So with the steep price drop and the hacking community going nuts on the iPhone, we thought it'd be a good idea to start getting into it. Rather than risk our day to day 8Gb iPhone (which was paid for by the day job), we took advantage of the $200 price cut and snapped up a 4Gb iPhone for $300.

Since I work WAAAY outside AT&T's coverage range (Paris) and don't feel like being one of those $3000/month AT&T customers who receive 500 page bills, I've decided to get a bit pirate on our little 4Gb beauty.

I wanted to go from end to end without touching AT&T.  I was hoping to not have to pay for iPhoneSimFree but worst case scenario I will settle - it looks like it is going for $50 right now from the Australian carrier.  We've found a good roundup here: iPhone unlocking and activation bypass roundup.

As for initial activation, I think DVD Jon's product is the best.

If you do a Google search for “iPhone unlock” you get a whopping 4.390.000 hits, so I thought that it would be nice to make a roundup of the various working activation/unlocking methods around (with a lot of help from the guys at irc.osx86.hu, #iphone and hackint0sh.org)

Disclaimer

The stuff below is for information purposes only. It’s illegal in some countries to bypass the iPhone’s activation window and unlock the phone. Make sure that you know what you’re doing, this site (including me) is not liable for your actions and won’t give you money if you destroy your iPod.

Read everything twice before you try things out, it’ll really speed things up.

Activation bypass methods (no sim unlock)

MAC: iNdependence (the new iActivator)

iNdependence is a Cocoa-based application for Mac OS X which provides an easy-to-use interface for jailbreak, activation, SSH installation, and ringtone/wallpaper/application installation on your iPhone. It’s open source under the GNU v2 license.

WIN: “Draken’s way”

Since there’s no working one-click-activation program for Windows yet user Draken from the hackint0sh forums wrote great two step guide for Windows users, which will take you from a brand new Iphone to a fully activated Iphone without hassle!

Sim-unlock methods (don’t forget to show off afterwards!)

MAC/WIN: The SuperSIM method

With this method you change some things on your own providers SIM card to fool the iPhone, it’ll think that you inserted the AT&T SIM card. The method is a little bit expensive because you have to buy a SIM card reader/writer and a supersim, though with this method you don’t have to unscrew screws and “can’t” destroy the phone (note: this only works on “old” V1 simcards).

MAC/WIN: The TurboSIM method

You can’t fool the iPod by writing AT&T on your SIM card, though you can with this method (since the turbosim is sold out this can get a little expensive…).

MAC/WIN: The Hypersim / PSS SIM Kit method

This method is similar to the TurboSIM one, though hyper cards are easier to get and way easier to program (thanks to PSLiNK for the tip)

MAC/WIN: Hardware unlock

Difficult and dangerous, you can end up with an exploding iPod (ow, yeah, before trying this, read the disclaimer).

MAC/WIN: Software Unlock

Jailbreak the iPhone, bypass the activation, install this program and unlock the iPhone! Confirmed working by engadget and gizmodo, though not available for the masses yet and the software won’t be free.

Did I forgot something?

Do you know a better way to unlock a brand new iPhone? Post it in a comment and I’ll add it to the list!

As the original author said, if you guys know anything more - please post. We should have results by the weekend.