Well, due to popular demand, I have been asked to provide a tutorial, based on my experiences, on how to get a T-Mobile Sidekick prepaid plan onto the iPhone. I will cover, getting the SIM, payment, porting your old number, and setting it all up on the iPhone in this tutorial. So let’s get started!
The first step is to get a T-Mobile SIM card. Well, if you don’t have a T-Mobile SIM that came from an actual Sidekick phone already, read this carefully. Well, I went to one of my local T-Mobile stores in order to obtain my T-Mobile SIM card.
Well, as you may have know, I had AT&T GoPhone before I had T-Mobile on my iPhone, so obviously I didn’t have a T-Mobile SIM. Well, like I said, go to the T-Mobile store, and ask for a SIM kit for the prepaid sidekick plan. (Its a special SIM, so make sure you tell them what you want, with a straight face.
Now, also make sure to tell them, “I bought a Sidekick on eBay, and I haven’t gotten it yet, but I need the SIM so I can use it when it gets here”. Just make sure you tell them you “have a Sidekick, but its not with you”. If you have a non-caring T-Mobile employee, you’re golden. If they tell you no, say “alright, thank you” and go to another T-Mobile store or go back on a different time and day. It worked on my first attempt, they really shouldn’t care.
So now, that the T-Mobile person has the SIM (Make sure on the package that he/she brings back has a “$30″ in a big pink square”. Also, make sure you have $35 with you to buy the SIM kit and pay the tax (it depends on where you live, there are different taxes everywhere, its 6% here, very cheap).
Cool! You now have everything you need from the T-Mobile store!
Before they do anything, if you want to keep your number (doesn’t matter what carrier you have, they made a pact with all the major companies to port numbers) tell them. They will tell you that they will give you a new number, then they will call T-Mobile customer service for you to get it changed.
VERY IMPORTANT: I had huge issues here. If you have AT&T call their asses at customer service and get your account number!!! Prepaid customers have an account number as well, I didn’t know prepaid customers had account numbers so I had to spend 3 days (I did it on Friday, and. i had to wait to call them on Monday morning, because I had a b-day party on Sunday and they said wait 24 hours so Saturday wasn’t a good day to do it.) waiting to get ported until i called and the issue was AT&T didn’t want me to port my number because I didn’t give them my account number, because I didn’t know.
SO GET THAT NUMBER! Then tell them your name, bring some ID, bring the money, write down the number you want to get ported, get your account number, and most of all, stay cool.
So let them set your new T-Mobile prepaid (sidekick) service up. Make sure its not regular T-Mobile prepaid or else you will not be able to get the full internet, as some of you have found out by me emailing you.
Now, after you’ve paid and gotten your SIM, take out your iPhone, and go into Cydia, and add the repo http://repo666.ultrasn0w.com/ and refresh. this is your unlock solution. This is where you unlock with ultrasn0w. Install ultrasn0w and reboot.
Now, before poping in the SIM, go back into Cydia, and go into the Modmyi repo, or search for “T-Mobile”, now look for the “T-Mobile -US Prepaid Sidekick Support” package, install it.
(This will enable you to use the full unrestricted internet (not just the 5 wap sites you get with the regular T-Mobile prepaid (non-sidekick), teathering, and MMS (well, I have not gotten MMS to work, I called the creator of the package, and he said he called T-Mobile and none of the MMS APNs they gave him worked, so don’t be surprised that MMS doesn’t work.)
Now, MMS does work with the T-Mobile Flexpay Sidekick plan with this same package.
Alright, turn your iPhone off (slide the red slider by holding the power button), now take out the old AT&T SIM you had in it, and pop in your new T-Mobile SIM. Now, turn the iPhone back on.
You should see a delay, or it saying “…” in the status bar, let ultrasn0w kick in and recognize you now unlocking, and you should see an “E” symbol for EDGE after a few seconds, and then T-Mobile, then more bars pop up.
I had huge issues when I did this. I was scared out of my mind, thinking I had canceled my AT&T service for a non-working T-Mobile sidekick service, I rebooted and still “Searching…” and it would hang….
