I don’t know if it is legal what they are doing but anyway, after the news that the iPhone shipped one million times it starts to become very attractive to get a piece of the cake for many people.

check it out cellhut

Apple experts said the iPhone could never be unlocked, and with a price tag of $399 (£197) the question has to be asked, who would risk trying? Well it looks like some determined gadget lovers gave it a go anyway and from the details listed at freeiphoneunlock.com they were successful.

read it here onecompare

If you do a Google search for “iphone unlock” you get a whopping 4.390.000 hits, so I thought that it would be nice to make a roundup of the various working activation/unlocking methods around (with a lot of help from the guys at irc.osx86.hu, #iphone and hackint0sh.org)

read it here

As reportedon the weekend, iPhoneSimFree started to offer iPhone unlocking today. The iPhone unlocking software is currently available from four retailers around the globe.

Wireless Imports sells the iPhoneSimFree iPhone unlocking software for $99 in the United States.
iPhoneSimFree also launched a new site to appear more professional.

read it here i4u

CNN confirmed the iPhone crack developed by a group called iPhoneSIMFree, which was reported last week. According to CNN, an independent software consultant has demonstrated the software that unlocks iPhone on Friday evening.

The method developed by iPhoneSIMfree was initially reported by the tech site Engadget.
CNN has spoken with two members of the group behind iPhoneSIMfree and they said “would start selling the software, which they haven’t yet priced, as soon as their online payment and customer service systems are ready”. Still, for the moment it’s not clear if the unlocking of the iPhone is legal or not.

read it here efluxmedia

Earlier today we noted that while successful hardware-based iPhone unlocks are taking place all over the world (Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Germany, etc), some users are apparently doing damage to their units that will almost certainly not be covered under Apple’s warranty. One commonly reported issue is the loss of Bluetooth and or Wi-Fi connectivity.

read it here iphoneatlas

FRENCH CANADIAN site Technaute has been running a yarn about a bloke who installed a cracked SIM card in his iPhone and got it to run on the Rogers network.
Apparently the iPhone is fully functional other than a lack of voice mail.

read it here theinquirer.net

Here’s an interesting solution to legal and technical problems involved in freeing Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone from its much maligned coupling with the AT&T (T) wireless network.

An anonymous donor, claiming to represent a group of open source advocates, today offered $100,000 for the right to release the code necessary to unlock an iPhone freely on the Web. The offer is posted here: FreeIPhoneforMoney.


read it here business2

Several groups have now said that they have software ready that robustly unlocks the Apple iPhone and enables users to use the iPhone on other carriers. One of these groups now apparently (there are some doubts, as lawyers like to send written things first) got a call from AT&T lawyers reports Engadget.

read it here i4u

We thought today would be, well, fitting to start our new technology law series Know Your Rights, written by Engadget’s own totally punk copyright attorney Nilay Patel.

In it we’ll try to answer some fundamental tech-law questions to help you stay out of trouble in this brave new world.


read it here engadget

Today was the fourth time someone has claimed a 100% unlocking method for the iPhone. All four methods work great, but there’s a problem with all of them: they cost money. We don’t know how much the software methods will cost exactly, but we know one thing for sure: there is going to be a free alternative. If you want to get it soon, keep reading.

Editor note: Here is a nice overview of all the hacking methods, their cost and where to order.
read it here gizmodo

George Hotz remembers taking apart his first computer, an Apple II, when he was 4 or 5 years old.
He cracked open an answering machine, remote control, vacuum cleaner and more computers. He scavenged for more products to tinker with on trash night in his neighborhood.
Now the 17-year-old from Glen Rock, N.J., has reached the big leagues of hacking. He says he has “unlocked” the iPhone, finding a way to get around the device’s restrictions and allow it to be used not only on AT&T’s cell phone network but also on T-Mobile’s network and overseas.

read it here sfgate

here are two ways to go about fully unlocking an iPhone in order to use it with any carrier and network. A “software unlock” involves extracting the unlock key from the iPhone’s radio chip and then using the unlock command and key to unlock the phone--this is how Apple or AT&T would unlock a phone. There’s also a “hardware unlock,” which uses a Turbo SIM or other methods to unlock the iPhone.

read it here arstechnica

There’s a new iPhone unlocking method in town this week, which achieves a full unlock using only a Turbo SIM card. This latest method is a big improvement over the previous options, since it doesn’t require you to buy anything besides the aforementioned Turbo SIM card. The Turbo SIM is a third-party SIM similar to the SilverCard, but the Turbo SIM actually squeezes in alongside your usual SIM card and can run code.


read it here arstechnica

This weekend’s C-4 developer conference features “Iron Coder Live”, a contest in the same vein as MacHack. The event encourages conference attendees to develop creative “hacks”, written in within a short timeframe. This year’s theme, of course, is iPhone.

read it here macdaddyworld

My iPhone broke. The screen just died a slow death, getting brighter and brighter and then very hot and then...nothing...over the course of a morning. With no phone to play with this morning, I did a lot of thinking and hunting through iPhone foundation files instead. And I seemed to find quite a lot of interesting calls in the Celestial framework, specifically the AVRecorder class.

read it here tuaw

Well, it’s here now. The #iphone-dev team has compiled the first third-party application for the iPhone. Of course, it is the standard “Hello, world.” application, but it’s native to the iPhone and uses the iPhone’s GUI.

slashdot.org

Building on the work of the iPhone Dev team and in particular the hacker Nightwatch, “Tomo.M” has compiled a SOCKS (SOCKetS) proxy server for the iPhone, called “srelay”. What does that mean? It means that you can share your iPhone’s EDGE connection with your computer. Beginning with the steps to add custom ringtones, you then install and run the server on the phone.

read it here wired

If you’ve been wanting to activate your iPhone without iTunes so you can use a non-iPhone AT&T/Cingular SIM, or you just want to use your iPhone as an iPhonePod, I have some good news for you. The guys over at ModMyiPhone have introduced a program that doesn’t require you to work from the command line.

read it here tuaw

After the first Hello World application, hacker NerveGas and the people at #iphone-shell have built Apache, Python and other Open Source apps for the iPhone. Yes, your iPhone can now be a web server and do all sort of 1337 things. This also means that third-party applications for iPhone will happen no matter what. People, Doom could be just around the corner. [UPDATED 3:07AM EST: As a bonus, check their progress on the iPhone unlocking after the jump.]

read it here gizmodo

Besides gadget freaks, the other big group clamoring for the iPhone has been hackers. Since the Apple TV was hacked so easily it has given hackers an extra incentive to take a shot at opening iPhone’s closed fortress.

Here’s a quick rundown of the hacks currently underway for iPhone zdnet

The iPhone file system has been compromised and you can access it using iPhoneInterface. Full access to the file system means custom ringtones and all kinds of fun stuff.

One of them: They moved the Safari application from the dashboard to the iPhone space. This also opens the door to running custom applications as soon as someone figures out how to program without an SDK or adapt normal Cocoa apps to the iPhone. And the unlocking feels so close now that you can almost touch it.

Read it here gizmodo

A noted Norwegian hacker claimed yesterday to have come up with a way to activate an Apple Inc. iPhone without committing to an AT&T wireless plan.

Jon Lech Johansen, better known as “DVD Jon” for his part in creating and releasing code in 1999 that broke DVD copy protection, has posted a Windows-only workaround he said lets iPhone owners use the device as a widescreen iPod and Internet communicator. The cracked iPhone can’t be used as a phone, however.

Read it here computerworld