“Personally, I use mine as an emergency phone/Internet device,” Greenbaum reports. “AT&T offers a contract-free, pay-as-you-go plan called the GoPhone, which works much like a calling card where you pay in advance for phone minutes as well as data. Currently you can buy a $100 calling card and the credit is good for a year. Other small denominations are available with shorter expiration dates.”
“Although AT&T doesn’t officially support pay-as-you-go plans like GoPhone for the iPhone, you can buy a GoPhone, and simply take the SIM from the GoPhone (which is usually a cheap ‘dumb’ phone) and put it in your old iPhone. This will enable you to use the iPhone as a phone, but even if you add the GoPhone data plan, you can’t use data on the old iPhone because the phone’s internal settings are not set to allow this,” Greenbaum reports. “However, there is a workaround for this problem that can be done easily and without any jailbreaking or other “phone hacking.” You can do this by taking advantage of a legitimate, built-in part of the iPhone OS called ‘over-the-air provisioning.’ Over-the-air provisioning allows you to change certain otherwise inaccessible phone settings (such as the data network).”
Greenbaum reports, “You can use this process with an original iPhone, iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS.”
Find out all of the details in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jax44” for the heads up.]
Who on Earth needs an ’emergency Internet device’? Sell the phone – if you need a backup phone, get something dirt cheap. Keeping an iPhone in a drawer and dropping money on a plan you may never use is ridiculous – it’d be like having a Ferrari, then keeping an old Porsche 911 as a back-up car.
You have an extra Porsche 911?? I’ll trade you my iPhone!
@ukok
what’s wrong with keeping the porsche as a back up car?
Maroon!
@ G4Dualie,
No kidding!!! +1!
I would like a Data (only) Plan for my old iPhone. Anyone know how to get this to work?
@iGads
Did you read the article?! It’s pretty explicit as to how to achieve this.
Personally, I am using my old iPhone 3gs as my “carputer” with my iPad sim installed (with a microsim to sim adapter). It is recessed in the dash with a bezel so it looks like a touchscreen stereo. I have a crappy faceplate from a cheap-ass cd player that hides it when I leave the car. A prepaid sim is an option I would consider as an alternative to the iPad sim. It’s nice to have a permantly installed system Music and GPS that doesn’t drain your battery or necessitate what I consider to be “over-integration”. Having everything on one screen is great everywhere else but your car where you need to focus on driving not menus & multitasking IMHO.
Mzoom, not a bad idea at all. I might just do that with my old 3G.
@Mzoom
So, what exactly did you say?
Prepaid on an iPhone? What a concept.
Too bad 99% of telcos are too greedy to glom onto that form of income.
Won’t be signing any 3 year contract with the Canadian telcos. That would be like marrying a known philanderer.
Come to think of it, here are the plans for My 2011 garage:
Garage Space 1 (Primary Car):
2010 Vandenbrink Design Ferrari 630GTO
http://bit.ly/9uHG7i
Garage Space 2 (Backup Car):
1955 Porsche 550 Spyder
http://bit.ly/d9GTop
Both with built-in prepaid iPhones as mini-carputers of course
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Geez. My Porsche is used as a backup vehicle for my BMW.
Really.
A lot easier in the UK I’m glad to say. The networks will unlock your iPhone for you (for example http://shop.o2.co.uk/update/unlockmyiphone.html) and then you’re free to choose any of the 5 networks’ PAYG options, all of which have data plans.
My 3G’s wireless stopped working. It sees networks but can’t join them. I’ve tried all the possible fixes but nothing works. Pisser. I was going to hand it down to my son, but not give him a data plan, just our call minutes and texting, of course. However, an iPhone without wi-fi or data pretty hamstrung.
This is good information. Some people use an iPhone mostly as an hand-held Internet device under WiFi (like an iPod touch), and less frequently as a “mobile phone”; the “phone feature” is necessary but not used too much. So if you don’t want to pay $55 (or whatever) to ATT monthly for data and minutes that are mostly not used… get a used out-of-contract iPhone. Pre-pay $100 for X voice minutes that do not expire for one year. Don’t worry about 3G wireless data, unless you want it. You now have an iPhone that can make phone calls as needed, works as an Internet device under WiFi, and does not have a monthly ATT fee. I guess the tricky part may be to find a used iPhone in good condition.
@aka Christian
I’d take it to one of the five Twin Cities Apple Stores and ask one of the Genius dudes. They’ll get it running!
@aka Christian
Same thing happened to my 3Gs last week. Took it to Genius Bar. They checked and said antenna went bad and swapped for a new one. Works like a champ now…
Before the iPhone 4 launch (and the cynically timed removal of everything ‘unlimited’) you could buy sims with a prepaid data value for use with USB stick. These ( 3 network for example ) were time limited to a month, 3 months or 1 yr – but importantly you were buying a quantity of data, 1GB or 3 GB etc.
Therefore those who only use the 3G network when away from Wifi home networks were paying for data downloads by the MB.
This was a fair deal. You paid for what you used.
Now we seem to be stuck with a different model of 1GB allowances per month on a monthly fee contract – and I bet most are using no more than 100 or 200MB of data.
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