February 8, 2007 4:00pm Further tests and research by BetaNews have indicated that users performing the unlock should not upgrade to 1.1.3 from within iTunes. Instead, the 1.1.3 upgrade package from the iPhone Dev Team should be used, say developers.
Problems with the process seem minimal. After the upgrade to 1.1.3, all features continued to work, save for the new location feature in the maps, and the Installer application and any previously installed applications disappeared from the home screen on our test phone. However, this is related to the jailbreak itself, and not the unlock.
Since our initial report, at least one group has managed to include Hotz's unlock code into a basic application which handles all the programming without user interaction, as is shown in this guide from iClarified.
Score one for the unlockers. After months of waiting, the newest iPhones are now unlockable thanks to the tireless work of one programmer.
George Hotz, known as 'GeoHot' in the unlocker community, posted his solution to his blog early Friday morning. The unlock is said to work with any of the newest phones that came preshipped with the 1.1.2 or 1.1.3 firmware.
"Yes, the impossible has been done," Hotz wrote. While the process is not for the non-technical, a test by BetaNews on our demonstration iPhone showed that Hotz's unlock could be completed in about 15 minutes, with full functionality afterwards.
For those technically inclined: The unlock works with phones with the version 4.6 bootloader. Up until now, most developers working on the unlock were only able to figure out ways to free the phone from Apple and AT&T's grasp through hardware solutions.
The issues created quite a heavy black market for phones that were made before the iPhone's 45th week of production -- roughly the time when Apple began to ship the new bootloader. It also created a profitable market for companies who used dual-sim solutions to fool the phone into thinking a foreign SIM was indeed AT&T's as well.
It is not yet known however whether this unlock is upgrade-resistant. Apple has taken measures in its upgrades to the device's firmware to re-lock phones, or even in some cases "brick" them altogether.
There does seem however to be some animosity among those working to unlock the iPhone, as evidenced by Hotz's statements at the end of his post.
"I am disappointed in the elite/dev team for not finding this; or even looking here. I know not everyone in elite/dev is so closed, and I feel bad for those people. Why don't we all just share everything? Apple will patch it anyway. They always have the upper hand," he lamented.
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