Australia - TurboSim Iphone - I need help.

Hey All,

I've just received my iphone and the guys from votech are helping me with the tsim installation.

My main questions were, what's the best phone plan to sign up to, so i can use most of the features the iphone has to offer, such as webbrowsing / voicemail etc.

Also, with the turbosim enabled am i still able to use homebrew etc, or would i have to softmod my phone, for example if i wanted to run the nintendo emulator or the instant messenger client.

Anyone else who is in australia and has a turbo sim setup please give me all the info you can as i'll be setting this all up tomorrow, any help is much appreciated, i've been lurking these forums for a while now and you all seem like an awesome bunch.

Any response is a good one !!

Freek.

Hi, I'm in Australia and using an iPhone with Turbosim solution for about the last month and a half and it's been great, no problems.

To answer your questions:

Best plan: I'm signed up with Telstra currently. As far as I know they're the only provider in Australia who have EDGE, so you will get the fastest data connection through them. However I think it is also prohibitively expensive (my work pays for mine) so you might be better off looking at a Vodafone cap plan where you get GPRS access cheaply. It will be slower than using EDGE but it should still work if you plan on using data on-the-go a lot. Best advice is to try to find wireless hotspots whenever possible!

With the TurboSim enabled you'll certainly be able to use the 3rd party software, I've been very much enjoying it. You'll most likely jailbreak and activate your phone as part of the TurboSim installation process, and that's all you need to do to use 3rd party apps. You do not need to use a software unlock before using them, the TurboSim gets rid of the need for hacking the baseband and all that nasty stuff which the AnySim app does.

Other advice, have a sharp pen-knife ready for cutting the sim (you have to cut pretty close to the actual metal part) and take the time to line up the contacts REALLY REALLY REALLY carefully as it will save you hassle in the long run. Once they're lined up and inserted into the phone properly it's great, but it's easy to bump them before inserting which will result in "no carrier".

I think this guide is pretty popular and has links to what you need:
http://iphone.simbunch.com/turbosim.php

I used iBrickr app on a PC to do the jailbreak, very easy, and the PACAY script (search these forums to find it) for activation.

And don't rush it, slowly and carefully making sure you understand each step before diving in will save you a lot of heartache in the long run, after all it's not that simple to get the phones or turbosims over here if you muck it up!

Good luck!

These aren't really TurboSIM questions, but yes, you can use homebrew as to activate it you have to use 1.0.2.

Telstra has (amongst other plans) two good ones for iPhone Users:
70MB for $29/month, or 10 MB for $16/month, on both pre-paid and post-pad plans.

Also, check out the Australian iPhone Sanctuary thread: http://hackint0sh.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1354

Welcome, Aussie iPhone user! More the better!

Telstra have changed their prepaid Data package.... its now $29 for 80meg.

Does 80MB get you very far? You'd have to be pretty frugal in your web usage to only use 80MB per month if you used it a couple of times a day

I guess the iPhone has an EDGE counter so you can see what your usage is and be careful not to go over. Do you know if it's 80MB downstream, or does it count both sent and received data?

it does me just fine, but i use wireless as home and work.. so its only when i am out and about that i use edge. But yes you have to be a bit careful with it.

I think 80meg is total usage

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ricochet

Does 80MB get you very far? You'd have to be pretty frugal in your web usage to only use 80MB per month if you used it a couple of times a day

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For a house connection, yeah, but on the iPhone... I thought that at first, but actually it's painful waiting for web pages to load over EDGE, so it's less likely you'd hit it without dedication!

(Most of the time I just look up Wikipedia and text-based news sources, and go find a WiFi hotspot for more demanding pages. I think US resident AT&T customers need Unlimited Data more because of Visual Voicemail, which feeds audio recordings to the phone.)


But if the iPhone was HSDPA, then 80MB would be totally inadequate...

In fact it's criminal that Telstra is allowed to charge the same rates for high-speed data, as you can hit this limit in just a few minutes.

HSDPA peaks at 3.6 Mbps, over 20x the speed of EDGE...

Yeah I totally agree with you dotmike, telstra's data rates are absolutely ridiculous...

80MB might be a handy buffer to have for basic email and text based usage (although you can't turn off images on the iphone's browser so you're stuck downloading those...) but to pay $29 EXTRA per month on top of a plan is pretty steep.

Luckily work picks up the tab for mine, I'm just leaving EDGE disabled unless I really need it so that I don't blow the monthly cost out of the water as I believe it comes in at around 2c per KB ($20 per MB, outrageous)