On a trip to his homeland, Dong Ngo, editor of CNET, found a phone store that became quite popular in Vietnam for unlocking 3G iPhones. The most impressive thing is that the process is not done either via the SIM replacement (which can cause compatibility issues with iTunes) and much less via hack software, still non-existent.
What Vietnamese Tuan Anh Do (29 years old) discovered was a way of doing the unlock of the device by its own hardware and, later, rewriting a file Hex. The hacker charges 1.2 million dongs (about R $ 160) for an hour-long job.
From making such changes, opening the Apple smartphone is a common task for Tuan, which makes it look much simpler than. After arriving at the iPhone's board, he extracts the chip from the baseband (component that controls the connection between the phone and the operators network) this is a complicated step, since it is glued.
One false step and the iPhone can be "bricked" forever which promptly replaced by the store (located in the city of Hani), although, according to him, this never happened (the two units were lost while he developed and discovered how perform the exploit).
Once the chip is removed, its information is transferred to a file via a special reader. With a publisher Hex, it removes the lock data from it and, after that, reprograms the chip with the new changed file. In other words: it is no longer configured to work only with a cell phone operator.
Detail: installing firmware 2.2, for example, takes the iPhone back to its original state. To those who have already unlocked the store in Tuan, a discount is given for carrying out the process for the second time.
For more details and photos, see the original article at Crave.
