Dev Team Updates: 3G Unlock in the Works

The iPhone Dev Team has updated their blog with a TON of content in a lengthy post. Here's a breakdown of the main takeways:

progress is being made towards a software-based iPhone 3G unlock, though the when and even if this is going to happen remains unspecified

the iPhone Dev Team warns users to stay clear of hardware-based 3G unlocks that revolve around SIM card modification

playing with a beta version of RiP Dev's 4.0, the Dev Team reports that the software will most likely be available within a couple weeks, not a few days

the cryptic messages that led up to the release of PwnageTool 2.0 have been decryptified and explained by the Dev Team

Also, some screenies of a 1st gen iPhone (unlocked & jailbroken) running the 2.1 beta firmware, as well as some new Installer 4.0 beta previews:

Check below for the post in its entirety:

We’d like to update you on what we’ve been doing for the last week or so, and to bring you up to speed with a couple of workstreams. Things are certainly hopping up in the DevTeam with most of our members being able to obtain 3G iPhones, which means a distributed workload and lots of fun for our team members. A week ago, we posted a screenshot of an iPhone 3G downgraded to an earlier baseband firmware. We are able to execute unsigned code on the baseband in order to circumvent a security check, which then allows us to flash the baseband to an earlier version. Of course, this isn’t a 3G unlock (as yet) but it is a demonstration of our ability to hand-control the baseband. With all this upgrading and downgrading, we were worried about (true) bricks, so we’ve developed a method to dump the WiFi tables and the seczones. Now we can modify without sweating, since a successful recovery can be made at any point. With this out of the way, changing our underwear every 5 minutes isn’t necessary! Yay for us, bad news for Hanes. So, we are making steady progress towards the goal of a software-based iPhone 3G unlock. Please note though that we are working hard on it with no estimates of if and when it will be completed. We’ll update you as soon as we know anything else so stay tuned and watch this space. Over at the hackint0sh forums we’ve been monitoring the whole “SIM-card unlock” proxy-SIM situation. This involves using a chip that is attached to your SIM card (with a small modification to your SIM) or sometimes a small PCB soldered inside the phone. These sim mods so far seem very very very questionable. Zf has found that they use trickery of the GSM and UMTS network that is considered highly illegal in most countries and they rely on sending bogus IMSIs and various other nasty hacks to obtain service on your iPhone. A couple of our members have written something about how this “works”. We’ll try to publish more findings soon. DevTeam recommendation: Steer clear, don’t use! DevTeam members have an internal beta version of Installer 4 from RiPDev. It looks very nice, and expect a release from them soon. We don’t have an exact date yet, but we’d estimate certainly not within the next few days and less than a couple of weeks. We’ve attached another couple of screenshots at the end in case you want to see more. We are also testing an internal build of PwnageTool for iPhone OS 2.1b2 (for first generation iPhones and also 3G models). Unlock and jailbreak is working fine on the 1st Gen (we don’t think Apple is even trying anymore to prevent pwnage or unlocks for 1st Gen iPhones). For 3G, jailbreak certainly still works, and this will be released in good time. We are also looking for some help! Are there any graphic designers/web-developers out there that could help us with a couple of things? We have lots of lovely postcards sent to us that we’d like to show you all. and we’d like a nice site to show them off. We can’t pay you anything as this is all a hobby, but if you think you are a good graphic designer/web coder/developer then send us an email to blog@iphone-dev.com perhaps with a link to your work and examples of your design. Also some people have asked about the cryptic posts that we made during the run up to the release of PwnageTool 2.0, here are the explanations. Oh My! & Is it a bird? these were screenshots of the tooltips from a beta of PwnageTool 2.0 with “Oh My!” being something that George Takei says alot and “Is it a bird” referring to Superman. West we go! Go West is a film by the Marx Brothers, we decided on the use of Harpo and Einstein images for buttons in PwnageTool so we ran with that. Our sources are hidden… Einstein once made a quote “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” again we were referring to the button in PwnageTool. Position freely! This was a sneek peak at one of the icons from the upcoming installer4 application, this refers to the independence and choice offered by Cydia and Installer. And now for something completely different…. This is reference to a Monty Python, John Cleese often said “And now for something completely different” as a segue in-between sketches during the excellent Monty Python’s Flying Circus. We opted for pythonesque imagery in the DFU game in PwnageTool so we thought it would be a cool reference. Living in sweet harmony! This is of course referring to AppStore and Cydia working hand in hand on 2.0. 2.0 Demo aka “to all the haters…” This is a song by culture club. With the famous lyrics “Do you really want to hurt me? of course sung by Boy George *cough* Bootneuter 2.0 aka Flash! This is Queen’s “Flash Gordon” which is synchronized with the pressing of the “Flash” button in BootNeuter. iBoot unlaced…. This is referring to the hack of iBoot, where we are the cobblers. The Last Supper… This is was about the little run-in with geohot and co. Yes the counter was bogus, it didn’t mean anything. World’s 1st Jailbroken 3G Phone Music by Phil Oakley - Together In Electric Dreams, we didn’t pour champagne on the iPhone to Jailbreak it ;) Boldog Születésnapot! - This is “happy birthday” in Hungarian it was directed at one of our team-members, it also mentioned “a downloadable birthday gift, coming soon” :) Sundays - We were hinting at a 2.0 release that day. SugarBowl Sweetness - SugarBowl is the Apple codename for a 2.0 firmware release. As you can see the cryptic messages were just fun and there was some method to the madness ;)

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