Tech & Biz

The iPhone is Finally Free!!

by Leonard Brody | August 25, 2007 at 12:50 am

35598 views | 10 Recommendations | 7 comments

I love when younghans end up beating the masters at their own game. This is a huge FU to the carriers...bottom line...start opening your networks and handsets and let people decide on their own. Way to go kid. Now, get working on the banking systems. Video file is attached.

George Hotz stood in the kitchen of his family home in Glen Rock, N.J., and announced his breakthrough to the world: He had liberated the hottest cellphone in history.

The 17-year-old, a curly-haired kid on his way to college, made his revelation not at a news conference but in a YouTube video. He had unlocked the iPhone from AT&T's wireless network, freeing the gadget for use on other mobile networks, including those in Canada. He was using his phone, in fact, on the rival T-Mobile network.

"I started working on it the day it came out," he told The Globe and Mail Friday after posting a complex step-by-step guide to unlocking the device.

The young hacker was one of thousands who queued for hours to buy the eagerly awaited iPhone the day it hit U.S. shelves in June. Many of them immediately began looking for a way to break the electronic chains binding it to AT&T.

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Jordan Yerman

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 05:48 on August 25th, 2007

¡Libertad! Evidently AT&T says they'll try to prevent such unlocking, even though US law allows the practice... More here. I'm waiting until the iPhone gets native support for 3rd party apps so I can use Skype, IRC, Firefox and TextEdit. Then I can work from bars and... d'oh! Did I type that out loud?

René

at 07:57 on August 25th, 2007

But you still have to pay for whatever service you manage to hook up to, don't you?

Jordan Yerman

at 08:01 on August 25th, 2007

Yes, indeed. The iPhone would not suddenly have free service. It means that you could pluck the SIM card from your existing phone and drop it into the iPhone without having to sign a new contract. You could then choose to stick with a basic phone package, only using the Internet via the iPhone's Wi-Fi chip.