Unlocked Apple iPhone

If we start talking again about unlocked iPhones, no matter if we're keeping in sight the old one, or the iPhone 3G, there's quite a lot to say. First of all, I guess there's not much left to say about the jailbroken "2.5G" iPhone - everything works great, and new updates from Apple aren't causing any problems. Unfortunately, we can't say the same about the iPhone 3G, because only a few days after the 2.0.1 firmware update, Apple released a new update. While they usually say the new updates are fixing various issues, their primary target seems to be disabling jailbroken iPhones, as it happened this time...

Before moving to the new update, here's something to really give you dark thoughts - according to Jonathan Zdziarski, a hacker with his hands deep into the iPhone, Apple's smartphone is so smart, that it can even "phone home" and "tell" the Cupertino-based company what you're messin' with. The worst part is that, if Apple doesn't really like some of the apps you're using, it can even kill them!

I don't know about you, but this already gave me the chills. OK, spying on your users is not something that ethical, but it happened before, and I can live with it - after all, I've been using Windows for more than a decade, but Microsoft never disabled any application on my computer...

Here's what Zdziarski said about this whole thing:"(..)the iPhone calls home once in a while to find out what applications it should turn off. At the moment, no apps have been blacklisted, but by all appearances, this has been added to disable applications that the user has already downloaded and paid for, if Apple so chooses to shut them down.

I discovered this doing a forensic examination of an iPhone 3G. It appears to be tucked away in a configuration file deep inside CoreLocation."

Now, let's move to the 2.1 Beta firmware, released as a direct consequence of the fact that crackers managed to break the 2.0.1 version I mentioned earlier. Anyway, it is also reported that version 2.1 will focus on the background push notification service, allowing live apps to receive data via the Internet while shut down, while directional GPS support will allow more complex navigation than the simple positional system currently in use.

For now, those looking to have an unlocked Apple iPhone can easily get the PwnageTool 2.0.2, able to jailbreak the 2.0.1 firmware. Unfortunately, the unlocked Apple iPhone "2.5G" will still have an advantage here, because the unlocked iPhone 3G is immune to the trick allowing older jailbroken iPhones to be used on any network...