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Using an iPhone 4 without the phone... possible?

J

JoelTGM

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 26, 2010
30
0
I want to use my iPhone 4 as an iPod (wanted the excellent camera combined with it's other media playing capabilities) and not use the phone part at all. So is there a hack out there that simply activates the device for good, and all updates are safe? Or do I have to keep doing these jailbreaks for each update?

and sorry for the dumb questions I am like 1 hour new to iphones and barely understand this stuff, but I jailbroke it with greenpois0n so far, but am of course afraid to update to the new OS (4.2 I think).
 
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wait wait, what if I put a telus sim card in this iphone to activate it, then pulled the sim card out? Or if I got some kind of inexpensive contract with telus, so I could have a sim card, and then when it ends I could just use it like usual? I read that it disables the phone obviously, but the wifi as well... which I'm cool with because then I could just use my laptop to update apps and stuff and sync it, I never use the device to browse the web. Any recommendations for accomplishing this in the cheapest way possible?
 
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you can use it as a touch if you are not under a paid contract if you want a very expensive Touch go for it. and Jailbreaks are fixed by Apple all the time so every time a new firmware comes out you must rejailbreak. there are some stickies up top that will help you understand. but really sound like you should have bought a touch!
 
labman said:
you can use it as a touch if you are not under a paid contract if you want a very expensive Touch go for it. and Jailbreaks are fixed by Apple all the time so every time a new firmware comes out you must rejailbreak. there are some stickies up top that will help you understand. but really sound like you should have bought a touch!
Click to expand...

yes it is a very expensive touch, but the new ipod touch has a terrible camera, and so I want to use the iphone as an ipod so I can listen to music while cycling, but then at any time take it out and snap a very nice photograph. I can't take digital cameras with me on rides, but I LOVE to take pictures, so this works for me. I want to somehow activate it and make it work, even if it disables the wifi.
also I bought it used so I don't have a sim card at all that came with the phone.
 
ok I've heard you can use cheap pre-paid sim cards, so tomorrow I will attempt this. Hopefully Telus does this, and hopefully it's a casual thing that doesn't involve me having to register crap. if it's a hassle then i will just use the jailbreak, all it means is i have to wait longer to update the phone as hackers make new solutions.
 
must say I am not a fan of requiring one to "reactivate" for every update

Why do they do this? I mean you could be past your contract, moved to a different carrier and now the device is rendered useless unless you hacktivate it or know someone with a sim
 
i thought the touch had the same camera capabilities. maybe ive been looking at the wrong product information pages.

a gross waste of money my friend but there is nothing wrong with using the phone that way. it does not need a sim to work. too bad you dont wish to use the phone features like TEXTING those pictures from anywhere (you have a signal).
 
JoelTGM said:
ok I've heard you can use cheap pre-paid sim cards, so tomorrow I will attempt this. Hopefully Telus does this, and hopefully it's a casual thing that doesn't involve me having to register crap. if it's a hassle then i will just use the jailbreak, all it means is i have to wait longer to update the phone as hackers make new solutions.
Click to expand...

I haven't done it myself...but I'm pretty sure that it works. You probably just need to:
1) find (borrow?) a microSIM and slip it into your iPhone.
2) take the microSIM out and it's an iPod touch now!

The only thing is that you need to get the iPhone OUT OF CONTRACT or else you're paying for a service that you're not using.

Hope this helps!
 
does the sim need to be active or does it just need to be an att sim? in otherwords, would a sim from an expired contract(as many iphone owners have) still activate the device if the owner wants to continue to use the device as an ipod?
 
coochiekuta said:
i thought the touch had the same camera capabilities. maybe ive been looking at the wrong product information pages.

a gross waste of money my friend but there is nothing wrong with using the phone that way. it does not need a sim to work. too bad you dont wish to use the phone features like TEXTING those pictures from anywhere (you have a signal).
Click to expand...

No the ipod 4 actually has a 0.69 mega pixel camera. It is really thin and can't fit anything like the iphone 4 camera. Also the ipod camera has a fixed focus, there is no tap to focus or auto focus, there is also no flash, and the field of view is smaller. I bought this iphone 4 used so yeah it's expensive to use as just an ipod, but not as bad as one might think, and I have my reasons.

here's two comparison shots by the way (taken at the same distance).
http://static.arstechnica.com/ipod/ipod4_susies_night.jpg
http://static.arstechnica.com/ipod/iphone4_susies_night.jpg
 
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dukebound85 said:
must say I am not a fan of requiring one to "reactivate" for every update

Why do they do this? I mean you could be past your contract, moved to a different carrier and now the device is rendered useless unless you hacktivate it or know someone with a sim
Click to expand...

hm, so wait, if I were to use a sim card to activate the device once, but then remove the sim card or let it expire, it would lock the device after I updated it? if I got that correct, then doing these jailbreaks is definitely the only way to go. I'm fine if I have to be on a slightly out of date OS.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-gb) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

With an unlocked iPhone there is no real activation process. You do need to connect
the phone to iTunes, but it "activates" right away.
 
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