Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Using iPhone 4 overseas?

sou1 so1di3r

sou1 so1di3r

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 26, 2008
779
13
Denver, CO
Ok, so I am going to be studying abroad next fall and was wanting to bring my iPhone 4 to use. I went to italy a few months ago for a little over a week and brought my iPhone to use solely as a camera. It worked great. I didn't get any cell service anywhere for some reason, but I wasn't really trying to use my phone so it didn't bother me. Airplane mode worked great.

But now I'm going to be living in London for 10 weeks and traveling around Europe (probably Paris, Ireland, Amsterdam, etc). I'm going to have to buy a phone as everyone in our program is required to have one, but my friend who lived in London last fall said there are shops you can take your iPhone and they will put a european sim card and make it work?

I've never jailbroken my phone and don't know how, or is that something they would do? Also, I know the iPhone 4 uses micro-sim cards, so I'm not sure what to do there.

Also, since I will have a new phone number and everything, is there a way to keep all my US contacts separate so that after I get back from London I can just sync up my phone and restore all my US phone numbers back to my address book?
 
The only way this will work is if your iPhone is unlocked, either from the factory, or if it's jailbroken and unlocked with ultrasn0w. If you're an AT&T customer in the US and didn't get it from Canada, Europe, or another country that sells the phone unlocked from the factory, your only hope is to still have the 01.59.00 baseband on your iPhone 4. That is currently the only baseband that can be unlocked by the ultrasn0w tool. To check your baseband, do the following:

Go to Settings -> General -> About. Scroll down until you see 'Modem Firmware'. If it's anything other than 01.59.00, you will not be able to unlock the phone. If that is the case, your best bet for phone service using your iPhone 4 in Europe will probably be a service like Skype.
 
Your iphone 4 needs to be jailbroken/unlocked in order for you to use it over there. Reception is great as I used mine in Paris/Dublin awhile back without any issues.

You need to check your baseband on your iPhone and see if it's unlockable. If it's 1.59 then you're good. If higher then you're out of luck. If you are able to unlock, then the SIM/MicroSIM thing can be resolved by either cutting down the foreign SIM you get over there or get a prepaid SIM from O2 or some other cell provider over there that sells the iPhone 4.

You could also pick up a cheap used AT&T phone from eBay/Craigslist and unlock it before you leave. AT&T will usually provide unlock codes for cheaper, non-Droid/Win7/iPhone phones if you call them up and give them your IMEI number. Process takes about 15 minutes and you're set.
 
Yeah my iPhone has Modem Firmware 04.10.01 so I'm out of luck? Damn I was really hoping to get this to work. I just got a bunch of great travel apps for london and was going to use my iPhone as my camera too :(


I guess I could technically buy an old iPhone 3GS or something and try to use that?
 
sou1 so1di3r said:
Yeah my iPhone has Modem Firmware 04.10.01 so I'm out of luck? Damn I was really hoping to get this to work. I just got a bunch of great travel apps for london and was going to use my iPhone as my camera too :(


I guess I could technically buy an old iPhone 3GS or something and try to use that?
Click to expand...

That might work, but you should do some research on that too, because while I think that all iPhone 3GS's can be unlocked, there are different methods for doing so based on the baseband and the bootrom version. eBay would be the best way to find unlocked phones for sale at a reasonable price.
 
Thanks guys, I'll keep looking into it.

But just to be sure, the ONLY way to unlock your phone is if that firmare is the 1.59? I don't know much about jailbreaking, but I thought they release new jailbreaks pretty quickly for each new update to iOS? But maybe these things are totally separate.
 
Jailbreaks and unlocks are completely separate so just because there's a new jailbreak out, doesn't mean there's also a new unlock out as well.

You could get a cheap 3G/3GS if you wanted (3G would probably be cheaper) however, since you're only going to be over there for a little bit, I'd suggest you just get a crappy AT&T handset and unlock it. You can still use/bring your iPhone 4 to use as a camera or whatever as well.
 
h1r0ll3r said:
Jailbreaks and unlocks are completely separate so just because there's a new jailbreak out, doesn't mean there's also a new unlock out as well.

You could get a cheap 3G/3GS if you wanted (3G would probably be cheaper) however, since you're only going to be over there for a little bit, I'd suggest you just get a crappy AT&T handset and unlock it. You can still use/bring your iPhone 4 to use as a camera or whatever as well.
Click to expand...

Yeah I'll probably end up doing this. I mean actually I'll probably just buy a regular pay as you go phone when I get to London if I can't use my iPhone.

Oh well :(

Thanks anyway guys!
 
I'm in much the same situation. But fortunately I still HAVE my old 3GS and it's unlocked. Thank God.
Now that I can't unlock my ip4 I'm not going to sell the 3GS.
 
You can always buy a 2G iPhone (4GB) on eBay. You can certainly find them for around $100 or cheaper. That is what I currently use when I travel abroad. Or if I don't want to give up my 4, I'll just use Skype (which is another option for you).
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8H7 Safari/6533.18.5)

sou1 so1di3r said:
Thanks guys, I'll keep looking into it.

But just to be sure, the ONLY way to unlock your phone is if that firmare is the 1.59? I don't know much about jailbreaking, but I thought they release new jailbreaks pretty quickly for each new update to iOS? But maybe these things are totally separate.
Click to expand...

"Jailbreaking" and "unlocking" are two totally different terms. People use them interchangeably so I understand your confusion, bu they shouldn't be mistaken for the same thing.

A jailbreak lets you phone be customized with non-Apple stuff: themes, apps, animations and other enhancements. Any iPhone can be jailbroken so you're right when you say that "they come out with a jailbreak for every new iOS firmware"

An unlock however literally unlocks your iPhone so that it can be used with any carrier in the world pretty much. I'm assuming you have an ATT iPhone (the GSM version of the iPhone or commonly known as 'the one with the sim card in it') so unlocking it would help you use it anywhere in the world since 99% of the rest of the world runs on GSM.

Now, you're specific problem is the baseband. Unfortunately, you have the 04.10.01 baseband which can't be unlocked by ultrasn0w.

You can get an unlocked 3gs on ebay, use a normal phone or just hope that the jailbreaking community comes up with an unlock for other basebands than 01.59.01
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back