iPhone 3G unlocked! Public Release set for New Year’s Eve

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

It seemed like the iPhone 3G in the USA will never be unlocked, until now. Dev-Team, the famous team responsible for jailbroken iPhones, states that they have completed unlocking the iPhone 3G. All that’s left to do is to package it into an user friendly software set to be released on New Year’s Eve, 2008.

However, not everyone will be able to unlock their iPhone with Dev-Team’s software. If you have not been following Dev-Team’s actions in the past months, you probably did not hear that updating your iPhone 3G to firmware 2.2 without using a special PwnageTool will prevent you from unlocking the iPhone. The New Year’s Eve release requires the iPhone to have a baseband of 2.11.07 or earlier. To check your baseband, go to Settings-> General->About->Modem Firmware. Those who had updated their iPhone 3G to firmware 2.2 without using the PwnageTool would probably have an incompatible baseband, making them ineligible to participate in the iPhone 3G unlock this month.

If you have already updated to firmware 2.2 without taking the necessary precaution. Do not fret over it. There’s always the possibility that Dev-Team can downgrade the baseband or to find another method to get around it later. If for some reason, that can’t be possible, you can always go to countries that sell unlocked iPhones 3G like Hong Kong or simply buy them online on Ebay. For your reference, here is a list of countries and carriers selling unlocked iPhone 3G.