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Hmmmm, I just do not know what it is with people. OK, you can break into most any car with a slim jim and a few specialized tools.
First of all, its illegal. Get caught and go to jail.
Second, you end up having to spend years getting to know how to use the software and equipment to make it work so, its hardly free.

en :-(

What about data and internet?

Was only a matter of time - however, once Apple figures it out - I would bet it will be locked down with another patch. If I were selling these 'kits' - I would unload as many as possible before they become no use.

What is a JesusPhone?

I love seeing stuff like this. Why?

Does anyone ever remember hackers going to this much trouble for a Blackberry, or a Treo? I don't.

I'm not in the market for it myself, but the fact that so many are interested, means there is strong interest for the iPhone in markets where the iPhone isn't currently available.

Just got my first AT&T;bill for the jesus phone on the $60/mo plan. I went over 135 min for which they charged me (legitimately, but @ .45/min, 60.75). So I was expecting something around $155-ish.

Surprise: $235. Why? For some reason AT&T;is slipping next month's flat charges into this month's bill.

So friendly.

If you have an iPhone, do not use it in Europe for data. I was in Europe for 2 weeks last month and used my phone minimally for internet. I just got my bill from AT&T;for $3,215.84.

Unless you have money to burn, set your phone to check email manually and do not launch Safari.

Where Can I buy this unlock? I want it NOW!!!!!

The JesusPhone… saves you from the sins of other phones...
I love it! hahahahaha

I paid $15 to get a T-Mobile RAZR V3 unlocked in Bulgaria, so I'd drop $96 in a heartbeat to get one to work on T-Mobile (in the US) and Globul (in Bulgaria). I bought an unlocked Sony Ericsson so I could swap SIM cards and do essentially the same thing.

It was only a matter of time...

"First of all, its illegal. Get caught and go to jail. "

Um, no it is not. You are allowed to unlock your own phone. You own it. You should learn about your consumer rights instead of accepting a framework set up so you can freely monitored and the data can goto the government or the highest bidder. Its an invasion of privacy. Moreover, in this hack, people do not have data access. However i suspect wifi works just fine, which is pretty plentiful in most european cities.

-Liquidu

Sure seems like a lot of trouble to unlock a phone that won't work on other carriers anyway. Something about COMPLETELY DIFFERENT AND INCOMPATIBLE RADIO TECHNOLOGY. But hey, who's keeping score?

If I was in the States, I would not have a problem with using ATT

here in Mexico, we have no idea when or if ever we would have access to an iPhone, we do not even have an iTunes store, that is required for activation

@en

That is a completely moronic comparison. If someone shells out $600 for a phone, they own it and should be able to do whatever the hell they want with it. You don't go to jail for breaking into your own car.

However, if you want to stay with the automobile anaology, what Apple and AT&T;are doing is equivalent to Ford selling you a car and then forcing you to buy your gas from Shell only. Does that sound reasonable to you?

I'm quite happy to hear that someone unlocked it .. even if it is for just a matter of time..just shows that its unlockable and will be sooner or later! I am a huge fan of everything that's Apple ..I do not have AT&T;service in my country.. as is the case with many other Apple fans..so that pretty much shuts me out of all the fun.. sucks!!

hotinplaya, If I was in the States, I would not have a problem with using ATT.


Come to California, everyone else does. You might get an iPhone given to you.

"Something about COMPLETELY DIFFERENT AND INCOMPATIBLE RADIO TECHNOLOGY"

Uhm.. GSM is GSM babes.. once the phone is unlocked it'll work on any GSM network seeing that its quad or tri band

@ChrissyOne

"But hey, who's keeping score?"

Obviously you're not. The iPhone runs on the GSM standard, just like virtually every other country in the world.

It's called the GLOBAL System for Mobile communications for a reason, sweetie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM
http://ntrg.cs.tcd.ie/undergrad/4ba2.05/group7/index.html

@ The Great Apple Fanboy Massacre

Eat me, sweetie. Virtually the rest of our country does not, yet Americans seem more obsessed with unlocking the iPhone than the proles in the old country.

To wit...

ChrissyOne:

If you took the time to actually read the article, you'll notice that these are EUROPEAN hackers who claim to have unlocked the iPhone to work on a EUROPEAN network.

