By now you're all fully schooled in the black art of
jailbreaking and
unlocking your new iPhone, right? Did you know that the whole dirty business can be done via iTunes in just "seconds?" The catch: it requires a €999 (about $1,480) unlocked iPhone sold (
at least temporarily) by T-Mobile Germany. Interestingly enough, there isn't any physical (or bit-level) difference between a locked and unlocked iPhone, it's Apple working all the unlocking magic over the network with a bit of help from iTunes. According to first reports from
MacNotes.de, the IMEI number is recorded at the point of sale and sent to Apple. After 24 hours, the iPhone can be unlocked by iTunes in a procedure taking just seconds. The firmware remains unchanged at 1.1.2. This news potentially opens up the iPhone to further unlocking schemes although it already sounds very similar to the approach favored by
iPhoneSimFree clan, don't you think?
[Via
MacRumors]
posted Nov 26th 2007 5:14AM
all phones should be unlocked and carriers should only sell data plans, not phones...
I know that picture. I should since I sent in to macnotes in the first place. :P
Unlock is done in just seconds. The most interesting is that you can swap the sim after activating (from T-D1 to O2 for example) and there is no need to reactive or unlock the iPhone again.
until you update again... Or does itunes detect if the iphone is unlocked or not?
Apparently iTunes detects the state. Switching SIM's with or without iTunes synchronization in the meantime does not make any difference. :)
Change the language into French, and this is probably what you'll see on iTunes via a similarly priced iPhone bought by Orange in the coming week...
Well, at that price they should at least include a MacMini!
£717 for a phone, what a steal. Some people have more money than sense, and apple are laughing all the way to bank for it.
So... someone needs to do a comparison of the files/firmware on an "apple unlocked" phone versus a legitimately unlocked phone and work out where the magic happens. Clearly there is a way for the new iTunes .dll to direcly access the phone to make this change, then we can all enjoy our "apple-endorsed" unlock solution which sounds very quick and painless.
I wonder if it sends the IMEI each time you connect the iPhone to iTunes in order to check whether it is authorised to be unlocked or not? That could make things more interesting...
Hopefully apple will realise that a lot of people want a choice on what network they want to commit to, the overpriced deals seen in europe are turning people away from this product, 26K activated in the UK (story below) appears to be a poor launch (might or might not be true but I would expect O2 to be shouting from the rooftops if everything was going as expected...).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/23/iphone_activations/
Dang, because prior to this they just had NO IDEA! If only they'd known that people want CHOICE, it would have saved them so much extra work on all that pesky locking down stuff. Where are the consumers when you need them?!
Just got back from Switzerland using my authorized ATT iphone and guess what? total nightmare. Phone would only register on Orange CH and when going into the settings I could not select any of the other carriers like Swisscom or Sunrise and would get an error message which was great when I was in a dead zone with Orange and basically pay all this money to use it overseas when I travel. Called Apple and ATT and surprisingly someone at Apple told me that with the last update 1.1.2 done when the phone went on sale in Europe they may have changed some of the frequencies to limit the use of unlocked phone (mine is not unlocked) on other networks. Does anyone know what frequency Vodafone UK, T-Mobile Germany and Orange France (and Swiss) run on? I kind of believe this because I met a friend in Geneva who was using an unlocked phone with 1.1.2 and all she could use was Orange CH. I am mad as hell if this is the case. The guy at Apple had never heard of someone having this issue and I was assured they would look into it very seriously.
Unlocked iPhones work perfectly well in Switzerland (Swisscom, Sunrise and Tele 2). I am about to see with Orange. But as you say that will anyway work.
I live in the UK and have an unlocked iPhone on t-mobile.
I travel to our datacentre in Switzerland all the time and never have a problem using my iPhone over there for both calls and internet browsing.
So it's down to the hackers to figure what tells iTunes to unlock the iPhone that's connected and work on spoofing that instead of futzing around in hardware.
"After 24 hours, the iPhone can be unlocked by iTunes in a procedure taking just seconds."
