All Articles Tagged unlocked

iPhoneSIMfree.com chose CNN as their 2nd news outlet that got to verify their iPhone software unlock method. The good news is that CNN re-verified what Engadget already verified. So yeah, what we thought was true before? We were right. It looks like they’ve set the cost of the software unlock pretty low — $36 US each for each block of 50 licenses, and the price drops to $25 if you buy 5000+ licenses. The licenses are supposed to be available as of today, though all’s quiet on their website.

That’s right, they’re not going to sell to the end user. And since the price point is now available, end users won’t be willing to pay too much past that for the unlocking software. My guess is that they want to avoid that AT&T lawsuit, and their law-talkin’ guy thinks that this method will be their DMCA loophole. iPhoneSIMfree can distribute the software to other folks who then assume the legal risk of a lawsuit for distributing software that bypasses a security measure.

Engadget notes that due to the way this deal is set up, the best way to not distribute this software is to either

1. Send your iPhone in to be unlocked, or
2. buy a new iPhone that they’ve unlocked.

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There’s no news from the $100 grand reward for free software blog, but I don’t really think you’ll see it. Why the artificial deadline? The big news today is the absurdity of the DMCA where it comes to unlocking. You see, in the USA, we have a right to unlock the phones. But AT&T and/or Apple has no obligation to do so. And the software that does it; that’s technically software that bypasses a security measure, etc., which means that it’s governed by the DMCA. And the DMCA pretty much screws anyone that bypasses a security measure. That’s the root issue at stake: that our telco laws here are bollocks.

At any rate, Ars Technica has probably the best writeup on it that I’ve read this morning.

They link to Ed Felten’s blog, where he states that AT&T is screwed, and that we’ll have an unlock one of these days. Ed Felten is kind of famous in some circles for work with the Govt. in the Microsoft Antitrust trial, his defeat of the SDMI audio watermarking (and the RIAA’s bizarre lawsuit that followed), and his utter defeat of Diebold / Premier Election Solutions e-voting machines on TV. He’s had some experience here, and knows what he’s talking about.

iPod Observer has a good writeup on an article at BusinessWeek that also explores the issue in depth, and BusinessWeek has a bit of their own insightful commentary as well:

“Indeed, this time, hackers may have the law on their side. Remember, decades ago, automakers built their instrument panels so that only authorized radios of their own manufacture would fit in. Eventually, U.S. courts ended that practice.”

And no one ever had trouble installing a car stereo again.

There’s another writeup on the two currently-poised-to-release-unlocking-software-but-not-really-willing-to-until-the-lawyers-say-it’s-ok groups, iPhone Unlocking / John McLaughlin, and iPhoneSimFree. It gives a good view from above if you’ve not heard about it.

MYiTablet found an interesting article at C|Net that postulates that Jobs wants the iPhone hacked and unlocked; that Apple lawyers doesn’t care — Apple’s stake after the sale is tiny:

“Isn’t it ironic that AT&T lawyers went knocking on the doors of the hackers while Apple lawyers sipped tea at home?”

I suppose that’s a rhetorical question, but NO — it’s not irony. It is insightful and interesting, though. What does Apple get for iPhone service plan revenue sharing, $12 the 1st month and $3/month per subscriber thereafter? He’s got a good point, and it’s a good article. As a side note, Don Reisinger has some crazy red lips.

figure 1: Seriously, check out the crazy red lips Don Reisinger’s got.

And finally, there’s a Slashdot discussion about it all too. I don’t have anything stupid to say that I want broadcast to the internet today, so I’ll skip it. But that option is always there.

I think you can see a bunch of posturing between the two companies that are ‘poised’ to release the iPhone unlock, but both of them have law-talkin’ work to do before they can.

Anyway, here’s a wee bit of posturing from the iPhone Unlocking blog. The unlock video isn’t a good quality video; it’s all done with his Nokia N95; the video is chunky, as shaky as anything could really hope to be. The Windows command-line text that proves the connection and unlock process is all a big blur. Once it’s all said and done, he puts in his sim card, and it appears to work just fine. But if you need to watch it, it’s here. Bonus points for him exposing his friend Liz’s phone number in her voice mail when she doesn’t answer his call.

It looks like the unlocking service of UniquePhones.com is ready to unlock the iPhone, but AT&T lawyers have slowed down the process. Their unlocking service was supposed to have been available today; instead, all that is available at their iphoneunlocked.com site is an opportunity to give them your IMEI and your email, in what they call an invite.

It is now 12N EST – the time when we said we would be offering iphone unlocking software to our customers.

