A quick round up before going into the details. There is no software method to unlock the 3G iphone yet. The iphone-dev team is working hard and getting closer day-by-day. They were successful in replacing the baseband on the 3G iphones, but it seems that the procedure had some problems. They want to release a robust solution as a software method to unlock 3G iphones. See their team blog for updates.
There is a SIM-based solution also to unlock the 3G iphone. Many people call this hardware method, but I would like to call it SIM-based solution as this approach does not involve opening the iphone and playing with the chips/circuits. This is first done by Brazilian hackers. It involves a wafer-thin card that piggybacks on your SIM and fooling the iphone into thinking that it is a test SIM thereby allowing any carrier. But they are selling this solution at a very premium price of $250-$350.
Coming to the main topic of this post, iphonehacks is running an article which says that a vietnamese hacker is able to unlock 3G iphones using a pure hardware method. It involves removing the baseband chip from the motherboard, reading the contents of it, reprogramming the chip with modified data, and then putting it back on the motherboard. Sounds exciting, isn't it ? I feel that he is generous because he charge only $80 for the whole process which takes about an hour.
The above two solutions (SIM-based and hardware method) does not work with the 2.2 firmware on 3G iphones because the firmware upgrades the baseband. This creates one more challenge to the hackers and puts apple ahead in the cat-and-mouse game. The upgrade of baseband with the 2.2 firmware happens only on 3G iphones. I seems that there is no way to downgrade the baseband once it gets upgraded. So, think twice before upgrading your 3G iphones to the latest 2.2 firmware.
No comments:
Post a Comment