Apple iPhone Updates
First, a little update on the still long anticipated iPhone for the EU. So far we have confirmation that Apple will partner with O2 in the UK, T-Mobile in DE, Orange in France and the latest I have read was TIM in Italy.
All of these will be officially sealed after the IFA Consumer Electronics exhibition in Berlin beginning of September 2007.
What is interesting about these is, firstly that Apple chose to partner with local subsidiaries of operator groups to cover Europe as opposed to have one or two EU agreements on operator group level to do so. Secondly the choise is interesting, all these operators are the most traditional in their country recognising the history, since O2 used to be BT Mobile several years ago, T-Mobile well it is T-Mobile owned by Deutsche Telekom, Orange is part of the France Telecom Group and TIM is Italy’s oldest operator.
The second update is regarding the iPhone hacking. A hardware hack that was not demonstrated itself on the web but the result published in a video on YouTube came about 2 weeks ago and now this software hack has been found. This hack now allows the use of the iPhone on a mobile phone network different from the one it was configured for by Apple without any feature restrictions whatsoever (apart from VisualVoiceMail of course which is an AT&T-specific network feature).
Ironically the news spread across the net on the same day that the EU operator information was issued. Anyway, a six-man group worked tirelessly since the launch day. Some wonder why it too so long, I on the other hand give kudos to Apple for developing such an elaborate sim locking system. The unlockers have developed a software that unlocks an activated iPhone so you would need to get that one sorted with a different tool (ie. iActivator).
The sad news: the software is not yet available but I guess as soon as the legal side is satisfactorily covered of when it is leaked it will be.
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