
The $23/month iPhone - vaksel
http://mediumjones.com/my-23month-iphone/249
======
randallsquared
I tried this _kind_ of thing last November when I bought my G1, putting it on
a GoPhone account instead of using t-mobile. The biggest problem I had was the
lack of 3G (which is t-mobile only on the G1), since once in a while my phone
would decide it needed to download, for example, an update, and there went all
my bandwidth and all my minutes, too (and I was never allowed to get 100MB for
$20; the most I could ever get was 10M for $15). So, last month, I broke down
and went with a month-to-month plan at t-mobile, and since I can get unlimited
data while paying the same as I was paying on a GoPhone account, I'm happy,
and I don't have to nervously check my minutes every day and put my phone into
airplane mode near the end of the month, etc.

If you really don't have the money, this could be worth it, but a similar
thing was months of stress for very little savings, for me.

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dkokelley
Some friends of mine (and myself) had a different approach. 5 of us all have
iPhones sharing 1400 minutes, unlimited data and texts for $62/month/person.
It's 5 guys who aren't big talkers and with rollover we never come close to
running out of minutes (we could probably step down in minutes but we keep
them just in case).

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rscott
Hello $23/month iPhone, meet my normally priced iPhone that has functionality.

I mean this is novel and could have its uses, but most people would want data
for the additional $20/100MB and throw in some more for texts, and at that
rate you're pretty much at normal prices.

~~~
potatolicious
When I had my iPhone 2G on a data plan I was burning through a clean 1GB a
month without even trying (the Maps feature is pretty killer)... This plan
would not hold up for anyone who wanted to make real use of the data features.

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andyking
This doesn't seem very special. Where I live, you could put a pay-as-you-go
SIM card from O2 (the iPhone's network, so no unlocking needed) into your
phone and add "unlimited" internet access for about £7 a month.

I don't have an iPhone, but I buy a £10 (~$15) top-up monthly, which gives me
300 free SMS messages. Then I use £7 of that top-up to pay for the monthly
internet add-on. I have £3 left for calls and other random usage and if I need
more, I just add more that month.

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christofd
or you just use a so-called turbo sim card that tricks the phone permanently
into thinking it's on the ATT network. then you don't need to do any software
hacks later on (or be shut down by future updates from apple):
[http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2007/08/turbo-sim-add-
on-a...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2007/08/turbo-sim-add-on-allows-
full-iphone-unlocking.ars)

~~~
zain
Did you actually RTFA? Or, even the article you posted? From your link: _"The
unlocking process is still a bit complicated and requires SSH on your iPhone"_

So you still have to jailbreak your phone. And really, this article is only
tangentially related to jailbreaking. It's about using the iPhone with Skype
and a GoPhone plan.

~~~
christofd
No the article's title is how to use an iphone for 23 bucks a month and not
how to use an iphone with skype.

Being able to insert a pay-as-you-go SIM card is front and central to the plan
here, or you are forced into a full cellphone plan. That implies either the
turbo sim card hack or a soft unlock.

Further, insinuating that i have not read the article or neither the link that
i have posted is quite annoying. The topic is not easily answered, because
with Firmware upgrades by Apple it's a cat-and-mouse game. Over a longer
period, the most quoted solution that I have read about is the Turbo SIM hack.

The Turbo SIM card hack was popular with first generation iPhones (and made
big press in previous years; I recall the company Bladox from Czech Rep. was
featured a lot). That's about when I read up on this topic. Recently though,
it stopped working with the Firmware 2.2, which is when this software hack
from Yellow Sn0w worked... with 2.2.1 and beyond soft unlock doesn't work
anymore, and it's apparently back to turbo sim - see:
[http://www.edmartechguide.com/2009/03/research-before-you-
up...](http://www.edmartechguide.com/2009/03/research-before-you-update-your-
iphone.html)

For further info, from iPhone Hacks, O'Reilly, April 2009:

Hack 47. Unlock Your iPhone with a SIM Hack

\---------------

You can use a locked phone on a different carrier with a physical hack to the
SIM card.

As mentioned in Section 45, the second method of the anySIM software hack
changed the baseband so that any MCC/MNC pair (used to identify a cell
network) portion of the phone's IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber
Identity) would appear to be a valid pair. Even if you can't successfully hack
the baseband—for instance, on a 3G iPhone—there is a hardware method for doing
the same thing.

As there already existed a large market for unlocking phones prior to the
iPhone, many companies were already producing solutions for hacking SIM cards.
Bladox, a Czech Republic–based SIM test tool manufacturer, introduced the
Turbo-SIM in 2004. This clever device consisted of a thin circuit board shaped
like a SIM card, and a tiny microcontroller (Figure 7-8). By cutting a tiny
square out of the plastic casing of the SIM card (which did not affect the SIM
card's normal functioning), the Turbo-SIM could piggyback the SIM card,
intercept its communication with the phone, and mediate between the two to
make sure they "agreed."

SIM card sandwich hacks of this nature were some of the most consistently
effective for first-generation iPhones, and are currently the only effective
solutions for iPhone 3G hacking. As with many hacking solutions, a game of
cat-and-mouse has ensued, and many of these SIM piggyback cards ceased to work
when firmware 2.2 was released for the iPhone. Because the piggyback SIM has a
reprogrammable microcontroller, they can be upgraded with new firmware (with
the right programming equipment) to work around new problems.

\---------------------

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raquo
Could someone please explain me what's worth 50 points in this article?
Millions of people worldwide unlocked their 2G iPhones to pay less or to use
their service provider. There isn't _anything_ new or interesting in it.