So, if you have to wait 24hours after buying the phone before it can be unlocked, how does this take "just seconds"?
You have to wait for 24 hours since T-Mobile in Germany collect the IMEIs and send them to Apple CA per fax. This will create an additional delay because of the different timezones. Then at Apple someone punches in the IMEIs into the iTunes DB, and these need to be replicated around the globe. Once that is done it is just a matter of seconds for the unlock itself to complete. The other process is way more time consuming and is what causes the delay. :)
"Interestingly enough, there isn't any physical difference between a locked and unlocked iPhone"
What's interesting about that? What phone has ever had a physical difference between locked or unlocked? It's just a software change.
I don't even think thats from iphonesimfree
If you build a house, why don't you have a key?
I guess apple's auth. unlocker can even run an update without problems
hey, what is the version of your software? mine was 1.1.2 and my friend who had an unlocked one was the same. I am not making it up, it would not let us choose other carriers than Orange CH. Restarted the phone, etc. same problem every time. This didn't happen earlier on when I went to Portugal, I could switch carriers as I a pleased.
@ Jonathan : your problem has nothing to do with the hardware but with your provider. You are trying to access other networks from an American At&T SIM Card, which means that you will get billed through AT&T for using your phone on another network. AT&T has most likely made a roaming agreement with Orange CH so that you use Orange CH when you are in Switzerland and the Orange CH customers use AT&T when in the States.
This issue has nothing to do with a phone being locked or not, since you are not using SIM cards from other operators but your original SIM card in roaming mode. The same will be with your friend, it will depend on the original carrier he/she would be using and the agreements of this carrier with foreign carriers while roaming.
Hi, this would be great except that they don't. I spoke with two different people at ATT including ATT international on conference call with Apple who told me that they have agreements with all three carriers in Switzerland. And if this was the case how would you explain that with my old pearl or motorola V3 I was able to just pick any of them on previous trips using an ATT SIM? What was even more interesting is the fact that the Apple tech person mentionned that the last update released after the European launch could have made some changes on the networks you can use with the iphone, thus limiting the number of unlocked devices on the market. Why would an unlocked phone using another carrier's sim card would only lock on the Orange CH signal and no others???
Seems very exploitable to me.
Apple's fat middle finger up its iPhone users' behind. Amazing.
hey guys,can i upgrade the phones firmware in the future without it getting locked again?
presumably it's checking with some Apple server, so all you would (conceivably) have to do is monitor the packets coming in to say that a phone can be "legitimately" unlocked, and we should be all set to make an unstoppable workaround... but I'd really rather not pay $1,500 for the privilege of working that out...
I give it a week until this exploit is used to create a method in which the iPhone is unlocked. I then give it another week until 1.1.3 comes out and blocks said method.
As much as I'd love to be enthusiastic about this whole thing, I just know how this is going to end.
This isn't fair if Apple's doing this for German customers, then Americans should have the right to get unlocked iPhones. Now all we need is someone willing to sue. lol
I am torn, can anybody tell me, should I buy one or not? On the plus side, it is certainly the most beautiful cell phone I've ever seen. It also has a sturdiness to it, a quality feel, solid, well-made, (and it probably feels even more solid without the damn anti-theft cord glued onto the back). Like Job's, the attractiveness of a thing is important to me, and that touch screen is just incredibale...
On the other side of the equasion...no video, only 2MP camera, no mms, no auto-focus in camera, extra 20 a month for it's plan, no sending of files over bluetooth, and no using as modem either...
Part of me wants it and another part of me wants to wait till Sony's phone with 5mp camera comes...what to do?
My view exactly. The problem we have here in the USA is that unlike people like us, who hang around websites like this, most Americans could care less and desire the cheapest, nastiest, featureless, ugliest cell phones that they can buy. Since they are unfortunatly the vast majority, the market will cater to them with subsidized phones, most of which are rubbish anyways. Which really gives me the penalty as I have to buy unlocked phones, AND pay the higher monthly fees that are caused by everyone elses subsidized phones.