Free iPhone GUI unlock works perfectly - thanks hackers!

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 14 September 2007 01:03

Your IT - Mobility

The free, software only iPhone unlock that has emerged over the last couple of days works, having tested it on my own iPhone, meaning iPhone owners worldwide can now make calls on any GSM network - hooray!
The controversy surrounding the free software iPhone hack has been quite amazing over the last couple of days, as a user called HaRR0 decided to claim the credit for work done by the iPhone Dev Team and TUAW.com’s Erica Sadun.

HaRR0 has been very quickly slapped down by the community, and rightfully so – his attempt to steal the limelight as ‘the’ developer of a free, almost ‘one-click’ GUI based software unlock almost saw him receive an AUD $50,000 (USD $42,000) ‘reward’, although that happily didn’t happen after the truth became known as to the iPhone unlock’s true authors.

But HaRR0 did the world one favor – he managed to get a fellow programmer to create a GUI unlock that actually works. Yes, it’s an unlock that takes 20 minutes to ‘flash’ the firmware in your iPhone, and still involves a few (very simple) steps, but compared with the complication manual steps I was trying to follow in my attempt to hack my own iPhone, the GUI solution works.

It took me a while to find the actual collection of files and simple instructions needed to hack the iPhone, with even the iPhone Dev Team and TUAW.com saying that a few days would be needed for them to polish their own one-click GUI unlock software.

But even though I’ve waited patiently, along with everyone else, if an almost one-click, simple GUI unlock was available – I frankly didn’t care who made it – I just wanted it! Now! Not in a few days!

And… I found it. And it worked. And it’s still working! I immediately hunted around for someone with a T-Mobile SIM card so I could test it to see it the unlock worked. Thankfully, I found someone very quickly, and once I explained that I wanted to see if my newly unlocked iPhone truly was unlocked or not, they were most happy to oblige.

A couple of minutes later, I made my very first iPhone phone call. Also, there’s some additional software that comes with the iPhone unlock package – an ‘installer’ program that lets you install several dozen different programs, from games to Flickr photo uploaders to voice recorders, utilities, ringtones, wallpapers and plenty more.

There was also a batch file which fiddled with my iPhone’s internal software to allow the YouTube application to work – I’d never been able to use it before.

So… if you’re reading this, and you have an iPhone and want to unlock it NOW as well, what to do? You'll find a link to easy step-by-step instructions and the free graphical iPhone unlock in the conclusion on page 2...