Ways to unlock your IPhone

Since then the iPhone has been launched in the market, there are many searches going on regarding unlocking an iPhone. Hackers and technical professionals are trying to find ways to unlock the iPhone and accordingly Apple is trying to close the loopholes. Smart hackers are keep trying to find new loopholes and creating loophole to provide unlocking services in terms of money. 

There are some techniques which are easy to use and can be done by yourself, as well as there are some techniques which can only be done by experts, where some of the techniques are no more working. As it is legal to have your iPhone unlocked in US, but there are some techniques which can void your phone’s warranty. Here, the techniques are listed below, among which you can judge, which method is easy and devoid of risks. Let’s get started with some knowledge of technical jargons used.

Baseband: Baseband is the firmware embedded in a chip that is responsible for functionality of cellphone signals, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Baseband and iPhone Firmware (OS) are two separate components. The SIM lock is installed in the baseband chip.

Firmware: It is the OS (Operating System) software installed in the iPhone. To know your iPhone firmware version, connect it with iTunes and you can see the its version and every other details in the summery TAB.

Unlocking: iPhone provided by the service providers are SIM locked. It means you cannot use the phone in any other network. Unlocking the iPhone enables it to use other carriers.

Jailbreaking: You can only install apps and games only from Apple’s app store through iTunes. Jailbreaking refers to reprogramming your iPhone’s firmware to install applications from third party sources. Jailbreak is basically done by using third party applications.

Unlocking Using Ultrasn0w

If your phone is jailbroken, then you can easily SIM unlock your iPhone using ultrasn0w. Ultrasn0w is a third-party application developed by iphone dev team that is free and is used to unlock network locked iPhone. However, this is software based unlock where a series of steps to be followed in order to unlock using Ultrsn0w with a condition that it should be jailbroken before unlocking. The guide to unlock using Ultrasn0w can be found in their blog.

For those business persons who regularly visit different countries and like to use local SIM and don’t want to carry on with a long term contract of their carrier, it is good to install ultrasn0w and have their phone unlocked. The only limitation to ultrsn0w is that, it cannot unlock CDMA-based cellular phones provided by Verizon and Sprint. 

Also who have unlocked their iPhones from AT&T to T-Mobile using ultrasn0w, cannot use T-Mobile 3G services as it uses different frequencies than AT&T. However it supports T-Mobile 2G EDGE network. Unlocking CDMA iPhones are different from that of GSM phones. If it's iPhone 4S - then it supports both CDMA and GSM and thus can be unlocked. To unlock CDMA phones, IMEI unlock method and GEVEY Ultra S unlock method can be used.

GEVEY SIM unlock

There are certain basebands which Ultrasn0w will unable to unlock such as Baseband 02.10.01, 03.1.01, 04.10.01 etc. GEVEY SIM based unlock is also known as hardware unlock, another iPhone unlocking technique that does not need jailbreak. However, in this way you can never update your handset as well. The reason is that hardware unlock is attached inside your handset, and they can sometimes damage your iPhone SIM holder voiding its warranty. Still it’s good unlocking techniques that unlock iPhone from any carrier without voiding its warranty.

IMEI unlock method

It is one of the simplest, safest and inexpensive IPhone Unlocking solution also known as factory-unlock or permanent unlock method. IMEI unlock can be done by yourself in just few steps without having any expert knowledge and without voiding the iPhone warranty as it don’t need any software changes. There are a few IMEI unlocking service providers who charge a minimum amount of unlocking fee and can guide you to factory-unlock your iPhone.

You just need to provide your iPhone IMEI and the carrier name and after a couple of hours, you can be able to permanently unlock your iPhone through iTunes. 

These guys contact Apple server that take care of the entire iPhone IMEI database through a secure connection. In contrast, if you find IMEI unlocking method quite expensive, there are other alternative such as hardware unlocking namely GEVEY SIM unlock.

A Word of Caution

Unlocked/ Jailbroken iPhone are considered warranty lost by the Apple customer service. If you have unlocked or jailbroken iPhone, you must restore its original firmware before going to any customer service center. Any software or hardware hack applied to the phone can make it (sometimes to the PC) useless if mistaken in the process. So, choose wisely which way you can safely unlock your iPhone. Do share your experience with us to let know the people the successful way of unlocking.