The wildly popular iPhone brings baggage with it to most new customers in the form of a lock-down inside one of Apple’s partner networks. Want to set your iPhone free? The newly updated program ZiPhone 2.2 is one way to jailbreak an iPhone.

WARNING: only use ZiPhone 2.2 directly if you’re comfortable working with the command line.

ZiPhone 2.2 is capable of unlocking any currently available firmware version on the iPhone, including 1.1.3. The author writes on the ZiPhone site that the most recent release fixes a “stupid bug in 2.1 [that] didn’t allow my “Z” icon to be deleted and caused some minor problems.”

I recommend caution before using this software because Apple and its partner networks frown at this sort of hacking. But, the author notes that “ZiPhone [has] never bricked a phone so far.”

A summary of differences between the last two versions of ZiPhone, courtesy of QJ.net.

Version 2.2:

- Removed bug in 2.1 didn’t allow my “Z” icon to be deleted

Version 2.1

- Corrected the “Apple logo bug”.
- Removed -v option (now it’s always booting in verbose mode)
- Added integrity check on zibri.dat.
- Added 2 .BAT files for windows newbies :)
- Updated README.txt
- OSX versions updated.

Without activating the iPhone on a partner network like AT&T’s, access to the media player and web features is normally blocked. Since July of 2007 when Jon Lech Johansen reported successfully unlocking an iPhone, the unlocking trend has has continued.

To automate some of the unlocking process with ZiPhone 2.2 check out the graphical user interface and scripts over at Unlock.no. Screen shot of the GUI below.

Related:

Entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 1:26 pm under Apple, Software.

Read more entries by Matt Jansen.
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