Day: November 7, 2009

The End Of Unlocking Coming Soon?

After today’s announcement from Telefonica Europe that O2 will unlock their iPhones to every network once the Apple iPhone 3G WWDC 2009iPhone is released on other networks means that perhaps other countries will have to follow suit and therefore perhaps the end of hacking to unlock the iPhone. Blacksn0w is the latest unlocking tool from GeoHot which unlocks the latest baseband, however I’m wondering as if to how they will roll out the unlock, either by a carrier update or software update I assume. But if so it won’t take a hacker too long to work out how it’s being unlocked and simply apply it to other phones making it harder for Apple to play the cat and mouse game.

The CEO stated that iPhones will be unlocked once the contract is up, but on Pay As You Go there is no contract so surly they should be sold unlocked, however the way it was started it seems that you have to go to get it unlocked and it won’t just be rolled out. And although I’m going to keep using O2 if they roll this out I’m going to unlock my 8GB iPhone 3G before I sell it to upgrade to a 3GS. Hopefully the rest of the world follows suit and the iPhone becomes a network free device.

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O2 Will Allow Unlock For UK iPhone’s

O2 the current exclusive retailer of the iPhone and iPhone 3GS, although not for long; will be allowed to unlock their O2iPhones to other carriers as long as it’s the end of their contract period according to the CEO of O2’s parent company, Telefonica Europe. “Once the iPhone becomes available on other UK networks,” says Matthew Key, “we will allow O2 customers to unlock their iPhones, although of course they will still need to honour any outstanding contract period they have. At the end of their contract period, they are entirely free to move to another operator — though naturally we hope they won’t want to!”

Orange is starting to sell the iPhone from November 10th and Vodafone will be joining in on the iPhone in early 2010. O2 have had exclusivity on the iPhone since 2007 but once released on Orange and Vodafone an unlock will be allowed.