We have the software. It works. And we are ready to go.

Seems AT&T is a bit annoyed at the idea. A middle of the night phone call from a Silicon Valley law firm is slowing down the release of the software to you.

Stay tuned.

On their blog, they mention the difficulty of knowing what to do with the code in the event that AT&T bans them from operating an unlocking service. The lawyers will figure that stuff out fairly promptly, I would imagine. I figured this site to be legit, it’s too much work to be a fake and do the linking with uniquephones.com, so I registered for an invite. It looks like they expect to be up and running within the week:

Your details have been stored, expect an invite code in the next few days!

Remember when I said you should wait to let someone else find out if this site is legitimate? Well, according to Engadget, they are indeed legitimate. Engadget doesn’t have a copy of the software, don’t know if the 6 hackers that toiled away on it will release source to the public, or if they’ll charge beaucoup bucks for it, or when they will have a system in place for you to unlock your iPhone, or what. They just know that it works. Here’s the rundown:

• You still have to activate using the usual tools
• APN settings were included in the 1.0.1 update in secret
• You can set preferred carriers if you don’t want to roam
• YouTube doesn’t work
• No visual voicemail
• Takes a couple of minutes and is painless
• Gizmodo did not post a Death Star picture; they’re saving that for the iPhoneDevWiki folks or some other free unlock.

figure 1: this is the soldering you’d need to do

The full ten steps to unlocking an iPhone have been posted at iPhoneJTAG by George Hotz, aka Geohot. It’s a ten step process, beginning with step 1. It’s not as difficult a process as I expected it to be, except the precise scratching and soldering process. You have to scratch away at one of those tiny wires on the iPhone, and solder other wires to it directly. I imagine that the folks at the iPhone dev wiki will still be hard at work on unlocking the iPhone via a software method; not everyone has got a steady soldering hand.

figure 1: T-Mobile Subscriber GeoHot demonstrates an unlocked iPhone. Necessity is the mother of invention.

According to Ars Technica, an iPhone hacking group has claimed to unlock the phone with the aid of some sophisticated soldering. This, of course, goes well beyond the ken of the average user, but it should give hope to anyone that wants their iPhone unlocked: the hackers hope to have a software unlock within the week. Even if they don’t, they’ll post full instructions on how they did it in a week, so anyone that wants to go through the arduous microsoldering process can do so.

So in one week exactly from this blog post(thats less than the time it takes to ship a turbosim) we will release simple step by step instructions for unlocking, probably not even involving hardware. Sorry about the wait, but I assure you it will be worth it.

It seriously kills me. They unlock the iPhone, some damn fine hacking work, and then they apologize about the wait for it. No apology should be expected.

Gizmodo is reporting that the iPhone can be 100% unlocked with the use of a Turbo SIM card. This SIM card unlock doesn’t use SIM card readers or any other fancy equipment, besides the $80 blank Turbo card that an unlocker would need to buy. The actual unlocking process seems to need information only from the iPhone. You’ll need to have ssh or iPhoneInterface on your iPhone, in the very least, so you can modify some key iPhone files. After the process is done, any SIM card can be used in the iPhone, and apparently on any network. [image: Jesus Diaz of Gizmodo]

Forum members of Hackint0sh have figured out how to unlock an iPhone using a SIM card reader/writer and a blank SIM card. The Phone has reportedly been tested in Europe. The equipment to do so apparently cost $96 US, and we can apparently expect a Gizmodo post later today once they verify that this method works.

In other unlocking news, other hackers have figured out how to dump the full content of NOR memory; this memory dump should ostensibly hold all the information an enterprising hacker would need to unlock the iPhone in software. You know, without $96.

And lastly, I just want to call attention to the neat Star Wars themed photoshops Jesus Diaz of Gizmodo has been posting.

Bit by bit, information is coming out on how the syncing will work, and what it means to have to activate the iPhone before you can use it.

First, AT&T’s return policy has changed: you now only have 14 days to try it out (it used to be 30 days). There’s now also a 10% restocking fee for a return. Don’t worry, though; the contract breakage fee ($175) is still the same if you miss that 2 week deadline. We knew the phone was going to be locked, though it’s a surprise that it may be locked to one SIM card.

Second, you’ll have to activate an AT&T plan before you can even use the iPod functionality of it. Crazy! Without a worth-$3000 2 year plan, that purchase is just a $499 or $599 pretty little brick. Hopefully it will reduce the reasons to steal them. It’s going to be a hot little thing in my pocket, that’s for sure.