Unlocking the iPhone 3G

OTTAWA -- After a long wait, the hacker community has created a software only unlock for the new Apple iPhone 3G allowing it to be used with (almost) any SIM in any country and with any carrier. However, only about one third of people trying currently report success unlocking their phones. I just managed to successfully unlock one of my phones, and so want to share how I managed to do it.

cydia (Figure 1)

The new unlock hack is called yellowsn0w.  Instructions can be found on the yellowsn0w website. 

The first thing I had trouble doing was figuring out how to get yellowsn0w into my iPhone. I didn't have any trouble jailbreaking my phone using QuickPwn. This made it capable of installing non-Apple approved applications using two new application icons, "Cydia" and "Installer" (see Figure 1). I also had no trouble installing Bossprefs from Cydia's, "Featured Packages" and "Free Applications".  I got a lot of help with this from an AppleiPhoneApps.com tutorial.

After a lot of looking around I realized that the actual yellowsn0w application was not listed in Cydia or Installer. And when I went to the yellowsn0w.com website it showed nothing but a static page. Eventually, I realized you have to manually add yellowsn0w to the Cydia directory. From the Cydia application, you select "Manage"  from the bottom-of-screen menu (see Figure 2), then "Sources" from the center of the screen (see Figure 2), then "edit" from the upper right hand corner (see Figure 3), then enter "apt9.yellowsn0w.com" (see Figure 4). Having manually added yellowsn0w.com to the list of sources, listed under "Entered by User" (see Figure 3), it can be installed like any other, such as Bossprefs.

I followed these instructions, but I still could not get my phone to detect a carrier. I had restored my iPhone from a backup made before the hack attempt. Perhaps this was the problem.  Perhaps I made some sort of mistake somewhere along the line.   But I did eventually get things to work using the following directions posted by Mees on http://blog.iphone-dev.org/post/67797811/dont-eat-yellowsn0w. There are a lot of variations on this sort of process, but I can certainly attest that these specific instructions worked flawlessly.

Note that you first need to add the "MobileTerminal" application listed in "Console Utilities & Daemons" in Cydia.

Install Yellowsn0w 0.9.5 with Cydia
Install Bossprefs with Cydia
Install Mobile Terminal with Cydia

Put off everything with Bossprefs ( SSH, 3G, EDGE, WIFI )
Reboot using Bossprefs->Power->Reboot

30 secs after reboot go to terminal, type in:
yellowsn0w -c
yellowsn0w -r

Flight mode on and off, nothing yet.

reboot using bossprefs
flight mode on and off and it worked ;=)

sources (Figure 2)

edit (Figure 3)

enter apt9.yellowsn0w.com (Figure 4)