iPhone unlocking - current status

8156 Views 19 Replies 8 Participants Last post by HowEver, Jul 13, 2007

Jade

Discussion Starter · Jul 8, 2007 (Edited)

iPhone unlock status update [Currently: no iPhone unlock]

The hackintosh forum http://hackint0sh.org/forum/, is tracking and discussing the work of people who are trying to get the iPhone unlocked so it can be used outside of the US, without SIM cards from AT&T (handy if you want an iPhone but are in a country without a carrier with an agreement with Apple.)

Quoting their stickied Status thread:

Quick status indicator:

UNLOCK - no
3RD PARTY CODE - no
SYSTEM ACCESS - yes
ACCESS TO DMG - yes
ACTIVATION - yes

Good news eh? At least the phone can be used as a wifi-capable iPod right now. Almost enough for me to buy it. But I'm going to wait for the full unlock first, even if it takes a couple of months, and see if Apple brings down some kind of hammer on people unlocking phones. Who knows Rogers could release the iPhone first :lmao: and then I'll be able to skate on the ice rinks in hell while listening to my iPhone.

Edit: as of the most recent update on 11/07/2007 the status is the same, nothing new over at hackint0sh.
Edit 2: changed title of thread to reflect status

1 - 20 of 20 Posts

guytoronto

· #2 · Jul 8, 2007

I'd like to know where all the smug 'AT&T will have to unlock it for consumers. It's the law in the US' users are.

Jade

Discussion Starter · #3 · Jul 8, 2007

Unfortunately guytoronto, that's not the case. Some providers will unlock phones voluntarily (I think T-Mobile?) but the law changed last year in the states now says that you can legally unlock your phone, but they definitely don't have to do it for you.

HowEver

· #4 · Jul 8, 2007

Jade said:
Unfortunately guytoronto, that's not the case. Some providers will unlock phones voluntarily (I think T-Mobile?) but the law changed last year in the states now says that you can legally unlock your phone, but they definitely don't have to do it for you.

It has never been against the law to unlock your own cell phone, either in the US or in Canada.

And I think guytoronto was saying the same thing you are here.

Jade

Discussion Starter · #5 · Jul 8, 2007

Oh I should note that legally you have to unlock if the customer requests it in the UK & I think, Europe. But apparently no European sales until Xmas at least.

I wonder if Apple is going to try a similar contract-locked strategy in Europe which is majority pay-as-you-go customers. In any case I bet they'd get way more sales without contract requirements.

Jade

Discussion Starter · #6 · Jul 8, 2007

HowEver said:
It has never been against the law to unlock your own cell phone, either in the US or in Canada.

And I think guytoronto was saying the same thing you are here.

It was kind of hard to make out what guytoronto was saying so I may have missed something. But I think he was saying that US carriers were legally required to unlock phones, which isn't true, or what I was saying.

Also while it's definitely not illegal, in Canada, Telus for example claims that it "violates copyright" to unlock your phone

, which illustrates that the real issue is the carrier & your contract.

jhollington

· #7 · Jul 8, 2007

Trying to unlock your phone may almost certainly be a breach of your contract terms, but then again that's usually just grounds for your carrier to terminate your contract and little else. In this case, they have little advantage in doing this to you, especially once you've already unlocked your phone.

There was a case in the U.S. a couple of years ago where a couple of carriers tried to bring this up as a DMCA issue. It was quashed on the basis of the fact that unlocking a phone is not actually copying anything, and the SIM lock does not qualify as a "technological means of copy protection."

Now if somebody were using the unlocking capabilities to duplicate proprietary phone firmware, that could be construed as a violation of the DMCA.

imachungry

· #8 · Jul 8, 2007 (Edited)

edit: didn't know it was a phishing site. links removed

Flipstar

· #9 · Jul 8, 2007

imachungry said:
http://www.dailyexhumation.com/inde...ull&id=1183924433&archive=&start_from=&ucat=&

http://www.iphoneunlocking.com/

Do not post to that iphoneunlocking.com website.. it's a scam.

HowEver

· #10 · Jul 8, 2007

jhollington said:
Trying to unlock your phone may almost certainly be a breach of your contract terms, but then again that's usually just grounds for your carrier to terminate your contract and little else. In this case, they have little advantage in doing this to you, especially once you've already unlocked your phone.

