When the tethering hack came out for the iPhone, I was very interested to try it. So, like many people, I was afraid of what it would do to my phone and my contract. But, after seeing it in action last month, I decided to give it a try. This little application is truly an amazing program.
This article is not an endorsement of any hack for your iPhone. Please don’t do it. But, if you did do it, this is the solution.
After installing the hack, everything looked to be in perfect working order, until a realtor showed up at my house (which is on the market) and said he had left me a message about showing it. I looked at my phone and there were no messages. That’s when I remembered my friend Zach saying something about how the hack caused problems with visual voicemail. Drat!
There are several discussions floating around the internet about how to fix the problem, ranging from resetting the network settings (which didn’t work for me) to completely resetting the phone, which I didn’t try. I did, however, find the solution and it’s an easy one:
Go to:
Settings -> General -> Network -> Cellular Data Network
On the fourth line, in the “Visual Voicemail” section, there is a setting for APN. This has probably been changed to something like wap.cingular. To have your voicemail return to normal, change this setting to acds.voicemail (it’s as simple as that). The system took about 10 minutes to start sending voicemail back to my phone, but it worked like a charm.
Two things I noticed about tethering, though. If your computer is connected through USB to the iPhone, the battery will generally stay charged. If connected through bluetooth, you can expect about an hour out of your phone before needing to recharge.