Turns out, I had “3G” on. Lol. Make sure you turn 3G off. If you forgot to turn 3G off before turning your phone off to take the SIM out, turn 3G off in the Settings app, and reboot again, this time, you should finally see a T-Mobile carrier with bars! So don’t be stupid like me and leave 3G on. ?
So, now go into Settings->Phone->My Number, now it will say “unknown” like mine did, change it to (country code first, then area code, then number)
Example:
1 (800) 444-4444
Cool, so there you go! You should now have T-Mobile Prepaid on the $1 a day Sidekick plan on your iPhone 3G or iPhone 3G S running (and only running) iPhone OS 3.0 (7A341).
Now, if you didn’t receive an SMS text message saying that your number had been ported in the 24 hours they told you it would (and I mean 24 hours), call 1(877)789-3106 to see what’s going on. This is T-Mobile’s number porting hotline. Call that number to begin porting your number or to see what’s taking so long.
Once you get everything done and straightened out here and you have your number, go to Settings->Phone->My Number and delete the old number, and type in your new number. Now, go ahead and reboot one last time.
Now, on to payment, you will get a month of “free” (you pay $30 bucks at the T-Mobile store to get the SIM kit so its not exactly free) T-Mobile service.
So what happens when you run out of money the next month? Well, just pick up a T-Mobile refil card at your local Walmart, Target, Best Buy, convenience store, or T-Mobile store. They come in denominations from $10-$100.
To add funds to your account, dial *223 on your iPhone.
Or go to Settings->Phone->T-Mobile Services and tap on the service that you need.
The T-Mobile Prepaid Sidekick plan includes: Unlimited SMS text messaging, unlimited internet (EDGE & GRPS, 3G doesn’t work due to hardware differences), unlimited teathering, possible MMS for 25 cents sent 10 cents received (if someone can get this going), and 10 cents a minute!
Now compare that to AT&T’s Prepaid GoPhone plan: $20 for 100MB of data, $20 for unlimited texting, teathering block, MMS block, and 25 cents a minute.
Now you see why I switched! ?
lovely! thanks alan. I’m going to do this today on my iPhone 2g. So I’ll report back here how well it works.
From what I can tell, the only issue might be MMS compatibility. As it says: “iPhone 2G users must install ActiveMMS2G from Cydia” from here http://www.modmyi.com/forums/t-mobile/656651-t-mobile-usa-carrier-bundle.html
Very good article. Gonna use it today 🙂
Very nice guide, I’m interested in switching, but the only downfall is no 3G. How fast would you consider EDGE for T-Mobile in Kbps?
Mike: Well, I can’t tell you exactly how fast in numbers, but let’s just say I don’t miss 3G at all. T-Mobile’s EDGE network is very very close to AT&T’s 3G network. About 5bars of EDGE = 1-2 bars of 3G. Its way faster than AT&T’s EDGE network. GRPS on T-Mobile’s network seems more like EDGE on AT&T’s network.
i posted something earlier this morning but for some reason it didn’t post. I’ve went ahead and did the deed. (ironic how I found this website trying to stay on AT&T, haha) Thank You Alan!
I’ll just report back my differences.
1) They didn’t have a “sidekick prepaid kit” they said they stopped selling it 2 years ago. So they just gave me a $10 kit, which I assume can be configured at time of purchase to be a “sidekick kit”. What they tell me this includes is 30 whenever minutes for 90 days. And $10 credit every month for the first three months. Pretty cool deal all included for the $10 set up fee.
2) they asked for my address to set up the port. They said they port it into a regular postpaid account. Get possession of the number than transfer it to my prepaid.
I have a iPhone 2G so I was going in and trying to see what the differences were. I do not have the “Cellular Data” option under the Settings>General>Network.
I thought I would finally have visual voice mail again but no…
Modmyi says “iPhone 2G users must install ActiveMMS2G from Cydia” to get MMS and I believe activate the “Cellular Data” option under Network Settings. I’ve installed “ActivatedMMS2G” but haven’t seen the “Cellular Data” option yet. I’ll fiddle and research some more.
reference:
http://www.modmyi.com/forums/t-mobile/656651-t-mobile-usa-carrier-bundle.html
http://www.modmyi.com/forums/native-iphone-ipod-touch-app-discussion/653591-activatemms2g.html
Alan mike was talking about download speeds. Edge is around 175kbs
I just did a test and got 197kbs. 3g would be nice but edge works for me and I am in wifi zones all the time.
