Several days ago I bought the new iPhone after months of researching alternatives to my Blackberry Pearl. The frustrating part was that once I decided the iPhone 3GS was what I wanted I had to take a leap of faith because buying one meant waiting & hoping that I’d be able to use it. As a T-Mobile customer with a great contract I would’ve quickly lost money by switching to AT&T … so I opted to sit & wait it out hoping the Dev Team or someone else would come up with the jailbreak needed.

What does jailbreaking a phone mean? From Wikipedia:

Jailbreaking is a process that allows iPhone and iPod Touch users to run unofficial code on their devices bypassing Apple’s official distribution mechanism, the App Store. Once jailbroken, iPhone users are able to download many applications previously unavailable through the App Store via unofficial installers such as Cydia and Icy.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait long – GeoHot (a 20 year old hacker who first broke the original iPhone) released his program purplera1n. Once I was able to get Cydia on my phone I could unlock it with another program called ultrasn0w, meaning I could use it on any carrier by inserting a different sim card.

Even though I’d never attempted anything like this before, reading through forums and watching a few videos inspired me to give it a whirl… and it worked! The video proof with directions to follow along is below.

Below are the steps I took to get my 3GS up and running on T-Mobile:

[[the following directions jailbreak the phone using purplera1n]]

1. Get on a Windows PC (XP seems to have fewer issues than Vista)
2. Make sure iTunes is updated. Tun off auto updates.
3. Go to http://www.purplera1n.com/
4. Download and run purplera1n (should say “waiting for phone”)
5. Connect iPhone 3GS to computer.
6. Be patient – puplera1n takes a couple of minutes (should say “entering recovery” then “done, wait for reboot”)
7. Phone reboots – you see image of purplera1n
8. Make sure your wi-fi is connected
9. Run Freeze application to install Cydia
10. Download Cydia
11. Reboot

[[the following directions unlock the phone using ultrasn0w]]

12. Disable 3G network in (Settings, General, Network) so T-Mobile can run smoothly
13. Go to Cydia: Manage, Sources, Edit and type in repo666.ultrasn0w.com (the o is a zero in sn0w)
14. Go to Cydia: Changes, and install ultrasn0w
15. Reboot
16. Use paperclip to remove sim card, & replace with your own
17. Voila! You are now on the network of your choice!