A few weeks ago I bought an iPhone 3G for $125 off craigslist and used it for a while with a GoPhone SIM, but I decided it's far too slow for my purposes, which is development. Today I bought a iPhone 3GS for $70, plus my iPhone 3G. The guy said he'd been "having trouble" with it, but I decided to take it "in the condition it was in", which was a really bad idea in my 20-20 hindsight.
Basically, it couldn't read my SIM card. It was at the Emergency Call screen. I restored it. Same thing. I restored it. Same thing. I pwned it. Same thing. I pwned and hacktivated it. Same thing. I put 4.0.2 on it. Same thing. Each time I'm at the Emergency Call screen and it shows up as an iPhone in recovery mode in iTunes.
Okay, obviously it's a hardware issue, so I go to the Apple Store. The Genius searches everywhere with her little flashlight to make sure it's not water damaged (which thankfully, it wasn't) and proceeds to tell me that the error is possibly caused by some lint in the dock connecter. Obviously the dock connector has no bearing on it reading a SIM card, but I'm playing along at this point.
She comes back and we have the same issue. Going forward, she pulls the SIM tray out of the phone and looks up the serial number. It's an iPhone 3G, out of warranty. Wait a minute, it's obviously not a 3G. She tells me that she can't verify the serial number without the SIM tray from the phone or the phone being recognized by iTunes, and I need to call AT&T to see what they can do for me (WTF?).
At this point I apologize that I'm about to make it difficult, and tell her that I have a utility on my MacBook that can kick it out of recovery mode (TinyUmbrella), and it will then show up in the developer tools. She does what a good employee would do before allowing a customer to run a jailbreak utility in-store in front of a bunch of customers, and runs to the back to ask for permission. Apparently she explained the entire situation to her manager, because she came out and said she was going to take my phone and remove the screen to get the serial number.
She disappears with my phone again and comes back 5-10 minutes later with my phone and a black box, containing a brand new iPhone 3GS. I sign initial here and here, sign and date here and here, and then I am handed my new phone.
TL;DR: The bottom line is that Apple's customer care is the gold standard. I paid $195 for a cell phone, out of contract, that retailed for $199 with a 2 year contract only a few months ago. My only regret is that the new phone came with 4.0.2 so I can't use the T-Mobile SIM that's arriving in the mail tomorrow until 4.0.2 or 4.1 is jailbroken, but we're obviously counting days on that one since the dev team is great.
EDIT -
Anyone know of an unlock for 4.0.2?
Basically, it couldn't read my SIM card. It was at the Emergency Call screen. I restored it. Same thing. I restored it. Same thing. I pwned it. Same thing. I pwned and hacktivated it. Same thing. I put 4.0.2 on it. Same thing. Each time I'm at the Emergency Call screen and it shows up as an iPhone in recovery mode in iTunes.
Okay, obviously it's a hardware issue, so I go to the Apple Store. The Genius searches everywhere with her little flashlight to make sure it's not water damaged (which thankfully, it wasn't) and proceeds to tell me that the error is possibly caused by some lint in the dock connecter. Obviously the dock connector has no bearing on it reading a SIM card, but I'm playing along at this point.
She comes back and we have the same issue. Going forward, she pulls the SIM tray out of the phone and looks up the serial number. It's an iPhone 3G, out of warranty. Wait a minute, it's obviously not a 3G. She tells me that she can't verify the serial number without the SIM tray from the phone or the phone being recognized by iTunes, and I need to call AT&T to see what they can do for me (WTF?).
At this point I apologize that I'm about to make it difficult, and tell her that I have a utility on my MacBook that can kick it out of recovery mode (TinyUmbrella), and it will then show up in the developer tools. She does what a good employee would do before allowing a customer to run a jailbreak utility in-store in front of a bunch of customers, and runs to the back to ask for permission. Apparently she explained the entire situation to her manager, because she came out and said she was going to take my phone and remove the screen to get the serial number.
She disappears with my phone again and comes back 5-10 minutes later with my phone and a black box, containing a brand new iPhone 3GS. I sign initial here and here, sign and date here and here, and then I am handed my new phone.
TL;DR: The bottom line is that Apple's customer care is the gold standard. I paid $195 for a cell phone, out of contract, that retailed for $199 with a 2 year contract only a few months ago. My only regret is that the new phone came with 4.0.2 so I can't use the T-Mobile SIM that's arriving in the mail tomorrow until 4.0.2 or 4.1 is jailbroken, but we're obviously counting days on that one since the dev team is great.
EDIT -
Anyone know of an unlock for 4.0.2?
