iPhone - FutureTG.com

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Setup and Signup
In the first year of its existence, the iPhone was remarkable (among
other ways) in that you didn’t activate it (sign up for service) in the cellphone
store, with a salesperson breathing down your neck. You did it
at home, on your computer, in iTunes, where you could take all the time
you needed to read about the plans and choose the one you want.
That all changed with the iPhone 3G. Now, you sign up in the cellphone
store, with a salesperson breathing down your neck.
This Appendix covers the AT&T plans you might sign up for, plus how to
upgrade an original iPhone’s software to the 2.0 version.
Activation
Activation means signing up for a plan, turning on the service, and either
finding out your new phone number or transferring your old number to the
iPhone.
A non-activated iPhone isn’t altogether useless. It’s still a very nice iPod—in
fact, it’s pretty much an iPod Touch. But without a two-year AT&T contract,
the iPhone costs $600 or $700 (for the 8- and 16-gig models)—so if an iPod
Touch is what you want, then you should just buy an iPod Touch and save a
lot of money.
Some wily fans have realized that they can buy the iPhone for $200, sign up
for service, then cancel and pay the $175 early-termination fee. The result: a
no-service, liberated phone for $375 total. (That’s still more expensive than an iPod
Touch, though. And you never know when that loophole might get closed.)
Incidentally, the iPhone is a locked GSM phone, meaning that it works only
with an AT&T account. It won’t work with Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, or any other
Setup and Signup 323