Hackers release tools to unlock iphone os 4 (iOS4)

Shortly after the iphone 4 is officially launched with the latest firmware iOS4, hackers released the tools to jailbreak & unlock the latest firmware on the 3G & 3GS phones. Though the hackers found the exploits during the beta of iOS4 & 3.1.3 firmware they did not disclose is because apple would close them in the main release. Note that 3G & 3GS iphones are supported on iOS4 but not 2G iphones. They updated the following tools:
pwnage tool - to jailbreak the new iOS4 firmware (redsnow should follow)
ultrasn0w tool - to unlock the baseband

The good news is that the updated ultrasnow tool (v0.93) can unlock all the basebands till the latest one (5.13.04). The new firmware updates that baseband (responsible for gsm communication) to the latest one but the latest ultrasnow tool can unlock it so that the phone can be used on other networks. So, even if you accidentally updated your iphone firmware to 3.1.3 version (which also updates the baseband to 5.12.01) which rendered the phone not usable on other networks this latest tools will be your savior. The users with jailbroken phones on 3.1.3 firmware can also use ultrasnow without upgrading to iOS4.

The bad news is that the pwnage tool cannot *yet* jailbreak the 3GS iphones with the new bootroms (iBoot-359.3.2). The iphone week number will help as a thumb rule to find if your 3GS iphone is having old or new bootrom. The 4th and 5th digits of the serial number will tell the week number of the phone. If your iphone week number is <40, then you will definitely have old bootrom. If the week number is >45 then you will definitely have new bootrom. In between, we cannot say for sure. The sure shot method to determine the bootrom is to use some tool like 'usbview' and put the iphone in DFU mode.

Tutorials:
jailbreaking 3G(mac, windows), 3GS oldbootrom(mac, windows)
unlock of 3G and 3GS

update(5-July): If you have the 3.1.2 SHSH blobs stored (not 3.1.3 shsh blobs), there is a way you can jailbreak the 3GS phone with new firmware. See this tutorial.This tutorial is not yet for the faint hearted. These steps were released for the advanced users as the tool development will take some time.

Mouse customizations not working after standby

I was using Logitech marble mouse(trackball mouse) for a quite some time. BTW, it is a very nice alternative for the regular mouse especially for people who get pain in the wrist. I closed down on this item mainly because of its cost effectiveness and good set of features. First of all its ergonomic. It fits well for both left-handed and right-handed people. In general, trackball mouses causes less strain on the muscles because you need not hold the mouse and move it. It stays in a place and we only have to move the ball on top with our fingers. I read on the internet that gripping the mouse contributes to most of the strain caused by mouse usage. Though its very less strain to do it once, we catch the mouse a few hundred times in a day and it causes RSI(Repetetive Stress Injury). I used to get pain in my wrist earlier because of my typing and mouse usage. Now, my pain reduced a lot after using this trackball and a softkey keyboard.

Coming back to the main topic of my post, recently, I started getting one strange problem with my mouse. I customized the mouse buttons to do page up and page down when I press the small buttons on the mouse. (By default they are assigned to previous and next for the browser). When I boot my machine from scratch I do not have any problem and my customizations work fine. There is a mouse icon in the system tray which can be used to customize the button assignments. The problem starts when I put the machine and standby mode and come out of it. The mouse icon in the system tray is missing and my customizations do not work any more. Everything goes to default. Rebooting the system is not an acceptable solution for me.

Finally, I found a solution to the problem where I need not reboot the machine. The trick is to get back the mouse icon in the system tray, i.e. get back the necessary daemon/service working. From the list of applications that run during the startup, I figured that LOGI_MWX.EXE is the one that corresponds to the mouse service. It is located in c:\windows\logi_mwx.exe. The solution is to run this application after coming out of standby mode. You will get back your customizations. You can create a shortcut to this application on the desktop for easy access.

Step-by-step guide to iphone 3G unlocking (link)

iphonehacks is running a nice tutorial on step-by-step guide to unlock 3G iphones. I find it very neat and elaborate. It explains the known conditions under which the unlock does not work. It also has the precautions to be taken before unlocking.

One more nice tutorial from iclarified.

[Off Topic]
There are some requests for link to unlocking 2G phones having 2.2 firmware. Here it is.