Help needed with an iPhone 4S

floppybootstomp

floppybootstomp

sugar 'n spikes
Moderator
Joined
Mar 5, 2002
Messages
20,281
Reaction score
1,794
A friend of mine is selling his iPhone 4S for a reasonable price but before I buy it I need to be sure I can configure it to my network and number. The iPhone is on the Vodafone network and has a sim card and my phone is an HTC Wildfire with a Sim card on the Virgin network.

I understand the iPhone sim card is smaller so I need to unlock the iPhone and then get a simcard I can use with it and be able to connect to my network and use my number.

Can this be done?

All my contacts on the Wildfire are on the phone and I have copied them to the 2Gb SD card in the phone but can't seem to be able to copy the contacts to the phone's sim card.

Just where is my number stored on the Wildfire? Sim card or phone?

Am I able to do this myself? I see guides and software available but also read that iPhone 4's with later versions of iOS cannot be unlocked (or Jailbroken, as it's known). And if I buy a blank iPhone sim card can this be programmed to work with my number and network?

I'm a bit confused but would really love to stop using my Wildfire and use a more user-friendly phone.

I asked three shops offering unlocking services, two said they couldn't unlock the iPhone 4 and the third said they could but wanted £60 to do all the things I required, including supplying the iPhone Simcard. That seemed expensive to me.

So, any help and advice would be greatly apreciated :)
 
Im not too up on the unlocking side of things, i know it can be done via Ultrasn0w.

I just found this, maybe worth speaking to Vodafone?

http://cow.neondragon.net/index.php/how-to-unlock-your-iphone-from-o2-and-orange

How do I unlock an iPhone from Vodafone?

Vodafone will unlock your iPhone for a fee of £15.32 on Pay Monthly or £19.99 on Pay As You Go. For Pay As You Go customers, the £19.99 charge is taken from your Pay As You Go credit so you should top up by at least £20 prior to unlocking your iPhone. It should take no more than 72 hours to unlock your iPhone. Requests should be made through Vodafone’s online form.

See the FAQ on the Vodafone website for more information.
Click to expand...

Can you export your contacts to your gmail account on the wildfire? I think thats what i did with my GF's old WF when i gave her my old iP4...

Theres an option in the contacts section i think, something like 'merge with....' (?)
 
That's a good link V_R, will have to get my mate to do the unlocking or at least do it in his name. Which just leaves the Sim card. I suppose it would be best to get in touch with Virgin (my network) and see if they will supply a mini sim card for my account to be used with an iPhone. That should be interesting.

What I need, I suppose, is a way of copying my current normal sized sim card to the Apple mini Sim Card. Will have a search around tomorrow.

I'll check out gmail for the contact transfer but I've never used online services with the Wildfire, text is so small I can't make out a single thing on the screen, waste of time.

I do have most contacts printed out actually, wouldn't be too much of a hardship to manually enter them again, there's around 250 though so might take a while....
 
You have two optons with the sim.

Phone Virgin and ask for a Micro Sim or buy a sim cutter. :)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/TeckNet-iPhone-Cutter-Converter-adapters/sim/B003QRAUYA/2

....as an example.

For your contacts, seriously, get them added to your gmail account and just sync them. It maybe a bit of a ball ache to start with, but once its done you will never go back, its sooooo much easier. I cannot stress this enough.
 
Well well, a sim cutter? Had never heard of it. Coupla quid to get round a problem, I like it.

Looks like it's going to take 2 to 3 weeks to unlock the iPhone 4s but I figure it's worth it and I'll order a sim card cutter. Can't help thinking the cutter will trim the data though, lol

I hear you about the gmail sync, I'll give it my best shot, thanks.

Me mate is a bit desperate for cash at the moment so he's offered the iPhone 4S to me for £170.00 - deal?

I was definitely going to buy a refurbished iPhone 3 on Ebay at some stage so this seems a better idea.
 
170 quid for a 4S!? bite his had off! :D
 
Have ordered a sim cutter from Ebay - £2.34

I am now the owner of an iPhone, never thought I'd see the day.

And it's not a 4S, just a plain 4. I misunderstood, me mate upgraded from 4 to 4S for himself as his contract had run out and he needed a bit of spare cash hence the sale of the 4, which I have paid 170 for.

