Precentral reports that a user has eventually made to unlock european GSM Palm Pre’s. This unlock is not proxy SIM based, it is a software unlock.
Luckily this unlocking thing does not apply to german Palm Pre’s as they we got factory unlocked Pre’s anyway.
Read more on PreCentral.net…
The jailbreak the iPhone Dev Team released a couple of days ago is in no way intended to be used by end-users rather than developers. It is a jailbreak-only, that allows Cydia based developers to make their apps compatible to iPhone OS 4.0.
The jailbreak still requires a legal activation via iTunes and a valid subscription. Means: the redsn0w tool will not hacktivate or sim-unlock your devices. If you ain’t a dev, you are strongly advised not to update, got me?
Details on the iPhone Dev Team’s site…
As of now the only factory unlocked Palm Pre’s are being sold here in Germany. German Palm Pre’s are of course being sold with a germany QWERTZ keyboard. Anyway some international customers prefer the international QWERTY keyboard.
Now rumors in spanish forums have surfaced that the spanish GSM based Palm Pre sold by and locked to the MoviStar carrier have been unlocked. As of now we have no confirmation, if that is true or a hoax.
Today notorious GeoHot released a standing new jailbreak tool called BlackRa1n. BlackRa1n is currently only available for Microsoft Windows. It is supposed to jailbreak any 3.x based iPhone or iPod touch. No matter if you’ve jailbroken before or not.
BlackRa1n is fairly self explaining and straight forward designed. It’ll bring your iPhone or iPod Touch automatically into Recovery Mode.
Sadly currently BlackRa1n does not hacktivate your iPhone. So you still need a valid subscription with an Apple licensed carrier or a factory unlocked iPhone.
Kudos fly out to GeoHot. Standing work again.
What has happened so far
Some irritation is going on in the Apple hacking community. On the one hand GeoHot today announced that there will be a tool that will allow jailbreaking all iPhones and iPod Touchs, but as he wished to perform further tests he didn’t tell anything about the procedure.
The Chronic Dev Team on the other hand who seem to have been working together with GeoHot now released the technical details about this hack. Sadly as there is no GreenPois0n tool available as of now, the technical details are most likely useless for 99,9% of all iPhone and iPod users.
Reasons are unknown why the Chronic Dev Team released the information before a tool has been finished. But it seems GeoHot is not amused by taking these steps.
Update 2009, Oct 19th: GeoHot and the Chronic Dev Team tell they have independently found the bug that allows for jailbreaking the 3.1 firmware.
Enduser compatible information
According to mFX.ch (german only) the forthcoming GreenPois0n jailbreak tool will not require to bring the iPhone into DFU mode. The GreenPois0n will be released on the PirateBay*.
External Links
» GeoHot on the universal 3.1 jailbreak…
» Chronic Dev Team on 3.1. jailbreak progress…
» GreenPois0n site (only dummy page atm)…
» TheiPhoneWiki with technical details…
* for legal reasons here in Germany we cannot link directly to the PirateBay.
Update July 04, 2009: MMS now works, MMS server settings are getting saved with the help of some (more or less complicated) tricks. We’re currently prepping a fool proof step-by-step tutorial for all of you. We recommend to not play around with those settings at the moment to not screw up settings worse. Tutorial will be up on Monday. Please wait until then. Thanks for your attention.
Update July 05, 2009: Wanna know how to enable MMS on iPhone 2G? Find our definitive MMS on iPhone 2G HowTo here…
Abstract
Since SwirlyMMS has been released last year we know the iPhone 2G is capable to send MMS. Anyway with their newest update Apple makes MMS available only for 3G and 3Gs customers. They say it is hardware related. This is not the case.
What has been found
It was quite logical that some people would be starting to investigate and research into the MMS feature sooner or later. Now an application has been released through Cydia that claims to unlock MMS capability for the iPhone 2G. It is called ActivateMMS2G and it is distributed on the iSpazio repository. Anyway we recommend not to install it as of now. to read our definitive MMS on iPhone 2G HowTo here.
Current Status
The status is almost alpha. Most forum reports indicate these issues:
Our Recommendation
Don’t misunderstand us, but this is deeply alpha. If you really want MMS on your iPhone 2g, get yourself SwirlyMMS. It is much safer than tempering with ported hacks from 3G iPhones to 2G iPhones. SwirlyMMS is currently getting ported to iPhone OS 3.0. then follow our definitive MMS on iPhone 2G HowTo here.
