iphone 3g unlocked by hackers from brazil

The iPhone hacking community seem to be working overtime cracking Apple’s new iPhone 3G.

The iPhone Dev Team had published the video of the world’s first jailbroken iPhone 3G only yesterday and plan to release their Pwnage Tool 2.0 very soon.

We now have breaking news that hackers from Brazil have unlocked iPhone 3G, yes unlocked, using a hardware method that does not need any jailbreaking.

If you have been following the iPhone hacking news since the original iPhone, you might remember that before we had the simple hackin softwares like ZiPhone, hackers had unlocked the jailbroken original iPhone using a Turbo SIM card.

This one is similar, just that the hackers have been able to unlock iPhone 3G without the need to jailbreak it, by using a wafer-thin card that piggybacks on your SIM while in the iPhone. So all that you need to unlock iPhone 3G is DesbloqueioBr’s chip (SIM adapter) and your SIM (and a iPhone 3G).

Paulo and Breno of DesbloqueioBr explain that they have been able to achieve this by programming the SIM adapter in such a way that it tricks the iPhone into believing that a test SIM card has been inserted. Since iPhone 3G thinks that it is a test SIM card, it allows service and hands the functionality back to the SIM thus unlocking it.

Folks at Engadget have been able to test this hardware unlocking method with their FIDO locked iPhone 3G with a local TIM SIM card and then in their AT&T iPhone 3G, and have confirmed that it worked perfectly in both.

You can also checkout the video of the world’s unlocked iPhone 3G (please note its not in English):

DesbloqueioBr are still to reveal the pricing details of their unlocking kit and how they plan to release it to iPhone users who are looking to use SIM card from any GSM carrier. I will let you folks know in case I get more details, so stay tuned here at iPhone Hacks.

Thanks, Zélelé for the tip.

Update: As per Niche Technologies, they plan to charge between $250 to $375 for their hardware unlocking method.

Thats why everyone loves the iPhone Dev Team, they give away their easy-to-use software unlocking tools for free and to top it, they are doing all this as a hobby. I know, they haven’t unlocked iPhone 3G yet, but its not even a week since iPhone 3G was launched, so give them a break and be patient. I am quite confident that we will hear from them soon as they seem to be making good progress.