So, not exactly a bargain but if we look at Ebay still a very good price but Enviriphone will only give 140 for it. I not too bothered, anything to get rid of this HTC Wildfire.

I have started the unlock process, yesterday I requested unlock from Vodaphone as if I were my mate who I bought phone from. Will have to wait but did receive automated email confirming request. They will charge me mate 15 quid to unlock so have given him £15.

Now why do I think there will be problems with this? Maybe I'm a cynic but my experience with some mobile phone networks has not been particularly too good in the past - read Carphone Warehouse (avoid like the plague) and Orange (criminals in a good citizen's outer clothing - they will stitch you up a kipper given half a chance).

So, let's wait and see what happens. The phone is perfect, unscratched, original box, charger and lead.

I've loaded I-Tunes onto my main PC for this iPhone (and I HATE i-Tunes) just so I can connect it to see when unlock occurs (if it ever does).

Worst comes to the worst I expect I'll get my money back selling it on Ebay to somebody with Vodaphone.

I'll keep you all posted on progress.
 
Hope the unlock happens quickly Mr Flopp's :nod:

My god that is going to seem so good compared to what you had!
 
floppybootstomp said:
I've loaded I-Tunes onto my main PC for this iPhone (and I HATE i-Tunes) just so I can connect it to see when unlock occurs (if it ever does).

.
Click to expand...

Once you have checked the unlock with iTunes you can get rid of it. It's no longer needed for updates. As for music, HERE is a link on ways to get your music onto your phone.
 
I dont get the hate for iTunes, its fine. I've not had any issues with it. iTunes 11 is out in October too. Will be even better. :)

http://www.apple.com/uk/itunes/new-itunes/

Thats still a decent price Flops. Your unlock should be fine, i cant see any reason why it wouldn't be. Fingers crossed. As you say worst comes to the worst you will make your money back on the bay. :thumb:
 
Ah, I-Tunes. I have been trying to use this software since April 2006 and have always, always, experienced problems with it, the worst thing that happened once was I plugged iPod in and iTunes decided to erase the player's hard disk completely.

When I tried to use it lately I was converting folders containing mp3 files but neglected to tick the box that enabled m4a backup to computer's hard disk so that when I moved original folders with mp3 files the iPod wouldn't sync and it disabled playback of those files on the iPod.

My eldest daughter recently had her iPhone 3 stolen whilst on holiday in Greece and borrowed an iPhone 3 from a friend. She couldn't load her music onto it as the borrowed phone synced to a different store account. I am not an Apple fanboy, not at all, but will confess a fondness for iPhones and iPods, I have two iPods, a 30Gb Fifth generation and an 80Gb iPod Classic from 2008, both of which I like a great deal.

Nope, me and iTunes don't get on but it seems I'm going to have to install it for this iPhone 4. I'm going to install iTunes on my main computer, my gaming machine and keep it just for the phone.

Nope, me and iTunes just don't see eye to eye, I've always had problems with it and in that I'm not alone.

Having said that, Winamp is quite good for player management but it's very slow compared to iTunes and I have the full version of Media Monkey installed which seems to me to be just as complicated as iTunes.

I recently wiped my 80Gb iPod and am going to reload it and am wondering which program to use. And I wonder - will iTunes manage the libraries of several Apple devices? Such as in my case a pair of iPods and one iPhone?

PS: I have to stay in on Friday as daughter's new iPhone 5 arriving so I'll get to take a look at one. I let daughter person use bedroom computer with iTunes on it exclusively for her phone, so no probs there, hopefully.
 
Sim card cutter arrived yesterday and I trimmed my sim card. The cutter isn't very accurate and I had to file the sides on the resulting 'mini sim' before it would fit into the adapter. And it needs to be snug in the adapter before it fits back into my HTC Wildfire. Managed it in the end though, Wildfire working fine.

No word from Vodaphone yet on unlocking but called in Vodaphone store today and they told me it takes 4 working days and then they will email with instructions on how to unlock, which differs from what I've read elsewhere. We shall see what occurs.

Also bought a mini sim card with £5 worth of PAYG credit just to check all is working ok. It is. Will load iTunes and sync it later this evening, get some music on it.
 
lil update....

