Using a UK OSF in New Zealand

[Guest some_postman]

I've been looking for a lower end android phone for a little while and was either going to get a Samsung Galaxy 3 (5800 or very close to an apollo) or an HTC wildfire. The best price I could find them PAYG was around NZ$350 and $400 respectively. Well, all that changed when I figured out I could get a San Fransisco for about $240, even inlcuding the forced 20 pound top up. With a brother living in London, how could I resist?! They had a helluva time finding one, but eventually got me a white SF - so I guess its TFT. Oh well, im sure its still a dead sexy screen.

So I take it that most of the Orange related apps etc will be useless for me in NZ. Is it easy to de-orange the phone, or will I be better off to re-flash my phone with a different version of the OS?

[Guest _Carl_]

I've been looking for a lower end android phone for a little while and was either going to get a Samsung Galaxy 3 (5800 or very close to an apollo) or an HTC wildfire. The best price I could find them PAYG was around NZ$350 and $400 respectively. Well, all that changed when I figured out I could get a San Fransisco for about $240, even inlcuding the forced 20 pound top up. With a brother living in London, how could I resist?! They had a helluva time finding one, but eventually got me a white SF - so I guess its TFT. Oh well, im sure its still a dead sexy screen.

So I take it that most of the Orange related apps etc will be useless for me in NZ. Is it easy to de-orange the phone, or will I be better off to re-flash my phone with a different version of the OS?

Well even in the UK your'll find the apps to be pretty useless :) ;)

[Guest yorksims]

I've been looking for a lower end android phone for a little while and was either going to get a Samsung Galaxy 3 (5800 or very close to an apollo) or an HTC wildfire. The best price I could find them PAYG was around NZ$350 and $400 respectively. Well, all that changed when I figured out I could get a San Fransisco for about $240, even inlcuding the forced 20 pound top up. With a brother living in London, how could I resist?! They had a helluva time finding one, but eventually got me a white SF - so I guess its TFT. Oh well, im sure its still a dead sexy screen.

So I take it that most of the Orange related apps etc will be useless for me in NZ. Is it easy to de-orange the phone, or will I be better off to re-flash my phone with a different version of the OS?

The whole job's quite straightforward really,I've only had my TFT OSF a week and I've pretty much got my head around the basic modding

Once you've unlocked your phone using the free online code calculator you'll need to change the APN settings for your kiwi network and then you have two options really,you can either flash it with another ROM or do what I chose to do and keep the stock Rom and strip all the Orange branding out of it.I only chose this route because there aren't a great deal of custom roms available for the TFT screened OSF yet but once there are more available I'll have a more serious play with it.

There are excellent guides here in the forum covering everything you'll need so probably the best advice while you're waiting for the phone to arrive is to do plenty of reading and get what stuff you can that you're going to need like fastboot and clockworkmod downloaded ready so that as soon as the OSF turns up you can get stuck in to it.

Edited December 18, 2010 by yorksims

[Guest theInquisitor]

Remember that the OSF will not work on Telecom's network, but only on Vodafone and 2degrees, as it lacks support for UMTS850, the standard Telecom's network is based on.