Posts Tagged ‘speakout’

Unlocking a Nokia 1661

T-Mobiles sells the Nokia 1661 as a starter pre-paid phone in the United States. It’s really cheap (less than $20 at Wal-Mart). I bought a couple just for the SIM cards on a recent trip to the US. I used the SIMs in unlocked iPhones while on vacation.

The Nokia 1661 phone itself is decent, so I decided to try and unlock it for use with Canadian carriers (such as the 7-11 SpeakOut service). Hey, free phone, right?
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Using an iPhone on a Pay as You Go plan in Canada

Note: This post is more than a year old, so I’ve edited it with updated info. Edits are indicated.

If you’re interested in using an iPhone in Canada, but aren’t interested in being stuck in a lengthy contract, perhaps using a prepaid service can be an option. Here’s my 3-step guide to using an iPhone on a Pay as You Go plan in Canada.

Step 1: Acquire an iPhone in Canada.

First thing you’ll need is an iPhone. You can grab one on eBay or from your friendly neighbourhood iPhone seller. I’m not going to go into how to acquire an iPhone in Canada, you can figure that bit out yourself. Maybe your husband just bought a new iPhone and wants you to have his old hand-me-down iPhone or something like that.

A few things to watch for, though. If you get a first generation iPhone (sometimes called a 2G or 2.5G iPhone), you’ll have to unlock it, since it was never sold in Canada. This is trivial, and can be accomplished using the iPhone Pwnage Tool on either Mac OS X or Windows.

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