LEI Mike: I know. I was on GRPS when i replied, so i couldn’t test it. AT&T’s 3G sucks dude. It was crap. I even thing EDGE is snappier than AT&T’s 3G network.
Hmm 175Kbps is a bit faster than my current internet, which is around 130kbps.
I may be willing to switch to T-Mobile soon. I will keep you updated.
But how do you use the tethering feature exactly?
Thanks
Hey, well I thought I would let you know you don’t have to buy a special sidekick sim card, any prepaid tmobile card can be switches to a sidekick plan, I went into a tmobile store and asked for a prepaid sim pack and they thought I was crazy(lol) they had no idea, so I went into walgreens next store and picked up a $20 nokia prepaid tmobile phone, then activated it as a normal plan with the cheap phone, then went online and changed my plan to sidekick, and you can put the apn hiptop.t-mobile.com and get th Same effect, also just to let you on a glitch I found if your account is drained (mine has $0.04) you get full data and text and calls are blocked, but you have to put at least $10 in evrey 3 months or your account get deleted but I have Been using this trick since about April, cause I have AT&T phone so basically I have a iPod touch with data, and the sidekick plan is truly unliimited cause I have downloaded many movies and albums from it, so hope it helps…
Hey mike, as far as I know you have to go to tethering in networksettings turn it on, and then plug the USB cable into the computer and all you need is iTunes and it should come up as a network, but I haven’t tried this yet, my computer sucks, but I’ll try it soon this week, my friends laptop, and let ya know how it goes.
Also when downloading the fastest I have seen is around 20kbs a second, but from what I have heard is that it is better then AT&T edge, it is good for normal browsing, but downloading takes a while,
Mike: install iTunes 8.2 (not 8.2.1) and go into Settings->General->Network->Internet Teathering and switch it to on, choose USB and plug the iPhone into your PC.
Give it a moment to install the drivers and bam! It will do it by itself.
DC: Yes, that is true, but there are sidekick sim
kits that give you $30 to work with, instead of the $10 thatregular prepaid gets you. Plus it does it by itself.
I have seen up to 60kbps while downloading stuff. Uploading spee it alright.
I can post articles here with tons of images no issue in a matter of 5 seconds.
Yeah your way is easier but I didn’t know that, and about the speeds, when downloading from megaupload or rapidshare I have gotten a max of around 20kbs, that’s what the download plugin said but I ran a test and it said 75 kbs max and around 60 kbs average, but I guess with those sites the slow down the download speed, I guess…
you can test the speed from your phone by going to: http://i.dslr.net/tinyspeedtest.html
GPRS is really slow around 40kbps. Edge speeds are around 175kbps. 3G speeds are around 700kbs. All of these numbers depend on your location and signal strength. Obviously if you only have 2 bars yours speeds are going to be slow. Also the APN that you are using also makes a difference. I find that epc.tmobile.com is faster than wap.voicestream.com
Well I live in a big area and mostly have full bars, I did the speed test it said 139kb, , but when I use the download plugin it always goes from around 10-20, I don’t no way it always says diffrent…
Also about the apn, you have to use hiptop.t-mobile, the others don’t work because the data goes through danger servers, I’m on sidekick prepaid, it’s always been this way though cause I have it since march…
I am tired of ATT, I would like to switch to TMobile, does the sidekick plan is $1 per day of use or $1/day even if you dont use.
Will I still be able to use itunes to sync and update?
It’s a dollar a day everyday, even if you don’t use it, but you can switch between prepaid plans easily on days you don’t need data, but when you switch back it takes a dollar put, but If you don’t need data it would be worth it.
I’ve done this to my iPhone 2G. So far I love it. There is no better F-U to AT&T than seeing that T-Mobile at the top. And I’ve noticed quicker speeds as well. And the sidekick prepaid pricing is unbeatable.
I’ve noticed 2 things.
1) Even without the Sidekick Carrier Bundle I’m able to access internet, messaging and calling. From what I can tell I just need to pop in the SIM and I’m good to go. So my Cellular Data Newtork APN is blank, is that ok?
