iPhone and Honda Civic

Both have a high resale value. Now, when I have been given freedom by AT&T from their outrageous 2 years contract with expensive data plan, I did the Math first thing. I paid them almost seventeen hundred dollars over two years while on average used 200 min of voice and 200 MB of data per month. They need phone users like us. Before I could test some of the best Android phones in the market, I decided to give myself a break and decided to switch to pay as you go T-Mobile plan. However, I did not want to loose the best thing that my iPhone offered me- my contacts and the awesome touch screen ease of use. So I decided to jailbreak and unlock my iPhone and use the T-Mobile pay as you go service on my phone itself. At first it sounded challenging and risky (the fact that my 3GS could become unusable) but I wanted to give it a try anyway. It is not as difficult as you might think. I am going to share my jailbreaking and unlocking experience with you. 

Things to remember:

1. Do not upgrade your iPhone to the latest OS release by Apple. This will upgrade your phone firmware (also known as baseband) to the latest. Remember hackers need some time to find the vulnerability and come up on patches. 
2. Whatever instruction you are following, follow it strictly. If it says use Administrator account to run something, you really got to login as Administrator and run that software.

Here is how the process works. There is a famous redsn0w software floating around internet for every release of iPhone OS which guides you to get your iPhone in the DFU (Device Firmware Update) mode so that your iPhone can ineract with iTune software without iTunes automatically loading latest version of firmware. DFU mode is different that Recovery mode. Once the phone is in DFU mode, redsn0w software starts jailbreaking process by installing iPad baseband and Cydia app store. During the process you will see Pineapple logo (if you see original apple logo then your phone never went to DFU mode) and reboots after installing cydia.

At this point phone is jail broken. This means you can run cydia app. Once cydia starts, you cna find ultrasn0w software which unlocks your phone. For simplicity I will list steps as below (for 3GS phone):

1. Search for redsn0w application for windows on google and download (named as redsn0w_win_0.9.6rc19.zip  for the baseband 6.19 ) and save it in a folder of your choice
2. Search for iOS (named iPhone2,1_4.3.3_8J2_Restore.ipsw) restore software for your version and save in the same folder.
3. Login as physical id "Administrator" on your laptop and run redsn0w application. 
4. Show the path to the ipsw file -> it will verify and prompt you for next action.
5. Choose iPad baseband install and cydia on the option page
6. At this stage you have to follow exactly as it prompts for taking the phone into DFU mode. You can repeat the process if you missed something.
7. Phone should reboot itself after it successfully jailbreaks. Don't worry if it gets stuck. Sometime you have to be patient and repeat the process. 
8. Once it restarts open cydia and search for ultrasn0w app. start the app and it will unlock the phone.
9. Insert your simcard and enjoy the freedom.

By the way, I do not use data plan anymore. I get wireless connection at home as well as work and utilize that for free. So far, I am happy using a prepaid 100 dollar T-Mobile card with one year validity with one thousand minutes and did I say T-Mobile has more bars than ATT in the valley, on the hills and else where.