My Birthday Present

The Gotham Gal and my kids got me what I couldn’t bring myself to buy.

Iphone

Thankfully they ordered it from Apple and I can now choose how to activate it myself. Given that I don’t want to use it as a phone, just as a wifi enabled camera, music player, and browser, any advice on how best to do that?

#VC & Technology

Comments (Archived):

  1. Dan Cornish

    Happy Birthday!

  2. RK Bentley

    If you type in all 9s or 0s for a social it’ll give you pay per minute options. I believe if you cancel your services within the first 30 days then there’s no penalty and you have your own wifi ipod.I would recommend googling the steps just to cover yourself.Congrats on the phone, I’m waiting for my verizon contract to run out…

  3. Danny

    Everything you want to know about bypassing activation on the iPhone:http://www.hacktheiphone.co…IMHO, the safest (e.g. non-hacking) method is at the bottom “How to get a pre-paid plan” — that way you pay $50 once, and if the need arises you can always use your prepaid minutes to make a call.Good luck!

  4. Dave

    Here’s another activation link that may or may not have approaches not covered by the above link.http://iphone.fiveforty.net

  5. Alex Iskold

    Welcome to the cult ;)My bet is that after a couple of weeks you will not wan to use Blackberry.

  6. howardlindzon

    Sign up for lifelock and you get around the whole mess and do a prepay.

  7. Derek J

    Absolutely foolproof way to activate your iPhone without AT&T contract (pre or post paid). Works like a charm. http://anderson-technologie

  8. bijan sabet

    I’m sure you will get lots of tips on how to use it as an iPhod.i say don’t do that. have your cake and eat it too. that’s what i do. I use both. the iphone when i’m in/around boston. or if i’m in nyc for a day trip. when i’m out for an extended period of time I have my Curve.the camera on the iphone is so much better than the camera on the curve. i have photos on my flickr stream comparing the two. and if you only have an iPhod (vs iphone) you won’t be able to twitter/flickr them on the fly.just my two cents.

  9. obscurelyfamous

    happy birthday, fred. I just got an iphone myself (commenting on it now!). Do the prepay trick and then check out getleaflets.com for some app goodness. But first do fun things for your bday tonight.

  10. Matt

    So far this is the only method I’ve seen that worked successfully:http://alexking.org/blog/20…Basically, you sign up then cancel your contract. You have to activate to get everything working, but once you cancel the service, the WiFi stuff keeps working.

  11. jackson

    iGift

  12. markslater

    Fred -Couple of Points. I bought my wife (wink wink) the phone when it came out – we just travelled Europe with it as i really want to test it out before i bought an unlocked phone – here is what i (we) found- The camera is OK – not great – highly sensitive when moved around – also the actual snap button is touch screen so it takes alot of getting used to not to move the phone when trying to snap. – Funnily enough the phone worked really well all over europe. (prague, vienna, Paris, London)- the wifi is the killer app though.- No Video – Big miss in my view- IPOD is sick- No MMS. For some reason you cant send pictures or receive them VIA MMS – i could be completely dumb here but we called ATT and they told my wife that she could not. I know you probably email to Flickr, but frankly this is ridiculous.It will NOT replace the BB on the email front – at least not yet. Other than that – it is a superb device.

  13. fewquid

    Hi Fred,Did you see this (it was linked from Crunchgear):http://iphonejtag.blogspot….The site has a video clip showing a fully functional iPhone apparently running with a T-Mobile sim card.As I understand it, the hack currently involves some soldering and hard-core tweaking, but the team seem optimistic that a software unlock method can be found…Not there yet, but close…

  14. Smakka

    Why the heck don’t you use it as a phone!?! You seem like very awkward girl if you don’t use this very expensive “toy” as your permanent phone…I am 12 yrs. old and i have an iphone! I love to use it so why dont you???