My iPhone, Without AT&T

iPhone on T-MobileI 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.

  1. 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)
  2. Simulated iTunes activating the iPhone by using iNdependence.
  3. Jail-broke the iPhone, and opened an SSH connection.
  4. Installed iPhoneSimFree on the iPhone via SSH.
  5. 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.
  6. Removed SimFree.app from the iPhone, and began making calls.
  7. One setting did need to be changed to use the EDGE network though:
    1. Went to Settings > General > Network > EDGE
    2. Changed the APN to internet2.voicestream.com (depending on the area of the country you are in this URL may vary).
    3. 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.