The iSaga

Suzie and I each own an iPod Touch and we use them all the time.  I use mine multiple times daily, for contact info, alarm clock, music playing, web surfing, Facebook, email... you name it.  It's my link to the outside world at work.  She doesn't use hers nearly as much as I do but she is pretty attached to it nevertheless.  Both of us thought,  "How cool would it be if we could find a good deal on an iPhone and we could stop carrying both a cell phone and an iPod.  It would be the best of both worlds."  That started me looking.  We didn't want the latest and greatest (no wait--of course we wanted the latest and greatest--just way too expensive), but we wanted good features.  In other words, we wanted the most bang for our buck.

The more I dug, the more I learned.  Because iPhones were only sold for AT&T customers (and recently Verizon as well) we would have to have any iPhone that we buy "jailbroken" and "unlocked" (two completely separate but equally necessary processes) because we are both on T-Mobile.  In other words, we would have to cheat the phones--hack them if you will.  The trouble is iPhones came in so many variations--some of them not unlockable.  I dug and dug on Craigslist.  Because of all the variations, I was hesitant to buy just any iPhone.  A couple of weeks passed by and every time I would email somebody about one they were selling (asking highly technical questions to determine if they were usable to me) they were already sold, there was always something about its configuration that I found not quite desirable, or they would never reply back.

One day a week or two ago I met up with this guy that was selling one with a broken screen.  He wanted $80 for it, but when I saw it and realized how truly hammered (bad shape) it was I declined.  Besides the glass being shattered, there was also a streak going through the LCD portion of the screen just under the glass, the outer part of the volume button was gone (it still worked with your fingernail), and the case was cracked and gouged in multiple places.  He said, "What will you give me for it?"  After thinking about it, I offered him $40 bucks.  In retrospect I should have offered him 20.  It was in bad enough shape and he was eager to take the $40.  To make a long story short, I put that iPhone through the paces.  I hit it with every kind of hacking software I could and tried everything on it.  First it wasn't jailbroken.  I took me quite a while to get through that, but I did and I learned.  I got the phone pretty much fully functional, but could never get it unlocked for T-Mobile.  Basically, I had it functioning as an iPod Touch.  The battery never held a very good charge, I was lucky to get it to sit for half a day without dying.  We were, however, really surprised at how well the camera worked for both stills and video.  The voice recorder worked great, and all the game apps I had put on it (borrowed from my Touch) worked great.  I filled it with songs and they played and sounded great too.  The only thing that didn't work was the wifi portion, which, to me is pretty important.  So me--being the inquisitive fixit guy that I am--opened it up.  The insides of it looked like they had been victim of condensation a few times--possibly being left out in a car overnight too many times or something.  I never did find anything physically wrong inside like something loose, unplugged or broken.  I was able to get it completely apart and back together without any problems.

Or so I thought.

Upon reassembly I had no camera.  Dang.  Well, I wasn't too worried about that part yet.  I was still trying to get the thing unlocked.  It was around this time when it earned its new name: iBrokit.  Like I said before, I had tried all the hacking software apps that were out there (and there are many) to get it unlocked at this point.  Except for one.  The one thing I was holding out from trying had no way to go back to its previous state should it not work out.  What it did was actually (WARNING! Geek Speak Alert!) re-write the modem baseband to another frequency.  It was reported to work on some and not for others.  Well, I made the jump.  Unfortunately, it didn't work.  Luckily, I didn't lose any ground (it was still operational) but I didn't gain either.  At this point I had exhausted all my options.  I gave up and put it up for sale.  I took good pictures, made a nice Craigslist ad, and sold it to a guy for $45 bucks.  He knew what he was getting.  "If nothing else I can use it for parts." he said.

In the meantime I had spotted an ad from a guy in Tacoma selling a pair of iPhones in beautiful shape--a white one and a black one.  Because both of them were already jailbroken and unlocked I was able to put my T-Mobile SIM card in each of them and test them out right there.  He wanted  $235 each for them but I got them both for $400.  They're pristine!  They came in the boxes, complete as the day they were first bought.  We spent all day yesterday putting them up to our operating level.  Lots of contacts, music, applications, ringtones, and everything else that had to be set up the way we like them.  Here's the crappy pictures I stole from his Craiglist ad:

So up to this point, here is the rundown of our devices:

Inez, My iPod Touch
Isaac, Suzie's iPod Touch
iBrokit, the guinea pig
Irene, my new iPhone 3GS
Ivan, Suzie's new iPhone 3GS

Do you see the naming pattern?  Can you say geeks?