iPhone Unlocking

That time has come, and E3 is less than 24 hours away!  I am currently typing this article up in the media lounge, and putting this together to try and get some information from you, the readers, on what you would like me to cover at the event.

One Hacker's Opinion is our weekly DashHacks catch-up news column. Do you want to hear about the biggest hacks and how they might impact the industry? Today's edition features a bunch of cool hardware mods, scene shockers, and Nintendo news that has us all talking!

Following up on yesterday's RedSn0w upgrade, we also have some pretty big news for those preserving their baseband for unlocking as well. If you've got an iPhone 4 or 3GS, you can now say goodbye to those carrier restrictions with the latest build of UltraSn0w Fixer.

If you've looked into unlocking the iPhone in the more recent years, then you've probably heard of Apple n' Berry. If not them then at least their popular unlock product the Gevey Sim. They now have a new way for a permanent unlock on your iPhone.

A good few people have reported to me that the BaseBand downgrade isn't working for them. Well musclenerd has found the cause of the problem.

Well that's all finished now! A few days ago we posted news about an unlock solution for all basebands and a day later announcing the release of the Gevey Ultra Sim 5.1.

Software unlocks have always been a rare thing in the iPhone market.

Everyone loves toting around an iPhone that is jailbroken and unlocked. Apple has been making the latter harder to accomplish, by introducing new basebands in their firmware updates. This limits ultrasn0w, at least until a new update is released.

The other day we reported that AT&T were unlocking iPhone's where the contract had expired.  Well more news regarding unlocking is making the rounds.

Right after the release of ios 5.1, the dev team updated the well known tool redsn0w so that all devices capable of ios 5.1 were able to obtain a tethered jailbreak. Sn0wBreeze was also updated so that unlockers can upgrade their device using a CFW and still obtain their unlock status.

This image is the About screen from a 3G iPhone that was bought in a store last week. As you can see the modem firmware version has been successfully downgraded to an older beta firmware. This is not an unlock (yet), but it is our illustration of the first progress made with regard to hacking the 3G baseband.

We have accomplished this by being able to execute our own code on the baseband that allows us to circumvent security checks and flash the baseband with older, disallowed firmware. Please note this has been accomplished using software only, the iPhone 3G has not been disassembled or hardware modified in any way.

It seems there is a bug which prevents the Turbo Sim from being properly programmed when the SMS storage is full (why the turbo sim is full is another question). This utility deletes the SMSs from the Turbo Sim, and this should, hopefully, solve the ERRORs while running turbo-info/turbo-app.

...John McLaughlin, founder of Uniquephones, said his Belfast, U.K., company will be posting software on Saturday that iPhone users can download to unlock their handsets to work with any SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card on any network they choose. The software should hit the Web at www.iphoneunlocking.com between noon and 2 p.m. Eastern Time, he said.