subject: Want to Unlock an iPhone? These Tips Show You How (for free!) [print this page] Want to Unlock an iPhone? These Tips Show You How (for free!)
Let's face it, the iphone is cool. But if you don't use at&t or don't want to use them how do you fix the iphone so that it works with your cell phone carrier?
In this case you aren't fixing that iphone. You are unlocking it. You can also "jailbreaking" it but we'll get to that in a minute.
Try to look this up and you'll find tons (and I mean tons) of sites offering to sell you some software that will unlock the iphone. Some of those guys are selling the stuff for $100 or more. But with a little time on your hands and a little effort, you may be able to unlock that iphone for free!
I don't know about you, but I can always find some extra time to use Big G when it means saving a hundred bucks or more.
Unlocking cell phones is nothing new. With most of them you just pop out the sim card and put the sim card from your current or old cell phone in it. Voila! that spiffy cell phone that you've been lusting after will now work with your current carrier.
Too bad it's not quite that easy with the iphone anymore.
But if will spend a little time searching through the Big G (yes, we mean google) you can find everything you need to unlock that iphone for free.
How this works is that you'll download an application to your computer, connect your iphone to the computer, install this bit of code, restart your phone and *BOOM* unlocked iphone.
What is really beautiful about this is that it is totally un-doable. That means if you get nervous about doing the unlock or if you don't find that it's useful to you, or whatever, you can simply remove that little bit of code and you're back to the way you were, no harm no foul.
"Jailbreaking" is a little different.
I'm not going to go into too much detail about that right not, but jailbreaking is when you free you iphone from the restrictions that at&t and verizon have put on it. For most of us, that means that we can use some of the really cool 3rd party apps that these 2 carriers don't have available. You can also do more with ringtones, change the skins, etc.
So, some kinda cool stuff comes as a result of jailbreaking.
And before you get to wondering, the process of jailbreaking can be as simple as the process to unlock the iphone. It can also be free as well if you will take the time to use Big G to your advantage and do a bit of searching.
There are quite a few developers out there that have the free applications available. I know a few so I don't want to recommend a particular one. But do just a little homework and I GUARANTEE you'll find the free stuff. None of it requires a degree in computer science and it all works pretty quickly.
Oh yeah, and you can find it for Mac, PC and for Linux!
