Zibri says 3G iPhone has no copy/paste and no MMS

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 04 May 2008 20:09

Your IT - Mobility

Zibri, the Italian programmer of the now famous ZiPhone unlocking tool for the existing 2G iPhone, has promised an unlock for the iPhone 2.0 firmware while explaining that the new firmware leaves out some much requested features.

ZiPhone, the iPhone unlocking tool by Zibri, is well known – or should be – by anyone with an iPhone they’ve already unlocked, or would like to.

Update: The iPhone 3G has launched! Full details here.

Original story follows:

Zibri wasn’t the first to unlock the iPhone, nor was he the first to release an easy unlock method. But his ZiPhone software made it incredibly simple for iPhone owners to update to 1.1.3 or 1.1.4 firmware and unlock their iPhones in around four minutes on the PC or Mac

As the countdown continues to the launch of the iPhone 2.0 firmware/software, as well as the oft-predicted and much expected 3G iPhone, Zibri has admitted to being a bit bored after hacking the pre-release iPhone 2.0 firmware.

He has shared the news that Apple will likely release a new version of iTunes to coincide with the iPhone 2.0 firmware release, which will also mean a new version of ZiPhone will emerge.

However Zibri says he “will have to rewrite ZiPhone to support the new “mobiledevice” framework.”, which means we should not, repeat not, “expect a new ZiPhone version shortly after the official 2.0 release” because “it will take some time to rewrite and to fully test it.”

Of course, that’s usually the case when Apple launches new firmware versions, as the hackers figure out what new protections Apple has put in place and work hard to open it up to anyone that wants to unlock their iPhone.

In screenshots at Zibri’s site, we can see that his iPhone has the pre-2.0 firmware loaded, and he shows a contact search feature, something that has been known for a while now would appear in iPhone 2.0 firmware.

Zibri also says that hacking the iPhone pre-2.0 firmware has already been done, but the making it ‘easy to use’ for the rest of us part of the software “will need some time”.

So, what has Zibri shared about the “gold” pre-2.0 firmware, which Zibri believes is feature complete? Please read onto page 2.