iphone help
 

Evening all

Its my birthday soon (25 again!) and the missus has mooted the idea of buying me an iphone.

So, my question is..is this just a tarts toy or are they actually any good ?

However, the bigger issue/question I have is that I am provided with with a works phone with T mobile service. Ive seen iphones offered 'unlocked' on ebay so does that mean I can just use my works phone sim card in it and away I go ? Internet access would be good but i am not that bothered..just the phone and and using it as an MP3 in the car would be great.

Sorry but as many people will tell you in here I am a bit simple when it comes to gadgetry !!!

Any advice appreciated (particularly with the point about using my works sim card in it)

Cheers
Nat

Sorry can't help wrt to sim card.

But otherwise I find the iPhone to be much more than a toy. More like an ultra portable computer. I've been using it as my business phone for 6 weeks now and for me it is brilliant at:
- syncing emails from 3 email accounts over the air
- syncing 3 calendars over the air
- browsing the Internet with a real web browser

and a lot more things, but not so important to me.

Haven't played with the SatNav yet, and haven't had time to load any music on it either. But ron that matter Last.fm works very well for me.

Plus, the apps store is huge.

And it finally runs Skype. Halleluia.

what puts me off an iphone is that data and wifi is only included from their hotspots so not part of the 'free' plan. Oh and yiou have to pay after 12 months for wifi...unless its changed

Data is included in every tariff and is unlimited on any service - Ordinary, Edge or 3G.
See: http://www.o2.co.uk/iphone/paymonthly#tab-panel0_tab1

You also get use of exclusive wifi hot-spots put up by o2; only registered phones can use these. There are plenty about in most towns.
See: http://consumero2.directoryconnection.com/

You can also make use of any Wifi connection that you have access to, eg at home.

I love it! Working in the garage while streaming Planet Rock, or watching live TV broadcasts from BBC1 or BBC2, or something I've missed on iPlayer!

Oh, it also makes calls too, apparently!

As Antony says, no and no. So get one :lol:

ar ok...just that whenever I look at the small print it says its free from their partners (forgot the name) and BT Openzone - roaming wifi/data download is not included

never owned a mobile, always had work one, on the lookout now for one and like the gadget element of Iphone and now the price is coming down. Think I may have to go into somewhere and ask :rolleyes:

I bought mine Unlocked from the UK http://www.iphoneunlockuk.com/ and it works on my sim card contract here in Denmark, the only normal suppleir over here has **** coverage so did not want to buy one from them with a contract, i like mine it does all the things i need it to and some i dont.

Have you figured out a way to synch with a Linux machine? None of the standard Linux music managers will work, e.g. Rhythmbox, and even under windows in a virtual machine (VirtualBox), some USB voodoo trickery prevents it from synching with iTunes.

Have you found a solution to this at all?

As I said I haven't tried to sync music with my laptop, so I'm afradi I can't help much at the mo.

I guess you've got an iPhone 3G, if not you should try that:
http://banshee-project.org/

The only issue you will probably have is unlocking it as you're current company T-Mobile contract probably won't include data or not lots of it so that's needs to be addressed. I doubt you can use the app store also but you might be able to via iTunes??

It's easy
 

For unlocking you need to do the following:

Ensure your phone is not upgraded beyond iPhone software 2.1 as it shifts the phone's baseband and it gets tricky to unlock.

Download QuickPWN. And run this on your computer. For some reason it is not happy with modern intel based Mac's but works on older Macs and PC's. This is what is known as 'Jailbreaking' This will enable you to download a whole range of free programs through it's inbuilt program called 'Cydia'.

OK, once you've jailbroken your phone you need to open Cydia and search for a program called 'yellowsn0w'. I haven't mis-typed it, it is a zero in there.

Run Yellowsn0w and as long as your sim does not have pin protection, put it in the phone and turn it off, turn it on again and within about 20 seconds you've just unlocked your phone.

Don't upgrade to the latest software version 2.2.1 as it will re-lock your phone.

There are a few hardware-based ways of unlocking your phone, but these are expensive.

Done it on 3 iPhone 3G's now, thank god for insurance as I have butter-fingers. At least I have now replaced the touchscreens for £30 and got everyone in the family a cheap, unlocked iPhone 16gb.

There is a load of web-forums dedicated to people doing this, who can help you, do a quick google search.

Jason

The problem with Banshee is Mono.

And at the moment I still have a first generation, non-3G iPhone.