Unlocketh Thy iPhone

by Aaron Wright Aug 27, 2007

Woop-de-doo, but he hasn’t made it worth anyone’s while, has he? According to the BBC, George Hotz of New Jersey spent his summer trying to unlock the iPhone to be used on rival networks of AT&T, most notably T-Mobile.

However, the unlock isn’t as straightforward as simply “flashing” the memory on the iPhone, a more common way of unlocking a mobile phone to allow it to work on other networks. Instead, Mr. Hotz and a team of four others, including two Russians, spent over 500 hours since the launch of the phone working out how to hack it with a combination of software and hardware skills.

The software skills are possibly something you or I could do by downloading a program from the internet, most likely with a little tweaking, but what average Joe is going to spend his time with a soldering kit just to unlock a phone? If you’re up to the task, good for you, but unfortunately the rest of us have lives to lead.

Full credit to Mr. Hotz though; he’s publicly stated that he wishes there were a simpler way of hacking the iPhone and doesn’t want him or anyone else to earn money off of the hack—so while he loses points for wasting his summer in a beautifully hot (I’m jealous of British weather) country, he does gain a few from being quite modest about the whole affair.

But there is a simpler way

On Friday, 24th August 2007, Engadget announced that they had received information of a successfully unlocked iPhone without the need of a “hardware hack.”

A 6-man team has been working on the hack since the iPhone was launched on June 29th this year, but they refuse to tell us how they did it, most probably because they’re going to make a little earner out of this one, and quite rightly so. Engadget has posted a video to show us a little proof that the hack, by iPhoneSimFree.com, does indeed work brilliantly.

The hack takes a few seconds to do and does require you to activate the iPhone on your new carrier, in the demo’s case T-Mobile, which is a straightforward pain-free process.

There appear to be only a couple of downfalls to this little software “upgrade.” One is that the Visual Voicemail will not work, as expected, as that part of the iPhone is currently only an AT&T service, and the sedcond is that YouTube doesn’t work right out of the box, but will in time with a little activation (as posted on Engadget).

It took long enough but someone has finally done it.

So to those of you that already own the iPhone: what are you thoughts on this? Is there anyone out there who really didn’t want to subscribe to AT&T’s network and is disappointed that you didn’t wait for this so you could stay with the carrier you were on before you switched to AT&T? Or does this whole affair not bother you one bit? Let us know by leaving a comment or two below.

 

Comments

  • “Or does this whole affair not bother you one bit?”

    What bothers me is that Apple has a rather unwarranted reputation for being this advocate of open-ness, when in reality they create the most locked-down, restricted products in the industry.  I’m much more interested in the rumored gooPhone.

    Beeblebrox had this to say on Aug 27, 2007 Posts: 2220
  • I have to say that I was very happy with Verizon service.  On the other hand, I am not especially happy with AT&T’s service.
    I have had more dropped calls and static interfere with reception in the short time I have had the iPhone (I resisted the hype and just purchased it two weeks ago) than I did for my four years on Verizon (previously I had Sprint, which was significantly worse than AT&T).  When the reception is good, the sound quality is unmatchable. On the other hand, the Edge network, while slow, is not the dial-up like torturous nightmare that it was proposed to be. 
    When the option is available to use my iPhone with Verizon, I will switch, likely even paying a fee to do so, if necessary.  While AT&T is my only option, I will use it, but I cannot promise to be uncomplaining.

    bluegirl had this to say on Oct 04, 2007 Posts: 19
  • The same situation is in UK and O2 Network
    Apple News

    wyspa had this to say on Oct 29, 2007 Posts: 9
  • now,i’m waiting for unlock iphone 5 .แอร์รามอินทรา

    Burglar Alarm had this to say on Aug 25, 2011 Posts: 4
  • -man team has been working on the hack since the iPhone was launched on June 29th this year, but they refuse to tell us how they did it, most probably because they’re going to make a little earner out of this one, and quite rightly so.
    Whitepoint Pizzeria

    nobelboy had this to say on Oct 18, 2011 Posts: 14
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