Iphone Unlocking And Other Questions.

Hi and welcome to iLounge.

1)First, I'm planning on purchasing the 4gb Iphone from Apple's Store online. I understand it's on clearance now for $299. My question, why are people selling the unlocked version on Ebay of the exact same phone for nearly $100 more? Can't you easily search the net and find out how to do this yourself for absolutely FREE?
Yes, you can unlock most existing iPhones for free at this point. It's a fairly easy process for anybody with a bit of computer experience, but there are still a few hoops to jump through.

The pre-unlocked versions obviously have the benefit of saving you the time and trouble, but may not be as nice as getting your own shiny new one. :)

2)I currently have a regular account (not prepaid) with AT&T (formallyCingular before they merged). I understand that you can use one of the hacks to use your old Cingular card with the Iphone, but why would you want to do that when you can just unlock it fully to use any SIM card. Is there any advangtes of doing it only to use the old Cingular SIM?
The steps to provision a non-iPhone Cingular/AT&T card are a bit easier than a full unlock, and might even be more easily supported in newer firmware revisions.

In short, the full unlock requires a modification to the baseband firmware. On the other hand, the Cingular/AT&T SIM card restriction is a more artificial one within the firmware itself, rather than an actual provider SIM lock.

Chances are good that the v1.1.1 firmware update that is coming out will break the current unlock methods. It's more likely that the other method will still be more easily achieved since it's a simpler method.

3)I personally really don't care about the internet on my Iphone, so if I completely choose to ignore that function of the phone (including Youtube, etc. etc.), will all of the other features work like my current old RAZR phone. I might decide to go on the internet ever so often, but will WIFI still work to connect to my wireless connection?
By default, the phone will try to hook up using EDGE whenever it's within coverage, although you can turn off features like period mail polling to minimize the data usage.

WiFi usage and EDGE usage are independent of each other, and there are hacks available to turn off the EDGE features. In fact, the unlocked iPhones provide an EDGE settings menu which you could just deliberately misconfigure to keep the iPhone from using up data services when away from a WiFi access point.

4)If Apple does and probably will block future unlocks, will the current unlocks be suitable to use for the life of the phone? Meaning, if I care nothing about Itunes or the interenet, will my phone still be functional if I choose not to update? Also, are the updates automatic or my own choice?
Thus far, all updates have been done through iTunes, and have been done at the user's option (ie, you are prompted to accept the update or not).

If you were to never connect the iPhone to iTunes, you wouldn't even be offered an update, much less forced to take one. There's no reason to assume the iPhone will otherwise stop working with older firmware, as cellular technology is fairly standard. AT&T themselves could someday decide to block non-upgraded iPhones from their network (their ability to do this is merely theoretical), but an unlocked iPhone would still work on any other network.

Even if you did sync your content with iTunes (which is necessary for things like calendar and contact synchronization), chances are you would only be offered firmware updates, rather than required to update your iPhone. Some future version of iTunes down the road might refuse to sync with a non-upgraded iPhone, but again you're not required to keep updating iTunes either.

How do you disable the iphone from using anything other than wi-fi to connect?

I would like to be sure that if I am near a wi-fi spot I don't run up a phone bill so I would like to turn it off!

Just access via wi-fi please!

Can someone explain how to do this please?