View this article at: http://dev.macnn.com/articles/07/10/01/bricked.iphones.revived
Monday, Oct 01, 2007 11:10am
'Bricked' iPhones partly or...
Following days after the crippling v1.1.1 update, a number of iPhone owners may at last be able to return hacked units to partial or full functionality, according to reports. Full use of an iPhone is currently limited to people using the paid unlock by iPhoneSIMFree; while the company had only managed to help customers with AT&T SIM cards as of Friday, the company can now purportedly get phones functioning with any carrier, a given example being Vodafone.

If a phone unlocked via this process warns that a different SIM card must be inserted, users must re-activate non-AT&T cards using a program such as iBrickr or iNdependence. The new iPhoneSIMFree method requires downgrading to the v1.0.2 firmware, a move which eliminates enhancements such as the improved interface. Posters from the Hackint0sh messageboard have meanwhile devised a means of indepedently downgrading an iPhone, one involving a series of hardware and software restarts. This only works for users of Macs and iNdependence, however, and does not allow cellular functions, only Wi-Fi. Users are also said to be restoring their phones via the TurboSIM method, which is a hardware hack that involves (among other steps) joining a TurboSIM card with one from the desired carrier. If executed properly, the hack should work without any outside help. Members of the iPhone Dev Team collective are said to be working on a second baseband unlock for downgraded units, fixing calling, as well as a fully-functional 1.1.1 unlock, which is already in testing.