service. Unlock didn't take. I tried deleting ultrasn0w and installing it again, went to another Bell store and still no luck.

So I read as much as I could for a week, worked on it a little, went on vacation, came back and worked on it some more. I thought maybe the Korean guy was on to something: that 06.15.00 baseband will only work with iOS 4.1. So I held off on calling Rogers until I knew for sure. But more Googling suggested that 06.15.00 will unlock on 3.1.3. Now I was getting confused by all the numbers, but someone in some forum mentioned they did exactly what I wanted to do using blackra1n.

(To quote Samuel L. Jackson: "I hate this hacker crap.")

So I restored to 3.1.3, and tried to jailbreak with blackra1n. But it just hung. So I thought maybe I'd jailbreak with Spirit and then unlock with blackra1n. So Spirit jailbroke with no problem, and now I can't even remember why unlocking with blackra1n wasn't an option, so for whatever reason I installed ultrasn0w again. That was a few days ago, and today I took it to a Bell store, they popped in a SIM, and within seconds it had a Bell signal.

So long story short: I did exactly what I did the first time it didn't work and now it worked—totally painless (the second time). Hopefully it's still working when I hand it over to my mom. And I've run out of energy to bother trying to get my $35 back. Life lesson.

By the way, how is iPhone on Verizon? Is it fine? I went to my 3rd NBA game this week where I literally had no cell phone connection from the time I entered the downtown of the city until I got home. It's just ridiculous. I'm thinking of finally leaving AT&T.

DSGamer wrote:

By the way, how is iPhone on Verizon? Is it fine? I went to my 3rd NBA game this week where I literally had no cell phone connection from the time I entered the downtown of the city until I got home. It's just ridiculous. I'm thinking of finally leaving AT&T.

That seems very odd to me. I've always had decent reception in the Portland downtown area with an iPhone 4 on AT&T. There are a couple spots here and there where streaming video can be a little troublesome, but other than that, I haven't had any problems. I should mention also, that I live really close to the Rose Garden and pass by there every day with reception on my phone.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

By the way, how is iPhone on Verizon? Is it fine? I went to my 3rd NBA game this week where I literally had no cell phone connection from the time I entered the downtown of the city until I got home. It's just ridiculous. I'm thinking of finally leaving AT&T.

That seems very odd to me. I've always had decent reception in the Portland downtown area with an iPhone 4 on AT&T. There are a couple spots here and there where streaming video can be a little troublesome, but other than that, I haven't had any problems. I should mention also, that I live really close to the Rose Garden and pass by there every day with reception on my phone.

It's not so much a downtown Portland problem. Although I work in the burbs and have less anecdotal data on that. I have had an iPhone for years and had very little trouble downtown. There are, however, spots throughout the metro area (including my home) where I can guarantee that calls will be dropped consistently.

Really, though, this is more about events. Almost every event I have attended in the Portland metro area since owning an iPhone has been major fail on AT&T's part. Oregon Ducks football games, Blazers games, concerts, it doesn't matter. If there are a bunch of people in one place AT&T dies for me completely.

DSGamer wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

By the way, how is iPhone on Verizon? Is it fine? I went to my 3rd NBA game this week where I literally had no cell phone connection from the time I entered the downtown of the city until I got home. It's just ridiculous. I'm thinking of finally leaving AT&T.

That seems very odd to me. I've always had decent reception in the Portland downtown area with an iPhone 4 on AT&T. There are a couple spots here and there where streaming video can be a little troublesome, but other than that, I haven't had any problems. I should mention also, that I live really close to the Rose Garden and pass by there every day with reception on my phone.

It's not so much a downtown Portland problem. Although I work in the burbs and have less anecdotal data on that. I have had an iPhone for years and had very little trouble downtown. There are, however, spots throughout the metro area (including my home) where I can guarantee that calls will be dropped consistently.

Really, though, this is more about events. Almost every event I have attended in the Portland metro area since owning an iPhone has been major fail on AT&T's part. Oregon Ducks football games, Blazers games, concerts, it doesn't matter. If there are a bunch of people in one place AT&T dies for me completely.

Yeah, it must be the large amounts of people all in one place that is the problem. I tend to avoid lots of people in one place, so that could explain why I don't generally have problems.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
DSGamer wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

By the way, how is iPhone on Verizon? Is it fine? I went to my 3rd NBA game this week where I literally had no cell phone connection from the time I entered the downtown of the city until I got home. It's just ridiculous. I'm thinking of finally leaving AT&T.

That seems very odd to me. I've always had decent reception in the Portland downtown area with an iPhone 4 on AT&T. There are a couple spots here and there where streaming video can be a little troublesome, but other than that, I haven't had any problems. I should mention also, that I live really close to the Rose Garden and pass by there every day with reception on my phone.

It's not so much a downtown Portland problem. Although I work in the burbs and have less anecdotal data on that. I have had an iPhone for years and had very little trouble downtown. There are, however, spots throughout the metro area (including my home) where I can guarantee that calls will be dropped consistently.

Really, though, this is more about events. Almost every event I have attended in the Portland metro area since owning an iPhone has been major fail on AT&T's part. Oregon Ducks football games, Blazers games, concerts, it doesn't matter. If there are a bunch of people in one place AT&T dies for me completely.

Yeah, it must be the large amounts of people all in one place that is the problem. I tend to avoid lots of people in one place, so that could explain why I don't generally have problems. :P

The thing that really has me down is that I've experienced this on New Years in New Orleans and in New York City (any time). So basically what's happening is that I'm being trained that when I might need to make an emergency call the most my phone isn't going to work for me.

