iPhone 3G Trick I Learned Thanks to Ike
Saturday, September 20, 2008
I already knew that AT&T's 3G network coverage sucks. But until Hurricane Ike blew through I was always at least able to make phone calls and send/receive text messages, and surf on their EDGE network at my home.
Ike changed all that. Now I'm lucky to get a signal at all. And even when a signal is present, it disappears the moment I hit send.
No big deal. This is why I have a Virgin Mobile "pay as you go" phone in my hurricane kit. Its on Sprint's network. And despite all the "it was a friggin' hurricane. give AT&T a break" arguments, Sprint's service never missed a beat.
To save minutes though, I would forward and un-forward my iPhone as I roamed in and out of pockets of service. That got old. After a bit of searching I found two codes that helped out quite a bit. They (1) forward calls if I don't answer and (2) forward calls if my phone is not on the network. Very handy!
To activate, simply type the following into your phone and hit "SEND"
1. Forward on no-answer: **61*destination*11*delay# (where destination=the number to which you want the call forwarded, and delay=how long to wait before it forwards)
2. Forward on no service: **62*destination*11#
To deactivate both of these, simply use the code: ##61*11# and ##62*11# respectively, and to check your current settings for both: *#61# and *#62#
Labels: iphone, iphone tip
posted by Russell @ 10:43 PM,
4 Comments:
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At 7:46 AM,
John said...
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Thanks for this.
Ike made me hate my iPhone. Apart from AT&T's horrible performance, there's another issue: I have a work issued Blackberry, also on AT&T. It had problems - but worked much better than the iPhone. They would be sitting on my desk next to each other, and the iPhone would have no service, while the Blackberry would have a bar or two and be fetching my work email.
Plus, even with the latest software update, the iPhone battery life seems to have gotten WORSE. Good to know I can at least forward it to the work phone since it has become a massive FAIL device. -
At 2:11 PM,
John said...
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hmm. I just get errors saying that I have no network access, even though I have many bars of service and am on Edge.
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At 7:39 PM,
Russell said...
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I was getting network errors before I learned that there needed to be the "11" in the middle. I just tried the codes again and they worked for me.
Make sure your got the right *'s and #'s is all I can suggest.
Sorry -
At 6:53 AM,
John said...
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no problem, thanks for the tip. And the idea of having a pay as you go phone on another network in your hurricane kit is a great one. Thanks.
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