Apple Broke My iPhone, and Their Policies Prevent Them from Fixing It

Apple also willingly blocks Facetime over 3G and tethering at the carrier's request (on a per-account basis) so that the carriers can upsell you.<p>It really pisses me off that Apple is actively assisting the carriers in screwing me out of using the data that I'm already paying for.<p>If I've paid the carrier for x GB, I should be able to use that for Facetime, wifi tethering, or whatever the hell else my phone is capable of.<p>Because it's so rare for Apple to fuck their customers like this, it's extra jarring when it actually happens.

I use StraightTalk in NYC with an official unlocked iPhone 4S, because it's less than half the price of AT&#38;T, but dealing with them has been horrendous. If you aren't good with computers, forget about it, ever.<p>They supply their SIM cards with a list of "settings" (APN), but it turns out 1) you can't access them on an unlocked iPhone, and 2) they're both wrong and incomplete anyways. Calling them up, their customer service told me it will never work without jailbreaking my iPhone (which is completely incorrect), and gave me <i>another</i> set of settings to try, which also didn't work.<p>In the end, after much Googling, experimentation, etc. (including the T-Mobile SIM card swap trick), I discovered the following worked:<p>- Download the Apple "iPhone Configuration Utility"<p>- Create a profile with not just correct APN settings (att.mnvo) but also the proxy server and port (66.209.11.33:80), despite the fact that the customer service representative kept insisting it must be left blank<p>- Attach the profile to your phone, and restart it once or twice<p>I've accepted the fact that MMS will simply never work, but most people I know use iMessage anyways, so I don't really mind.<p>The absolute worst part was a couple of weeks ago, when StraightTalk decided to change its proxy from 66.209.11.32 to 66.209.11.33, incrementing the IP address by one. My data didn't work for two days, calling them gave me someone else completely unqualified who insisted that they never need to tell anyone when they change their internal settings, because iPhones detect them and self-update automatically, etc. And that besides, nothing had changed, and a proxy isn't necessary anyways. It was only through trial-and-error that I discovered the new functioning proxy (because it happened to be the same as the MMS one, now, unlike before).<p>So, you will save money, but the experience is horrible. It is ridiculous that Apple doesn't expose APN/MMS/etc. settings on their unlocked phones, and it's ridiculous that StraightTalk can't even provide minimally correct information to their customers on how to get their SIM cards to work.

Should an unlocked phone be able to function on any carrier without hacking? Yes. If I had my way, there would even be laws guaranteeing customers this ability.<p>However, I really can't sympathize with you at all. You intentionally and knowingly chose to do something that was not officially supported. Now you are complaining that your hack stopped working. If you wanted it to always work, you should not be doing something so weird.<p>Classic case of "Doctor, it hurts when I do this."

Apple's locked-down APN settings affect me as well, except for me it's only an annoyance. I use a travel SIM card with cheap data called abroadband. They have their own APN settings, but since the SIM card is issued by Telekom Austria, the iPhone will lock in TA's APN settings, which don't work.<p>Now abroadband have a settings profile you can download and install, but since it overrides any settings you have, I have to find wifi and re-download/install this profile every single time I swap SIM cards.<p>It's a huge pain and no other phones have this issue. I really have no idea why Apple feel the need to hide the APN settings - it's like hiding the network settings on your computer since DHCP works "almost all the time" and all those numbers are confusing..

What can I say, I really enjoyed my iphone, but it's been a year, I like my Galaxy just fine. It is not worth the trouble unlocking and constantly breaking into your own device. This is probably not what you want to hear. Plus, when signal is weak, I can use wi-fi to make calls which saves battery and I don't have to go to special corner in the office other iphone users run to, to talk on their phones. It is like pretty girl, if she tells you she doesn't like you, go on and find another girl.

The interesting thing about "unlocked" iPhones is that there are several definitions of "unlocked", viz:<p><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcwebertobias/2011/12/22/how-u-s-carriers-fool-you-into-thinking-your-iphone-4s-is-unlocked/" rel="nofollow">http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcwebertobias/2011/12/22/how-u...</a><p>Here's the summary, at least as of the date of that article:<p>1. The only <i>fully</i> unlocked iPhones are the ones you buy directly from Apple, not from any carrier or reseller (BestBuy, etc.).<p>2. Your phone may be unlocked for European SIMs but not unlocked for another US carrier.<p>3. No US CDMA carrier will ever activate an "unlocked" phone previously activated on another CDMA carrier's network.

I have this exact same problem. It's infuriating.<p>I bought an 'unlocked' iPhone at full price with the expectation that I would be able to use it with the carrier of my choice only to discover that I can't.<p>I was without any mobile data for nearly a month because the unlockit.co.nz "solution" for modifying APN settings wasn't working for me. I tried it again (randomly) a week ago and data came back. Still no MMS.<p>I guess I should have bought an Android device, but I was so disappointed by my previous phone (Droid 2) that I'm hesitant to purchase another non-Nexus device. I also develop iOS apps and need something to test them on.

