iHacks: Activating the iPhone Without AT&T

In this new series of blog posts, we are going to show you how to hack your iPhone, ranging from complex hacks that change the way it works, to simple hacks that make it easier to use. For starters, here's how to activate a new iPhone without signing up with AT&T.

NOTE: All of these hacks are at your own risk and are provided purely for educational purposes. We can't be held responsible if you break your iPhone, disable it, damage it or otherwise affect its functionality, nor it they don't work.

Hack #1: Activate the iPhone without AT&T

If you just want a big-screen iPod and WiFi web browsing device, it's not difficult to activate the iPhone without setting up an AT&T account. To do this, you'll need three things:

• A new, unactivated iPhone.
• The iActivator program from the iPhone Dev Wiki. Make sure you get the latest version direct from the authors; several other sites are still offering older versions that don't work correctly on newer iPhones, or are offering incomplete instructions. At the time of writing, the latest version is 1.1.4
• The iPhone firmware image. You can get this from Apple: the iActivator documentation contains a link to the download site for this.

Unfortunately, the iActivator program is available for Mac only at the moment; Windows users can find an alternative set of instructions here.

1. Plug in your new, unactivated iPhone. When iTunes starts (and asks you about activating the iPhone), quit out of it. iTunes may also pop up sometimes during the process: if it does, quit out of itTunes as quickly as possible, or the process may not work.
   
2. Run iActivator. It will ask you for the location of the iPhone firmware image that you downloaded; point it in the right direction.
   
3. Click on Jailbreak. This is the process that allows the program to copy files to the iPhone. Follow the instructions until you get the Jailbreak Successful screen.
   
4. Click on the PUT PEM button. This puts a special file onto the iPhone that allows the activation to work effectively. If this works, you should get a message reading "file successfully written to the iPhone".
   
5. Click on Generate Activation. This will bring up a dialog box asking for two numbers: the IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identifier, which identifies the iPhone) and ICCD (the Integrated Circuit Card Identifier, which identifies the SIM card in the iPhone). You'll find both of these numbers listed on the back of the iPhone case. Make sure to type them in correctly; if you get them wrong, the activation may not work. iActivator will then create a file that contains the activation information: save this and remember where you saved it.
   
6. Click on Activate iPhone, and point the program to the activation file created above. This copies the activation file to the iPhone, and runs the activation process. If it works, you'll get a message that reads "Activation succeeded. Activation result: Activated". If you get a message that says "Activation result: failed", run step 5 again and check that you entered the codes correctly.
   
7. Congratulate yourself: you've just activated the iPhone. To keep things tidy and avoid problems, it's best to now undo the Jailbreak, so that the iPhone is back to its normal state. So, click on Return to Jail and follow the instructions.
   
8. When you turn the iPhone back on, you'll get a message about "waiting for AT&T activation". Don't worry about that; just hit dismiss, and you can use the iPhone.

We did encounter some problems when we ran this process; the activation process failed a couple of times. We found the best way to retry the step was to unplug the iPhone, wait a few seconds then plug it in again, quickly closing iTunes when it started up. This seems to help, but you don't need to start again from scractch; the jailbreak remains in effect until you undo it. So, if the Put PEM file step doesn't work, unplug the iPhone, wait, then plug it back in and retry that step.

An iPhone activated this way can work as an iPod, playing music, videos and even TV shows bought through iTunes; synching your media works in exactly the same way as it does with a normally activated iPhone. It can also browse the web over a WiFi connection, but it can't make phone calls.

Unfortunately, this process won't allow you to activate the iPhone with another carrier; the hackers at the iPhone Dev Wiki are still working on that. We'll be sure to let you know when they manage to get around the locks that Apple has put on the iPhone.

Restoring the iPhone
If you decide that you want to undo this process and activate the iPhone normally, the best way is to completely restore the iPhone from scratch. To do this, follow this procedure:

1. Synch your iPhone in iTunes; this process is going to completely erase all of your data, an this saves the data to your Mac. Make sure that you are synching everyhing that you want: contacts, calendar, photos, etc.
   
2. With the iPhone still connected to the Mac, press down and hold the power and home keys. Keep holding them down until you see the screen that says "please connect to iTunes".
   
3. iTunes will pop up a message about detecting an iPhone in recovery mode; click on okay, then click on Recover, then Recover and Update, and wait for the iPhone to be restored and your data to be copied back, a process that can take some time. You can then run through the normal activation process and set up an account with AT&T to enable the cell phone service. You should also note that any other hacks you have done (such as changign the carrier logo, etc) will be removed by this.