As of yesterday, November 3rd, 2009, all iPhones in existence are able to be unlocked with the current – Apple supplied – firmware.
Anyone who knows about the tricky game of unlocking iPhones knows that this is a small victory for the mouse and big brother Apple (the cat) only has to fix the exploit injection hole to prevent future versions of the iPhone firmware from being unlocked.
Let’s back up a bit and talk about jailbreak and unlocking in general… First, jailbreaking is merely hacking the iPhone OS to allow custom code (unapproved by Apple) to run on the iPhone. With a “Jailbroken” iPhone, you can do things like run multiple applications at the same time, tether your phone with carriers that don’t support it and even customize the look and feel with Winterboard.
An “Unlocked” iPhone is not only jailbroken, it also includes modification to the baseband (modem software) that allows it to work with any GSM carrier. What does that really get you? Well, in the US it allows you to use an iPhone on T-Mobile. You could also take that same iPhone overseas and purchase a Sim card from a local wireless provider essentially saving you substantial amounts of money when calling places internationally. Going back to the US unlocked iPhones – you’ll never be able to use 3G data on the T-Mobile network due to the differences in the frequency spectrum from AT&T to T-Mobile. You would still have access to EDGE data: arguably close to 3G data speeds depending on your connection.
That’s old information, so what’s new? For the last several months, people who wanted or use the unlock had to have iPhones that started the unlock at iPhone OS 3.0 because at 3.1 Apple changed the baseband (modem software) and a hack wasn’t available for it. If you started at 3.0 and continued to update through non-official “hacked” firmware, you were fine. Everyone who recently purchased a phone was just out of luck. Most iPhones for the last several months had been shipping with firmware 3.1 or greater and the new baseband… thus making the phones invulnerable to previous unlocking procedures.
That all changed yesterday. Boy-genius and iPhone hacker, Geohot, released his new unlocking tool called “blacksn0w” (that’s a zero not and oh). This can be installed on any jailbroken iPhone straight from Cydia or by using his jailbreak software, “blackra1n” you can jailbreak brand new iPhones and then install the unlock.
Fair warning: unlocking an iPhone has become relatively safe but this unlock could still potentially cause irreversible harm to your iPhone if not done properly. If you choose to unlock, you can NEVER upgrade to an official firmware from Apple after that. You will always have to wait for the go-ahead from the hackers responsible for the unlock.
That said, Rocky Mountain Mac Repair does offer iPhone unlocking to those who don’t want to play with fire but like a warm supper. Let me be VERY clear here: we’re not selling software, we’re not trying to fool you into unlocking your iPhone… we know exactly what to do and would love to help you with our expertise. That said, if you decide to take advantage of this service, please have your iPhone backed up onto your computer before you bring it in: contacts, pictures, text messages… just plug it in, right-click and choose backup. During the unlock procedures, it is possible that your data will be erased from the phone. As long as it’s backed up, that won’t matter. 
To those brave enough to perform the unlock, we salute you.
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