History of The I Phone - Activation and SIM Lock Bypassing

Activation and SIM Lock Bypassing

The iPhone normally prevents access to its media player and web features unless it has also been activated as a phone through AT&T or O2. On July 3, 2007, Jon Lech Johansen reported on his blog that he had successfully bypassed this requirement and unlocked the iPhone's other features with jailbreaking. He published the software and offsets for others to use.

On August 14, 2007, Gizmodo reported verification of a method to bypass the iPhone's SIM lock, allowing the phone to work freely with carriers other than AT&T. This method requires a Turbo SIM card costing approximately US$80 and essentially tricks the iPhone into believing that it is operating on the AT&T network even when it is connected natively (not in roaming mode) to another carrier. Australian Personal Computer later published a ten-step guide to unlocking the iPhone using the Turbo SIM method.

In mid-August, UniquePhones announced an unlocking service for the iPhone, only to retract the service the following week after receiving a phone call from a lawyer representing AT&T.

On August 24, 2007, George Hotz, a 17-year-old hacker from Glen Rock, New Jersey, broke the lock that ties Apple's iPhone to AT&T's wireless network. He confirmed that he unlocked the phone and was using it on T-Mobile's network. The hack opened up a realm of possibilities for overseas customers because the iPhone was only sold in the U.S at the time. By unlocking it, Hotz opened up the phone to all kinds of phone networks across the world. Hotz posted the hack on his blog. The process is complicated and requires both disassembling the iPhone and executing software commands on a personal computer. Hotz, along with four others across the world, reportedly spent about 500 hours to unlock the phone.

Also, on August 24, 2007, Engadget reported, by way of photos and a video clip, that they were called by the "iPhoneSimFree" team to view a demonstration of unlocking the iPhone using a software-only solution. Unlike Hotz's hardware hack, the code in this hack was not made available to the general public. Sales of the unlock started on September 10, by way of several resellers who were able to order "keys" from iPhoneSimFree which are then passed onto the customer to use the software.

After only one full day of sales, early on September 11 the iPhone Dev Team announced that they had also created a working "software unlock", and released it to the public for free. Utilizing the existing unlock requires some technical knowledge, although a GUI-based version was under construction. Two free, GUI-based unlocking programs that have been made available are AnySim and iUnlock Reloaded.

On September 24, 2007 Apple issued a warning that future updates could render unlocked iPhones unusable. On September 27, 2007, owners of unlocked iPhones who took advantage of the version 1.1.1 update through iTunes reported that the update rendered the device virtually inoperable. There were also reports that the update even affected some iPhones that were not unlocked, and Engadget found that the firmware update had "bricked" unhacked iPhones as well. The firmware update relocks iPhones, but on October 11 the iPhoneSIMFree announced that they had hacked the 1.1.1 iPhone update, not only unlocking them but also unbricking those iPhones which were bricked by the update.

On October 16, 2007, the iPhoneDevTeam released AnySIM 1.1, the free utility that unlocks iPhones. The updated version works on firmware version 1.1.1, but doesn't fix baseband problems caused by updating an unlocked 1.0.2 phone up to 1.1.1.

On October 23, 2007, the iPhone Elite Dev-Team released Revirginizing Tool to rebuild the lock table in the seczone area to repair the damage done by the original anySIM 1.0x unlockers so unlocked 1.0.2 iPhones can upgrade to 1.1.1 without bricking the iPhone. The tool is unbricking the previously bricked iPhones.

On November 21, 2007, T-Mobile announced that due to litigation commenced against them by their competitor Vodafone, which resulted in a preliminary injunction preventing T-Mobile from locking the SIM card to T-Mobile in Germany, it will sell the phone "unlocked" and will offer the iPhone without a T-Mobile contract for €999 (US$1,478) at its shops to customers in Germany until the court renders a decision.

During the end of November, Apple released another version of iPhone firmware, 1.1.2. This version does not have many new features, but breaks unlocks.

During Macworld '08, on January 15, Apple released a fifth version of iPhone firmware, 1.1.3; this version repairs loopholes used by "iPhone Hackers." The firmware however had been compromised prior to release and new security measures were quickly bypassed.

On February 8, 2008 Geohot released the first full software unlock for the 1.1.2 & 1.1.3 OTB iPhones.

For recent information see IPhone SIM unlocking.