I have to admit, I finally have fallen for an iPhone.

Actually, this is not entirely true. In light of a couple of business trips I had to do I found out that my not-so-often-used iPod did no longer work so I had to go for a new toy anyway. Based on discussions with good friends the video capabilities of the iPod Touch appealed a lot to me given that I quite frequently have to spend some hours in an aircraft and the idea that I could watch training videos during flights was intriguing. So initially I went looking for an iPod, not an iPhone.

During a more in-depth value-for-my-money type of product comparison I finally decided to pick the 16 GB version of the iPhone basically because I liked the idea of carrying a single device with all of my stuff on it as opposed to carrying multiple special purpose ones.

That said I'm now running an iPhone with a Vodafone (Germany) flat data tariff and hugely enjoy it. In Germany T-Mobile owns the exclusive rights to sell iPhones but the tariffs attached to their offering are so ridiculously nonsense (over the course of 24 months an iPhone will cost you + 1.000,00 € if you decide for T-Mobile) that I decided to jailbreak my device and enjoy full consumer freedom.

Left aside the geeky emotions that arise when you SFTP or SSH into your iPhone's Unix the first time, jailbreaking the iPhone has been simple and straight forward with the current version (1.1.4) of Apple's firmware.

Once the basic steps were done it took me a while to get rid of three major annoyances:

• The Vodafone carrier logo is a bit too long for the space reserved in iPhones UI so it ends up being cut to "Voda..." which simply does not look nice.
• If you have activated call diverts - possibly to send callers to your voice box after a while - whenever you make a call you get an annoying "Call diverts active" popup which you have to acknowledge by tapping the screen before the dial pad can be used again.
• The EDGE data services did not work right away.

There are thousands of sources out there on how to solve each of the issues. It took me quite some time however, to separate the simple approaches from the more complicated ones, so I repeat these easy steps here for others to follow along.

Obligatory disclaimer: I have executed all steps outlined here on my 16 GB US iPhone with firmware version 1.1.4. I'm not taking any warranty of any kind as to the instructions given here. You operate on your own risk! ;-)

With that out of the way let's start:

Changing the "Voda..." text / carrier logo

From my research there seem to be multiple options when it comes to carrier logos. Most of them involve running a patched version of the springboard and replacing PNG graphics via SFTP. I have not tried any of these as I was not really requiring a graphical logo. All I wanted is getting rid of the shortened text. It turned out being absolutely easy with Erica Sadun's Make it Mine application which can easily be installed from the Community Sources. Once installed simply select the MIM app from the springboard, enter a new text and there you go. No reboot required. So my iPhone now neatly says "AT&T" as an homage to the SIM which shipped with it. :-)

Stop annoying "Call diverts active" messages when making a call

This one has been a bit tougher. Partially because there are again numerous different ways to get rid of this odd behavior and the ones which Google gave good ranks did not work for me. So this worked perfect for me:

1. SFTP into your iPhone. Use root as the username and alpine as the password.
2. If your iPhone runs on Nate True's jailbreak download com.apple.carrier.plist from /var/root/Library/Preferences/.
3. If your iPhone runs Dev Teams' jailbreak  download carrier.plist from /private/var/mobile/Library/Carrier+Bundle.bundle/.
4. In case you're on a Windows machine and don't have a property list editor (the downloaded file comes in a binary Mac format), you have to convert the downloaded file to XML before you proceed. Simply do so by using this nice web based conversion service.
5. In the XML file change the settings for ShowCallForwarded and ShowCallForwarding from true to false as indicated in the below snippet:

<key>ShowCallForwarded</key>
<false/>
<key>ShowCallForwarding</key>
<false/>

Upload the file. (Windows users: Don't worry about the format, iPhone will read XML files just fine, so you don't have to convert back.)

Reboot the iPhone by turning it off and on again.

That's it. You're done.

Give it a try and make a call. You no longer have to acknowledge the annoying message.

Using Vodafone Germany EDGE with the unlocked iPhone

This again was an easy one after doing some research. Here's what to do:

1. Via the update Installer install the TMOBILE.DE EDGE EDIT fix from the Tweaks (1.1.4) category.
2. Go to Settings > General > Network > EDGE. (Note: The EDGE option will not be available if the patch did not install correctly.)
3. For Vodafone Germany clear all fields and enter web.vodafone.de into APN.
4. Reboot your iPhone by turning it off and on again.
5. That's it. Enjoy EDGE.

Besides the patches and tweaks outlined above I've done numerous other things to optimize my iPhone to my personal needs. One application which I really enjoy is Cucusoft's fantastic iPod Video Converter + DVD to iPod Converter Suite (direct download here) which I've used to convert entire DVD's to carry them with my iPhone.

I'm going to post more about my personal experience with Apple's power toy once I move forward. In the meantime, happy hacking.