Running an Apple iphone in ireland with O2
Its been almost 2 months now running my iphone in Ireland on the O2 network and I must say it is the most amazing gadget I ever had!
I have been waiting for O2 Ireland to release the Apple iPhone for absolutely ages now and it still hasnt been released. France has the iphone. Germany has the iphone. The UK has the iphone. Ireland doesnt. And I cant understand why! I am proof that the Irish networks are fully capable of running the iphone. Adam is running his on Meteor. Mike is running his on Vodafone. Jim is running his on 3. Peter and myself have our iphone's on O2. I badgered O2 Ireland for months but nobody knew anything. The local O2 shop on Oliver Plunkett Street said O2 lost the contract to Vodafone. Muppets!
In November, Ol and myself went to New York for our Yearly Trip (NYC is one of our favourite places) and the first thing that had to be done was to run down to the Apple Store and pick up a couple of iphones. I couldnt believe how busy the Apple store was. Queues out the door! I waited in line slightly nervous incase they would say no. Not at all! 2 iphones please. Yes sir. Credit Card? It was in his hand before he could finish his sentence. Off back to the hotel!
Ripped the package open and marvelled at the neat design. Apple made sure the wow factor started with the box! Since I had no intention of running on the AT&T network, all I could do was switch it on, slide the unlock key and watch the interface morph, slide and sparkle! I nearly used up all the battery turning it on and sliding for 10 days. I had to do it everyday! Some days about 10 times!
Got off the plane, drove from Shannon to home and went straight down to my room to unlock the phone! 15 minutes later I had it unlocked and installed all the necessary bits and bobs! I must have played with safari for nearly and hour! Checking all my sites and stuff and zooming in and zooming out!
Next thing. EDGE. I thought this would be the show stopper. EDGE is Enhanced Data, basically GPRS. I did a bit off googling and tried the Irish O2 GPRS settings of open.internet with username and password set to GPRS. Bingo! It worked!
All that was left was to ring O2 and get a decent data plan. I had a Blackberry Connect package for my old XDA II Mini S so I cancelled that and got a heafty 10 gigs a month for 30 Euro a month! Sorted! Always on email and browsing!
The EDGE is fast enough for browsing and email is a dream. Unlike Blackberry Connect, it is a pull rather than a push so at anytime I can check if there are new mails. Nice!
Over the next few weeks, apps from open source developers showed up on Installer (only on an unlocked iPhone) that fixed any gripes I had with the phone. such as Edge settings not being saved, numbers of callers not being recognised properly etc
The camera is decent. 2 mega pixels and open-source applications to send the photos stright to flicker.
My Top 6 iPhone apps (No particular order):
- BlockPuzzle
- Newsgator RSS Reader (syncs with my desktop FeedDemon Reader)
- Safari
- iPod
- Installer
- Quicktime Player (brilliant for podcasts, even on EDGE)
- YouTube
I find myself reading more now too. Every morning I go to Puccinos for a latte before work and catch up on all the days RSS feeds. I also have an ebook reader with a few books downloaded. With some custom apps (by myself) I can also check how many people are in AREA51 at any time!
I find myself not turning on the laptop that much anymore. It really is that good.
Tags:
iphone
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I'd love to get one but unfortunately I'm stuck in a contract with 3 for another few months!
Hi Liam, just read that article and its a load of bollox. O2 saying they will not accept "hacked" (Hate that word) iphones probably means that you cant go in, not pay for a device through them, use your own and sign up for their tarrif. There is no way they can stop people using an unlocked iphone on their network or they will get some serious legal heat. Look at Germany, France, England.
My own guess is (if you do the maths on the cost of the handset) that they make on average about 100 Euro on each hand set. Mine cost $399 which at the time was about 300 Euro. They are flogging THE SAME DEVICE for 399 Euro.
The whole iphone saga is riddled with scare mongering from ATT, Apple and O2 worldwide.
Dan.
i got my iphone a while ago, had a stealth sim for a while but now am on 1.1.3 and fully unlocked thanks to ziphonegui.
The only problem i have is that my text messages dont show the name of the sender, just the number in a 35387... format. This is very annoying, i have the names saved in my contacts as 087.. and everything is fine making calls, names show up fine.
Any idea on how to fix this? Its strange. Im not sure whether anyone else has had the same problem and would be interested to find out! I unlocked a few more fones on my laptop with the same zuiphone and the same thing happens to my mates! Strange.
Congrats! That is the one thing that pisses me off about it.
I have found the only way to get this to work is to put the number in as : 35386XXXXXXX instead of 086XXXXXXX
Hopefully they'll sort that in a future update.
Dan.
O2 told me to use edge settings for hacked phones, but it stil wont work. does anyone have any ideas. Please....
Thanks for the very useful comments on iphone. I had brought an unlocked iphone in NZ which worked fine. When I arrived in Ireland and went onto an O2 data plan I could not access edge and O2 were no help at all claiming that it would not work as not brought in Ireland.
Used your Edge settings and hey presto it works. So simple. So thanks alot.
One question though, can I safely update/install apps in the installer programme without bricking iphone? or does that only relate to itune updates?
Great site mate.
Thanks, Pauric
JH.