limerain doesn't do carrier unlock but it does do hactivation (ie, it will activate your phone without using itunes).

If you want to keep a carrier unlock don't install 4.1 and then limerain. you need to wait for pwnage tool or snowbreeze that incorporates the new exploit so that you can keep your carrier unlocked baseband and install a custom firmware of 4.1

If you have a factory unlocked iphone then you can just upgrade to 4.1 and use limerain.

We've recently moved from Kunming to Beijing and I lost my digital scales and measuring cup in the move. So I bought some prepackaged bread mixtures from Jenny Lou's in Beijing. I got a rye bread mixture (including a sachet of yeast) and it turned out to be really tasty. It wasn't cheap though. If you google Jenny Lou's they have a delivery service, they may even deliver to Kunming.

thats interesting. was it a purely local China Unicom SIM or was it one of these China Unicom mainland-HK dual SIMs. See www.china-mobile-phones.com/HongKong-China-SIM-card.html

They actually assign you a different number when you cross the border to hong kong. They have a deal with one of the Hong Kong networks and perhaps its that Hong Kong network that gives you roaming in Taiwan, SF etc.

If it was a standard China Unicom SIM then that's pretty amazing. Must only be available in Guangdong Province. Most of the country they want a big deposit for roaming.

I still don't think this is connected to receiving international SMS though.

Basically international roaming is so that you can use your phone abroad and people can contact you on the same number wherever you are in the world. It has nothing at all to do with using your phone inside China. They do actually have roaming within China also (ie, if you use your Yunnan SIM card in Chengdu) but this is almost always switched on by default.

There may have been some confusion between turning on international roaming and turning on international calling (not the same as roaming) but even this is not actually connected with text messaging which is different. Text messages are sent to a local service number and then redistributed by the network from that service center. Your phone is not making any connection abroad to send an international SMS - that is done at the network's service center. The same is true of receiving SMS. An SMS sent from say Britain to China would be sent to the China Mobile service center which would then send it on to your phone. At no point is your phone having to make any kind of international connection so both roaming and international call function are irrelevant.

Both roaming and international calling usually require a hefty deposit. International SMS doesn't, its just 1 yuan per message instead of 1 jiao or whatever deal you've got as a package. But even if international SMS sending was a function that you could request to be turned on (I think its usually just on by default), it is not connected to receiving SMS from abroad. Sending and receiving are 2 totally separate things.

It would be great if this was something that can be sorted out by switching on a service or paying a deposit but the truth is that the chinese mobile system is just messed up. Things that work in one province won't work in another. Nobody will explain why or take any responsibility. There is not much you can do about it.

For example, when I was on China Mobile in Kunming I had all my numbers stored in the international format +86 1xxxxxxxxxx. When I went on a trip to somewhere in the north of the province I was unable to call anyone. I finally worked out that if I removed the country code for China and the plus sign it worked fine. They can't even get the same thing to work within one province - don't expect any uniformity across multiple provinces.

There is no easy solution. If you have a smartphone there are various apps which allow free messaging between users of the same app using your phone's data connection rather than SMS but this is not suitable for getting in touch with someone who doesn't have the same app. There are also various apps that send international SMS via the internet rather than the mobile network. I use one called biteSMS for iphone and send texts abroad through that saving lots of money. However this won't help you in receiving texts which is what the thread is about.

If you want to go for international roaming be prepared to pay a big deposit. Last time I did this China Mobile required a downpayment of 3000 RMB.

Actually this has nothing whatsoever to do with roaming. I'll explain when I'm back on a computer, currently on mobile.