A team of hackers announced Tuesday that it has unlocked the iPhone 3G.
Codenamed
"yellowsn0w," the hack will enable the iPhone 3G to work with 3G
networks other than those sanctioned by Apple. (For example, the unlock hack would make the iPhone 3G work on the T-Mobile network in the United States.) The iPhone Dev-Team,
famous for unlocking the original iPhone, said the hack will be ready
for release by Dec. 31.
This, of course, will undoubtedly lead
to another game of cat and mouse. When the Dev-Team unlocked the first
iPhone in 2007, Apple released software updates that effectively
bricked (i.e., rendered useless) any unlocked handset.
"It’s
a cat-and-mouse game," said Jobs, when asked about unlocked iPhones in November 2007. "We try to stay ahead. People will
try to break in, and it’s our job to stop them breaking in."
It should be clarified that "Jailbreaking" the iPhone is not the same
as unlocking it — though there is some confusion over this term. The
term Jailbreak refers to a process that hacks the iPhone to run
unauthorized software — apps that likely would never be approved in
Apple’s iPhone App Store. The iPhone Dev-Team released the Jailbreak tool for iPhone 3G — called Pwnage 2.0 — just days after the iPhone 3G’s launch in July.
‘Tis the Season to be Jolly! – yellowsn0w [iPhone Dev-Team via Engadget ]
Photo: dfarber/Flickr
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