AT&T is changing the price of their fee to upgrade handsets while on contract, reports BGR.

Originally, AT&T only charged customers $18 to upgrade to a new device, but now they want to charge $36. And to top things off, their reason is pretty bogus…(...)
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With over a million iPhone 4S units pre-ordered and countless more sold through retail stores today, it’s no wonder that carriers’ activation systems are crippled. If you’ve been having problems activating your new iPhone, you’re not alone.

We’ve actually been having quite a few issues ourselves today, and have been searching for workarounds to get our new handsets active. After a lot of digging, I’ve come up with two pretty good alternatives to the typical activation methods…(...)
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Just picked up your iPhone 4S? Excited? You should be.

But that excitement may be quickly quelled when you try to activate your new device.

Apparently, AT&T’s servers are getting hammered, and it’s causing activation to fail over, and over, and over…(...)
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One of the problems with using the iPhone 4 on an unofficial carrier is you lose the ability to FaceTime. Enter MiTime. MiTime is an application available for jailbroken iPhones that activates FaceTime on unlocked iPhone 4s that are running on unofficial/unsupported carriers, such as T-Mobile USA.

The app was first introduced back in August of 2010 and now it has been updated with support for iOS 4.1 and 4.2.1. It works by sending two international SMS messages to activate FaceTime. It is currently the only way to activate FaceTime on unofficial carriers, and in my opinion, it’s definitely worth it.

Follow the guide below to activate FaceTime on your unlocked iPhone 4… (...)
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MiTime is an app/service for activating FaceTime on phones that are operating on unofficial carriers. It should work worldwide and will use two text messages to activate. You must be able to receive an international SMS message to get activated (see here if you can receive international SMS). (...)
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A few weeks ago we told you about a trick to activate an iPhone without the original SIM card. This was used by jailbreakers and unlockers who didn’t have the original SIM card to activate their iPhone. It worked well for a while but it seems Apple caught up to it and put an end to it all by hooking the activation wildcard ticket to the ICCID of the used SIM. Fortunately, an alternative method was found to go around the “Different SIM Detected” message you might get.

Step 1: Download iFunBox from here.

Step 2: Download the patched LockDown folder from here.

Step 3: Run iFunBox and sync it with your iPhone.

Step 4: Go to /private/var/root/Library/ and replace the Lockdown folder with the one you downloaded in step 2.

Step 5: Reboot your iPhone.

I haven’t tried this myself but it seems to work well. If you do try it, please let us know how it went by leaving a comment below.

[Sherif Hashim]

"How to Fix the “Different SIM Detected” Issue on the iPhone" is an article by iDownloadBlog.com.
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Simply using a $3 PhoneBook card, a SIM card usually used to transfer your contacts from one phone to another, Sherif was able to activate 2 iPhones.

Check out the video below to see how it works. Warning: sound is terrible!

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The text message contains a link to AT&T’s website which provides more information about the activation process, being yet another indication that some orders might indeed ship a day ahead of schedule.

Under the overload of activation requests the last couple years, some users had reported not being able to activate their new iPhone for up to 48 hours. Maybe Apple decided to ship these iPhone 4 earlier to some of us in order to ease the load on AT&T’s servers on Thursday, when the iPhone 4 is officially hitting the shelves.

I haven’t received  such a text message myself but I’m curious to see who among you got one. Let us know by leaving a comment below.

[via RWW]

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[digg-me]After playing with my kids iTouch’s it became clear to me how much the iTouch is lacking in functionality. Before buying one I considered it just an iPhone without the ability to make calls. The lack of camera was the biggest surprise, because I can’t figure out why they left it out. The GPS and Camera would have been really nice to have even if I can’t use it as a phone.

So would it still be better to buy an iPhone and use it just like an iTouch but with camera and GPS?  I found a thread on one of the iPhone forums where a guy, who was going to college and couldn’t afford the $30.00 a month data plan, but wanted an iPhone anyway.  He was on campus where they had a robust wifi connection all of the time and didn’t really need the data plan. He already had an AT&T cell phone (a Razor), and just wanted to get a used iPhone and put his SIM card into it.

After giving the guy a hard time, a good samaritan responded with a way to do just that.  He pointed out a cool service offered by unlockit.  It is an APN Changer for 3G iPhones.  It lets you turn off the Edge and 3G data service on your iPhone.  This lets you use an AT&T SIM card with your iPhone but lets you use it without adding the iPhone data plan.

To use this service do the following:

1. Put the AT&T Sim card in the already activated iPhone.
2. Make a wifi connection to a local wifi source.
3. Navigate to this page.  Click “Continue To The Next Page”.
4. Click Disable Data (Fake APN). The Install Profile window appears.
5. Click Install. Another Install Profile window will popup warning you that authenticity of this profile cannot be verified.  Click Install on this window too.
6. You should now see a message stating “Could not activate Cellular Data Network; You are not subscribed to a cellular data service.

You should now be able to make phone calls and be able to use wifi to access the internet.  When you aren’t connected, you should get an error.

To remove the 3G/Edge block, simply go to your Network settings and removed the Fake APN profile.

This thread pointed out a really cool service.

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As I reported yesterday, Apple has started to offer an online signup process for the iPhone 3G. This new process allows you to:

1. Enter your billing information.
2. Review eligibility and pricing.
3. Select your AT&T rate plan.

Once you’re done, choose your closest Apple Retail Store and let us know when you’d like to come in to complete your purchase. An Apple Specialist will be ready to help you personalize your new iPhone 3G, make calls, browse the web, receive email, and more.

This “at home” option generated a lot of rumors over the weekend but it turns out that you will still have to go an Apple Store to complete the activation of your device. Apparently, you can’t go through the online process and activate in an AT&T Store, but this option may come soon.

"Apple starts iPhone 3G online signup" is an article by iDownloadBlog.com.
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