Video: An iPhone without the phone (or the contract)
Erica Sadun at The Unofficial Apple Weblog has a handy little tip on how to transform your iPhone into a Wi-Fi-enabled iPod.
It involves signing up for the iPhone prepaid option, activating the iPhone, doing a bit of SIM-card fu, canceling the payment plan, and then enjoying the iPhone's iPod and Wi-Fi functions without the contract.
Sadun's instructions, tests, and results are here.
Update: Tom Merritt tested this out, "borrowing" Jasmine France's iPhone, and it worked smoothly for him. Watch his Insider Secrets video above to see that SIM trick and other SIM-swapping advice for the iPhone.
Jasmine has yet to report whether she received her iPhone back. I'll update this page as soon as that happens.
Update 2: Jasmine received her iPhone back, and then returned it to Kent German's office. All is well.
Update 3: Jasmine France reports that it wasn't her iPhone, and she ain't even tryna hear all that iPhone noise. Pssht.
%20%7C%20Crave%20-%20CNET&srcUrl=http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9739347-1.html){kind=small}
Yeah, yeah...it's very sleek and stylish and has a fantastic looking interface, but I'm holding out for a second-gen and an unlocked option, thankyouverymuch.
Sorry but buying an iPhone for all it's functionalities is much better than MANY other things out there.
2) Touch screen? Over-hyped marketing. No real advantage to a touch screen...oh wait...you do get fingerprints on it and increase the chances of scratches...thats something for you
3) Camera on the PSP? Got it....yea, thats right genius...the PSP does support a camera, so take your 2MP camera phone and get lost. Anyone who uses their cell phone as a camera should be beaten with it. 2MP is absolutely nothing and is worthless except for posting really bad pictures on myspace.
4) Internet experience is the same if not better on the PSP. How? Well, lets see, at least PSP supports java....oh you didnt know that the iPhone doesnt support Java, which is used by the majority of the internet? Have fun surfing around on the 10% of the internet that the iPhone can actually handle.
5) iPhone is nothing more than a hyped up iPod with crappy phone service. It has crap storage compared to a true iPod (yea, what I really want is 8GB versus 30GB I have in my 5G iPod), has features that I already have on my more powerful PDA (inferior processor is found in the iPod), and the best part...runs on the worst cell phone network there is.
iPhone....good choice...for uneducated people who like marketing gimmicks and dont bother to do their research before buying new technology.
You are a poster boy for Apple's fanboy club.
But the thing is I don't want either right now as there will eventually be a better package for both in the future for much less money, and more features. It may take a year (or two) for Apple to provide more and improved features on what it already has.
The PSP (I hope) will get redesigned (like the PS2 with the slim version) in the future with it having better controls with the joystick and d-pad away from each other instead of being cramped onto one side or change the d-pad to a joystick.
- Nothing new here & no tricks
- by drkdaedvn July 7, 2007 10:04 PM PDT
- Wow, CNET editors are not good, sorry:
- Like this Reply to this comment
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- by alexisj11 August 31, 2009 6:20 AM PDT
- Wondering if you can help me out...
- Like this
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(10 Comments)1. All AT&T phones have 3G sim cards, is so in the future if a customer were
to upgrade their phone to a phone a 3G phone, AT&T wont have to take $36
dollars out of their pocket (retail price of sim card) to give them another sim
card. And customers keep their sim card because all contacts are stored on
the card (expect iphone sim card)
2. Duh, the phone works when you take the sim card out, you already
activated it with the sim car already in it. Did the phone work with no sim
card before you activated it?
3. Sim swapping has been going on since AT&T/Cingular/Pacific Bell(not sure
about the last name) started.
P.S. when you say "Same Number" , you say it as a really cool feature for the
iphone. But I been doing this since year 2000.
Overall nothing new in the video or top secret trick what so ever. waste of
time.
I'm getting the new iphone and want to give my old iPhone to my husband to use without the phone feature.
Any idea how the syncing works? I'd like to be able to put songs, podcasts, photos on the device.
Should I just use the same iTunes account or can he essentially wipe out the device and use his own iTunes account?
Thanks so much!