Gravey wrote:

iPhone DIY unlocking update

Jeez, I'm sorry that you had so much trouble. When I have had trouble with jbs before, I have always restored to stock and then started again. When I did my iPad recently, it took 2 efforts, but it has held fine ever since.

spider_j wrote:
Gravey wrote:

iPhone DIY unlocking update

Jeez, I'm sorry that you had so much trouble. When I have had trouble with jbs before, I have always restored to stock and then started again. When I did my iPad recently, it took 2 efforts, but it has held fine ever since.

It took a lot of time, but the actual headache of the unlocking process wasn't that bad. Having to take the time to go out to a store to see if it worked magnified that headache, but that's how it goes. All told, I'm happy it's working now.

Final iPhone update:

Handed the phone over to my mom last week, and she is now the proud if somewhat bewildered owner of a totally functioning unlocked iPhone 3G. Not to be outdone, my dad got a text from his carrier saying that he could get a 3GS for $0 with a three-year contract. Yesterday he was showing off his new phone. So everyone's happy.

Gravey wrote:

iPhone DIY unlocking update:

So the other week I re-downgraded to 3.1.3, jailbroke it with Spirit, and unlocked it with ultrasn0w, the version that works for baseband 06.15.00 (my 3G's BB version). The next time I saw my parents, we went over to a Bell store, had a SIM popped in and... no service. Unlock didn't take. I tried deleting ultrasn0w and installing it again, went to another Bell store and still no luck.

So I read as much as I could for a week, worked on it a little, went on vacation, came back and worked on it some more. I thought maybe the Korean guy was on to something: that 06.15.00 baseband will only work with iOS 4.1. So I held off on calling Rogers until I knew for sure. But more Googling suggested that 06.15.00 will unlock on 3.1.3. Now I was getting confused by all the numbers, but someone in some forum mentioned they did exactly what I wanted to do using blackra1n.

(To quote Samuel L. Jackson: "I hate this hacker crap.")

So I restored to 3.1.3, and tried to jailbreak with blackra1n. But it just hung. So I thought maybe I'd jailbreak with Spirit and then unlock with blackra1n. So Spirit jailbroke with no problem, and now I can't even remember why unlocking with blackra1n wasn't an option, so for whatever reason I installed ultrasn0w again. That was a few days ago, and today I took it to a Bell store, they popped in a SIM, and within seconds it had a Bell signal.

So long story short: I did exactly what I did the first time it didn't work and now it worked—totally painless (the second time). Hopefully it's still working when I hand it over to my mom. And I've run out of energy to bother trying to get my $35 back. Life lesson.

glad to hear you got the software unlock sorted out. Being in Canada all carriers offer hardware unlocks for $50 now. A bit more steep, but you dont have to worry about updating through itunes when new OSes comes out. The carriers might hum and haw over performing the unlock, but it is possible.

Has anyone here made the switch *away* from iPhone? I'm contemplating it. I hate the idea of giving up on my iPod in the pocket all the time. But I'm also hating the constant dropped calls and the dead spots, including large public gatherings. It's tempting to go pay less money for a free Android phone on Sprint.

Or has anyone made the lateral move to Verizon? Did things get any better?

DSGamer wrote:

Has anyone here made the switch *away* from iPhone? I'm contemplating it. I hate the idea of giving up on my iPod in the pocket all the time. But I'm also hating the constant dropped calls and the dead spots, including large public gatherings. It's tempting to go pay less money for a free Android phone on Sprint.

Or has anyone made the lateral move to Verizon? Did things get any better?

I'll be switching to Android when my contract is up June 20th. I'm fed up with both AT&T and Apple at this point.

DSGamer wrote:

Has anyone here made the switch *away* from iPhone? I'm contemplating it. I hate the idea of giving up on my iPod in the pocket all the time. But I'm also hating the constant dropped calls and the dead spots, including large public gatherings. It's tempting to go pay less money for a free Android phone on Sprint.

Or has anyone made the lateral move to Verizon? Did things get any better?

My Verizon iPhone will be here on Wednesday. From what I've read and from what friends have said, call quality in the NYC area (and most other cities) is much better on Verizon than ATT. I guess I'll find out for myself in a few days.

For what its worth: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/te...

Interesting. I'm going to go to Verizon today and talk to someone about their offerings. I prefer to stick with the iOS platform and cost isn't an issue. I can afford to take the hit. I can't afford for my wife to call me with an emergency while I'm at a Blazers or Ducks or Beavers game or for us to get split up while visiting New Orleans, NYC or San Fran and be unable to reach each other.

Well, I guess I can serve as a cautionary tale to people attempting this switch. I did this yesterday. If you upgraded your AT&T iPhone to iOS 4.3 and you try to restore your new Verizon iPhone from backup it won't work. This may not seem like a big deal, but if you're like me you bought into Apple hardware because of ease of use. Because I wanted to stop fiddling with my phone and just use it. A big part of this has been that I haven't had to reconfigure my phone from scratch since my first iPhone 3G. I had to do it again last night and this morning because iTunes won't restore an iOS 4.3 backup to a phone that's running iOS 4.2 (Verizon hasn't gotten 4.3 yet). So I'll be spending a lot of today going through Kayak, TripIt and every other application on my phone trying to remember passwords so I can set those up. Nevermind that all text messages are lost.

I thought splintering the OS was just for Android.

[edit] Oops.. you're trying to downgrade, not upgrade. That makes sense. 4.3 changes the way that the location services cache is handled regarding backups. The new backup likely isn't compatible with older versions of the OS, and since the OS is older it can't even be made aware of the change.

Yeah. The big crime isn't that Apple doesn't make backwards compatible backups. It would be nice if I could import/export my text messages in a text file, but whatever. The bigger crime is that Verizon isn't on 4.3. Seems like a huge oversight if you possibly have a bunch of people switching.

Yeah that's a bit weird. It doesn't seem like there should be anything carrier-specific in the new release.