New Unlock Works for All iPhones, All Firmwares
iclarified.com
iclarified.com
As for the carriers who lock these phones, it's as if your bank wouldn't let you put holes in the walls until you finished paying off the mortgage. All this does is frustrate customers who paid for that device and who are anyway locked into a contract. Pointless anyway, since it was always possible to pay a guy $20 to unlock any available model out there.
I'd like to see device manufacturers and carriers focusing on their core business (better hardware/software/service) instead of how to cripple more features to squeeze a few extra dollars today.
Even more importantly, I'd like to see people grow a spine and just say no to buying devices if what they intend to do with them is prohibited by the manufacturer. Do that for a while and you'll see them start sweating and advertising their new open product.
I thought this post was about iOS, not Android. Ba-doom-ting!
But seriously, I've unlocked and jailbroke several iOS devices so that relatives could use them in China and it is a pain. The easiest was using the 'slide to unlock' pdf hack via a web site a few years back. I've never done it on a device I intended to use over here (meaning 'the west') because the value to me isn't there compared to regular free and easy OS updates.
Well, don't they? My mortgage has a section about needing permission to do renovations. I do not know how things are in the USA, but given that one, in some states, can walk away from a property without repercussion, I would be surprised if things were different. Would be a nice way to increase the price of one's house: buy a house in a different neighborhood, burn it down, turn in the keys.
Back to the subject: with iPhones, the argument that locking takes away functionality is less strong than for other phones. You will get updates.
> Do that for a while and you'll see them start sweating
> and advertising their new open product.
The SAM tool lets you fool iOS into sending a valid carrier to the activation server, and the activation server happily sends back the material necessary for the OS to associate the baseband with the SIM.
To make things even better, the material sent back from Apple's servers isn't time-sensitive and hence the attack can be replayed forever - once you have the "baseband ticket" for a given phone and SIM, it can be unlocked forever across all current known versions.
Saved me when I was in Vietnam.
And they aren't illegal -- many first world countries require that phone companies unlock your phone if you request it, and of those that don't, I don't know of any where the hardware is illegal. They are openly sold in stores in the USA, which I think is one of the most restrictive countries about such things. Calling emergency services for non-emergency purposes is not usually legal, but that doesn't seem to be what you are saying.