RichB

Vodafone has reached an agreement to sell Apple's popular iPhone in the UK.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Vodafone enters UK iPhone market

Excellent, lets hope everyone does away with this stupid £35 p/m price!

Markus

Excellent news. So we have O2, Orange and Vodafone all selling the iPhone (3G and 3GS) in the UK. It will indeed be interesting to see what tariffs they have to try and win customers from other networks.

STi wanna Subaru

iTrader: (1)

I wouldn't be shocked if there was zero difference between the respective tariffs....

ScoobyDoo555

Thinking the exact same thing tbh - the interesting one will be the performance aspect...

O2 have said that they got caught with their pants down, as they didn't expect iphone users to use so much of the data network.

Orange have never been good at this type of thing (imho), but with the acquisition of T-Mobile, maybe they'll piggy-back off that to get a decent service.

As for Vodafone, well, time will tell, as data-wise it's a bit of an unknown (again, imho)....

interesting times ahead - I'd moved over to O2 during the Summer, and personally don't feel as though I've been shafted. The service to date has been nothing short of fantastic.

Dan

Markus

Apart from shocking CS which cause people to loathe O2 (Can't comment myself, never used O2, used to be Voda then Orange), I think one of the main reasons for people unlocking their iPhones and going to another network is coverage, as I recall people saying in some places the coverage was shockingly bad on O2, but Orange and Voda were fine.

P1Fanatic

I only went with the Iphone 3g as the mrs started working for 02 and gets 30% of the line rental for friends & family (quite a few of my mates have used this discount as well). Works out at £24.50 which is pretty good. Still I dont think £35 a month for 600mins/500txt unlimited data is that bad either????

However the network coverage is pants for making / receiving calls. At home my phone is constantly searching for signal. I know its 02 as Ive had phones (personal & work) with Voda and they are full signal. Work changed to 02 as well so when Im oncall I have to head to the nearest window.

Simon

Scotsman

iTrader: (3)

Great news as I'm due an upgrade on the company account in Feb. Currently have a Touch but would be nice to have the phone/gps/faster processor. I'm certainly getting a collection of company paid for phones to swap around with - a couple blackberrys and a Nokia E71 so far, though tend to use the Blackberry Pearl the most.

Only thing that puts me off with using the iphone on a daily basis is the battery life - I know how fast my Touch drains it's batteries. In comparrison my Pearl lasts for days.

Swen6

My contract with O2 is up in January, so will be interested in the offerings from both Orange and Voda, only went to O2 for the iPhone and a week after my warranty ran out O2 CS were poor, wanting me to sign a new 18mth contract for a refurbed handset, told them where to shove that and popped in to my local Apple store, who after a quick check changed the phone, was a refurbed unit but i got 3mth warranty and it hasn't affected the time i'm attached to O2.

boxst

Yes. O2 is extremely patchy where I live (even though their map says it has full coverage). So we have an unlocked iPhone with T-Mobile on a Solo contract (pretty good value actually: £25/ 800 minutes / unlimited internet).

I will happily switch my wife to Orange when it comes available and then I don't have to mess around with hacking the phone all the time. Which I currently can't do for 3.1 as I don't have a Mac and don't trust the ipsw files on Bit Torrent sites.

Steve

Markus

You could always trust someone with a Mac to create the ipsw for you

*edit* Ah, ok, I see, 3.1 ipsw 3G *is* around, just not for 3GS or the iPod 2G/3G.

Markus

Seeing as I'm a nice chap, I *think* I've created a couple of custom ipsw files for based on 3.1 for the iPhone 3G.

I followed the steps in this guide up to step 8, entering my local admin password. At that point I had the custom ipsw saved.

I have NOT tested these builds as I do not have a 3G only a 3GS.

At present I have two files:

iPhone1,2_3.1_7C144_Activate_Phone.ipsw

iPhone1,2_3.1_7C144_Do_Not_Activate_Phone.ipsw

Both have the root partition size set to 695MB, they do NOT have any custom cydia packages installed, nor do they have custom logos.

The former file has the "Activate the phone" option enabled, this is the file that should be used if you are NOT using an official iPhone carrier/network as it will activate the phone for you. The latter file has the "Activate the phone" option disabled and should be used by people who ARE using an official iPhone carrier/network.

To install the new ipsw, put the phone into DFU mode, the linked guide should give instrusctions on how to do this, then follow the guide from step 10 onwards.

Once restored you should find cydia installed. You will then need to unlock the phone using ultrasn0w. To do this you'll need to go into Cydia, and select the Manage option. Select Sources, click Edit in the top right, then click Add in the top left, it will ask you to enter a URL which is:

Note that it should auto add the http:// portion of the url. Also, the "o" in snow is NOT a letter o it is the number 0 (zero).

Once you have entered the url, click Add Source, it will very the url and say "updating sources". Once complete click the Return to Cydia button, then click Done in the top right. You should see the new source added. Click on it and it should display ultrasn0w, click on that item, then click Install in the top right, then click Confirm and it will download and install ultrasnow. You will then need to click the Reboot Device button to reboot the iPhone, and I think that should be it.

If you would like the ipsw files, then send me a PM/email.

I should add, I provide no warranties that this will work, nor that the ipsw files will not corrupt and brick your iPhone, use them at your own risk.

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

You will probably find the tariffs similar to what they are now, people dont understand that Apple have their pie and eat it with the Iphone, they set the pricing, not the mobile companies (phone H/W costs and % of call cost all go to Apple).

Tony

Markus

Dev team have released Pwnage Tool 3.1.3 which is compatible with the iPhone 3GS. You need to pwn the phone on 3.0 or 3.0.1 with redsn0w first before using the new tool, and you obviously need to use the new PT to create a custom ipsw file.

They don't have a redsnow for 3GS yet, but it is said to be coming soon.

If anyone needs a custom ipsw for the 3GS then drop me a PM/Email and I'll get you one. Same deal as above for the 3G, I'll have one for official and non-official carriers. I upgraded mine to 3.1 using the instructions from here and it worked perfectly, well, once I got past the "incorrect firmware" error, which was simply me being a **** and using the 3G ipsw rather than the 3GS one!

boxst

Thank you Markus -- 3.1 running happily unlocked on a 3G.

I still may try and get a Mac of course

Steve