A bit of friendly advice — if you’ve unlocked your iPhone, you should be careful with the next firmware update — don’t apply it immediately. Check with news sites and forums to see if the update works fine with unlocks first. Apple released a press release that noted that the current methods of unlock can cause “irreparable damage to the iPhone’s software.” And as such, they’re going to void the warranty of anyone that unlocks their phone, and they’ll mark your phone as ineligible for warranty service. There are some reports of people that have been “blacklisted.” There’s a full rundown of this story after the cut.
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figure 1: what you see when you launch AnySIM.app. Apart from installing it, instructions for this app should require a FAQ.
Another full GUI SIM unlocking application is now available. AnySIM.app is the official unlocking application from the iPhone Dev Wiki crowd. AnySIM is going to be a bit difficult to install for now, as it hasn’t been brought over to installer.app yet, but that should be fixed in the next day or so. If you can’t wait and you’re comfortable with SSH and the Terminal, installing it should be a breeze. It is significantly easier than the command-line not-for-the-faint-of-heart unlock, and AnySIM’s unlock only takes 3-5 minutes, as opposed to upwards of 20 for some other methods.
We had linked to an iPhone unlocking application that worked fine earlier in the week, but there was apparently some drama with it and it wasn’t by any means an official version (that didn’t stop it from being the version I used, however).
figure 1: Erica Sadun and HaRRo
Apparently the Harro fellow I linked to yesterday has a penchant for scams and has caused a bunch of drama in the iPhone hacking community. There’s allegations of stolen code, misappropriations of intellectual property, and the intent to sell the GUI unlock program code. HaRRo also removed the direct download link, so I’ll direct you now to the instructions page if you’d like download the IP-tainted GUI unlock. Erica Sadun of TUAW notes that though her code has been misappropriated, the code has been given back to the hacking community and they’ll continue to work on it:
“we should be very, very close to the holy grail: a completely free and open source, completely GUI, one click unlock for the iPhone.”
Once they get that GUI app written, it should take them little to no time to get it installed on AppTapp Installer.app, or to make an AppTapp-like installer for it.
In related news, I cancelled my order for the iPhoneSimFree unlock solution, and Wireless Imports was very pleasant about it. It appears that they were having very serious difficulties with the Windows platform; they intend to get the unlock.app installable via AppTapp Installer.app. I guess iPhoneSimFree has been unresponsive in the past few days, which makes the other folks reselling their software look bad.
I’ll admit that I went the cheap route; I used the GUI tool. Though the instructions for installing it are for windows, it’s not hard for Macs either. I installed community sources, the BSDB environment, and then SSH on my phone with installer.app. I set my Auto-Lock to off, since I didn’t want my iPhone going asleep on me during the process (to turn auto-lock off, go to settings->general->auto-lock and set it to ‘never’. You can always change it back when you’re done.)
After that, I downloaded the GUI unlock.app zipfile. I expanded the zipfile on my desktop. I then copied it into my iPhone applications directory with the following Terminal command:
scp -r ~/Desktop/Unlock.app root@iphone:/Applications/
I waited for the password prompt (it can take up to 30 seconds the first time you ssh into the iPhone), and put in my password, and waited for the files to finish copying. I then restarted my phone to get the Unlock.app to show up, ran the Unlock.app, pressed start, and waited 20 minutes. My iPhone now accepts other sim cards.
It’s tough to say when or if this will make its way into installer.app because of all the weird legal questions, but at least the method of install isn’t too tough. The only bad news is that now my wife is definitely going to start pressuring me to switch back to T-Mobile. Well, it’s not the only bad news. I wasted $99 figuring that the iPhoneSimFree crowd would have their ducks in a row. Time to ask for my money back, I guess.
The folks of the iPhone Dev Wiki have released their free iPhone software unlock. There are two versions. The first version, is the command line software version — looks like it’s not for the faint of heart. They do, however, have a GUI version available. Both processes take about 20 minutes, but the GUI software maintainer, David “HaRRo” Harrison, says he knows how to get the timings done in 3 minutes or so.
“This is still buggy and i will release a faster version in a few days as i havent slept.”
“And a shoutout to all those reporters who manage to get stories completly wrong”
Hmmm… the folks at iPhoneSimFree et al haven’t been able to get their ducks in a row, so I might just try this.
Here’s a relevant portion of the email I received from Wireless Imports last night related to my unlocking order:
Very Important, read from top to bottom for all the details!
We have been getting tons of calls left and right from our customers. I would like to personally thank each and everyone of you for placing your order with us for the iPhone unlocking.
At this time we have received over 1000 orders for the iPhone unlocking orders. We have suspended any further sales in order to accommodate all of you as soon as possible. Some of you are calling wondering if we have forgotten about you and that you had sent in your email back from our first one 6hrs ago. I apologize that we have not been able reply to your follow up.
We will try to reply to everyones email tonight before calling it a night.
Again I would like to stress how important it is to not call us. I hate to say it but we are extremely undermanned to take on the demand as it is and by answering the phone it takes us away from replying to others with the software needed to unlock the phone. The only thing calling us will do is delay everyones order. Again we are here if you urgently need to speak with us but please continue to remain to be patient.
Depending on when you placed your order we might not be able to get to it for a couple of days as we try to walk through those that need assistance that placed their orders earlier then others. Again we are going to help people out in the order you placed your order.
If you wish to speed things up we have posted on our website instructions of what is needed in order to unlock your iPhone. Currently we are working with customers on the phone and helping them do a step by step installation of the software in order to go ahead and unlock the phone.
Unlocking has been going on for about a day now. What are the various gadget sites saying about it?
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tuaw.com doesn’t care, claiming that only Europeans care. Everyone else is too worried about their warranty.
- Gizmodo reports that various hacking groups are already hard at work reverse-engineering the software unlock. Jon Lech Johansen, widely known as “DVD Jon” for the work he did unlocking DVDs, is supposedly hard at work reverse-engineering the hack. At least a part of the iPhoneDevWiki hacking crowd is still working independently on their unlock. Gizmodo is not happy about the software unlock situation, they want it to be free. But you can get a free unlock just by commenting on their web page. Even if you do get it, it’s not like iPhoneSimFree’s unlock is without its own set of problems. Did I say is? I meant was. A new version of their SIM software that has no problems available:
“It has been brought to our attention mainly through this article that there was a small bug in our code. This bug has now been resolved we will be forwarding the new simfree.app to all our currently registered resellers.”
Engadget is giving one away for free, one a day all week. Oh, and they have more video proof that the unlock works. Anything else that they have to say? Oh, yeah. Sorry if I forgot to mention, but Engadget has reported that the iPhoneSimFree unlock works.
The iPhone unlocking method from iPhoneSimFree is now available from Wireless Imports (USA). I put my money down and I’ll hopefully have an unlocked iPhone soon.
Actually, the only thing that I can tell that they’ve launched is a website. Anyway, they’re supposedly going to start selling unlock codes today. No, I’m serious! They’re really going to do it. They don’t just want to stay in the news, that’s unpossible. How could you even think that?
Nothing like a $150+ profit margin for selling unlocked iPhones. Since you need to buy a new iPhone to get an unlocked iPhone, and not update from the 1.0.2 firmware, or so they say. Are you excited yet? Yeah, me neither.
