So the iPhone Is Unlocked Again--Who Cares?

So the AT&T Death Star is finally in ruins: A complete, functional (and free) unlock has been disseminated to the masses of geeks who crave carrier independence. But does unlocking your iPhone really give you more freedom? On one hand, due to Apple's regular updates, you have to live in fear of a bricked iPhone, a device that the Mac Geniuses can turn away under a voided warranty.

 

On the other hand, the hacking community has been pretty quick to respond. The iPhone Dev Team (www.hackint0sh.org) had re-locked iPhones up and running and unlocked again roughly two weeks after Apple's 1.1.1 update. A hacked iPhone is also a "jailbroken iPhone," which allows owners to use all sorts of native third-party apps. Steve Jobs has said that Apple will release a proper SDK to developers in February, but that's a few months away.
 
So is it worth the risk and relative vigilance in scoping out future patches? To find out, we asked three unlocked iPhone users: Eli Black, 24, an AT&T customer, Hans Oppenheim, 38, a European customer (declined to disclose carrier), and Jeff Smith, 27, a T-Mobile customer.

 

Eli Black: I've unlocked two. It was between when the console-based unlocking program came out and when the GUI came out. I used the semi-GUI version with a tutorial I found on www.hackint0sh.org. I basically did a jailbreak (gaining access to the iPhone's file system) with PACAY and AppInstall, then loaded the leaked/beta GUI unlocker and ran that. It was pretty simple. As I understand it, all you have to do now is run AppInstall and PACAY, and you can download the unlocker directly.

 

Hans Oppenheim: I used the GUI application. The process isn't that easy since there is lots of information out there, so it takes time to find the foolproof way. The entire process took about three days. You can, of course, do it in 20 minutes if you don't do any research, but you run the risk of failing.

 

Jeff Smith: I used both, the GUI client and earlier CLI client. Something went wrong, though; I think there was a bug in it because it had only been released the night before or something, so I went the CLI route. It involves setting up an SSH server on the phone and connecting over Wi-Fi from your computer. It took about six or seven hours from start to finish, but that was mainly because I ran into a problem early on and didn't find the fix for several hours. If I had to do it all over again, it would only take 30 minutes.