Monthly Archives: July 2008

[iPhone] iPhone 3G confirmed unlocked using SIM Adapter X-SIM

There were some rumors two days ago (we reported here), that the Brasil based company DesbloqueioBr.com.br unlocked the iPhone 3G by using a SIM proxy adapter. Today a confirmation comes from Vietnam. Two well known guys from the vietnamese forum GSM.com.vn going by the nicks TA_Mobile and Immb published some photographs showing a SIM proxy solution named X-SIM. However it requires an activated iPhone to unlock.

For those of you being capable of reading (and understanding) the original Vietnamese forum messages: this link is for you. All the others: enjoy the pictures here.

Congrats to Vietnam!!!

[e-Biz] Apple apologizes for Inconveniences with MobileMe

For having had inconveniences (we reported here) with their new MobileMe services, Apple offers customers an additional 30 days trial period for free. Apple reps said that all issues that were occurring during transition from .Mac to MobileMe have now been solved and webservices work correctly. However they won’t use the notion “Push-Services” for now, because syncing all devices currently takes up to 15 minutes.

» MobileMe: Exchange for the Rest of Us

[iPhone] iPhone 3G sold out in Germany

While the iPhone 3G has just been launched in France (we reported here), in Germany T-Mobile must be quite content, because iPhones over here are completely sold out. Currently it is not clear, when new iPhones can be delivered by Apple. T-Mobile needed to set some thousand customer orders pending.

T-Mobile said they already sold 15,000 devices on german launch day last week. It is reported AT&T in the U.S. seems also be running out of 3G iPhones soon.

[Linux] Open-Xchange Server 6 for Debian

The free version of Open-Xchange has eventually been released for different Linux distributions. Binary versions are built using the OpenSuSE Build Service and are currently provided for

  • Debian 4.0
  • Fedora 8
  • OpenSuSE 10.2, 10.3 and 11.0
  • Ubuntu 7.04, 7.10, 8.04

Open-Xchange contains groupware functions like eMail, calendar and administration of contacts. It is based on Java and uses an Ajax webinterface. It is provided under the GPL.

A quick install guide for our Debian users can be found here.

[e-Biz] Mac Clone Supplier Psystar sued by Apple

Eventually Apple sues Psystar for having broken license terms and having committed copyright infringement of MacOS X 10.5 Leopard and Leopard Server. Psystar offers PCs pre-installed with MacOS X Leopard. As reported in german media heise.de Apple claims these points:

  • Psystar may have broken Apple’s license terms that allow installing MacOS X Leopard only on “Apple-labeled computers”. Apple says this means “Apple manufactured hardware”.The debate about what an “Apple-labeled computer” exactly is, is as old as tutorials that deal with installing MacOS X Tiger and Leopard on white box PCs. People in forums were joking about putting an original Apple sticker on your PC case may fit the necessity of the notion “Apple-labeled computer”. Obviously this is not enuff and Apple’s guerilla strategy comes to an end when other companies begin to develop business model out of their work. This will be a major topic and we are quite curious how Apple will explain the notion “Apple-labeled computer”.
  • Psystar may have violated Apple’s copyrights by providing modified MacOS X updates for their “Open Computer” customers.
  • Psystar may have damaged Apple’s brand, because of Psystar’s support for MacOS X being poor.

Apple’s lawsuit comprises of 35 pages and was issued shortly after Psystar began distributing a modified version of the Mac OS X 10.5.4 update. An online version of it can be viewed here.

We yet reported about Psystar’s business here:

» The never ending Psystar Story
» Psystar offers OpenPro
» Psystar offers Mac Clone

[e-Biz] MobileMe: The Rest of Exchange for Us

Apple’s MobileMe – the successor of .Mac, silently changed description of their offered services. You remember the advertisement “Exchange for the Rest of us”? Now Apple decided to remove the notion “Push-Service” of MobileMe and replaced it with the notion “Synchronization”.

Instead of being pushed instantly, data will now be synchronized every 15 minutes. That simply is not a push-service. Update: an instant sync will still be possible when using an iPhone or an iPod Touch. The price will remain the same (at least) in Europe: 80€/year.

[iPhone] iPhone 3G allegedly unlocked using SIM Adapter

[Update] Aug/25th/2008: read here, everything you gotta know about Proxy SIM solutions.

The Brazilian based company DesbloqueioBr.com.br claims to have unlocked the 3G iPhone. The whole procedure is like a deja-vu. It is said it works almost the same like with TurboSIM for the “old” iPhone. The difference is they say they make use of a faked IMSI test card, while Bladox’ TurboSIM solution emulated an AT&T card.

The Theory behind

The guys at DesbloqueioBr claim that the iPhone 3G only checks on first card detection (means after hot-swapping or after reboot) for the type of SIM. It is said it checks the IMSI code. During card-detection, the IMSI test card emulation now returns that it is a test card. The next requests to the card will then be answered by the normal SIM card. Same working like with the TurboSIM, except that the TurboSIM was coded to emulate an AT&T card during card detection stage.

