iPhone Beta Firmware on Factory Unlocked Phone?

[OCDMacGeek]

I'm in the iPhone Developer Program, and have access to beta firmware. However, I also have a factory unlocked iPhone 3GS that i got from Australia. It is important for me to have an unlocked phone, because I live in Montana where AT&T doesn't exist.

I'm worried that if I install beta firmware on the factory unlocked iPhone, I will lose the factory unlock. When the 3.0 beta was released, I vaguely remember reports that this happened.

Does anyone have any information on this?

 

[Applejuiced]

Why do you want to install beta firmware. Are you an app developer?
If not I wouldnt risk it.

 

[OCDMacGeek]

Why do you want to install beta firmware. Are you an app developer?
If not I wouldnt risk it.

Yes, I'm planning to develop some apps. My question is only related to whether or not the beta firmware will lock a factory unlocked phone. If it will ruin my factory unlocked phone, I will buy a used 3G to install the beta firmware (if any is even released).

 

[DAMNiatx]

where the link to beta firmware ?

 

[goosnarrggh]

where the link to beta firmware ?

Join Apple's iPhone SDK program.
Pay the fee to access on-phone debugging.
Whenever any betas of the iPhone OS become available for testing, and Apple deems you to be eligible to work with it, Apple will notify you.

 

[DAMNiatx]

Join Apple's iPhone SDK program.
Pay the fee to access on-phone debugging.
Whenever any betas of the iPhone OS become available for testing, and Apple deems you to be eligible to work with it, Apple will notify you.

what version is it ?

 

[OCDMacGeek]

Can anyone help me answer the original question? I would like to know if I can safely install the beta firmware on my factory unlocked iPhone (which I bought from Australia).

 

[Nermal]

You can safely install OS 4 on your phone without losing the unlock. Factory-unlocked phones are "unlocked for life", and no updates will re-lock them (after all, how would it "know" which operator it's supposed to be locked to?)

 

[thespazz]

Why don't you call Apple support and ask them? I don't see how this would be bad...

 

[mavis]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3GS (JB3.1, unlocked): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7D11 Safari/531.21.10)

Join Apple's iPhone SDK program.
Pay the fee to access on-phone debugging.
Whenever any betas of the iPhone OS become available for testing, and Apple deems you to be eligible to work with it, Apple will notify you.

what version is it ?

The first one is reportedly less buggy than the second. YMMV.

 

[kryten3000]

I have been wondering the same thing actually, and I appreciate the response from our Mod Nermal.
You see when the new phone comes out I am going to get mine from Hong Kong as soon as it is available there.
Besides this concern that has been brought up, is there anything else that I should take into consideration given how I am going about geting my unit?

 

[OCDMacGeek]

You can safely install OS 4 on your phone without losing the unlock. Factory-unlocked phones are "unlocked for life", and no updates will re-lock them (after all, how would it "know" which operator it's supposed to be locked to?)

Thank you very much for the response. Since this is such an important issue for me, could you confirm your source for the info? Have you done it yourself, or heard of it being done by others? I know that this is theoretically true, but I just want to make sure it is definitely true.

Thanks again.

 

[andybno1]

once your phone has been officially unlocked you don't lose the unlock , I have mine unlocked after paying O2 and beta firmware did not lock it, the OS itself would never lock the phone it's all done through iTunes.

iTunes contacts apple server, apple server comes back says iPhone is unlocked

 

[Kahnyl]

I've had more than one factory unlocked phone running beta releases. No problems at all with locking.

 

[OCDMacGeek]

Thanks. Off-topic from my original post, I would appreciate if someone could clarify a few things regarding beta firmware:

- I have seen passing remarks that one cannot backup app data to iTunes when using beta firmware. This would mean that every time you update to latest builds of firmware, you lose any app data. Is this true?

- When latest builds of beta firmware are released, do you have to do a full restore to update each time?

Thanks for the info.

 

[andybno1]

if you have a mac and install the SDK then you will be ok for backups.... backups are mainly effecting windows users with error sayin iPhone refused backup request