@ The Great Apple Fanboy Massacre

I took the time, in fact. Forgive my US-centric bent today. You know how we are, the whole world revolves around us, right?

ChrissyOne. If you work for a living, your boss certainly doesn't get full measure. Me? I'm retired, but when I was working I didn't waste my boss's time on a computer

@ ron

I bow to your superior work ethic.

And your ignorance of time zones.

Apple is playing the hackers, hardcore. Apple sets up the iPod and the iPhone with formidable defenses, but nothing like those on the laptop/server/desktop versions of OS X. Then they sit back and watch hackers drum all the interest in their product, and release patches to undo what they've done -- or argue to AT&T;that the iPhone shouldn't be tethered to just them.

It's pure genius, and the moronic hackers have all their work wiped away in an instant while Apple profits from the free press they gin up. We've seen it before with the iPod. I guess those geeks never learn, do they?

To BustingTheSkullsOfIdiots:

Apple also makes several dollars each month off of an iPhone subscriber's AT&T;service plan. Why would Apple want to allow hackers to break the iPhone just so it could work on other networks? That cuts Apple's monthly revenue from mobile phone access contracts. Not very smart.

The idea that Apple wants hackers to unlock the iPhone for free press is stupid. Apple has as much free press over the iPhone as anyone could possibly hope for, so why would Apple jeopardize it's high-profile product just for a few web articles? It's not getting that much press from hackers trying to unlock the iPhone.

Also, Apple demands control of its products, and I seriously doubt Apple would want hackers to try to unlock the iPhone – you just don't know what may happen, and that flies in the face of everything Apple is. The last thing Apple wants is unlocked iPhones where people can load anything they want on it. If that were the case, the iPhone would have come out unlocked or on multiple carriers.

Apple has an exclusive agreement with AT&T;because Apple is demanding more from AT&T;than other mobile phone manufacturers. Thus, in exchange for these concessions, AT&T;gets to sell the iPhone exclusively for a certain number of years. If Apple didn't want an exclusive contract, it would not have negotiated one.

Some people aren't completely clear on the concept of SIMM locking/unlocking. When a phone is unlocked, nothing on it changes, except that it can now work with a SIMM card from a different mobile carrier. The 'Subsidy Lock' is a feature that mobile carriers require from handset makers in order to force customers to continue to use the subsidised (zero dollars with rebate) phones with the same carrier. In the US, there is an obscure law that gives consumers the right to unlock their phone if they wish. All carriers abide by this, although almost nobody (certainly not many in this forum) know about this. All cellphones manufactured for the US market are unlockable. You call your carrier, ask for the instructions to unlock the phone, they e-mail them to you. It works.

I'm sure the same will eventually happen with the iPhone.

I'm sorry that I'm such a newbie about mobile phones, but aren't you supposed to sign up/activate the iPhone with AT&T;or whoever will be handling the exclusive rights to the iPhone in the UK and the EU? Won't it be just like here where you would have to buy the iPhone, activate it and get an AT&T;account, and then go from there with the unlocking procedure?

Is the theory that the European hackers would buy the iPhone for US$ 500/700 and then the unlocking itself would activate it with their present carrier, or would they still have to activate it through AT&T;here in the U.S.?

Again, I'm sorry that I'm not familiar with how this works.

Rudge,

There is an application out there (courtesy of your neighbourhood hacker) that mimics the activation process for the iPhone without ever connecting to AT&T;. It activates the device and allows it to use any AT&T;SIMM card without having to sign up for a new contract. You could also do this with an existing AT&T;account and SIMM card.

Once you get this done, you can do the UK hack.

As for the US, the change in the Copyright rules was made last November. It was related to the notorious DMCA. Here's the document from the US government:

http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2006/71fr68472.pdf

Scroll down to page 5.

Great. Pay $96 for breaking your iPhone so that visual voicemail and other specialized features don't work on "your own network." That makes sense... If it's just an WI-FI iPhone you want (with no mobile phone contract), you can do that for free using several previously published methods.

