Armed with a soldering iron and a large supply of energy drinks, a teenager has developed a way to make the iPhone available to a much wider audience. George Hotz of New Jersey spent his last summer figuring out how to ‘unlock’ the iPhone, freeing it from being restricted to a single carrier, AT&T Inc.The procedure, which the 17-year-old posted on his blog on Thursday, raises the possibility of a small industry springing up to buy iPhones, unlocking them and then selling them to people who do not want AT&T service or cannot get it, particularly overseas. The phone, which combines an innovative touch-screen interface with the media-playing abilities of the iPod, is currently sold only in the US.Apart from AT&T, only T-Mobile is compatible with the iPhone’s cellular technology, but smaller carriers also use the technology, known as GSM. In Europe and Asia, GSM is the dominant network technology. The hack is complicated and requires skill with both soldering and software, and missteps may result in the iPhone becoming useless, so few people will be able to follow the instructions. “But that’s the simplest I could make them,” Hotz said. The next step, he said, would be for someone to develop a way to unlock the phone using only software. Technology blog Engadget on Friday reported successfully unlocking an iPhone using a different method that required no tinkering with the hardware. The software was supplied by an anonymous group of hackers that apparently plans to charge for it. AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel and Apple spokeswoman Jennifer Bowcock said their companies had no comment. Hotz said the companies had not been in touch with him. The iPhone has already been made to work on overseas networks using another method, which involves copying information from the SIM chip, or Subscriber Identity Module. The SIM-chip method does not involve any soldering, but does require special equipment, and it does not unlock the phone — each new SIM chip has to be reprogrammed for use on a particular iPhone. Both hacks leave intact the iPhone’s many functions, including a built-in camera and the ability to access Wi-Fi networks. The only thing that will not work is the “visual voicemail” feature, which lists voice messages as if they were incoming e-mail. Since the details of both hacks are public, Apple may be able to modify the iPhone production line to make new phones invulnerable.
