Hey there,

I'll be getting my iPhone soon. It is a german 3G with 3.0.1 and the corresponding baseband, it is netlocked by T-Mobile. The person I bought it from did a reset of the personal information, so it'll be clean and ready to us. I want to jailbreak and unlock it to get rid of the netlock and use it with my o2 card.

Now, to my question:

I'm well aware of what a Jailbreak and an Unlock is and how they are performed. But, I'm currently not sure how to tackle the activation.

As far as I know, without the activation via PC and a T-Mobile SIM card, I can't start the iPhone and use applications or anything like that, it will remain locked with the exception of emergency calls.

Now I'm confused if a Jailbreak will also remove the need for activation or not, so:

1. Can I get rid of the activation with a Jailbreak? Do I need to put the SIM card I want use into the iPhone while Jailbreaking?

2. If I activate the device properly with a T-Mobile SIM card, which SIM card should stay in the device for the Jailbreaking process, the T-Mobile card or the o2 card I want to use?

3. Does it make any difference if I activate with a Jailbreak (if possible) or an original card? Especially regarding the "activation status" Apple has of my iPhone, there are still some months of guarantee left on the device and I want to keep the possibility to reset my iPhone back to factory settings and use the guarantee.

thanks for your help

Without some form of activation you cannot use your phone to do anything besides receive calls.

The devteam jailbreaks (pwnagetool, redsn0w) can do a hacktivation, this is basically a patch to the activation code to accept fake activation. This works for pretty much everything besides push notifications.

Other jailbreaks like blackra1n do not include hacktivation.

Proper activation requires a sim card from the original carrier that the iPhone was locked to. The iPhone is connected to a computer running iTunes and iTunes activates the phone with apple.

On 3G and 3GS iPhones, once activated it generally stays activated until you do a restore of the iPhone firmware. Then you need to activate again.

So you could conceivably jailbreak with the t-mobile sim inserted using redsn0w then let iTunes activate the iPhone.

Then install ultrasn0w from cydia and swap in your o2 sim and you should have an officially activated iPhone working with your o2 sim.

I don't know about the warranty side of things. The iPhone is only covered under warranty in the country it was sold in. This situation might be different if you purchase Applecare extended warranty.

Hey Olethros, thanks for you answer.

Shouldn't I activate the phone first and then jailbreak? Since redsn0w uses its hacktivation routine, the normal T-Mobile activation wouldn't be possible after the jailbreak and I would have to stick to the fake activation, or am I wrong here?

Stick with Olethros's way to go. There are two ways getting activation done: If with a legit contract and simcard the activation is done via iTunes. If the iPhone is restored to 3.0.1 but not activated and you dont have access to the contract simcard you need to use Pwnagetool or Redsn0w to put fake activation codes on the iPhone. The iPhone needs to be jailbroken to get this done, it is all done in one step by Pwnagetool/Redsn0w.
The disadvantage coming with activation via fake records is that you wont be able to use push apps properly. The fake activation record includes a fake file for push notes, zillion of users share the same.

If you follow Olethros's way the iPhone will get a proper activation file when activating it with the T-Mobile simcard. Jailbreak the iPhone then, insert your private sim and use the unlock tool. You'll have both then: an unlocked iPhone and a real activation file: you can use push apps then

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iPhone 3GS factory unlocked (3.1.2; Blackra1n, Cydia, OpenSSH, custom 3.0 ipcc file (no sig), tethering hack by Dev team, 32 GB)
iPhone 3G (3.0.1; Redsn0w 0.8, Cydia, OpenSSH) 16 GB

Yeah, that's what I meant. First the activation, then Jailbreaking (not important which SIM is inserted, since redsn0w recognises the activation and won't do anything in this case) and unlocking via ultrasn0w (with the o2-SIM installed).

Thanks guys, all of my questions are answered now. I can't await to hold the device in my own hands tomorrow