Hi group,
I have read the threads here about unlocking iphone. I have bought a Telstra outright and wondering if there are alternatives to paying $150 and waiting.
My question is... I keep reading bits about "jailbreak" but ot sure what it actually is/does.
is jailbreak something which unlocks the phone or something totally different?
thanks

You need to jailbreak your phone first, before unlocking it.

Jail breaking modifies the software, allowing you to install 3rd party apps, that Apple wouldnt normally allow (I'm sure someone will be able to go into more detail). Unlocking your phone does just that, unlocks it, but requires your phone to be jail broken. Hope I'm correct.

Oh, and assuming you do have an iPhone 3G (since you're with Telstra), you can't currently unlock a 3G iPhone yourself like you can on the 2g iPhone, you'll have to get Telstra/Optus/etc to do it for you

thanks for the info. yes its a 3G telstra fone. so i gather from this that unlocking means that any sim/service provider will work with the phone, while jailbreaking is a modification to allow u to do more with it, but the 2 things arent related?

thanks for your advice. much appreciated.

Yup, on a first gen phone you had to jail break it (to get access to the OS and then install software and change settings...) and then you could unlock it so it worked on all networks.

You can still jail break a 3G phone like yours, but at the moment no one has worked out how to unlock it from the network.

The only option for you to use your phone on other networks is to pay up to Telstra or try and negotiate with them (good luck!).

As I understand it, you pay Telstra, Telstra notifies Apple and then when you next sync it unlocks it. It can take a few days for each part of that process though - Voda sends an SMS to tell you to sync when they've notified Apple, so presumably Telstra does something similar.

Unlocking is one of the things that you can do once you have jailbroken the phone. In the 2G iPhone days you unlocking was one of these added bonuses that was brought by Jailbreaking. Unfortunately, there is no way to unlock a 3G iPhone other than by official means.

You can still jailbreak to run unsigned applications though

Thanks for the info.
Its making more sense now....

This is a good forum with a lot of very helpful people prepared to assist others.

cheers