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Friday, July 20, 2007

Unlocked iPhones: What is Apple’s Secret Weapon?


It's probably a matter of time before we see a true unlocked iPhone on the market. Hackers are working day and night to achieve this goal, and chances are they will succeed on a short or mid term period. DVD Jon has already been able to bypass the iTunes activation process and these hackers were able to unlock the iPhone and make it functional with any AT&T SIM card, freeing you and the iPhone from the two year contract.

But a successful attempt to completely unlock the iPhone from AT&T network could seriously hurt the relationship between AT&T and Apple. The very tight agreement signed by the two giants is based on the fact that customers must sign a two year contract with AT&T. If unlocking the iPhone becomes something easily done, AT&T and Apple executives will certainly not stay put, cross their arms and do nothing about it.

The iPhone lock is so important to AT&T and Apple's relationship, that they must already have a B-plan in place to avoid losing the 2 year contract for too many new iPhone customers. And I don't believe that they just crossed their fingers and said that "It won't happen".

But what can be the back-up plan? What could be the secret weapon that Apple and AT&T have in their back pocket to stop the hackers? Here's a possible scenario:

A great aspect of the iPhone user experience is the ability to activate the iPhone from the comfort of your home using only iTunes. But the back-up plan could simply be to drop that and go back to standard store contract signing and phone activation. This way, they would secure the contract and avoid the iPhone being used on Sprint or T-mobile. Yes, the iPhone will still be unlockable, but at least, Apple and AT&T won't lose any money because of this. At least on the short term period.

We can argue that the unlocked phone market is a marginal industry and that even if the iPhone is finally unlocked, this hack would not be used by the regular guy on the street. But this might be different with the iPhone - mainly for two reasons. First of all, people want an iPhone badly and they're ready to do anything to reduce the operation costs. Secondly, and this is even more important, AT&T's five year iPhone exclusivity, will push people to hack the phone in order to use it on T-Mobile or Sprint. Sure, by using the iPhone on another network they will lose features like Visual Voice mail, but that won't be a show stopper for many people.

A positive note for Apple, an easily unlockable iPhone will boost the iPhone sales even more. But AT&T would certainly not let Apple get away so easily with this one…

What do you think about this? Do you agree? Do you think Apple will just let that happen because it will remain a marginal market?

Thursday, July 19, 2007

iPhone Partially Unlocked! Make Calls Without a Contract!


The team of hackers working days and nights trying to understand the iPhone's inside outs has achieved a new goal. They are now able to make a call with an AT&T SIM card not attached to the mandatory 2 year contract. The hack can't be used with another Network SIM card, but this is probably a matter of time before they reach this ultimate goal, even though they are now stopped by major roadblocks.

With this new hack, it means that you will be able to use your current AT&T SIM card with you current plan, and even the corporate plan you've been dreaming to have on you iPhone.

Here's what the hackers have to say about their work:

All problems with unlocking lie in the baseband, the radio chipset for the iPhone. The chipset is an S-Gold2, and don't come in the chat and give us links to PapaUtils, we can't use them. Now the iPhone only has one lock, a network personalization lock. This lock means the MCC(US=310) and the MNC(AT&T=410) must match the first six digits of the SIM cards IMSI. This check is done in the baseband firmware itself. I'm not really sure where yet, but that isn't really relevant. The only thing standing in the way of an unlock is the baseband. All the other sim checks are known and can be patched out. We even know the AT command to do the unlock. It's 'AT+CLCK="PN",0,"xxxxxxxx"'. But good luck finding those x's. They are called the NCK, or Network Control Key, and are believed to be unique in everyones phone. Forget brute force(time impractical) and the obvious entries. If you still think bruteforce is a good idea, read this. Further, there is a limit of 3-10 unlock attempts per phone, after which the firmware will "hard-lock" itself to AT&T. So why can't we just patch the firmware? The firmware, located in the ramdisk at /usr/local/standalone/firmware/ICE03.12.06_G.fls, is signed. See here for what is known about the file. The sig is checked in the baseband bootloader. The updater program, bbupdater, only checks a checksum, which can be changed. The update will take, but then the phone won't boot because the sigs don't match.

We worked two solid days on disasseming the radio fw. There are a few backdoors, but none that would lead to an unlock. If you are *good* with disassembling ARM, PM geohot for the idb. We've documented a lot of functions pretty well. Although, this firmware is very difficult to work through. I'm 90% sure the password check happens in the function called pwdcheck, but I haven't found it yet. For all we know there could be a simple algorithm to generate the NCKs that we've missed.

Via Gizmodo

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

New iPhone Application from Blue Flavor


Blue Flavor has just launched a new web-based iPhone Application. The new website gives an easy access to websites like The New York Times, Flickr, Newsvine, del.iciou.us and other RSS feeds. What Leaflets does is reducing the weight of web pages to make it smoother on AT&T’S slow edge network. A complete list of iPhone applications is also available from Leaflets menu.

