Orange UK sold 30,000 iPhones on release day, despite their dodgy unlimited data = 750MB, and despite the iPhone already being available on rival O2 UK since 2007. By contrast, Verizon launched the much-hyped, geek-liked Droid for the first time on any network, anywhere, ever, and sold — according to Bloomberg — 100,000 over the weeked. Three and a bit times as much sounds almost as good as their “5x the 3G coverage of AT&T” commercials. But then the US is a much bigger market and Verizon a much bigger carrier, and Orange has only a day, not a weekend, but whatev…

The iPhone 3GS, as a third data point, sold over 1,000,000 it’s first weekend out the gate (300,000+ of those estimated to have been on AT&T). Sure, that was international, but then the iPhone 3GS was available internationally, all under the same brand, in several countries at the same time. Verizon licensed the Droid trademark, so even when the same device rolls out in Canada and Europe, it won’t be the Droid but the Milestone, which is 5x less the geek name sex-appeal.

What does this all mean? iPhone mindshare is still huge and demand in countries that were exclusive to one carrier is still high. In part, this may be because there’s a single, global iPhone brand (and feature set) for consumers to identify with, and rather than controlled by a carrier (like Droid), it’s controlled only to Apple — so it might just appear on your favorite carrier one day as well, be it Bell/Telus, Orange/Vodafone, or Verizon…

[via AppleInsider and BGR]

The iPhone finally went on sale in China last week, and according to Business Week, only 5000 appear to have been sold.

Scratch that. Do over. An overly expensive, Wi-Fi crippled version of the iPhone eventually went on sale in China, where over 2 million cheaper, unlocked, gray-market iPhones with functioning Wi-Fi have already been sold over the last couple years, and weren’t found to be terribly competitive.

Either way, China remains a billion-user market, and Apple needed to get a foot in the door. Sure, they likely wanted a much bigger initial foot, but when the next version of China Unicom’s iPhone, with Wi-Fi (and hopefully more competitive rates) becomes available, maybe… they’ll see some slow, steady growth in that general direction?

[Thanks Icebike for the tip!]

For those of you who have been patiently waiting to unlock your iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS currently on the 3.1.2 software, today is your lucky sn0w day as blacksn0w has been released one day ahead of schedule. It was just 3 days ago that iPhone hacker, George Hotz, announced via his Twitter account that he had found an exploit to unlock any iPhone with the 5.11.77 radio baseband.

blacksn0w is the unlock for the latest 05.11.07 baseband, and will also enable official tethering. blackra1n, a jailbreak for 3.1.2, has been updated to RC3, with hacktivation support, 15 second speed improvement, Tiger+PPC support, and installation of the latest blackra1n.app.

For the full details and on how to gain access to blacksn0w be sure to check out GeoHot’s blog. Need more help? Visit our Jailbreak and Unlock forums.

If you are looking to unlock your iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS and use blacksn0w, let us know how it goes!

iPhone hacker extraordinaire, Geohot, blaming successful initial testing, has moved up the release for blacksn0w, his new iPhone 05.11.07 unlock tool, to… today! More specifically, noon today (Eastern time). And it looks slick:

If you are a loyal blackra1n user who kept the blackra1n.app on your iPhone, run it. You will see Icy replaced by an option “ra1n”. Install this to upgrade your app. After upgrading, run blackra1n.app again. You will see “sn0w”. Install this, and enjoy your unlocked iPhone.

He has notes up for new jailbreakers, pwnagetool users, and iPhone 2G owners as well (who don’t need blacksn0w but rather BootNeuter, as always).

(If you’re a Twitter user, show him love by helping #blacksn0w trend.) Lastly, a warning:

Also, a note. This may be the best iPhone users ever have it. Be sure, if you have a 3GS or iPod Touch 3, to use Cydia’s “On File” or Firmware Umbrella in order to be able to restore to 3.1.2 in the future. And as always, the baseband cannot be downgraded, so be super careful with updates if you need the unlock.

For more, head on over to TiPb’s Jailbreak and Unlock Forums, and happy sn0w day!

George Hotz, aka geohot, posted on his Twitter account that he has found an exploit to unlock any iPhone that contains the 05.11.77 radio baseband found in the 3.1.2 iPhone software. This new unlock tool, blacksn0w, will be released to the public on November 4th and yes, it does contain hackivation!

Something else that everyone should take a look at is a post that Hotz wrote up on his blog regarding all of the websites out there that sell unlocks and jailbreaks to people who don’t know any better. These tools that jailbreak and unlock are a simple google search away and don’t cost a penny. These people who run these sites truly are scum that are simply ripping a lot of iPhone owners off.

All we can do to help shut these sites down is to just spread the word. The more of us who are aware the better.

iPhone hacker, geohot, has released blackra1n RC2 for your enjoyment. It corrects a few small bugs from the first release and can be downloaded here.

• Fixed 3G issues
• Tethered jailbreak for 3.1 OOTB ipt 8GB and new 3GSes
• Fixed icy issues
• Both Windows and Mac
• If you used RC1 with success, no need to rerun

So nothing earth shattering but it is worth a mention and on the unlock side, geohot is not working on that but the Dev Teams MuscleNerd is. So rest be assured an unlock is being worked on, we just have to be patient.

[Via TiPb Forums]

UPDATED: According to @geohot on Twitter, blackra1n for Mac is now live.

ORIGINAL: When George Hotz released his all iPhone/iPod 3.1.2 jailbreak application for Windows, blackra1n, he was unsure whether or not he would write a Mac OS X version. According to a recent post on Twitter it seems as if he’s had a change of heart.

blackra1n for mac coming soon…actually reuses code…NSRunAlertPanel causing crashes…and can anyone blackify the purplera1n mac icon?

It would be nice if this upcoming Mac version includes an exploit for the new bootrom but the probability of that happening is highly unlikely. For the latest news and tips for jailbreaking/unlocking your iPhone, visit our iPhone Jailbreak/Unlock forums.

The Dev Team has just released PwnageTool 3.1.4 for Mac OS X. This release supports the 3.1.2 iPhone software for the following devices: iPhone 2G/3G/3GS and iPod Touch 1G/2G.

• The iPhone 3GS is now supported out of the box in PwnageTool 3.1.4 (or if you have upgraded to 3.1.x in iTunes)
• The iPod 2G is still supported in PwnageTool 3.1.4 but you must already be jailbroken (we’ll update this if there’s a big demand from non-jailbroken ipt2G owners)
• The iPod touch 3G is NOT supported

If you’ve Unlocked your iPhone under 3.0, and want to maintain your unlock, it’s vital to remember:

This release allows your baseband to remain unlocked at 3.1.2, but it does not unlock a new baseband put there by restoring to official 3.1.x. It is super important that people who need the unlock to understand they can keep it only by starting at 3.0 (or earlier) and updating solely to custom IPSWs that don’t update the baseband.

If you used some other method, including blackra1n that involved upgrading to Apple’s 3.1.2, your baseband has also been updated and there’s no unlock until (if?) someone figures it out, and the Dev Team has no time table for that.

For the full details please visit the Dev Teams blog and read carefully as TiPb is not responsible for your jailbreak outcome, good or bad.

Need more help? Visit TiPb’s iPhone Jailbreak/Unlock forum.