This iPhone Lockdown is Ridiculous!
By Jonathan Greene |
October 11th, 2007
Comments (2)
This has nothing to do with the Applications issue…. The iPhone is a completely locked device. Both the device itself as well as the SIM card from AT&T are locked. Of course, hackers have broken these things, but if you don’t want to have to break it to “fix it” you are pretty much out of luck in enabling features that are quite common for phones today.
Currently the iPhone does not support MMS or DUN and AT&T’s SIM is locked and prevented from offering these services to another device should you switch devices for the day (or longer). You can choose to have AT&T deactivate this SIM and activate a new (and different) SIM card for your other devices but this is both ridiculous and cumbersome since you would have to reverse the process in order to then use the iPhone. There’s nothing you can do except pay more money to use features most any other smart or feature phone offers. If you want the iPhone this is how it is. If you want another device in conjunction, AT&T is more than happy to sell you an additional line… and data plan!
I tend to use a lot of devices. I enjoy being with a GSM carrier so I can move between devices as the mood strikes me and usually choose the device that suits the need for that day or a particular trip. The Nokia N95-3 is an awesome (and open) device and the phone I currently want to be able to take full advantage. While I can use the 3G services AT&T offers on the phone with the iPhone SIM inside, I cannot send (wonder if I can receive) an MMS or use the phone as a bluetooth modem for my laptop or internet tablet. This is something I have long done (and paid for the privilege) with previous devices before the special iPhone plan was created. This special plan by the way includes unlimited data! I know even unlimited is limited (xxGB) in the TOS, but I should still be able to use (or even pay more if I must, to use) the device I want on the network I am paying to access.
I’m very frustrated by this situation and am not about to pay for a second phone plan or cancel the iPhone one and give AT&T and Apple the satisfaction of an ETF (~$170). I just want my 3G service in the N95 shared with my personal network of devices and when I want the iPhone for the day I am more than happy to deal with EDGE and WiFi. Is there an actual logical (not because Steve Jobs said so) explanation behind why this is impossible?
I’ve heard that PAN works with a Blackjack and iPhone SIM, but there’s no support for PAN in the Nokia’s that I’ve found…. There’s a very interesting proxy access hack for the iPhone that seems like it would work on the N95, but there’s no proxyserver application that I’ve found. GNUBox looks promising, but is unsigned and rather complex to deal with.
Image found on Google… borrowed from ZDNet.
UPDATE: iPhone SIM DUN Access Solved!
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It sounds like AT&T wants to control which and how you use their devices. Perhaps this is a future indicator of things to come. While we might have enjoyed swapping SIM cards to our other GSM phones for making phone calls and data access, in the future the cellular system will be able to identify which phone a particular SIM card is assigned to and allow functionality accordingly.
Aside: I love the fact that people are using Free Open Source Software to get their devices and computers to act like *they* want (ref. to GNUBox). Maybe they’ll eventually realize a closed system is not in their best interest after all.
You know, if a phone won’t do what you want, then don’t buy it.
You can’t receive MMSes. The ones I have gotten show up with as SMS with a website, username, AND password and NOT in an auto login link form you can just click and login automatically with. You have to write down the user and password, and then go to mobilesafari and type them in. This is from another AT&T phone. Yup, stupid.
I love mine, and yes there are things it should do better. I think we will eventually see lots of improvements and some native apps. But even as it is, with its shortcomings, I find it the most pleasurable phone I have ever had to use.
When I got my Treo650, my reaction was, I don’t love it, but it does so much, that I’ll live with it. With my iPhone, I love it, and I’ll live with the shortcomings.
One day, I hope to go ahead and hack it and throw on a terminal app, and ssh client. THAT would be handy for work.