No 3G iPhone Unlock Soon, But Jailbreak Imminent
by Eric March on July 13, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Veteran iPhone hacker and current Google employee George Hotz is back in the blogosphere, now that the 3G is in the hands of many, to address the question of an unlock for Apple’s shiny second-generation iPhone.
You’ll recall Friday’s report that the iPhone Dev Team are updating Pwnage to jailbreak and/or unlock iPhones running firmware 2.0. It looks quite promising and there are going to be a lot of excited people awaiting its release. However, the big caveat, according to Geohot, is that there is currently no way to unlock the 3G iPhone — only first-gen iPhones running 2.0. The new baseband on the iPhone 3G — the part that was exploited to allow the unlock on first-gen devices, and which has not been updated on those first-year phones — currently has no known exploits, and while there are known exploits to jailbreak it, unlocking is an entirely different matter.
Geohot poked a derisive finger at the Dev Team for “sitting on” the latest Pwnage, but the Dev Team shot back explaining that they are taking their time with the release to make sure that everything kosher and it doesn’t go bricking a bunch of nice new Jesus Phone 3Gs. Just the same, Geohot has decided to create his own jailbreak solution for OS 2.0, called YiPhone — a dig at Zibree’s ZiPhone — and has even placed a counter on his blog to count down when he will release it, which is suppose to encourage the Dev Team to hurry up and release Pwnage. George’s counter runs out at 6:00pm EST on Tuesday, the 15th.
The Dev Team are confident however that they will be able to find an exploit in the new baseband, so an unlock is inevitable. It’s just going to take some time before they can suss it out. Proud new 3G owners and hopefuls wanting to use the device on another carrier, be patient. By now, you should be used to this stuff taking its sweet time.
(via ITwire)
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Posted in Jailbreak, iPhone 3G, iPhone OS 2.0
July 14th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
You will also notice that Geohot is incorrect about the new baseband bootloader. Aren’t Google employees supposed to be smart? Tell Geohot that if he googles the term “n82ap” he’ll notice an article that shows a .plist file that designates which baseband bootloader to use based on the hardware connected when restoring. n82ap refers to the iPhone3G where m68ap refers to the iPhone Edge.
Also, the DevTeam has posted a video recently for iBoot, which is the “BIOS” of the iPhones. In the video, you can clearly see that the shell returns the n82ap identifier for iBoot on iPhone3G.
DevTeam has broken into the iPhone3G. Geohot is wrong. Just because someone who unlocked iPhone Edge via hardware (not by his own knowledge and tools either, as he made it sound in the media, but a collection of his and the DevTeam) says there is no unlock for something doesn’t mean anything, and this is a perfect example. I won’t take anyone’s word but the DevTeam as true at this point, they’ve been doing some amazing work and it’s a shame that there are thieves among kings in this world and especially so in the world of iPhone hacking/development.
July 14th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
I know Geohot and DevTeam aren’t particularly friendly, and I know Geohot’s got his own agenda, so I do tend to take the DevTeam’s word before I take anyone else’s. I’m confident the team will find a solution regardless of Geohot’s chest pounding. It sounds like he’s just looking to get more face time with the media and stir the pot unnecessarily.
July 14th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Good, I’m not paying those exorbitant amounts for those apps. Looking forward to downloading them for free.