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George Hotz stood in the kitchen of his family home in Glen Rock, N.J., and announced his breakthrough to the world: He had liberated the hottest cellphone in history.
The 17-year-old, a curly-haired kid on his way to college, made his revelation not at a news conference but in a YouTube video. He had unlocked the iPhone from AT&T's wireless network, freeing the gadget for use on other mobile networks, including those in Canada. He was using his phone, in fact, on the rival T-Mobile network.
"I started working on it the day it came out," he told The Globe and Mail Friday after posting a complex step-by-step guide to unlocking the device.
The young hacker was one of thousands who queued for hours to buy the eagerly awaited iPhone the day it hit U.S. shelves in June. Many of them immediately began looking for a way to break the electronic chains binding it to AT&T.
The phone is sold only in the United States and is "locked" to the AT&T network as part of a two-year exclusivity deal between Apple Inc., based in Cupertino, Calif., and the New York-based wireless carrier.
Its design also prevents easy access to its SIM card, a chip that can be swapped so a phone can be transferred from one phone company network to another. The cards can usually be switched easily. In addition, many of the iPhone's features work only with the SIM card that comes installed.
The unlocking solution, which Mr. Hotz posted to his blog Friday, is difficult to follow and took him about two hours to perform.
"It's a complicated hardware method," he said Friday. "… You just open up your iPhone, solder some wires, run some programs that are out and then you get an unlocked iPhone."
Kevin Restivo, an analyst at telecom consultancy SeaBoard Group in Toronto, said the complexity of this so-called solution will keep it from having much of an impact.
"It's far too complicated for the layperson to deal with right now," he said, adding the iPhone's high price would dissuade most people from trying to make the changes.
"We're talking about $500 or $600 that could easily go down the drain if something goes wrong," he said.
Mr. Hotz, who is leaving home Saturday for his first year studying neuroscience at the Rochester Institute of Technology, wrote on his blog that he was sorry the instructions were so hard to follow. He also wrote that he hopes someone will soon be able to come up with a way to unlock the iPhone using only software.
That dream might have already come true.
According to technology blog Engadget.com, a Belfast-based firm called UniquePhones will begin selling a downloadable iPhone unlock service this afternoon through iphoneunlocking.com. The site displayed only a question mark when accessed Friday.
Earlier Friday, Engadget.com said a group calling itself iPhoneSIMfree.com contacted the blog to back up claims it made on a hokey-looking website that it had developed software to unlock the iPhone.
As for Mr. Hotz, he said he wants to keep his newfound knowledge in the public domain, available free of charge. "If people are going to charge money to do the hardware unlock, that's fine … What I don't want is people selling the method to do this," he said. "I've taken so much from free software, I feel this is my chance to give back."
Mr. Hotz says he plans to keep the first iPhone he unlocked as his personal cellphone. He is selling his second unlocked phone through online auction site eBay and started the bidding at $540 (U.S.). By early evening, the bidding had reached more than $25-million and was wildly spiralling higher.
Friday's developments are not the first reports of unlocked iPhones. Allegedly unlocked devices began selling on eBay for as much as $1,000 after the product hit stores.
Mr. Restivo said consumers should think twice before shelling out money to anyone promising a quick solution.
"People that are going to go to eBay and buy that purportedly unlocked phone from China are probably going to be sorely disappointed once it arrives."
AT&T spokesman Michael Coe said Friday the carrier's multiyear agreement with Apple is still in place and referred all other questions to Apple.
T-Mobile USA Inc., which is owned by Deutsche Telekom AG, had no comment Friday. It is the only major U.S. carrier besides AT&T compatible with the iPhone's cellular technology.
Apple Inc. did not return phone calls Friday.
The 17-year-old, a curly-haired kid on his way to college, made his revelation not at a news conference but in a YouTube video. He had unlocked the iPhone from AT&T's wireless network, freeing the gadget for use on other mobile networks, including those in Canada. He was using his phone, in fact, on the rival T-Mobile network.
"I started working on it the day it came out," he told The Globe and Mail Friday after posting a complex step-by-step guide to unlocking the device.
The young hacker was one of thousands who queued for hours to buy the eagerly awaited iPhone the day it hit U.S. shelves in June. Many of them immediately began looking for a way to break the electronic chains binding it to AT&T.
The phone is sold only in the United States and is "locked" to the AT&T network as part of a two-year exclusivity deal between Apple Inc., based in Cupertino, Calif., and the New York-based wireless carrier.
Its design also prevents easy access to its SIM card, a chip that can be swapped so a phone can be transferred from one phone company network to another. The cards can usually be switched easily. In addition, many of the iPhone's features work only with the SIM card that comes installed.
The unlocking solution, which Mr. Hotz posted to his blog Friday, is difficult to follow and took him about two hours to perform.
"It's a complicated hardware method," he said Friday. "… You just open up your iPhone, solder some wires, run some programs that are out and then you get an unlocked iPhone."
Kevin Restivo, an analyst at telecom consultancy SeaBoard Group in Toronto, said the complexity of this so-called solution will keep it from having much of an impact.
"It's far too complicated for the layperson to deal with right now," he said, adding the iPhone's high price would dissuade most people from trying to make the changes.
"We're talking about $500 or $600 that could easily go down the drain if something goes wrong," he said.
Mr. Hotz, who is leaving home Saturday for his first year studying neuroscience at the Rochester Institute of Technology, wrote on his blog that he was sorry the instructions were so hard to follow. He also wrote that he hopes someone will soon be able to come up with a way to unlock the iPhone using only software.
That dream might have already come true.
According to technology blog Engadget.com, a Belfast-based firm called UniquePhones will begin selling a downloadable iPhone unlock service this afternoon through iphoneunlocking.com. The site displayed only a question mark when accessed Friday.
Earlier Friday, Engadget.com said a group calling itself iPhoneSIMfree.com contacted the blog to back up claims it made on a hokey-looking website that it had developed software to unlock the iPhone.
As for Mr. Hotz, he said he wants to keep his newfound knowledge in the public domain, available free of charge. "If people are going to charge money to do the hardware unlock, that's fine … What I don't want is people selling the method to do this," he said. "I've taken so much from free software, I feel this is my chance to give back."
Mr. Hotz says he plans to keep the first iPhone he unlocked as his personal cellphone. He is selling his second unlocked phone through online auction site eBay and started the bidding at $540 (U.S.). By early evening, the bidding had reached more than $25-million and was wildly spiralling higher.
Friday's developments are not the first reports of unlocked iPhones. Allegedly unlocked devices began selling on eBay for as much as $1,000 after the product hit stores.
Mr. Restivo said consumers should think twice before shelling out money to anyone promising a quick solution.
"People that are going to go to eBay and buy that purportedly unlocked phone from China are probably going to be sorely disappointed once it arrives."
AT&T spokesman Michael Coe said Friday the carrier's multiyear agreement with Apple is still in place and referred all other questions to Apple.
T-Mobile USA Inc., which is owned by Deutsche Telekom AG, had no comment Friday. It is the only major U.S. carrier besides AT&T compatible with the iPhone's cellular technology.
Apple Inc. did not return phone calls Friday.
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