Does this actually surprise anybody anymore?<p>Guess what! Don't trust apple's updates! They have a LONG history of breaking your functionality when you "upgrade" them that goes back to the original iPods.<p>(A la blocking gnupod)

Seems to me this is really ATT's customer abuse than Apple's. I suppose Apple's main fault here is not putting more pressure back on ATT.<p>Albeit, downgrade seems like a reasonable request to me, although they may have security reputation concerns to be considered.

I dont know that I can prove this, but Im pretty sure that AT&#38;T was throttling my "unlimited" data plan well below the 2GB limit. It was bad enough that I rarely used more than 1GB of data per month.<p>Fast forward to my iPhone 5 upgrade. Granted there is decent LTE coverage here in Houston, but with no change in my usage habits I hit the 90% mark of the 4GB plan(I needed tethering, so I had to "upgrade") 18 days into the billing cycle. My main data consumption was iTunes match over cellular. I was getting constant buffer underruns with my iPhone 4 on 3g, but now Im hitting the data wall halfway through the billing cycle. Its now in AT&#38;Ts best interest to open the pipe for me so I can pay overage fees.<p>I dont know that it would be better on a different carrier, but I certainly harbor no goodwill towards AT&#38;T. I feel like Im one hassle away from buying out my contract.<p>Just getting my iPhone 5 proved to be a multi hour headache due to an AT&#38;T agents royal screwup of my initial upgrade. I ordered a 64GB black phone, was shipped white. He also updated my home/billing address incorrectly(more on that later) I returned it, and they spent 2 hours reversing the upgrade and giving me a new sim for my iPhone 4. That took so long that I couldnt re-order the upgrade. A week later I used the AT&#38;T website to order the new phone, however, it could only be shipped to the billing address that the AT&#38;T agent mistyped when I originally ordered the phone. So I had to cancel the order. But it wasnt that simple. I am a "premier" account and premier support isnt open on weekends. I had to go to an AT&#38;T store and cancel the order. Then I had to call premier support on monday and reverse the upgrade. The next weekend, they finally had some black 64GB iPhones in stock. I bought one. Guess what? it had an intermittent power button. I had to set up an appt with an apple store to get that fixed. Fortunately the Apple store experience was much better. So 3 iPhones later, I have an iPhone 5 with a bad carrier and have to now worry about my data usage. First world problems I suppose.

Thats interesting. So a given iPhone can now have a combination of the following locks:<p>* carrier lock<p>* APN lock<p>* region lock<p>How is that even legal?

it will boil down to corporate principles/culture that Apple has. It has to decide how much max resources it can dedicate to handling a small subset of affected user VS. potential media backlash that could be triggered if some of these 'minority' users are influential.

I am in the boat as you. After a few months I just accepted that MMS will never work on my iPhone. Google voice doesn't support mms anyway and I would rather be able to get MMS in my email.

Glad to hear that Apple still has people looking at the emails to the CEO and following up with executive support. I was afraid this might end after Steve left.

If only people had the option of not buying Apple phones...

I too use my unlocked iPhone on Straight talk and didn't realize I had this problem.

Why can't Straight Talk just push the correct APN settings when connected to the network?

If anyone else has this problem, check out <a href="http://www.unlockit.co.nz/" rel="nofollow">http://www.unlockit.co.nz/</a> from your iPhone. It creates APN settings profiles which can be installed even if your carrier has disabled them.

The last time I went to the US, I used "Red Pocket", another AT&#38;T reseller.<p>For data connections to work, they just generate an APN settings profile for you (<a href="http://goredpocket.com/configure" rel="nofollow">http://goredpocket.com/configure</a>)<p>Seeing as they can't seem to push For MMS settings, they give you the instructions:<p><a href="http://redpocket.wdsglobal.com/mms?contractId=503&#38;countryId=&#38;networkId=&#38;phoneId=5078&#38;bearerId=&#38;mobileNumber=" rel="nofollow">http://redpocket.wdsglobal.com/mms?contractId=503&#38;countr...</a><p>Worked fine for me.

What prevents the OP from using an official firmware (one Google search away) in combination with TinyUmbrella and install it then via iTunes?<p>Or did i overlook something?

Sounds frustrating.<p>While it may sound reasonably possible to allow a downgrade I don't think that's the case. Apple has made this no-downgrade a core rule so that developers can rely on that rule and only worry about building a one-way data migration path for new versions.<p>So maybe some of your data / configuration has been converted during the move to iOS 6 and now there is no process that can convert them backwards into an iOS5 format.

Get the official Apple iPhone Configuration utility off of the Mac App Store. It is for enterprise customers to config their iPhone fleet but I use it to set my APN settings for AT&#38;T prepaid which doesn't officially support iPhone.

This is all pretty comical. The hardware company we all praised when they released the iPhone sans carrier bloatware has apparently become the single most clever practitioner of carrier-prescribed device limitations.<p>Well played, Apple.

Possible solution? Trade handsets with someone who never upgraded to iOS 6.

I don't know exactly what these small carriers are like in the US, but shouldn't APN data be configured by the SIM/network automatically?

I'm also using StraightTalk. Have you tried SIM swap with a T-Mobile SIM? I think they describe this on the unlock it.co.nz site.

am I the only one wondering why you need MMS so bad?