I have said to everyone that i will keep them updated on the progress being made by us so its only fair you know the full story!!
As many of you, im sure, have already read geohots blog, you may or may not be aware that as it currently stands, we WILL NOT be able to software unlock the 4.6 bootloader iPhone until a new firmware Update is released.
Now, alot of people are having a hard time understanding this and for most people Geo's blog wont make sense so im gonna explain why to you.
Most of you know, that to Unlock the phone, the baseband firware needs to be patched, but to patch a firmware means we need to delete the old one and flash the patched one, this was done with ieraser or anySIM or whatever way you unlock the phone. To erase the baseband firmware, you need to have the secpack, again i am sure most of you are aware of this.
With the old bootloader, the 3.9 one, you needed to have the secpack of your current baseband firmware OR the secpack of a newer baseband firmware to allow you to erase the Flash, the problem with the new bootloader is it no longer accepts the current secpack, only a newer one. Therefore, until a new firmeware upgrade comes along, we cannot erase the baseband firmware.
Now, its not ALL gloom and doom, It may be possible that someone will figure out how to bypass the secpack for deletion or another way might be found but as of now, this is where we stand.
Now that we have all that nasty stuff out of the way, i do have some good news!! Firstly, an exploit has been found in the new bootloader that should allow us to run anySIM, this is excellent news as many people where worried if there would be an exploit in this bootloader. So basically, When we get the next firmware update, once the secpack is retrieved, we should have no problem unlocking 1.1.2 with bootloader 4.6, however, after the next firmware comes out, we WILL NOT be able to update to it as we will then need the secpack from the one AFTER THAT to unlock it.
Now, back to OTB 1.1.2 Hardware Unlocks:
TA_Mobile, geohot and myself have found away of harware unlocking 1.1.2 OTB iPhones, the problem is there are very very few people in the world with the skills and equipment needed to do it. It is basically a Hardware bootloader downgrade but involves removing the Intel IC from the Comm board and reflashing the chip. This method will not be useful to most people but once we have it done and completed the first phone, we will post a Turorial for the extremely technically minded!!
Another area being looked at is a Test Point bootloader downgrade, in theory, its possible but as of yet we have no information on this.
And finally for those of you who are going to ask, what about a Test Point unlock, we still need to patch the firmware and have no way of erasing it so at the moment, that is in the sae boat as the software unlock.
As i said guys, a promise is a promise and i will keep you updated!!
