The mysterious Dev Team released its carrier unlock, labeled Ultrasn0w, for jailbroken iPhones very early this morning. Very early. Yours truly woke up at 3:30AM to upgrade and unlock his 3G. Please pardon any typos in this post. =)
I’ve been carrying around an extra iPhone for the past several days in anticipation of the unlock. It’s a 3G that I purchased at an unbelievable price after an individual tried to update it through iTunes, updating the baseband in the process. The bootloader was too new to reverse the process, so the phone was not unlockable. I figured I could wait for the hopeful unlock or dump it on eBay — either way, it would be worth it.
When the 3.0 firmware was released on Wednesday last week, I upgraded that phone after hearing that I could eventually unlock it when Ultrasn0w was released. And I began taking it with me to work and back home in hopes that the unlock would come soon.
Well, I left that extra iPhone at work today as I didn’t go back to the office after an appointment. I thought about going back to pick it up throughout the night, but never did. And, of course, Ultrasn0w was released.
After days of carefully watching Twitter searches, the Dev Team’s blog, tech news sites (TechVi.com and TUAW.com only, of course!), I woke this morning to use the restroom — gotta love middle age… and diabetes — and hit TweetDeck on my 2.2.1-sporting iPhone 3G. *BOOM* It had been released!
I thought *very* briefly about going to the store to get my extra iPhone. As giddy as I was to see Ultrasn0w, I was still sane enough to avoid a 3:30AM dash to Backslash in my PJs. Instead, I went back to sleep.
I *tried* to go back to sleep.
You see, if you aren’t much of a techie, you may not get this. My wife doesn’t. It’s very similar to Christmas morning, only instead of some fat guy in a red suit, we wait for some mysterious hackers with humorous Twitter handles like @MuscleNerd.
I was up in 15 minutes, hooking my personal 3G up to the MacBook Pro I leave by the side of the bed most nights.
Careful to turn the brightness down on both devices, so as to not wake my snoring, slumbering wife, I was awake enough to remember to backup the iPhone in iTunes before continuing. After that process, I transferred my pictures to a folder on the MBP and used the custom firmware bundle I had created five days earlier for the phone sitting snug in its box on my desk at work.
While restoring, Randy Butler, a former employee hit me on IM. He, too, was awake too early and had already unlocked his iPhone. We talked while my phone’s firmware was upgraded, Cydia was updated, and the appropriate repo was added. Thanks, Randy, for keeping me awake enough to follow through!
The unlock was rather uneventful. It simply worked. My first call was to the always-awake Time & Temp Guy at a local bank. His voice had never sounded so good.
Now, I’m writing this as iTunes restores all of the music, podcasts, videos, photos, and apps to my beloved 3G. I’ve done literally nothing on the phone yet. But I have noticed that the battery percentage shows next to the green icon — something that allegedly would only happen on the newer 3G S hardware. I used to have a similar function on 2.2.1, but that was added by SBSettings, a program that no longer exists on my phone. Besides, the version on SBS appears differently, lacking the percent sign and replacing the batter icon when tapped rather than appearing next to it as it does now.
I’ll try to update my blog with thoughts about 3.0 and the unlock, etc. when I’m more fully awake. Suffice it to say, I’m very grateful to the Dev Team and everyone that contributed to the unlock.
