Unlocking the iPhone
When I bought my iPhone in the US in October, I knew I would eventually have to unlock it to use with a UK network. There are 2 parts to the process. The first is to ‘jailbreak’ the phone, to gain access to the inner workings of the device directly, without going through iTunes. This allows you to install extra, non-Apple applications. The second part is to break the SIM lock that prevents the use of SIM cards from networks other than AT&T.
Luckily, I had resisted upgrading the firmware on the phone to version 1.1.2 and was still on the less secure 1.1.1. With this version ‘jailbreaking’ is unbelievably simple. Just visit www.jailbreakme.com on your iPhone, click a link, and a web-based program breaks into the phone using a particular vulnerability, downloads the all-important ‘installer’ application. I had been a little nervous about doing this, but was surprised at just how easy and trouble-free it was. After a reboot, I had an extra icon on the iPhone’s home screen for the installer, and was able to browse lists of utilities, games, etc written by third party programmers. So far so good.
Breaking the SIM lock was where things got a bit hairy. There are quite a few possible scenarios for people wanting to perform the unlock, and having an iPhone legitimately activated with AT&T in the US, then wanting to unlock it for a European network, is only one of them. People start with different firmware versions, different versions of iTunes, and often with unactivated phones. As a result of this, the tutorial I followed on the web didn’t work properly with my phone, and I found myself suddenly locked out of my phone altogether.
Luckily, someone on the Macrumors forums was able to point me in the right direction and, after a couple of nervous hours, I managed to get everything working. So I now have a fully-functional, unlocked iPhone, on which I’m using my old pay-as-you-go SIM. Data costs on pay-as-you-go have come down a lot over the last year, so the email and mapping functionality of the iPhone are pretty viable in this setup. And I’ve found EDGE coverage in the UK to be good.
Of course, having a hacked phone is not all roses. When the new firmware version comes out, probably with all kinds of new features, I’ll be unable to upgrade without locking my phone up again.