iPhone users have always wished to have the freedom of carrier selection [like T Mobile] other than AT&T but Apple has resisted to date. iPhone 4 is no exception as it is one of the best smart phones available to date despite signal drop problems which will likely be fixed in iOS4.0.1. As earlier iPhone Dev Team was expected to rescue quickly iPhone 4 users in such a situation because GeoHot has not been much active in releasing unlock or jailbreak solutions after 3.1.2 firmware.
iPhone 4 was released on June 24th and within some days it was jailbroken. Jailbroken iPhone 4 is prerequisite to unlock iPhone 4. It was expected that it will be easy to unlock iPhone 4 as latest iPhone baseband for 3GS 3G was unlocked with ultrasn0w 0.93 and the exploit was anticipated to persist in iOS4 baseband firmware for iPhone 4. It did not happen as Apple has surprised with new baseband chip and OS running on it.
iPhone Dev Team members, @planetbeing and @MuscleNerd, took this challenge to unlock iPhone 4 running new baseband chip and OS. Here, we are compiling time line of their twitter profiles which kept informed us about the progress on iPhone 4 unlcok.
June 27th: iPhone 4 is jailbroken using @comex‘ s new userland jailbreak.
July 1st: First, they were able to decrypt iPhone 4 bootrom which was a huge success as it can enable durable jailbreak for iPhone 4.
July 4th: Next step accomplished in Mission “iPhone 4 Unlock” was the execution of arbitrary code on iPhone 4 baseband.
July 4th: Later on the day, we were informed that Apple has introduced an anti blacksn0w trick in iPhone 4.
July 6th: The next task achieved in iPhone 4 unlock was that they injected cmd.
July 7th: They move forward to achieve iPhone 4 unlock by employing custom “pp” command to dump thread priorities. Nerdy, isn’t it ?
July 12th: After a gap, we are informed that they have a back grounded task “steve” running with full signal bars on iPhone 4
July 12th: There is only one step left to finally unlock iPhone 4. Fingers Crossed!
July 13th: Anti Blacksn0w trick has been tackled by planetbeing. What Next?
July 13th: Mission Accomplished, iPhone Dev Team has unlocked iPhone 4. BOOM!
This unlock would probably be out as ultrasn0w 0.94 along with comex’s jailbreak after iOS4.0.1 is released. I am just thinking about these Nerds’ hacking capabilities as Apple would have spent more efforts to stop the iPhone 4 unlock by introducing new baseband chip and OS. They spent less than 3 weeks to intrude in iPhone 4 and crush Apple’s efforts. The Saga continues.
Hats off for iPhone Dev Team.
Update: iPhone 4 Unlock is out as ultrasn0w 1.0-1. Free you iPhone 4 from carrier’s dependence.
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Go the Dev team. Legends =)