There was a case in the U.S. a couple of years ago where a couple of carriers tried to bring this up as a DMCA issue. It was quashed on the basis of the fact that unlocking a phone is not actually copying anything, and the SIM lock does not qualify as a "technological means of copy protection."

Now if somebody were using the unlocking capabilities to duplicate proprietary phone firmware, that could be construed as a violation of the DMCA.

No one in Canada gets terminated for unlocking their GSM cell phone. This simply does not happen.

What might happen is that if you have your unlocked cell phone fixed under warranty you may find that it has been re-locked to your carrier.

As you correctly point out, unlocking does not involve duplicating anything at all.

imachungry said:
DailyExhumation.com - UK company racing to free iPhone from AT&T

Unlock Your Apple iPhone - iPhoneUnlocking

Why publish or re-publish these dubious references? The iphoneunlocking one is simply a phishing site since they have clearly lied about their capabilities.

imachungry

· #11 · Jul 9, 2007

HowEver said:
No one in Canada gets terminated for unlocking their GSM cell phone. This simply does not happen.

What might happen is that if you have your unlocked cell phone fixed under warranty you may find that it has been re-locked to your carrier.

As you correctly point out, unlocking does not involve duplicating anything at all.

Why publish or re-publish these dubious references? The iphoneunlocking one is simply a phishing site since they have clearly lied about their capabilities.

Some of you guys need a life. Sheesh. I innocently posted them because they concern the unlocking process. Removed. Now you can remove them as well.

tptptptp

jhollington

· #12 · Jul 9, 2007

HowEver said:
No one in Canada gets terminated for unlocking their GSM cell phone. This simply does not happen.

Of course not, as it would be ridiculous for any carrier to actually let you out of your contract for unlocking your phone. They'd likely hurt themselves more than you, particularly since you'd now have an unlocked phone....

I was merely pointing out that this is realistically the worst they can do, and they're obviously not about to do that.

Garry

· #13 · Jul 9, 2007

guytoronto said:
I'd like to know where all the smug 'AT&T will have to unlock it for consumers. It's the law in the US' users are.

Wasn't one of them running down to get 2 iPhones - one for him and one for Ebay? Then wasn't he holding a massive iPhone party to let everyone get their picture taken with it for $10/picture?

Oakbridge

· #14 · Jul 9, 2007

The membership of ehmac seems to have swelled in the past month or so, and many of these 'new users' have posted comments about unlocking, selling an extra phone on ebay, etc.

Do they really think we are that foolish? One of the things that I love about ehmac is that we are a community. We may get overly excited... interruption APPLE STORE IS DOWN... oops no it was just my mistake (grin)...

As I was saying, we may get overly excited about trivial things like the Apple Store going down, and of course we don't always agree on things, but for the most part, we can trust a lot of what is written here. We have our checks and balances, and we seem to be pretty good about policing ourselves. We challenge off the cuff comments to have facts to support what is said.

These 'new users' (and I am not referring to the legitimate new users, welcome to those of you) who have signed on simply to post wonderful comments about how they are going to scam AT&T and scam Apple will eventually crawl back to the dark side.

Don't they get that 99% of the time we love Apple?

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HowEver

· #15 · Jul 9, 2007

As a reminder...

http://www.ehmac.ca/ipod-itunes-iph...ait-iphone-gotta-make-some-space-my-desk.html

http://www.ehmac.ca/560799-post17.html

Cuzz323 said:
I'm not rich but i saved up 2k to get two phones with all accessories and if it's not unlock able , i'll find someway to make money of it , i'll have the only Toronto iPhone Event Meet &Greet for Ten minutes and a photo op for $10 a person.

Jade

Discussion Starter · #16 · Jul 13, 2007

Oakbridge said:
The membership of ehmac seems to have swelled in the past month or so, and many of these 'new users' have posted comments about unlocking, selling an extra phone on ebay, etc.

...
These 'new users' (and I am not referring to the legitimate new users, welcome to those of you) who have signed on simply to post wonderful comments about how they are going to scam AT&T and scam Apple will eventually crawl back to the dark side.

