Buying Devices for Dev Testing

[iHeartMyiPhone]

Hello all,

I just signed up as a Registered iPhone Developer (paid the $99 fee) and I want to start developing for the iPhone OS 3.0. I plan on writing apps that utilize the newly announced features (Bluetooth, P2P, etc).

I currently have an unlocked 2G iPhone running on T-Mobile. If I use my phone as a dev testing device for 3.0, I will not be able to use it as a phone (I'll lose the unlock). So it looks like I will have to buy a iPhone to test on, which I don't mind doing.

If I go out and buy a iPhone 3G, from the docs, it appears that it has to be activated prior to upgrading to the 3.0 beta. Is it safe to activate/unlock (with pwnagetool) and then install the beta? I don't mind buying an iPhone for testing, but I don't want to purchase a phone plan for it.

Question for the devs out there: How do you test apps written with the SDK? If you went out and bought another phone to use as your test device, how does that work?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[wanted.dead.or.alive]

Once you upgrade an iPhone to 3.0 it upgrades the baseband so no unlock.
At the moment the current pwnage tool has no support for 3.0, but apparently the dev-team have done it...

And you can have up to 100 iphones as your test devices, you just have to add the UDID of the phone to your account.

[iHeartMyiPhone]

Thanks for the response, but I am aware of those issues.

I guess what I want to know is if there is a way to bypass the required activation for devices to be used purely for development.

[cpjr]

No. Theres not.