.FLYINGHEAD THE COMPUTING UNPLUGGED INTERVIEW
.TITLE How to unlock your iPhone (and what it all means)
.AUTHOR David Gewirtz
.SUMMARY Unless you’ve been under a rock, you’ve heard about the iPhone. You’ve probably also heard terms like "unlocking" and "bricking" applied to this handy, if pricey gadget. What’s it all mean? Is Apple purposely destroying phones? If you want to add software to your phone, are you voiding your warranty? What if you want to switch carriers? We asked wireless expert Shawn Zade to explain it all.
.OTHER
Unless you’ve been under a rock, you’ve heard about the iPhone. You’ve probably also heard terms like "unlocking" and "bricking" applied to this handy, if pricey gadget. What’s it all mean? Is Apple purposely destroying phones? If you want to add software to your phone, are you voiding your warranty? What if you want to switch carriers? We asked wireless expert Shawn Zade to explain it all.
.Q David
Please tell us about yourself.
.CALLOUT Bricking is when your fancy, expensive electronic toy turns into a paperweight.
.A Shawn
My name is Shawn Zade and I work for [[http://www.wirelessimports.com|WirelessImports.com]]. Wireless Imports has been in the business of selling cellular phones which are imported from all across the world for use in the USA. 99% of our handsets are not offered by any carrier in the US. All our handsets are 100% unlocked for use with either AT&T or T-Mobile.
.Q David
Can you explain iPhone unlocking?
.TEASER There’s a lot of important information here if you’re an iPhone user. Tap for details.
.A Shawn
Typically carriers such as AT&T and T-Mobile lock their phones so they can’t be used with any other carrier. The purpose of this is to ensure that the customer stays with the carrier and does not leave.
.Q David
Why would someone want to unlock an iPhone?
.A Shawn
If you’re asking this question, you don’t live outside the continental US and you don’t live in places like Montana. Did you know AT&T does not offer service in Montana? So what happens to people that live there and want an iPhone because it syncs so perfectly with their iMac?
Well, if you’re one of those unfortunate people, then you can’t use an iPhone because AT&T doesn’t offer service in your area. However, if you can get your hands on one and then unlock it, then you would be able to use it with any GSM carrier you can find such as T-Mobile or the lower-tier local carriers.
But what if you are an AT&T customer? What benefit do you have then of having it unlocked? I’ll answer your question by giving you a real world example of my last international visit.
I took a trip out to Israel. if my phone had remained locked I would have had to pay $2.50 a minute to to AT&T to talk to anyone that I called or who called me, however since my iPhone was unlocked, I was able to walk into a local cell phone store and purchase a pre-paid SIM card just like you do here in the US.
I put that into my phone and anyone who called me was a free call while outgoing calls were only .20" a minute. Plus I had a local number for my Israeli friends and family to reach me on.
.Q David
Holy cow, that’s a big difference. OK, so how does one unlock an iPhone?
.A Shawn
Unlocking an iPhone can be a difficult task. There are many ways to unlock an iPhone but there are currently two very popular methods. You will need to decide which method you require by knowing which version of the iPhone you have.
First, let’s talk about Version 1.1.1. The easiest way to know if you have a 1.1.1 iPhone is to know when your iPhone was purchased. If it was purchased prior to November 9th 2007, then you have the 1.1.1 software. If your phone was purchased afterwards, then you will have either 1.1.2 or 1.1.3 software.
Both methods require you to perform a "jail break". The term jail break was derived from those who created software which cracks through Apple’s security and allows the phone to run third party applications (ie; instant messaging, games, etc). This, however, does not unlock the iPhone. This only preps it for the third party unlocking software to be installed (only version 1.1.1 iPhones and older can be unlocked via software).
Newer handsets purchased after 11/09/2007 will require a two-step process because Apple has changed the bootloader, in-house tech jargon which basically means the software unlock won’t work anymore.
The first step is to downgrade the software back to 1.1.1 so you will be able to jailbreak the phone. Downgrading the software isn’t all that hard when you have the right instructions in front of you. We have actually posted a set of instructions on our [[http://wirelessimports.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-unlock-iphone-v112.html|Web site]].
It will take about 10 minutes of waiting to downgrade the software; you just sit back and do nothing as your computer does all the work. The long set of instructions however can look pretty daunting, but fret not, as it is rather simple and you’ll be up and running in no time.
Once the software has been downgraded, you now can jail break your phone on the 1.1.1 software. Once jail broken you will need to pull out a pair of scissors and cut away a part of your SIM card.
Yikes! Did he just ask me to cut open my SIM card?! No. You do not need to cut open your SIM card, if you look at it there are two halves. The bottom half has the circuitry while the other half is plastic. You just want to cut away at one of the plastic corners.
The reason for this is that there is a new chip in town. This device is a paper thin circuit board that goes on top of your SIM card (called a Turbo SIM) but it has a tiny little transistor that needs some room which is why it needs part of the space the plastic portion of the SIM card takes up.