Don't they get that 99% of the time we love Apple?

I'm guessing this was directed at me. And um, wow. Harsh.

Since iPhone's not available in Canada and won't be for a good while, that's why I would need to unlock it if I want to purchase it this year. I guess I just want to be an early adopter and am kind of obsessed with the idea of having an iPod that can use wifi, let alone the awesome PHONE aspect of it. By the way, buying cool unlocked phones that aren't in Canada overseas and using them in here is very common and is hardly a "scam" or else most people I know who visit Hong Kong ever are scamming Nokia, Samsung, LG etc.

This is the scenario, the "scam" as you have erroneously decided to name it: Go to the States, go to the Apple Store :clap: pay full price for an iPhone (can't forget the half hour of playing with everything in the store... yeah I can never resist), come home, and unlock the iPhone so I can use it with a Canadian SIM card, and then use my shiny new iPhone. Please identify which part of this is me ripping off Apple. If anything with the cost of the thing Apple is ripping off me...

I have adjusted the screen brightness on my Powerbook and iBook and turned on my iPod's backlight... so the dark side is actually quite illuminated now. Oh yeah, I love Apple 99% of the time too.

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jhollington

· #17 · Jul 13, 2007

Although I can't speak for Oakbridge, I'm not sure that was entirely directed at you. Buying an iPhone south of the border and unlocking it is not "scamming" anybody.

However, buying an iPhone, signing up for an AT&T two-year contract to get it activated and working, and then calling up AT&T and lying to them, saying you've lost the phones to get them to release you from the two-year contract at no charge could be construed as fraud. If you search through the threads, this is exactly what another new poster was suggesting, and they had a particularly flippant attitude about the whole thing (ie, "Rogers, AT&T, etc are always sticking it to the customer, so I feel perfectly justified in sticking it to them.")

There's absolutely nothing wrong with buying an iPhone in the U.S. and activating it in Canada, if you can. As of yet, nobody has actually unlocked the iPhone, despite the number of sites making such unsubstantiated claims in order to drive traffic and/or build mailing lists). Further, because of the way Apple handles activation and support, buying an iPhone and activating it on a different carrier will probably void the warranty if it's not designed or intended to be unlocked.

Getting an unsupported and possibly non-warrantied device is a personal choice (and there's nothing that's a scam or fraudulent about that, per se), but it's something else that people need to be aware of. It's not like buying a pre-unlocked GSM phone from another country, which generally still includes some warranty and support from the manufacturer.

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Jade

Discussion Starter · #18 · Jul 13, 2007

There's absolutely nothing wrong with buying an iPhone in the U.S. and activating it in Canada, if you can. As of yet, nobody has actually unlocked the iPhone, despite the number of sites making such unsubstantiated claims in order to drive traffic and/or build mailing lists).

Ah yes.. I'm quite aware. Sadly!

This is something that needs to be emphasized though to keep people from being ripped off by "iPod unlock" sites. Perhaps I will change the title of this thread.

Oakbridge

· #19 · Jul 13, 2007

Jade you have posted on more than one day, so my references were not directed at you. jhollington was correct in mentioning the very arrogant new user who at one point talked about charging people $10 just to hold his 2nd iPhone. He was the same user who talked about calling up a carrier and blatantly lying about a lost phone, etc. He seems to have crawled back into the small hole from which he came. Probably because the population here didn't seem to drool and leap over his every comment.

It is my opinion that this is more typical of the Windows community. Everybody has a buddy who can get them 'something' that usually sounds 'too good to be true' (and quite often is). Over history, this has included clones, cracked software (when serial numbers were first included in software the big thing was to crack the serial number and create a file that was unlocked), overclocked processors, pirated software, etc.

I think for a lot of people who claim that Macs are just too expensive, it comes down to the fact that most of us pay for everything we use, which many windows users find very surprising. That is why when a Windows scam artist comes over and posts in a Mac forum, they tend to be surprised that many of us yawn and refuse to show any interest.

If my post offended you, I offer my humblest of apologies. Welcome. We hope that you become an active member of our little community.

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HowEver

· #20 · Jul 13, 2007 (Edited)

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