[Hands0n]

Well, job done, its available here http://iphone.unlock.no/index.htm in the GUI version. The more technical minded will find the manual method linked too from that page also.

We have George Hotz to thank for this (see Reg article http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/11/latest_iphone_hack/ ). He was the lad who cracked it first time round.

[miffed]

Great news , but you know what ? I am not even going to bother !

When I bought my iPhone , the intention was to get it onto T-mobile ASAP - But I have to be honest , I am seeing little benefits to doing that now the tariffs have been improved !
With benefits of staying with o2 are - Visual voicemail (you don't know how handy this is until you try it !) - EDGE ,(slight improvement on GPRS) , and the free wifi
TBH the only reason I'd unlock now is to sell it !

[Ben]

I have no intention of taking on an O2 contract, so for me this would be great news if I wanted an iPhone at this time. 1.1.3 offers a much more complete experience than earlier firmware and I would imagine demand for unlocked 1.1.3 iPhones will rocket and prices soar.

[gorilla]

I know this is slightly OT, but I heard last week (I think the guardian podcast) that O2 now have 85% 3g coverage. I can't remember if that was clarified into geography or population, but it would suggest that they are working hard to catch up. Could it be that they are under pressure to get their network ready for a 3g iphone? This would certainly make a 3g iphone more appealing.

[Ben]

That would be population... and I don't believe it for a fraction of a second :D

Just take a look at Vodafone's 3G coverage vs O2's to see how catastrophically behind O2 are in their 3G rollout.

Voda first, O2 second, darker blue is 3G on both maps. I don't know when Vodafone's was updated, but O2's is correct as of 20th December 2007.

Utterly shocking.

[miffed]

I really must put an o2 sim in my e90 and carry it around for a bit to see , the last time I used a 3G device on o2 (XDA exec) , the only place I got 3G was on the bloody Isle of wight ferry !
I know I have 3G local to me now. as O2 sms'd me to tell me they have increased coverage to include my area - , I know I don't have coverage at home , but worth checking out exactly where they are referring to
Interesting that o2 seem to be rolling out EDGE as well as 3G though - wonder why ? , surely they'd pick one or the other ? - unless , the were looking to have a "super network" , where the lowest common denominator os EDGE ? - Would be great , but unfortunately there are still plenty of bog standard GPRS holes from what I can see !

[gorilla]

I thin voda are being a bit optimistic there as well. That pic suggests they have good 3g coverage in NI, but their coverage is very patchy here. One of my friends who has a 3g phone on voda is about to switch to 3 for precisely this reason.

I'm now thinking, would I buy a 3g iphone to unlock it and use on another network? hmmm not sure. I think we wont actually see one in the UK until the autumn at the earliest and by which time there should be new S60 handsets and other offerings from SE and LG to tempt us.

[Hands0n]

By the time a 3G iPhone comes out, late summer is the speculation, the convergence of the handset into a fully fledged converged mobile phone and PDA will be all but complete. The key is the developer kit that is due out this month, and is already in NDA with certain ISVs. A general release of the SDK will be sure to get a rapid and early following. The black market software for the iPhone via the jailbreak goes some way to showing what can be done.

For sure, a 3G iPhone will be out - it will continue to blow away the S60 handsets in terms of performance and capability. S60 is nice, but it is getting ever-complicated to use, and morphs in each and every single iteration such that it is not that straightforward to change.

But I think the obvious candidate for the iPhone to address first is the Windows Mobile camp who are now just on version 7 of the OS. I don't think that Apple consider Symbian a serious threat just yet. It tends not to be used the same way WM and [now/soon] OSX are or will be.

I do not intend to jailbreak/unlock my iPhone either. Like Miffed, I find the O2 tariff is superb in its new guise. That O2's 3G network sucked, and probably still does, is irrelevant to me. On the iPhone EDGE is hardly noticeable, I seem to exist in an abundance of WiFi (home, work, The Cloud) and for my 3G needs I resort to my T-Mobile N95 with its 1.2MBps HSDPA (how quaint these days already :D)