You just basically throw that on top of the SIM and put it into your jailbroken phone and presto! Your T-Mobile SIM card now works in your iPhone (note that if you take out the turbo SIM and attempt to put it into another iPhone, it will continue to work while your old iPhone will not).
.Q David
Isn’t that illegal?
.A Shawn
Yes it is! … No I’m only kidding. If it was, I wouldn’t be here telling you my story.
Congress actually passed a law a couple years ago stating that it is legal to unlock your cell phone.
.Q David
Can you explain "bricking"?
.A Shawn
Bricking is when your fancy, expensive electronic toy turns into a paperweight.
Many people were experiencing that from not knowing how to correctly jailbreak their iPhones and again to those that unlocked their iPhones and went to update the software via iTunes when new software became available.
This initially caused the iPhones to stop functioning and there was no solution in sight at the time. Now, many months later, we are seeing that if you had a bricked iPhone, all you need to do is update the software to the latest release and somehow the update corrects everything that went wrong to the phone and fixes itself to turn it back into a virginal out-of-box state.
Out of all the iPhone’s we have seen, played with, and unlocked, there has never been one unit that has not repaired itself by restoring to the latest software available.
With that said, I do not recommend anyone updating their software if they do not know what they are doing. If you have certain questions or again need tech support you can email us and we will be glad to assist info@wirelessimports.com.
So if it isn’t illegal to unlock an iPhone, why would it be legal for Apple to "brick" them?
I don’t believe Apple would maliciously brick iPhones with their software updates. They believed they had a unlockable product on their hands since, after many months, no one was successful in really unlocking the iPhone.
I believe that, when Apple was working on the software updates, they did not factor in the possibility of a jailbreak and therefore take precautions against it. However when the 1.1.1 software was released Apple made it a point to change the way their new software works.
I don’t know exactly how it works, but I believe it does a clean erase of the OS then reinstalls the OS so there is no trace of the jailbreak. I could be wrong, but if that is the case, then it would explain why the jailbreak or unlocking can no longer brick the iPhone.
.Q David
iPhones are already quite expensive. Do you really think people would want to go through the risk of unlocking them, take the chance for bricking, and then use another carrier, potentially spending a lot more?
.A Shawn
iPhones can no longer be bricked but they can be relocked again by future updates, which as of at least the time of this interview in early February, can be downgraded back to older software which can be re-unlocked.
So now to justify the price tag of a $400 iPhone + unlocking fees.
Well, you could spend the same amount of money and get yourself a different phone, but I can almost promise you that it won’t have half the features of the iPhone. I only know of two other phones that have 8GB built-in both by Nokia — N91 8GB and N95 8GB, both of which will run you in excess of $600. The iPhone really speaks for itself; if you want, one there really is no alternative. The type of person who buys an iPhone already knows this.
.Q David
How many people do you think run unlocked iPhones? How do you come up with your numbers?
.A Shawn
We sell about 500-1000 iPhone’s a moth to our overseas vendors and we aren’t the only ones. Judging from the numbers from Apple and AT&T if there are 1 million unactivated iPhones running around that has to mean there are at least 1 million unlocked iPhones. By being the first company to offer a solution to unlock the iPhone in the US our call log counted over 2000 phone calls the first day alone with over 1000 orders coming in. I would have to say that there are about another half million unlocked iPhones running on AT&T’s network right now mostly for people who travel internationally or simply did not want to sign another 2 year contract with AT&T.
After all that, can’t Apple just brick the phone the next time they issue a software upgrade?
Sure they can, they made the phone and they can do whatever they want to it. But of course it would be bad for business if they did. Their track record speaks for itself. They made that mistake once and I highly doubt they will repeat it again.
.Q David
Overall, is it worth it to do this? How can the risk be reduced? And what final guidance do you have for our readers considering this grey area?
.A Shawn
There is no risk involved anymore. You just need to ask yourself a few questions question. Are you good with reading directions? Would you like to mail in your phone to us to perform the unlocking for you? Or simply purchase a pre-unlocked iPhone?
In short, I myself have an iPhone and love it. Before the iPhone, I used a RAZR on Verizon for two years and carried my iPod Nano with me everywhere I went. I no longer have a Nano and just carry one device around every where I go. It makes life so much simpler. You really get hooked onto it after carrying it around for a week.
My final word is if you don’t have the time, if you are still scared of bricking your iPhone, if you have no faith in yourself and still want an iPhone just not on AT&T, then just purchase one that has already been unlocked.
And once again I would like to simply point out something my father once taught me as a child. "If its not broken don’t fix it". I can’t stress this enough when it comes to software updates for the iPhone.
.BEGIN_KEEP
I always suggest being patient and waiting for our newsletter to give you advice on how to go about performing a safe update while keeping your iPhone unlocked. And keep in mind that it will also take weeks to come up with a safe update once Apple has released the software.
I would personally like to thank all those in the iPhone dev team as well as the people that created the installer application to allow for the possibility of unlocking the iPhone.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on unlocking your iPhone or getting an unlocked iPhone, visit http://www.wirelessimports.com.
Read [[http://wirelessimports.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-unlock-iphone-v112.html|unlocking instructions]].
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
.END_KEEP
