iPhone 3G Activation and Advice

[forthelulz]

I was recently given an iPhone 3G by someone living in Canada who upgraded to the iPhone 4. I live in the U.S. and when I got it all of the settings were for Canada. I restored the phone back to factory defaults, but I then got an activation error saying that there wasn’t a SIM installed. I am an AT&T customer so I tried switching SIM’S but it would not activate via iTunes. My question is this, will this phone work here in the U.S., and if it will is there a way I can activate without a SIM card? I tried calling AT&T about it but they want me to fully switch over with a data plan and I am not ready to do that, if I even can. Any thoughts or ideas?

Tl;dr: will a Canadian iPhone work on AT&T in the states, and if it will, can I activate without a sim card?

 

[0007776]

It sounds like the phone you got is locked to a Canadian network, in which case it won't work on any other network. If this is the case then there are ways to unlock it, and there are a lot of other threads explaining that process already. If the phone is already unlocked then it shouldn't matter which country it was from originally and it should work in the US.

 

[forthelulz]

I went ahead and performed a jailbreak on it using redsn0w. I guess I need to "hacktivate" it, but all of the methods to do so require me to download the cydia app, but I cant get past the iTunes activation. If there are any threads that explain my situation I would be grateful for a link.

 

[awadeee]

I went ahead and performed a jailbreak on it using redsn0w. I guess I need to "hacktivate" it, but all of the methods to do so require me to download the cydia app, but I cant get past the iTunes activation. If there are any threads that explain my situation I would be grateful for a link.

Hactivation allows you to bypass iTunes activation and see the homescreen. Redsn0w does that automatically. To be able to use your AT&T SIM, you will need to unlock the phone. If your baseband is 5.13.04 or lower, you can do so simply by installing Ultrasn0w from Cydia. If your baseband is higher, you will need to install the iPad baseband using Redsn0w and then installing Ultrasn0w from Cydia.

 

[forthelulz]

I heard that redsn0w automatically hacktivates it so i can go to the home screen, but im still stuck on the no sim screen. I tried searching the forum but is there a complete guide that shows a step by step upgrade if im using Windows? For what its worth, I only really want to use it as an iPod, AT&T pissed me off to no end today.