Jailbroken iPhones are a hot commodity these days. In Hollywood, the going price for a used, jailbroken iPhone 3G is $500. In New York, an iPhone 3G can yield upwards of $600 bucks. Salt Lake City jailbroken iPhone 3G’s go for $550 and up. Used. There are even iPhone jailbreaking services that specialize in jailbreaking and unlocking Apple devices.
A brand new, warrantied iPhone 3GS will cost $199 for 16GB, $299 32GB with an AT&T contract. Without the contract, the 16GB will cost $599 and the 32GB will cost you $699 retail. So why would someone buy a used 3G for the price of a brand new 3GS?
For one: people are locked into contracts. Can you think of another industry that charges you money for not doing business with them? Verizon’s early termination fee is $175. The other cell companies charge around the same, some more. The iPhone AT&T contract is one of the most expensive individual cell phone plans out there, it is almost impossible to own an activated iPhone for less than a hundred bucks a month. AT&T/Cingular has no shortage of disgruntled, unsatisfied customers who refuse to do business with them, no matter how hard Jobs and company try, and the members of the largest cell phone network in America, Verizon, can’t use the iPhone. App Store restrictions and must have jailbreak apps like pdaNET give iPhone owners further incentive to jailbreak their devices. The 3GS’s don’t offer much more to iPhone users; aside from double memory capacity, video, and a few other perks, there isn’t much of a difference between the 3G and 3GS. One notable difference is the ease in which the older model iPhones can be jailbroken and unlocked.
As Apple patches hackable holes and locks its consumers into predetermined, expensive wireless contracts, the demand for jailbroken iPhones increase. AT&T subsidies allow people to buy iPhones at well below retail price and make a hefty profit reselling. Apple has found a way to prevent jailbreaking – for the time being – on 3GS devices, making the iPhone 3G and jailbreakable 3GS models even more valuable on the Black Apple Market. See how much your device is worth – jailbroken – on Craigslist and then go and read our jailbreak how-to. You could make a few extra bucks.
*Correction Verizon service cannot be used with a simple jailbreak/unlock*
“the members of the largest cell phone network in America, Verizon, can’t use the iPhone unless they use an unlocked device.”
You can’t use an iPhone with Verizon unlocked or not. tmobile is the only other nationwide carrier that the iPhone can run on, although it only works with edge, not 3g. There are a few other smaller regional phone companies that work but for most people it’s ATT or tmobile, thats it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQQzOuq12I4
I’m fairly certain that video is faked. Google it, you’ll see. Also, the fact that comments require approval for that video is a dead giveaway. A normal jailbreak allows you to change the carrier name to whatever you want. That’s what he did here. You just can’t use a GSM phone on a CDMA network. It would be like trying to play a xbox game in a playstation.
Actually, the processor in the 3GS is much more advanced. The iPhone/iPhone 3G use an ARM 11 based CPU, which has been around about 6 years. The iPhone 3GS (as well as the Palm Pre) are ARM Cortex A8 based, which besides a higher clock speed, was produced using a smaller process (65nm vs 90nm). This translates into less heat and more battery life.
So, its not simply a matter of double the memory and better video (which is OpenGL ES 2.0).
In any case, I can understand why people jailbreak (though I don’t). These contracts are very expensive. Personally, I get in way below $100.00 though. My AT&T contract for my 3GS is $69.99 before taxes (the 450 min. voice plan is $39.99 plus $30.00 for unlimited data). Perhaps your figure includes the taxes, which does bring my total to about $90.00 a month. Fairly ridiculous, but thats reality.
It’s always cheaper to use AT&T with a family plan.
Here’s what we pay:
$79.99 for 700 minutes with rollover
2 unlimited dataplans = $60
$30 unlimited messaging
Total = $169.99 for 4 smart cellphones of which two are iPhones.
I think that’s a pretty good deal.