2) I paid only $10.84 but have $12.34 in my balance. And they haven’t taken any money out for todays usage.
could you confirm I am understanding you correctly?
“also just to let you on a glitch I found if your account is drained (mine has $0.04) you get full data and text and calls are blocked, but you have to put at least $10 in evrey 3 months or your account get deleted”
does this mean even if your balance is below $1 you still have data and texting access!? only calling is disabled? and you only need to put in $10 per 3 months just to make sure your account doesn’t get expired? if that is true that is pretty sick bug to take advantage of!
Yes you can sync to iTunes but the update would break ultra snow so you would have to wait for dev team.
And yes the glitch works, if you less than a dollar it charges 5 or 10 cent a message and then it cuts off, I have (0.04) In mine, the calls and texting stop but you still have data, Its good for me cause I have another phone and don really text, but you can use texting apps for free, but the account expires 3 months after the last deposit on your account, after that it gets ereased, I’ve been using it since bout April this way, I got to get a $10 card soon though.
Hey here’s a link to a guide I found http://tutorialninjas.net/2009/06/24/cheap-data-only-iphone-plan-idata/
Everyone: Cool, thanks for helping me out with my post Mike (LEI) and DC! î„ Looks like you guys have it covered.
Just have 3 things to say.
1) It charges you $1 every 24 hours (exactly), I get charged at 6pm because that’s when my T-Mobile account got activated and enabled.
2) The “glitch” about unlimited internet is still active? T-Mobile released a statement a few months ago claiming that they had removed such bug.
3) Don’t forget to enter our iRealQuickGiveaway or a chance to win 1 of 10 licenses to the awesome iRealQuickSMS application! Also, don’t forget to check out my review!
DC: Yes, I came accross that article as well after I heard about the glitch. But upon further searching people claim that it doesn’t work because T-Mobile fixed it.
Hey I’m on it now, this if for sidekick only, the other glitch worked with any prepaid account using the apn epc.t-mobile.com(I think) I’m still under the sidekick plan on my account, and I haven’t had 4 cent in my account since April and it’s worked for me, I am the only one I think to find this out, the only thing I ever found was this article, but you should test it out if you want,
Hey Alan, is it possiable to email you, so we could talk more, I might also have a fix for mms,
yea some serious experts on here. You guys are helping me get the most out of my new T-Mobile iphone. Thanks for the replies about my concerns, much appreciated.
the only thing I still am wondering about is my APN status. Right now it’s blank but the internet, txting and calling works fine. Is it ok to have it blank?
I guess I’m just not clear on what APN’s are. From what I’ve read it appears the apn doesn’t need to be changed to have edge on an iphone through the sidekick prepaid plan. So what would be the benefit of changing it to either epc.t-mobile.com or hiptop or voicestream?
btw the ability to edit the apn through “cellular network data” disappears when I install the sidekick package.
If for some reason I wanted to port my number back to AT&T, would I be able too?
So with this sidekick pre-paid plan the calls are $00.15/minute?
Hey red, since you have installed the package from cydia, sidekick prepaid settings, it stays on your memory untill you reset network settings, before 3.0 they didn’t have this setup so you had to install apn edit and put in hiptop.t-mobile.com, and epc apn don’t work, so it really doesn’t matter, and the mms doesn’t work, I thought I had found the right settings but it failed to send, and I just added $10 so I’ll let ya know what
happes in 9 days if it still works, it should, and also when I was on 2.2.1 I restored and ugraded
to 3.0 and the Internet still worked, so the
settings survived a restore and a ugrade,
technically you can port any number again and again thru diffrent services, so you should be able to but might have trouble like Alan did…
and yes the sidekick plan is .15, the normal tmobile plan is .10
Sorry for all of the questions. I can’t seem to be able to download the source for ultrasnow. I use this http://repo666.ultrasn0w.com/ and refresh, then i go to search and search for ultrasnow and nothing shows up. Any suggestions? When I refresh it says “bad url”
I see what the problem is. The Source repo is http://repo666.ultrasn0w.com (that last “0†in ultrasn0w is a zero!) I was putting “o”
DC: Weird, I get charged 10 cents and I’m on the sidekick prepaid plan.
