Non-Apple "Hello World" program working on iPhone

Stephen Withers
Monday, 23 July 2007 07:18

Your IT - Mobility

The first unauthorised iPhone application is up and running thanks to the efforts of a group of programmers that have taken on the challenge of unlocking the iPhone.

Admittedly, the application doesn't do much - it's  the "Hello World" program beloved by generations of programmers as their first efforts in a new language or for a new platform - but it is a start.

The iPhone Dev Wiki team (they've asked journalists not to link to the site to avoid unnecessary load on the server) has revealed method for building applications using free software and for transferring them to an iPhone.

There's a lot of work still to be done in terms of providing the facilities needed to make it practical to create useful programs for the iPhone, but this is a significant breakthrough.

On the other hand, the group's efforts to unlock the iPhone to allow the use of SIM cards from carriers other than AT&T has hit a roadblock. A method has been found to allow the use of prepaid SIMs for the AT&T network, it seems that the firmware in the iPhone's radio chipset is checking the SIM, and unlocking requires a more-or-less unique key for each phone. Changing the firmware is theoretically possible, but the new code must be correctly signed or the iPhone won't boot.

The group said "we are not even close on giving up the full unlocking... but we won't comment on a possible time line. If the unlocking is possible we'll eventually find it".