Free Apple iPhone Unlock is here; not yet in user friendly form

Dan Lane reports that a free iPhone unlock could be just hours away after a team of people apparently discovered the baseband hole for the device. He posted the news moments ago here. Have a read below and in a few hours we should know just how accurate it is!

Link: SMS Text News » Archives » Want your Apple iPhone unlocked? Priority access here.

I signed up to the list yesterday, and I also spoke to the guy running iPhoneunlocked.eu on the phone today.

Unfortunately he’s transferred, presumably, a truckload of cash to the ‘company” that created the unlock (iphonesimfree.com) and hasn’t yet been able to offer the service.

The iphonesimfree.com solution is basically built on the same idea (and, I believe, code) as the hardware (solder or needle method) but due to an undiscovered hole (literally, a hole) in the baseband firmware the iphonesimfree.com guys were able to perform the firmware upgrade without the hardware hack.

Earlier this evening (about 9pm GMT) a bunch of people on an IRC channel (that I just happened to be on at the time) discovered the baseband hole and are currently knocking up a free unlock tool… I fully expect there to be a freely available unlock tool by the time we all wake up in the morning (although I’ll probably stay up for it).

This is bad news for the iphonesimfree.com resellers (such as iphoneunlocked.eu) that have plonked down loads of cash for the licenses but have been unable to provide the service before the free solution was made available… but then surely everyone knew it’d be reverse engineered in a matter of hours

Update: More reports are being IM’ed and emailed to me by the minute. Looks like it’s confirmed by a few people now. The source code they’ve got isn’t yet in user friendly form.

One group got this solution up and running; only for the download link to stop working almost immediately.

It’s all spreading across Digg and so on. I reckon give it another 24 hours and we’ll have a usable, user friendly and free solution.