Give it a try at www.getleaflets.com.

Monday, July 16, 2007

Hack Your iPhone 101: Install Custom Ringtones


Here it is folks. The first iPhone hack you really wanted to have. Using a Mac (a Windows version is not available yet) you can install custom ringtones on your iPhone. But even though this hack is in your reach distance, the risk of killing your iPhone is there. You have been warned!

Using the iPhoneInterface and Jailbreak from their newly develop toolbox, the hackers have been able to write a procedure to add custom ringtones to your iPhone. Of course, Apple will probably release something that will make this obsolete, but for now, this is the only choice you have if you really want to add your favorite ringtones on the iPhone.

You might want to wait a few days to see if people are having weird problems with this hack or not.


Source: hacktheiPhone [thanks Paul]

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Hackers Break Into iPhone’s “Backdoor”

It didn’t take long for hackers to break through the iPhone’s glossy exterior and into its inner bowels, gaining root access. What troubles me is how easily and quickly it was done. So far hackers have managed to uncover the iPhone’s root password for the device, which is “Alpine”, as well as the mobile user account password - “Dottie”. And DVD Jon found a way to unlock the damn thing so we can use it as an iPod sans AT&T service.

Needless to say, in all this merriment, security analysts aren’t laughing.

“Once hackers are able to dissect the firmware, they can come up will all kinds of avenues to get to the iPhone’s kernel,” Paul Henry, vice president of technology evangelism for Secure Computing, told MacNewsWorld.

Yeah, and you know what that means…soon the scaremongering will begin and security firms will be lining up to sell us copies of Norton Anti-Virus for our iPhones.


Read it

iPhone reviews

Since iPhone was released last week, Newspapers and online publishers around the country wrote their own iPhone review. Most of the reviewers agree that iPhone is a wonderful device and it raises the bar for all the other portable device manufacturers. But the downsides of iPhone are always the same from one review to the other: Edge network is slow, AT&T's coverage is bad, a few important phone features are missing, voice quality is not very good and finally, iPhone is not a good business tool.


We are not going to post on them individually but here are a couple of them with interesting quotes.

Engadget probably has the most extensive iPhone review out there. They covered all bits and bites of iPhone. Here's a quote from their review: "But getting things done with the iPhone isn't easy, and anyone looking for a productivity device will probably need to look on. Its browser falls pretty short of the "internet in your pocket" claims Apple's made, and even though it's still easily the most advanced mobile browser on the market, its constant crashing doesn't exactly seal the deal." [Engadget]

Information Week is having a lot of fun with iPhone: "The iPhone is a pleasure to use. I've had it in my shirt pocket the whole time I've been writing this review. I take it out every few minutes to fact-check, and each time I've needed to exert a little bit of willpower to put it away and get back to writing. The iPhone wants me to play with it some more." [information Week]


FoxNews like the iPhone but not the phone: “If your priority is owning a first-rate phone and messaging device, the iPhone isn't for you. Call quality isn't up to par, key messaging features are missing and that virtual keyboard is really frustrating.”

PC Mag is also having fun with the device: "It's the best portable media player ever. It's possibly the most fun we've ever had with a handheld device. It browses the Web like a champ. Yet as a voice phone and a messaging device, it's a loser. The iPhone is full of contradictions." [PCMagazine]

CNet gives the iPhone a 8.0/10: "Despite some important missing features, a slow data network, and call quality that doesn't always deliver, the Apple iPhone sets a new benchmark for an integrated cell phone and MP3 player." [CNet]

The Gothamist is very optimistic about iPhone's future: "One of the reasons I felt comfortable with getting the iPhone was knowing that many of my "cons" are easily solvable with a software update. Rumors are already swirling about IM support. If you're looking for perfection in a device, you'll have a hard time finding it, but the iPhone gets close to perfect as you can get. And in time it will only get better."



Brier Duddley from the Seattle Times said something interesting: "Just remember this is only the first of many remarkable portable computing gadgets that will appear before your contract expires."

PC World wants to warn you: "An iPhone is expensive and comes with some major drawbacks. And the most prudent course would be to wait for the next version, one that'll work out some of the kinks, and we hope, be tied to a faster wireless network. But it's hard to be patient once you've seen one--the future of mobile devices is here and it's called an iPhone."

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Appleopolis: Customizable iPhone Application List


We have seen a lot of these iPhone application lists in the last month, but this one does have something interesting. Appleopolis gives to its registered users, the ability to add, store and manage all their favorite iPhone web applications. You might want to make this site your iPhone homepage. This way, each time you start your browser, you will have an easy access to your apps and favorite websites.

It doesn't have any type of user rating though. A feature that will soon become indispensable for a fast growing iPhone application developer community.

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