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JessicaLee
12-28-2012, 11:41 AM
I have at&t and my phone broke so my brother gave me an at&t iphone 4s. I recently got straighttalk because I wanted the lower price, but I still have my at&t account until the contract is up.

So my iphone is currently being used with my at&t account. I thought I could just trade the sim cards between my two phones, and my brother said I can not, that I need to jailbreak my iphone.

My question is silly, but is this legal? I mean, with a word like JAILBREAK I feel like it is not legal, but I know nothing about technology so I really have no idea. My other question is, what purpose does it serve to make it unable to be used with other services? I mean, why wouldn't apple want their phones to be used on any service? Or does apple make iphones that AREN'T tethered to a particular service?

Freelancier
12-28-2012, 12:40 PM
Easiest thing would be to go to AT&T and get them to activate the phone for your account, which costs like $35 usually.

vangogh
12-28-2012, 04:07 PM
It is legal. There was even a court case about it. However it will void any warranty on the phone. Probably not an issue as it's an older phone. You can also reset it back to an unjailbroken state.

You should also know that you won't be able to upgrade iOS when Apple sends out an upgrade. It'll overwrite the jailbreak. There should be places where you can get a jailbroken copy of the upgrade though if it's something you absolutely want.

However, if your contract is with AT&T and your brother's phone was set to work on AT&T you should be able to get it working under your contract without having to jailbreak the phone. The contract is AT&T's way of saying "hey we helped you pay for that phone initially and in return we expect you to remain a customer for a couple of years" They don't care though if you get another and use that under your existing contract. If you take both phones into any AT&T store they should be able to help you get your brother's phone set up so it works with your existing number and transfers all your data.

Harold Mansfield
01-04-2013, 03:01 PM
My other question is, what purpose does it serve to make it unable to be used with other services? I mean, why wouldn't apple want their phones to be used on any service? Or does apple make iphones that AREN'T tethered to a particular service?

It's about money and contracts with the carriers. AT&T got the iPhone deal to be the sole provider back when they first came out years ago. And it was like that for a while. A monopoly if you will. Kind of the reason I never got one and will probably never get one now.

All networks aren't instantly prepared to run all operating systems and data. For instance, you can't just activate a Blackberry on any service, unless they offer Blackberry's proprietary messaging and data services.

The iPhone is now on all major carriers, but back in the day, if you took your iPhone to Sprint, it wouldn't work. T-Mobile was the first to offer iPhone service if you wanted to bring one with you, but they didn't support them or the service using them. Even though they still had no problem taking your money for it.

Also, all services don't (or didn't) run on the same bands. If a phone is only made to work on GSM and Sprint's network is a different band and frequency, it won't work. Back in the day, U.S. phones wouldn't work in Europe.

If you have a dual band or quad band phone, then you can use it across more networks both in the U.S. and around the world.

GSM frequency bands - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_frequency_bands#Multi-band_and_multi-mode_phones)

vangogh
01-04-2013, 04:02 PM
Originally it was the deal with AT&T and then it was that different networks ran on different bands. To let the phone work on multiple bands it meant additional chips. Those extra chips meant more cost, weight, size, which were design compromises Apple didn't want to make. That's why an AT&T phone wouldn't work on Verizon and vice versa. Now they have a universal chip inside to work across carriers. The only reason you can't take a phone from one carrier to the next now is because the carrier locks your information to them.