Feb 11, 2008

BREAKING: New iPhones can now be unlocked with software


Ever since Apple changed the Bootloader with the release of the iPhone with firmware version 1.1.2 (Just in case you don't know, the Bootloader is the code that runs before the operating system runs) want-to-be iPhone owners have had to shell out extra money for hardware unlock solutions like TurboSIM and StealthSIM. This morning however, a full unlock solution for brand new out of the box iPhones hit the web - and, as is normally the case, within a few hours another popped up too.
For those of you who don't speak 'Geek' that means you can now buy (or get a friend who is in the US to buy you) a brand new iPhone from Apple and use software to unlock the phone to a point where you can use any SIM card to make and receive calls. Before this breakthrough you needed to spend extra buying a third-party SIM card that 'tricked' the iPhone into thinking you actually were using an AT&T Sim card to make calls. With this release, owning a brand new iPhone just got a $100 cheaper.
So how do you do it? Well, thanks to the web there are many resources that will help you unlock your new iPhone, but the best and most complete site to refer to is here. iClarified will show you everything from unlocking a brand new iPhone, to upgrading your existing firmware to the latest version 1.1.3. Most solutions oniClarified are so advanced that you don't even need to use a computer to achieve the unlock - you simply the Installer application on the iPhone itself to run the unlock

For those of you who want a more complicated way of unlocking a new iPhone see here for a more manual unlock solution. This solution requires that you download a script that you run via a terminal command - a more complicated and potentially perilous route to take.
Now that our dollar is strong, and the iPhone can be easily hacked, there really isn't a better value phone on the market than the iPhone. And with the imminent release of the SDK (rumors place an event before the end of February) the value proposition that the iPhone offers is stronger than ever.