I posted a few days ago about my recent good fortune in winning an iPhone. I had already unlocked it and had it working in the USA with my US T-Mobile account without problem. However, I ran into a few issues getting my UK T-Mobile to work as easily. Here are a few tips for anybody having similar problems.

SMS Settings

My main problem was that I couldn’t get SMS (text) messages to send from my iPhone on T-Mobile UK. I had figured out that this was down to an incorrect Message Service Centre number on the phone and I was basically correct. There are a series of codes you can dial on the phone keypad to query and change various settings on the phone. The SMS related settings are as follows:

  1. Check Service Centre number (SMSC) – dial *#5005*7672# and press call. This will display the current Service centre number. If this doesn’t work you have a different problem; see below.
  2. Delete Service Centre number (SMSC) – dial ##5005*7672# and press call.
  3. Set new Service Center number (SMSC) – dial **5005*7672*+nnnnnnnnn# and press Call. N.B. +nnnnnnn is the number of the SMS service centre number that you need to find out from your cell phone provider. It’s in international format and therefore starts with a + sign before the country code.

If option 1 doesn’t work for you, as it didn’t for me, then you have an outdated SIM card. Mine was my original One2One SIM from the days before T-Mobile in the UK and was about 9 years old. I went to my local T-Mobile shop and they replaced it with a new one for a £10(GBP) fee – I then called T-Mobile and they agreed to credit that amount to my bill since I was replacing it for “wearing out” due to old age. Since I switched SIM cards, everything has been hunky-dory with the SMS service.

EDGE/GPRS Internet

The iPhone doesn’t (yet) support 3G internet service but does work over what used to be called WAP – this runs, these days, in some territories over the EDGE network (as in the US) and in others over GPRS (most parts of the UK). I believe that EDGE is currently only available on O2 in the UK. You may need to manually configure the settings for this to work and you will need a Data plan/bundle from your cell phone provider – otherwise it can be ludicrously expensive. Typical prices in the UK run to £7.50/MB transferred – thats about $15 (USD)!! I pay £7.50/month to T-Mobile for a Web’n'Walk plan that gives me unlimited data transfer.

I had some problems tracking down the correct settings to use. T-Mobile UK doesn’t officially support the iPhone and their settings are only available on their website via a service that downloads the settings directly to your phone – and if it’s not supported it doesn’t work! I called T-Mobile Customer Services and the chap who ‘helped’ me tried to put my phone details into the same web-service rather than having any actual information! I did a thorough search online and eventually came up with the correct settings (after many attempts with incorrect ones) at the Carphone Warehouse website. They are:

  • APN: general.t-mobile.uk
  • Username: user
  • Password: wap

Please note the lack of “.co” in the APN – I didn’t spot that straight away and had more problems. If you are on a different UK mobile network, you can find the settings here. To find your way to the right iPhone menu for these settings click: “Settings->General->Network->EDGE”.

iPhone “Unlocking Services”

In the midst of my confusion over the SMS issue I tried a few different packages for unlocking my iPhone. The simplest and best seems to be ZiPhone. I foolishly bought into a package called UnlockiPhoneUK since they promised to unlock all features and provide future-proof support against new iPhone software released by Apple. I paid £29.99 (GBP) for what proved to be a rebranded version of the ZiPhone software (which is free!) and a mediocre help section on their website. I implore you to not repeat my mistake. I will be emailing their “Customer Service” and requesting a refund when I have a moment.

I hope that this information proves useful to anybody trying to get their unlocked iPhone up and running. I have been helped enormously by many sources all over the internet to collect the information above and I thank those who posted it. This is all regurgitated information and none of it is my own work. I just hope that having it in one spot makes it easier to find. I’ll post anything else useful I come across as I go along…