Disclaimer
First: BACK-UP YOUR IPHONE!
Second: This guide is heavily dependent on jailbreaking your iphone. If you are uncomfortable with a) hacking your iphone with unsupported software, b) doing something that is possibly illegal in your country and c) voiding the hell out of your warranty, this guide is not for you. You have been warned and I take no responsibility for your own personal choices and experiences. this is simply a personal account of how I managed to make the most of Singapore’s free, ubiquitous wireless internet service. YMMV!
Things you will need to get up and running:
An iphone – I use an iphone 3G but I imagine that if you can jailbreak your version of the iphone, you can use this guide.
An account to access Singapore’s free wireless network – An excellent guide can be found here.
An internet connection with something other then your iphone to read pages on, such as your computer – as one famous russian hacker friend of mine has always said, You need internet to get internet! I assume you have some type of access as you are reading this post.
A computer – This can be a Mac or PC running OSX or Windows. I haven’t tried jailbreaking on *nix boxes but I am sure the dev community has figured or is on the way to figuring something out. This guide was formulated on an MSI Wind Hackintosh using OSX Leopard.
A sync cable – To attach your iphone to your computer for jailbreaking.
Step 1
Sign up for an account to access Singapore’s free wireless network. An excellent guide can be found here. You will need a Singapore phone number to do so. After I jailbroke and unlocked my UK iphone I purchased a Singtel pay-as-you-go sim card to acquire a singapore phone number.
Step 2 – Back-up your iphone
This guide assumes that you have secured your data. I personally did a fresh install of iphoneOS 3.0 using itunes, after which i jailbroke using Quickpwn and Ultrasn0w, then synced my contacts, calenders, links and mail accounts using my MobileMe account. Just sign up for a free trial if you don’t actually want to pay for an account.
All my applications are installed through itunes so I have a back-up of all the apps I use. After you jailbreak just sync your apps, data and media as you normally would.
Step 3 – Jailbreak your phone (with the option to unlock if desired/supported)
You can find all the information on how to jailbreak and unlock your iphone on the iphone dev-team blog. Find the guide that works best with your version of the iphone.
Step 4 – Install the app “Backgrounder” using Cydia after you have jailbroken your iphone.
from the developer’s google code page:
Backgrounder is a Mobile Substrate-based extension to iPhone/iPod Touch’s SpringBoard application launcher that allows applications to run in the Background (applications are normally terminated upon suspension).
Backgrounder is the keystone application in using Singapore’s free, ubiquitous wireless internet. The iphone does not currently support multitasking. Once you log into the free wireless network using Safari, a cookie is downloaded into your cache telling the server that you are logged in and are free to use the service. Once you leave Safari the cookie is deleted, therefore logging you out of the server resulting in disconnection from internet access. Backgrounder enables you to minimize Safari without actually closing it so that you can use other internet dependent applications such as Tweetie, Truphone, Fring and Brightkite.
Step 5 – Turn on your wifi, authenticate with the server and milk Singapore’s bandwidth for all its worth!
Once you have logged into the network using Safari, enable Backgrounder and minimize safari. At this point you can use other internet dependent applications so long as you are logged in and Safari is minimized in the background. Some of my favorites are:
Tweetie – an excellent and inexpensive iphone twitter app that supports multiple accounts.
Truphone – voip on the cheap (much cheaper for international calls then my pay-as-you-go plan) and supports messaging with multiple services such as icq, msn, ichat, gtalk, etc.
Fring – another voip and messaging applications that support skype and twitter.
Brightkite – a location-based social networking service.
Thanks to Singapore’s wifi network coverage I don’t need to spend money on costly data-plans. If you are looking for good connectivity with your iphone on the cheap, I hope this guide helps you! For questions or help, please don’t hesitate to contact me through this webpage or email me at smallcaps – at – gmail – dot – com.
maedelmaedel 17:03 on July 25, 2009 Permalink
Sounds great!
well, but there is the rest of us who are not living in Singapore. And all those who are either not so web and device savvy to do or want to do all the jailbreaking, hacking, installing and so forth.Well – And still we selfishly enough want the same luxury! What about us?
Can’t there be simply free wifi anywhere – at least within given city limits? As some kind of basic service, like running water, street lights and canalization. Arguably wifi might not be as basic and fundamentally needed for a functioning society as canalization….but its getting there
And still it would definitely raise the quality of living immensely. And if having the choice – I’d rather pay a monthly fee for city wide wifi than for supposedly state funded TV broadcast with more than lame and out of date programming.
smallcaps 04:30 on July 26, 2009 Permalink
The French judicial system has recently declared internet access a basic human right. i think that the united nations should also include it in the “declaration of human rights”.
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6478542.ece
i absolutely agree that it would raise the quality of living immensely. the main hindrance i can see tho is that in order to provide this seemingly, most basic of human needs for interaction, many other types of infrastructure must be put into place such as access to power, telecommunication services, etc. unfortunately most countries lack these basic necessities that the “1st world” takes for granted.