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iPhone Dev Team releases 2.2 jailbreak

Team of hackers posts downloads and instructions for unlocking Apple's latest smartphone firmware update, and also includes a word of caution about Apple's baseband technology.

Steven Musil Night Editor / News
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. He's been hooked on tech since learning BASIC in the late '70s. When not cleaning up after his daughter and son, Steven can be found pedaling around the San Francisco Bay Area. Before joining CNET in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers.
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An unlocked iPhone 3G appears to be closer to reality.

Just two days after Apple released its iPhone 2.2 update, the iPhone Dev Team has released a so-called jailbreak of the firmware.

An easy way of unlocking your iPhone 3G could hit the Internet relatively soon. CNET

The team of hackers on Saturday posted to its blog QuickPwn for 2.2 and PwnageTool for 2.2 for Windows and Macintosh machines, along with instructions on how enable iPhone 3Gs with the 2.2 firmware to accept third-party applications.

The blog also includes a word of caution about baseband, the chip that controls the connection between the phone and the mobile-phone network:

Think of it like a cable modem or other peripheral that is attached to your home PC that needs occasional updates. When a software update is released and presented to you within iTunes, the baseband is sometimes updated (to fix bugs or add new features). The 2.2 update for the iPhone 3G contains such an update, so running the vanilla updater straight away with iTunes will reprogram and update the baseband. This could be bad for certain people, depending on your ultimate aim.

The iPhone Dev Team is still working to unlock the iPhone 3G, but it has proven a tough nut to crack, mostly because of the baseband technology. You can unlock your iPhone 3G to use it on another carrier by modifying the SIM card, but what the iPhone Dev Team is trying to accomplish is a software-based unlock that you would just download and install.