iPhone 3G...a few questions

[Luigitendo]

Well now that AT&T has announced that those of us unfortunate enough to miss out on their...network, are allowed to buy the iPhone 3G, but for a rather *ridiculous* price...

But i have a question...will it be able to be used on a different network? Like US Cellular, if i change the Sim Card...as with its predecessor



a second question...3G...will that work any faster on a home internet router? or not. i imagine the answer is no...

and IF Number 1 is a "yes" i can still use texts on us cellular, correct? I shouldn't have any problem using text from iPhone 3G...

THanks for the patience and time

[~tl]

Although it hasn't been explicitly stated, it is pretty much a given that the 3G will be locked to AT&T's network whether you buy it on contract or pay the extra up front for a "no commitment" model. This is the same as the original iPhone which has always been locked to AT&T. However, some people have found ways to break the SIM-lock and get the iPhone to accept SIM cards from other networks. It is also reasonable to assume that Apple will have secured all these holes in the v2.0 firmware that the 3G will ship with. I would guess that people will find another way to unlock the 3G, but it may take a while for them to figure it out and will depend on how well Apple has locked the platform down.

Once somebody manages to unlock it, it is reasonable to assume that all standard functions (with the notable exception of Visual Voicemail) should work regardless of the network you use it on. I guess some of Apple's push notifications services might need a bit of hacking too, but it's hard to tell until someone actually tries it.

As for your second point, the "3G-ness" of the new model only affects the speed when using the mobile phone network. Speeds on WiFi networks should be identical to current hardware. The v2.0 software may speed things up a bit, but that will also apply to older models too.