how to get my iphone into recovery mode?

[Boo Boo]

i hold the wake and home and it just recyles twice and stays off i hold them down for over a min with no luck

 

[pm]

It took me several tries. You need to time it right after the apple logo appears. Keep trying. I got it finally on the 4th or 5th try.

Good luck. (I went through that whole thing last night... but everything is working right on T-Mobile now).

 

[The Stigenator]

can you unlock the iphone before its activated? How so? Will visual voicemail work if i am a current att customer (though apparently with an legacy gsm customer so it wont add my iphone on it). So i can either unlock it, use my old sim. Forget about ever having to update the firmware (if i do, it might break unless the hackers have a solution) and oh yeah will the restore make everything go back to normal if the unlock doesnt work?

 

[pm]

Yes, you can unlock before it's activated. You need up update the firmware first. Use Apptap to update the firmware - or do a hardware reset and plug it into iTunes. And then use ibrickr to activate (move the lockdown file over by hand, or use an automated method) and then unlock.

I'm not sure if visual voicemail will work with an AT&T SIM. You could search here: http://www.hackint0sh.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=123 and see what the gurus say.

And yes, you can unlock it and use your old SIM.

As far as the restore - well, no, it won't undo the unlock. Which is good for most of us, but not for you if you want to return things back to exactly as they were before the unlock. There is no un-unlock that I know of - and I doubt anyone has written one because none of the hackers would want to do this.