The real hardcore geeks are getting extremely good at this iPhone hacking thing. Their fans are even better at presenting easy-to-follow tutorials on using those hacks.
- Grab your phone’s iBEC and iBSS files, which may prove useful in the future…
- Jailbreak the phone with RedSn0w (to install non-App Store apps).
- Unlock it for any SIM card via ultraSn0w.
Note: This applies to the current v3.0 firmware only. The catch is that, per always, SIM unlocks are broken by official updates. So, when Apple releases an update, to be safe you just have to wait for the geeks — the iPhone Dev Team as they’re called — to catch up. They’re pretty quick. And if you forget to wait, you just lose the SIM unlock — it doesn’t break your phone.
I think this took me all of a half-hour to accomplish, most of it waiting for reboots or software/firmware writes. That doesn’t include, though, the time to re-synchronise all my music, videos, podcasts, et cetera — But this and all the phone’s settings are restored automatically via iTunes’ automatic backup.
Too bad NTT DoCoMo doesn’t offer prepaid SIMs anymore… That would leave me fully covered for those spots where Softbank lacks service. So far three of my schools are affected, but it’s not really an issue for me.
Update: Now I wish even more that DoCoMo offered prepaid service… Minutes ago I tested my unlocked treasure with a DoCoMo SIM and it worked beautifully. (Well, I didn’t try data, just calling, but still.)