The iPhone Dev Team has admitted they got iPhone OS 3.0 hacked with jailbreak and unlock via yellowsn0w. They will perform a live demo on tuesday evening (US time – means in the middle of the night in europe). They are currently testing updated versions of PwnageTool and QuickPwn to fully work with iTunes 8.2.
Find more information here.
Abstract
There have been rumors about circumventing that annoying SIM lock. As Geohot stated (read here), modifying the 3G baseband will not be an easy task. Because this task still needs to be solved, some guys thought bypassing simlock by using Proxy SIMs might be a good idea for 3G iPhones as well.
Differences between 2G and 3G iPhones
For 2G iPhones Proxy SIMs worked very good, because only the iPhone checked once at startup, if the SIM is from a supported country and carrier. SIM Proxys faked this first answer only and gave control back to the real SIM card, which has been asked for all details (IMSI, Country Code etc.) again. The then gotten details have been used to transfer to the network and to try to log in.
After investigating in the Proxy SIM possibilities for the 3G iPhone the iPhone Dev Team (namely: _ZF) stated that in contrast to the behaviour with 2G Proxy SIM solutions, the behaviour of 3G basebands is like transferring the first gotten IMSI code to the network. This means: for 3G iPhones the Proxy SIM will fake a test IMSI card and the iPhone will send this test IMSI code to the carrier to log in.
Legal and technical issues with 3G Proxy SIMs
Although applying methods like this in order to unlock the iPhone 3G is most likely illegal in many countries (because it violates contract), members of the Hackint0sh forum have played with Proxy SIMs on different networks in the world.
As expected the results are disappointing. Besides the questionable legal status of those operations there have been heavy technical problems.
Types and Brands of Proxy SIMs
Tested cards include:
Currently none of these Proxy SIMs work reliable (cf. iPhone Wiki). Our recommendation is simple: keep on waiting, the iPhone Dev Team will make it sooner or later. In case you cannot wait, get yourself a factory unlocked iPhone 3G from one of the countries supplying them (see country list here) and save precious life time.
Update July 27th, 2008: In their testing program Juma found issues with some european carriers using 3G technique. In contrast to other SIM proxy manufacturers, Juma does not want to sell solutions that don’t work 100% on either GSM or 3G/UMTS networks. Customers who had already ordered got full refund on saturday and sunday. Anyway: we heard Juma is researching these issues to come up with a solution as soon as possible
It finally seems to be true. We already reported that unlock specialists from Brazil and from Vietnam independently from each other announced they can unlock the new 3G iPhones using a proxy SIM solution. But nobody (at least in Europe) got such proxy SIM into their hands.
Anyway here seems to come the real deal: a working proxy solution hit the streets of germany as of today. It is called iPhonix and is manufactured by Juma FZE – a trading company located in Dubai. As initial offer iPhonix will cost 50€ (about 80US$), instead of 59€. Sadly the product page seems to be available in german only by the moment. We already ordered a product sample, but as we don’t have it yet: we can’t confirm, but the german Magazine MacBug does (see german article here). Update: This currently does not work with any german carrier!
On the following video you can see a white iPhone 3G running with german interface. The iPhone 3G is obviously carrier locked (most likely to the german T-Mobile D1 net). After inserting the iPhonix proxy it connects to the carrier of Dubai (Etisalat) – obviously roaming. Anyway this is not the best video to convince german customers. We’d better seen checking out a T-Mobile SIM and putting in an O2 or Vodafone card that does not work and then after using the proxy… You know what I mean… And where is the making calls… Anyway see their promotion video here:
[Update] Aug/25th/2008: read here, everything you gotta know about Proxy SIM solutions.
The Bladox Team has released an application for their Turbo SIM (see here how proxy SIMs work) that is obviously able to bypass the SIM lock of 3G iPhones – means unlocking it. The application is still beta and might not work on the entire planet, but it obviously does in the U.K. The name of the app is zerog-0.95.tar.gz, but for legal reasons we will not directly link it.
See this video:
It takes ages until it is logged it, but anyway it documents the current status quite well…