Is a carrier contract required on additional testing devices?

Question

I am a member of the Developer Program. I normally do development with my own day-to-day mobile phone, but I'm considering using a secondary market (e.g. Craigslist) to obtain a second phone for development. I want to test apps on slower hardware to see how people with older devices will experience my software.

If I do, how can I provision that hardware for development and testing without subscribing to a carrier's network (e.g. AT & T)?

All Internet usage and testing will be performed on a wireless home network, or possibly by just using my existing SIM card. (I've never taken the SIM out of my own iPhone, actually!)

I just need to know if there's a roadblock to using a phone without a contract.

By the way, I have no intention of jailbreaking or unlocking, since I already own an iPhone.

Answer 1

Yes, you can provision an iPhone 2G for Development without any problems and can use it for testing. Just make sure you update the OS to 3.1 as an iPhone 2G on Craigslist is more likely to have an older OS (2.2.1 or earlier).

There is no need to subscribe to AT&T and you can use your home wifi network without any problems.

Just to let you know, iPhone 2G wont have GPS, Compass or Video Recording and so you wont be able to test apps which make use of these (CoreLocation framework mainly, for GPS).

Infact, we at India do use such an iPhone 2G imported from US which still has an AT&T SIM card that never got used. Our CEO at US just sent the phone to us for testing and it works fine with wifi.

@Andy,

It is just that Apple requires the application to be "compatible" with iPod Touch and not that we actually tested it on an iPod Touch.

To give you a great example, we developed a game which had options to turn sounds and vibration ON/OFF. It got rejected for the first time because the vibration option would show on an iPod Touch even though an iPod Touch cant vibrate!

We fixed this by hiding the vibration option when the device is not an iPhone without testing it actually on an iPod Touch and it worked and it was accepted. Its live now... Go check it: iFill It. ;)

Answer 2

Don't forget to also test on an iPod Touch (unless it is a phone-only application) as Apple require that compatibility.

If you are looking to pick up a second-hand iPod Touch I recommend considering a refurbished unit from Apple - I found it about $20 cheaper here in Oz than a typical eBay sale and you get one with a new battery!

Sorry, can't answer the phone question exactly, not being in the country ;-)

Answer 3

It should work, I have an older 2G phone with no service (transferred to a 3Gs) and I continue to test on that, using only WiFi for the network connection.