Teenager disengages Apple, AT&T

If the only hitch about the Apple iPhone was its connection with AT&T, now there are none. George Hotz, a curly-haired teenager in Glen Rock, N.J. managed to fracture AT&T’s exclusive partnership with Apple and freed the iPhone of its lesser appreciated gear.

17-year-old Hotz, who is preparing to enter college, disengaged the ties between two of the largest corporations of the US technology industry. He is now using the unlocked iPhone on T-Mobile's network, the only major US carrier apart from AT&T that is compatible with the iPhone.

Adopting a very casual attitude about his achievement Hotz said, “It'll make me a little more famous when I get to college, I guess.”

For the unlocking process Hotz collaborated online with four other people, two of them in Russia, "Then there are two guys who I think are somewhere U.S.-side," Hotz said.

He knows them only by their online handles.

Hotz took 500 hours to unlock two iPhone units, using a soldering iron and a large supply of Red Bull energy drinks. He has been working about 8 hours a day since the iPhone's June 29 launch.

In order to recover costs of the project, Hotz is selling one hacked iPhone on eBay. It takes guts for a teenager to loosen an expensive gadget as the iPhone, risking his own device. But since it is successfully done now, the costs are sure to be redeemed. As of 5 p.m. EDT Friday, bidding was over $4,500. The price of a normal iPhone is $499.

Another hacker donated an iPhone to experiment with. It is now a mess of parts and wires, and Hotz needs to buy him a new one. Hotz is keeping a third.

Not intending any compensation, Hotz posted the Hack on his blog, hoping other hackers can streamline and improve his method so that less-tech-savvy iPhone owners can unlock theirs as well.

But the process is complicated and requires skill with both soldering and software. Missteps may result in the iPhone becoming useless; Hotz warned adding that he has made the instructions as simple as he could.

AT&T and Apple declined to comment.

Reporting a similar feat, Technology blog Engadget yesterday revealed unlocking an iPhone using a different method that required a software update, involving no hardware changes to the device.

The technique was demonstrated on the blog by an anonymous group that called itself iPhoneSimFree.

These reports portray how desperate are people to have an iPhone that does not force them into using a certain network. Is Apple noting?