Received email from Vodafone on Thursday saying my email address wasn't on my mate's Vodafone account profile. Well no, it wouldn't be, lol Fair nuff really cos I could have nicked the phone. They asked me (my mate) to phone them on their free 191 number to sort it out.

Had to stay in all day Friday to take delivery of daughter's iPhone 5 which didn't arrive :mad: She's with 02 and they used Yodel as the courier :rolleyes: It eventually arrived 09:30 yesterday (Monday) btw.

Visted me mate on Monday and he phoned Vodafone. When he finally got through to an operator after hanging on twenty minutes, five minutes of conversation sorted it out. He received a text message asking for a sim card that hasn't been used with the iPhone before to be put in it and within a couple of days when he (I) connects to iTunes it will appear as unlocked.

Whether that means it's unlocked with Vodafone only and I have to wait up to 2 weeks for Apple to acknowledge the unlocking and update their database I do not know, we shall see.

So, the phone has the £5 PAYG sim card in it so I took a deep breath and installed iTunes to my main computer. This left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, lol

I went through every single option in iTunes and tried best as I could to make sure nothing was cocked up. I'd set 'Manually sync content to iPhone' on and as a result couldn't figure out how the hell you uploaded music to the iPhone :confused: Maybe I'm being a dufus but I've always, always, found iTunes confusing and I still do. So I turned that option off and the music loaded onto the phone ok using auto-sync. The same auto-sync that has been known to wipe Apple mobile devices clean.

I also created a new Apple ID for the Apple store. Since 2006 I have bought three single tunes from their store. I also set up a folder dedicated to the music on the iPhone and I was surprised to see they're stored there in mp3 format, I'm sure iTunes always used to convert everything to m4a format.

And there were still glitches. I created a playlist for 20 assorted songs, had to edit the 'info' details on every one to get them in order, no dragging into position. This took a while. At the end, tune number 15 insisted on being last, couldn't get it into the playlist position I wanted at all, tried all sorts. All info 'part of a compilation' boxes are ticked and they're all numbered 'Track 01 of 20' etc

Closed iTunes and opened later and three playlist folders had just disappeared from iTunes. Connected iPhone, it synced, of course, and the 3 playlists also disappeared from the phone. All created playlists were still there this morning, however, but it does confirm my belief that iTunes is one of the most confusing and flakiest pieces of software out there.

Anyhow, now waiting for unlocked message to show which should be Wednesday or Thursday.
 
Its all fun and games ain't it Mr Flopp's..Don't you just love iTunes :D
 
floppybootstomp said:
Had to stay in all day Friday to take delivery of daughter's iPhone 5 which didn't arrive :mad: She's with 02 and they used Yodel as the courier :rolleyes: It eventually arrived 09:30 yesterday (Monday) btw.
Click to expand...
Ah Yodel...... Beyond useless.


Whether that means it's unlocked with Vodafone only and I have to wait up to 2 weeks for Apple to acknowledge the unlocking and update their database I do not know, we shall see.
Click to expand...
It should be fine, i dont think you will have to wait for Apple.


I went through every single option in iTunes and tried best as I could to make sure nothing was cocked up. I'd set 'Manually sync content to iPhone' on and as a result couldn't figure out how the hell you uploaded music to the iPhone :confused: Maybe I'm being a dufus but I've always, always, found iTunes confusing and I still do. So I turned that option off and the music loaded onto the phone ok using auto-sync. The same auto-sync that has been known to wipe Apple mobile devices clean.
Click to expand...
Best way if you have more music that space, or just prefer to do it yourself is to tick the box at the bottom of the main iPhone 'Summery' page in iTunes 'Manually manage music and video' - That way you can just drag and drop your media to the phone on the left panel. (Little tip, if you have album art showing and you want to add the whole album, just click and drag the album cover over to the phone on the left, rather than highlighting all the tracks ;) ) :thumb:


I also created a new Apple ID for the Apple store. Since 2006 I have bought three single tunes from their store. I also set up a folder dedicated to the music on the iPhone and I was surprised to see they're stored there in mp3 format, I'm sure iTunes always used to convert everything to m4a format.
Click to expand...
Music you buy from iTunes will be in m4a, but the phone will play and store mp3's just fine.

You can just use your Music folder and all the music will appear in iTunes, then you can just drag and drop as above.