Empiricism

Since this has not been confirmed on forums and the video provided (see below) doesn’t show the unlock procedure, this is likely to be a rip-off. Anyway for proving the theory the iPhone Dev Team already provided a sample application for the TurboSIM, that does exactly what the theory requires: emulating a test IMSI at card detection stage. As of now there is no feedback. For legal reasons we cannot link the application, as we are located in Germany. During the next 24 hours google will index the page that contains the link, search for lamesaft-0.1.zip then.

Limitations

The video provided does not clarify how the unlock is performed. It simply shows a call being made from one iPhone to the other. It does not show the SIM adapter to be taken out. Moreover you still need to have the iPhone 3G activated. Currently there is no application available to do this. People on forums report that the DesbloqueioBr guys seem not to be willing to answer concrete questions.

Since there is no prove: we currently classify the DesbloqueioBr SIM adapter as SCAM. Update: at 00:29 the video shows the model as MB046LL, which could be identified as a U.S. american AT&T locked iPhone 3G (see model list here). This model obviously works with a different carrier (not AT&T, but TIM) in a different country (not the US, but Brazil).

Here’s the video that shows calls being made from one iPhone to another. The guy is talking portuguese, a translation is not available.

empty line for distance to the text.

[iPhone] Factory Unlocked 3G List (“Locked to Carrier” List) (update)

[Update] Sep, 26th: News from Hong Kong added (details here)
[Update] Aug, 25th: Apple’s list update included.

Almost unnoticed on july, 11th 2008 Apple also published a list of carriers offering the iPhone. The interesting thing with this list is, it also contains information about the status of the SIM lock in specific countries.

Apple’s official “Locked to Carrier” list

This is an extract from the official Apple list found here:

Country Carrier SIM Lock Available without Agreement
Italy Vodafone No Yes (499€/8GB, 569€/16GB)
Italy TIM No Yes (499€/8GB, 569€/16GB)
Hong Kong 3 No No (375€/8GB, n.a.€/16GB)
Hong Kong (Apple Store) No Yes (476€/8GB, 547€/16GB)
Greece Vodafone No No (Details here)
Czech Republic O2 No Yes (490€/8GB, 570€/16GB)
New Zealand Vodafone No Yes (470€/8GB, 535€/16GB)
Singapore SingTel No No (490€/8GB, 570€/16GB)
Slovakia Orange No No? (Details)
Macao 3 No No? (Details)

It is rumored, the unlocked iPhones need to be activated aswell, but in this case it can be done at home using iTunes. No matter how often you change your carrier, it seems you can always re-activate.

Forum reports

In addition to the offical Apple list, this is what people report in forums:

Country Carrier SIM Lock Available without Agreement
Belgium Mobistar No Yes (n.a.€/8GB, 615€/16GB)
France Orange Yes (100€ Unlock fee) Yes (509€/8GB, 609€/16GB)

This list may not be 100% accurate and refers to reports on forums, like hackint0sh. Feel free to add more details like pricing and how to obtain unlocked devices elsewhere as comments below. Thanks!

The cheapest iPhone 3G

For people living in Switzerland, Swisscom offers the iPhone 3G for beating prices between 519 CHF (=510 US$, =325€) for the 8GB version and 619 CHF (=610US$, =385€) for the 16GB version. This includes a prepaid tariff with no obligations. Disadvantages: 1. iPhone 3G is simlocked to Swisscom. You currently cannot unlock, since Proxy SIMs have heavy (legal) disadvantages (read here), 2. This offer is limited to people living in Switzerland. Your citizenship and rights of residence are checked in Swisscom stores. Tourists (=foreigners) not living in Switzerland cannot buy it.

[iPhone] XPwn Command Line Utility released

As member of the iPhone Dev Team, planetbeing today released “XPwn”. He describes “XPwn” as an experimental pwnage tool for Linux. Although XPwn was proposedly developed for Linux users, it actually is a cross-platform tool for command line users. Update: It does not support firmware 2.0 yet.

Warning

The XPwn tool is not intended to be used by newbies. That’s why it’s called experimental pwnage tool. It provides a command line interface only, what means you can dreadfully screw up your iPhones using it. The first version of XPwn seemed to have issues when writing the NOR firmware. Although planetbeing has obviously fixed this problem, we really recommend to wait for Pwnage 2.0.

XPwn’s versions

Experimental Pwnage comes in different flavours:

XPwn’s features

Experimental Pwnage implements many of Apple’s proprietary container formats: img2, 8900, complzss, iBootIm, dmg, HFS+/HFSX.

Nice work. Congrats to planetbeing. See XPwn hackint0sh thread here.