I have a legit AT&T contract. I happily pwned my iPhone when Pwnage came out in the spring, enabling baseband update, neutering, unlocking and activating (phone was previously jailbroken but not unlocked). I unlocked because I travel abroad and I like to use pay as you go SIM card of the country I am in.
A couple of weeks after 2.0 came out I left the States again and spent most of the summer in Europe. While I am still running pwned 1.1.4, I have already prepared my custom firmware with the new Pwnage Tool but I haven't restored it yet.
Here's my question: what happens if I restore my custom 2.0.2 FW with neutering, unlocking, and activating while I am in Europe? I guess there are two scenarios:
1. I restore custom FW with european SIM in iPhone
2. I restore with AT&T SIM while in Europe

Is this OK or am I going to have problems when I go back to the States and want to use my AT&T SIM card?

My intuition is that it should not matter, that the activation has to do with the device, not the SIM, but I am not sure, and I like to know what I am doing.

To the wizards out there, can you explain to me whether or not I can do this and why?

Thanks

It doesn't matter, but I recommend not to select the activation option in
Pwnage Tool since you are an AT&T customer, so create a custom 2.0.2 using
pwnage tool, and pop in your legit AT&T sim to activate, then you can use
any sim.

Originally Posted by JSN1

It doesn't matter, but I recommend not to select the activation option in
Pwnage Tool since you are an AT&T customer, so create a custom 2.0.2 using
pwnage tool, and pop in your legit AT&T sim to activate, then you can use
any sim.

Thanks JSN1. But why do you recommend not to select the activation option in Pwnage Tool? I selected it to pwn 1.1.4 (my AT&T SIM was in the phone, and I was in the States) and everything went fine.

Scenario 1 is the one you want to go for while you are in Europe. It's just ok for any simcard you are using while travelling. Just follow the tutorials for unlocking an iPhone 2G for use with any carrier.
Once back in the US if you want to use AT&T again and have all the options you pay for, you have to restore back to Apple FW. You can use Pwnage again but you dont check "Activate" to make sure to use your simcard.

Originally Posted by volkspost

Scenario 1 is the one you want to go for while you are in Europe. It's just ok for any simcard you are using while travelling. Just follow the tutorials for unlocking an iPhone 2G for use with any carrier.
Once back in the US if you want to use AT&T again and have all the options you pay for, you have to restore back to Apple FW. You can use Pwnage again but you dont check "Activate" to make sure to use your simcard.

OK, I am trying to understand this, and there are a couple of things in your post I still don't understand.

First, why I would have to restore back to Apple FW when back in the States.

Second, why you recommend not to check 'activate to make sure to use your simcard.' I checked 'activate' when I used Pwnage Tool 1.0 back in the spring to make my custom 1.1.4 FW, when I restored I was in the States and I had my AT&T SIM card in the phone, everything went fine, not a bleep, all my AT&T services working fine, in fact everything worked and still works fine

Thanks

If u select unlock then it wont make a difference at all, u could even unlock without a sim card inside
but if u activated with AT&T and not unlock and only jailbreak u wont be able to use a Europian sim

Originally Posted by lordofdaflies

If u select unlock then it wont make a difference at all, u could even unlock without a sim card inside
but if u activated with AT&T and not unlock and only jailbreak u wont be able to use a Europian sim

Agree on "if u activated with AT&T and not unlock and only jailbreak u wont be able to use a Europian sim." But here we are talking about a custom 2.0.2 FW with checked 'enable basebad update', checked 'unlock', checked 'activate', checked 'neuter', to be restored on a previously pwned iPhone of a legit AT&T customer. I did the same thing in the spring with Pwnage tool 1.0, but I was back in the States, and obviously everything went fine. What would happen if I do it while in europe, having a european SIM? Probably nothing would go wrong. But then what would happen when I am back in the States and I just put my AT&T SIM card in the device? That's what nobody seems to know for sure. In other words, what does the 'activation' process do?

Maybe we need a dev team member here, but anybody is obviously welcome to post their own ideas, speculations, facts, knowledge, whatever.

BTW, I find interesting that you say you can unlock without a sim card inside. But I guess you would agree you can't activate without the sim card inside, correct? and, following my thread of thoughts, I must confess I am more concerned of activating my AT&T card on a pwned phone through iTunes than activating it with Pwnage.

Activation:

As you have a legit contract, you do not need to "activate" your phone. It is already activated by your contract, doesn't matter what you do on your phone -- providing you do not cancel your AT&T contract. Also, sometimes activating a valid activated phone can get you on issues, thus people do not recommend software activating it with PwnageTool.

Jailbreak:

Unless you are missing something from AppStore, or wanna do non-Apple stuff on your phone, you do not need to worry about jailbreaking your phone.

Unlocking:

This sounds to me the only valid reason to play around on your phone: You wanna use a foreign SIM card on your phone, so all you really need to do is to unlock your phone.

If you only unlock, you do not need to ever worry about firmware updates. You can be on the "bleeding edge" of iPhone OS and it will be fully usable, no matter if you Update or Restore, and it will be working everywhere, anywhere.

Hope I could be useful

Originally Posted by hquest

Activation:

As you have a legit contract, you do not need to "activate" your phone. It is already activated by your contract, doesn't matter what you do on your phone -- providing you do not cancel your AT&T contract. Also, sometimes activating a valid activated phone can get you on issues, thus people do not recommend software activating it with PwnageTool.

I am afraid we are a bit digressing from the main issue here (for the readers of the thread, read my previous posts), but I am not sure you are right here. When I got my 1st gen iPhone, I switched my previous AT&T contract to an iPhone contract, but the device wasn't activated yet. To activate I had to go through the iTunes steps for activation

Originally Posted by Marco60

I am afraid we are a bit digressing from the main issue here (for the readers of the thread, read my previous posts), but I am not sure you are right here. When I got my 1st gen iPhone, I switched my previous AT&T contract to an iPhone contract, but the device wasn't activated yet. To activate I had to go through the iTunes steps for activation

Ok, maybe I had problems to explain what I think you have to do. I'll give it one more shot.

1. Any iPhone 2G can be jailbroken, activated and unlocked with PwnageTool and then be used with any simcard. You connect the iPhone and iTunes and see, it is already activated. Thats because when you check "activate" an already made activation record is put on the iPhone. Together with this one, it is made sure you can use YouTube (another set of files that come with PwnageTool).
That would be your firmware for travelling Europe.

2. Right now you do have an iphone contract with AT&T. Activation of the iPhone is then done via iTunes. The activation record is placed on the iPhone and you can use it.
Not having an iPhone with an AT&T contract all the user posts here on that topic tell us to not check "Activate" when you are going to use the iPhone in the US with your AT&T contract card. You would create a custom firmware for legit users that just jailbreaks your iPhone (plus puts Cydia/Installer on the phone if checked).
Connecting an iPhone equipped with this kind of custom firmware would againg make iTunes to activate it.

I know you can use any AT&T simcard with an 1. unlocked iPhone, I do that all the time with AT&T pay&go. The only thing I learned is that all customers on a legit contract or with a factory unlicked iPhone should not check activate (and not use Bootneuter).