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Apple iPhone 4S jailbreak has places to go and people to see, unlocking would be tougher

Posted: , by Daniel P.

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Apple iPhone 4S jailbreak has places to go and people to see, unlocking would be tougher
Alright, now that we got the new toy from Apple, let's see what will be the situation with jailbreaking it and installing Cydia, the biggest iOS app store after... the App Store. Jailbreaking is considered legal now, not that before the Copyright Office guidelines a good chunk of iPhone users weren't setting them free. 

The good news is that it shouldn't be long before a jailbreak appears, since the Chronic Dev Team recently announced they've found no less than five software bootrom exploits for the A5 chip inside the iPhone 4S, and are saving them for the release. The iPad 2 jailbreak came comparatively late, since it was hard to get access to the bootrom, placed inside the A5 this time. Since then, however, these five userland software defficiencies uncovered mean that Apple shouldn't have plugged the flaws with a revised hardware. 

They should be good for iOS 5, which was done and dusted hours after the first beta release, and four more software revisions, but if this is not enough for you, Geohot had mentioned that he has another hardware exploit like the Limera1n saved, which could possibly jailbreak the device once and for all, without the need to do it after each update. So, unless Cupertino's engineers have taken some extra special precautions, we should be runnung Cydia on the iPhone 4S in no time.

Since there will be a SIM card slot for getting on GSM networks like AT&T, unlocking here should be relatively easy, but with the combined GSM/CDMA baseband radio chip from Qualcomm we are in uncharted territory even regarding the GSM unlock, so we'll have to wait and see what the modders can do to make your iPhone 4S a true "world phone".

On the CDMA side of things, it is rather different. As CDMA phones don't use SIM cards to identify to the network, you can't just swap another carrier's SIM. That's why the CDMA receiver is not locked at all. However, the carrier has to activate the unique MEID number of your handset so you can use it. Since the iPhone 4S phones from different carriers will be 100% identical technically, registering them on another CDMA network shouldn't be an issue. However, although we wish carriers will activate any iPhone 4S, it is very likely that they will activate only the ones bought from them. For example, Verizon will activate only iPhone 4S handsets bought from Verizon or its distributors, and not ones sold by Sprint, AT&T or any other carrier in the world.

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1. Pyrothrax (unregistered) posted on 06 Oct 2011, 08:39 1

Shouldnt be all that hard ....

First!!!!

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2. SuperAndroidEvo posted on 06 Oct 2011, 08:59 2

They say one of the easiest things to do is jailbreak iPhones. I expect the iPhone 4S to be no different!

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3. bob (unregistered) posted on 06 Oct 2011, 09:03 2

yea its called you walk into an apple store and give them your money and they hand you an unlocked phone..... easy

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5. ZayZay posted on 06 Oct 2011, 11:18

Suckers

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6. skd62 (unregistered) posted on 06 Oct 2011, 12:12

so if this is a world phone... the one that will be offered by sprint and verizon are going to be unlocked on the GSM side... but there will we a script that will be loaded on the phones that will block US GSM carrier's simcard to be used on them.

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7. taco50 (banned) posted on 06 Oct 2011, 13:06

I don't think they'll be unlocked at all. Youd have to get a sim from VZW or Sprint and that would allow you to roam.

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8. unreged (unregistered) posted on 06 Oct 2011, 15:46

I don't know about the iPhone, but I use to have a BB Tour from sprint, and I was able to put in a sim card from ATT into it and it worked perfectly fine. Then again, I think one of the selling point of the BB Tour might have been that it came unlocked.

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