Unlock/Activate iPhone in Toronto

You can cancel the pay-as-you-go the next day but you won't get a refund...all you'll do by canceling is ensuring that next month it isn't automatically charged to your credit card. You'll also have no cell service in Canada or data so there isn't an easy way to deplete your prepaid minutes which will expire 30 days from signup. Fortunately I had a trip to California to burn through most of my minutes and use a ton of 'unlimited' data.

You won't be able to use your Canadian iTunes account to activate it...you'll need to use a US one along with a valid US address and US credit card (unless you've had a US address added to your Canadian card which I've heard has also worked).

As for it working indefinitely, nobody knows for sure yet as there hasn't been any updates from Apple yet.

My current minutes expire on August 13th so if an update comes after that date, I'll post here if my iPhone still works or not

thanks for the quick response.

With that in mind, looks like I'll delay the purchase until I know for sure it won't turn into an expensive paper weight.

Yes, I'm somewhat curious as to what happens if you cancel your GoPhone plan. I haven't bothered to cancel mine yet, since I travel to the U.S. enough to justify keeping it around, for now at least, but it would still be interesting to see if the device itself keeps on working after that point, and/or whether you're prompted to re-sign-up with AT&T.

Yeah, I'm curious to see what happens after my 'time is up' and I have to do a reset or reinstall of some kind (get a new laptop for example)...time will tell I guess...worse case is I go the software activation method and lose Youtube in the process I guess.

Will iTunes Canada work with hacked iPhone?

If you use one of the activation hacks, it doesn't really matter what iTunes account you're using, as there are no special restrictions on the content itself (beyond the normal DRM of course).

You only need a U.S. iTunes account if you're signing up for an actual AT&T account (ie, activating the iPhone legitimately, rather than using one of the workarounds/hacks).

so there's nothing in iTunes that checks for legitimacy of iPhones - i.e. you don't have a US account so you can't sync?

Secondly, if you use the pseudo-legitimate activation - failing the credit check so you get the pay as you go option - then you need a US iTunes account, first to do the activation, then to continue using the iPhone? Or can you activate with, let's say a friend's US iTunes account, then use a Canadian iTunes account for regular use/sync?

From the research I've done so far, the US iTunes account is only required at activation. From that point on, there isn't a connection between the iPhone and the iTunes account (as jhollington has said).

From that point, the only connect between iTunes and your iTunes account is for purchasing/downloading iTunes content.

I've actually caved somewhat and will be going this weekend to pick one up.

The one exception may be if you do a full "Restore" on the iPhone. I know that the first thing the iPhone wants to do after a restore is check with the iTunes Store. If you don't have an Internet connection active, then when the iPhone comes back online after a restore, you'll get an error about being unable to connect to the iTunes Store. This is in the case of a legitimately activated iPhone, mind you -- I haven't tried this with a hacktivated unit.

Further, I'm uncertain if that has anything to do with any particular iTunes Store account, as I've done a complete restore on a different computer from the one the iPhone was initially setup on, while not actually logged into my U.S. iTunes Store account, and it was still fine as long as it could get at the store in general.

Actually, no. The iPhone doesn't support anything over Bluetooth other than a headset, so initiating a dial-up connection through another device via Bluetooth is definitely not going to happen.

Basically, you'll only be able to get data for it over WiFi, although you can use just about any public-access WiFi network for this purpose, and the iPhone is pretty good at transparently hopping onto any available network.

success!! Thanks for the help. I'm just outside the apple store in buffalo as I type. Definitely worth it!