Here in Yurp we're spoiled with choice when it comes to cellphones and operators. That is, we usually don't have locked-in cellphones. Instead we can freely choose the operator and the phone and combine those two. Compared to this, the iPhone is inferior to its competitors here in Europe. I, for one, won't buy it if I can't choose the operator of my choice. Which is a pity, because it really is a marvelous gadget.

MDN MW: 'people' as in 'people have the power - at least in Europe'.

>If you have an iPhone, do not use it in Europe for data. I was in >Europe for 2 weeks last month and used my phone minimally >for internet. I just got my bill from AT&T;for $3,215.84.

Now wait a minute, there, ****WARNING****, 'splain this to us a little better. Do you mean that you went on the internet using WiFi (AirPort), or using something else? Like the Edge network ATT has in U.S. 'Splain it to me better...

> WARNING wrote: If you have an iPhone, do not use it in Europe for data. I was in Europe for 2 weeks last month and used my phone minimally for internet. I just got my bill from AT&T;for $3,215.84.


I've a similar story.... made 2 phone calls for about 30 seconds each - enough to tell family my hotel phone number and room number.

For roughly 1 minute of talk time: $130 US

UK telecoms know how to stick it to Americans.

"UK telecoms know how to stick it to Americans."

The bill is from your American telecom. You write the check o them. They get the money. To assert the UK telecoms get a large chunk of this is absurd. I have no doubt all the telecoms work together for price gouging on international roaming, but American networks are just as complicit. Your argument holds very little water.

-Liquidu

I've done the same with my AT&T;(Cingular) phone. I was charged (roughly) between $0.70 and $1.40 per minute, depending on which country in Europe I was in (UK, France, Serbia...). Of course, before I left the US, I had called Cingular and asked them to turn on my (free) international roaming feature. If you don't have it, you get ripped off. If you're planning on travelling overseas, you'd be a fool not to ask for it.

You DID have it turned on before your trip, right?

***Warning****

The answer is very simple. When out of the US use the phone in airplane mode. No expensive bills.

What is the "JESUS-PHONE"? You ask?

It's a cell phone that's SOOO Good, that if Jesus Christ invented it, that's what he would have done.

Of course we all know Jesus supposedly died a horrible death on a Roman Cross some 2000 years ago. Some claim he was the son of a god. Some claim he was just a prophet.

The fact of the matter is this, evolution has occurred on this planet we all share called Earth for billions of freaking years. BILLIONS OF YEARS!!!

That expensive liquid you put in your gas tank to drive to your local religious brainwashing organization? Well that's gas and it's made from oil that is decomposed carbon elements like plants and animals from BILLIONS OF YEARS AGO!!!

Why did the Russians plant a USSR flag under the North Pole? Because of the vast amounts of OIL UNDER THE POLAR ICE CAP!!! Now how could the North Pole, so cold, have supported life like jungles enough to produce the oil? BECAUSE THE EARTH WAS TIPPED ON IT'S SIDE SOME BILLIONS OF YEARS AGO!!!

What tipped it in the way it is now? A large asteroid perhaps?

Killed off most of the life on the planet perhaps? So dumbarse ape looking fskers like us could evolve and create funky religions as a reason to KILL PEOPLE!!

Study GALAPAGOS ISLANDS, it's living PROOF evolution is indeed FACT and not Fiction.

Study Sociology and learn why humans are a "herd animal" and form groups to kill other groups of humans.

Study more college level courses to really understand things and not what some undereductated preacher con artist tells you what you should know.

You are what you know.

http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/cell-phones/pda-phones-smartphones.jsp

I am interested in what you said about humans being herd animals. It makes sense but if you can provide some URLs that would be much appreciated!

Okay, I'll ask my question again to ****WARNING***, or whoever else might be able to answer it:

Here is what ***WARNING*** wrote: If you have an iPhone, do not use it in Europe for data. I was in Europe for 2 weeks last month and used my phone minimally for internet. I just got my bill from AT&T;for $3,215.84.

Unless you have money to burn, set your phone to check email manually and do not launch Safari.

My Question: Using the iPhone on WiFi for internet in Europe will cause AT&T;to bill you in America?? I thought in WiFi mode, the iPhone was just like any computer using the internet on WiFi. I've never been billed for using my PowerBook all over the world where I travel... My main man ****WARNING*** you need to post back and 'splain yourself...