14 DAY TRIAL // Last week's Dev Team Funday featured a live demo of yellowsn0w, the codename for the latest method of unlocking Apple's iPhone 3G. One of the team's members used Qik to broadcast a live video and audio stream of an iPhone 3G being soft-unlocked with yellowsn0w.
At the same time, the iPhone Dev Team, best known for its PwnageTool and QuickPwn hack tools, confirmed the completion of the iPhone 3G unlock. It promised that the unlock tool would become available on New Year's Eve: “Over the Christmas break some of our members will be talking at the Chaos Computer Club’s 25C3 Congress,” a Dev-Team Blog post reads.
“This talk will be a juicy technical talk relating to iPhone platform and our previous exploits. [...] We have been working hard on a few other things. The main one being the 3G unlock codenamed 'yellowsn0w.' This is now completed and is currently being packaged into a user-friendly application with the simplicity that you see in QuickPwn or BootNeuter.” Soon after, the team decided to go online and demo the tool. By using Qik, the developer was able to communicate with the viewers in real time.
MuscleNerd (the Dev Team member showing off yellowsn0w) revealed that unlocking the iPhone 3G was a job anyone could accomplish. While the demo depicts the developer using the Terminal to run the tool, users will simply have to download and run the tool (as they would with any application) when it becomes available, hours before New Year's Eve. Those who are interested in unlocking their phones for unsupported carriers only need the new SIM card at hand. The process takes a couple of minutes, probably even less.
Softpedia doesn't condone jailbreaking / unlocking the iPhone / iPod touch or any other device. Using hacks may render your device unusable, or may considerably reduce the quality of your experience using the respective device. If you choose to download and install the PwnageTool, you do it at your own risk. Unlocking / jailbreaking your iPhone may violate your warranty or the EULA with Apple and/or your cellular service provider.