talk to me about jailbroken iphones

I don't need the latest and greatest iPhone, since I've had the same fliphone for the past...well, something like 8 years. Seriously. But, a smartphone will be incredibly useful for work for me (chief among its usefulness will be allowing me to accept credit cards for sales), and since I'm a lifelong Apple guy, I'm thinking of picking up a used iPhone.

Now, the fun part is, I'm on Sprint (which I like a lot), which only just got the iPhone with the 4S. Will an older, jailbroken iPhone work on Sprint? Will older iPhones run the current iOS?

Or am I perhaps pursuing a false economy?

As long as you're willing to commit to Sprint you'll save money buying from them. The last two times I upgraded my iPhones I got over $300 each for them, immediately after the next gen phones were released.

Old iPhones (the iPhone3) run by way of GSM signal transmission only. That means you will have to use the phone with a carrier that does GSM. In the US, that would mean the phone could only be used with AT&T or T-Mobile.

Sprint works on CDMA style of signal transmission. Verizon works on CDMA also. Apple has only made one phone for the US that works on CDMA and that is the iPhone4s.

Quick answer; if you found a old AT&T iPhone you could not get it to work with Sprint.
In layman's terms it would be like buying an AM radio and trying to pull in FM stations. It is not a software difference that keeps these from working across all the companies but rather a hardware, signal processor difference. Or, "the guts aren't the same."

In reply to jrw1621:

Yeah, that too

jrw1621 wrote: Sprint works on CDMA style of signal transmission. Verizon works on CDMA also. Apple has only made one phone for the US that works on CDMA and that is the iPhone4s.

Ah, well. That's that, then. Good info.

jrw1621 wrote: Old iPhones (the iPhone3) run by way of GSM signal transmission only. That means you will have to use the phone with a carrier that does GSM. In the US, that would mean the phone could only be used with AT&T or T-Mobile. Sprint works on CDMA style of signal transmission. Verizon works on CDMA also. Apple has only made one phone for the US that works on CDMA and that is the iPhone4s. Quick answer; if you found a old AT&T iPhone you could not get it to work with Sprint. In layman's terms it would be like buying an AM radio and trying to pull in FM stations. It is not a software difference that keeps these from working across all the companies but rather a hardware, signal processor difference. Or, "the guts aren't the same."

Two of my coworkers have iphone4, not 4s, and they are both on verizon. So the standard 4 would work, along with the 4s.

Joey

Joey is correct.
iPhone4 sold in CDMA format as well as a version in GSM
iPhone3 only was sold in GSM format.

To repeat my intended answer though, "an iPhone3 can not be made to work with Sprint."

How does support look for the non-S 4 down the road?

jrw1621 wrote: Joey is correct. iPhone4 sold in CDMA format as well as a version in GSM iPhone3 only was sold in GSM format. To repeat my intended answer though, "an iPhone3 can not be made to work with Sprint."

Right! 3 is right out!

Joey