Yep, my email is:
alan@limitededitioniphone.com
Thank you sooo much for this tutorial. It was so simple to follow. So I just activated my phone with T-mobile and everything works. I have the camera icon in my messaging app, but it says failure to send. Will we ever be able to send MMS?
Mirasol H.: Glad to hear it! I hate AT&T and this is the perfect way to give them the middle finger that they cannot ignore.
If AT&T customers refused to pay their bills for 1 month (at the same time) AT&T would listen and fix their huge flaws.
Us as consumers have a lot of power, sometimes, it just takes people to recognize this to get the change they desire.
And yes, I do believe we will be able to get MMS to work. Its a matter of getting the right APN settings (which we don’t have yet).
DC says that mabe together we can get this small MMS issue resolved. I’ll keep you all informed.
Good to hear. I will be checking back to see if I can help in anyway. Thanks again!
thanks for the info DC.
Bummer. i was checking my.t-mobile.com and it said I was eligible for Gold Rewards. Looked further into it and sidekick plan does not qualify. Darn no extra 15% minutes with every refill for us!
DC or anyone, do you know why my “Cellular Data Network” settings disappear after I install the sidekick package? (under Settings > General > Network only Data Roaming, VPN, and Wi-Fi appear. “Cellular Data Network” is gone) Is it because i have a 2G?
Hey, sorry red I haven’t been here in a while, but the reason it’s gone is so people don’t put in the wrong settings in, “if it’s broke don’t fix it” so basically you don’t need to change the settings, also as far as I know about mms it was made for a sidekick and none of the setting worked I tried but I’m still working on it, and if you have any more questions I’ll try to answer them.
Hey DC,
So if I just switch T-mobile plans to the sidekick plan, how long before I can use safari?
You should be able to put in a working T-Mobile sidekick sim and have internet right away.
Thanks DC, that makes sense. But the “tether” on/off option isn’t there either. So does that mean my iphone cannot do tethering?
side note, I don’t know how I did this, but when I uninstalled the sidekick package all of a sudden I had all the options, tethering on/off, Cellular Data Network > Visual Voice Mail APN. After I reinstalled the package I lost it. I’ve uninstalled it again but cannot get those features back. I’ve tried and tried but cannot replicate what I did to get the tethering on/off feature.
Will we ever be able to have 3G on T-mobile? I would like to be able to use 3G Unrestrictor.
Hey red, I have uninstalled the packages many times, what you need to do is if you remove a tmobile package reset network settings, it will remove all the previous settings because they are stored, all you need is make sure the sidekick package is installed and then reset network settings and it should be there
mirasol, the current iPhones do not support tmobile 3g bands (3gs or 3g) but there may be some in the future, but 3g unrestricotr tricks the iPhone into thinking your on wifi when your really on edge or gprs or 3g, and you can Download more than 10mb apps and make calls over skype etc.
Hey red , you have a 2g right, well the 2g doesn’t support tethering, but I used to have one but I upgraded to a 3g, but i never got tethering on it, so I really don’t know, but you can use PDA net, that works because I used it with it, but you gotta buy it but if you get the xsellize repo you can get a cracked version, but idk if it works cause last time I checked it didn’t work(my friend uploaded a working version) but if you get PDA net you install software on your computer and it can tether it, hope that helps
Thanks for all the great help found on this site.
Red
I only have under Settings > General > Network >Data Roaming, VPN, tethering on/off and Wi-Fi. I couldn’t get safari to work at first so I used Alan’s APN creator, but that didn’t seem to work either. So I unistalled the APN app and rebooted and now safari works for me. When I go to Messages I see their is an option for MMS.
I have a 3G.
so i did everything and when i try to get on internet i get a nessage saying “could not activate cellular data ntwork: you are not subscribed to a cellular data service”… please help
Just install the prepaid sidekick tmobile bundle in cydia the reset network settings and it should work.
Red
I finaly found why the “Cellular Data Network” tab is missing. Go to this site : http://randomcritic.com/?p=147
Itunes 8.2 turns that tab off. He tells you how to fix it.
I had to remove the entry from the Cellular Data APN as my web access quit. Be nice to know what works for the Voicemail and MMS.
Any know.
I uninstalled the package from Cydia and everything seems to be working fine. Do I need to install it again? What is that package for anyway?
well everything except for MMS 🙁