Set '1' as your usual music folder, just make sure '2' is unticked or it will move everything around... ;)

attachment.php



And there were still glitches. I created a playlist for 20 assorted songs, had to edit the 'info' details on every one to get them in order, no dragging into position. This took a while. At the end, tune number 15 insisted on being last, couldn't get it into the playlist position I wanted at all, tried all sorts. All info 'part of a compilation' boxes are ticked and they're all numbered 'Track 01 of 20' etc

Closed iTunes and opened later and three playlist folders had just disappeared from iTunes. Connected iPhone, it synced, of course, and the 3 playlists also disappeared from the phone. All created playlists were still there this morning, however, but it does confirm my belief that iTunes is one of the most confusing and flakiest pieces of software out there.
Click to expand...
Cant help you with that as i dont use playlists i'm afraid. :)

Hope that helps. :cheers:
 

Attachments

  • itunessettings.webp
    itunessettings.webp
    33.9 KB · Views: 556
Ta da! IPhone4 unlocked today, I now have my Virgin account Sim running in it, all is good.

Well, almost all is good, Couldn't transfer all my numbers across, the HTC Wildfire saw the iPhone but the iPhone refused to recognise it for data transfer via Bluetooth, typical Apple behaviour really.

Tried Google sync, wasn't having it at all. So, so far, I've manually entered my 30 odd important numbers and it will be a slow process to manually enter the rest.

iTunes still has a mind of it's own, same old niggle with me, it never does what you want it to do. Unless you have an album with no guest artists or don't mind wherever iTunes dumps your music files, iTunes is crap. Always has been.

On my iPods I make one playlist for one album or compilation and although it takes a lot of effort and time, I can get the iPods to do that and hold the playlists as I want them and with the tunes in the order I choose. Not so with the iPhone using ios6, it only lists a few playlists, everything else is by artist which pretty much makes compilations impossible. iTunes IS NOT good - it's rubbish, imo

Ok, that's the negative, the positive is that for a total sum of £185.32 I now have an unlocked iPhone 4 :) It is such a joy to use after that poxy HTC Wildfire, I'm loving it. The sound quality is superb, today listened to new albums by Pink and The Killers on it whilst strolling about Greenwich.

Yesterday I went to Lakeside IKEA with me mate Johnny and somehow I managed to scratch the screen of my HTC Wildfire :( On the last day of it's use I managed to fubar it, I could have got 40 or 50 quid for it had it stayed pristine, I got the box, manual and everything. Bugger. Oh well, will keep it as a spare, have applied to Virgin to unlock it, no probs, same £15.32 fee applies, the same as with Vodafone unlocking the Apple phone.

Summary: Despite my criticism of iTunes (a deserved criticism, I might add) I really am rather chuffed to now have an iPhone, not the latest but it works well and it does have latest software. Come May next year, assuming I'm still alive & kicking and still have the power of speech I am going to change to contract Sim Card only deal with Virgin when my current contract ends.

Virgin may supply a lousy Broadband Service but I've been with their phone thingie for at least three and a half years now and I must admit they've been pretty good.

Right, more music (albums only) and gonna try a few films on this thing.... Mr Flops loves new toys :)
 
Um, this really hurts, but I gotta tell the truth..... Playlists were actually on this iPhone 4 all the time, the only thing that stopped me seeing them was me being an absolute Doofus :o

Playlists DID transfer to phone via iTunes, it was just my unfamiliarity with new phone made me think they weren't there.

So, gotta put the record straight, some of my previous criticism was unfounded.

However, just noticed today travelling on train - the iPhone doesn't have a radio. You what? Bloody Apple cheapskates, lol

Unless, of course, I've managed to miss that setting as well

We'll finish on an up - the iPhone audio playback quality is every bit as good as an iPod.

Meanwhile, back with updating iPod via iTunes, I've realised iTunes isn't happy unless you have a bonafide CD or downloaded music folder, it does NOT like self-compiled folders or downloads from questionable sources, I am spending some considerable time right clicking tracks and editing info.
 
You'll get used to it Flops. :)

No radio no, sorry. But you could try an app from the store, I use 'Tunein Radio' but that will use your data connection. Bonus is you have access to hundreds of internet radio stations. :)

I tag / edit all my albums/music via http://www.mp3tag.de/en/ before i add it to itunes, much easier. :)
 
Back
Top