Teen Trades Hacked iPhone for Car
The iPhone has certainly been a hot commodity for Apple and its U.S. carrier AT&T, who paid an undisclosed but assuredly large amount of money for exclusive rights to the gadget for the next five years. This has left those who don't subscribe to AT&T out in the cold, resulting in a mad dash to "unlock" the iPhone for use with other providers. Glen Rock, NJ teenager George Hotz was the first to manage the unlocking, and for his efforts he's earned a good bit of fame -- and some new wheels!CertiCell, a Louisville, KY, phone repair shop and parts seller has traded Hotz a shiny new Nissan 350Z and three new 8GB iPhones in exchange for his hacked iPhone. Hotz has said he'll give the iPhones to three online collaborators who helped him on his quest, which, all told, took 500 hours to complete. For his trouble, the 17-year-old Hotz is also walking away with a paid consulting job with CertiCell.
Though CertiCell claims to currently have no plans to "commercialize Mr. Hotz' discovery," we don't think it'll be long before we see iPhones pouring out of Kentucky that operate on T-Mobile's network and with foreign carriers. Until now, the rest of the world has been frozen out from using the iPhone because of Apple's U.S.-only deal with AT&T. Apple has been shopping the iPhone around Europe in search of a sweetheart deal similar to the one it struck with AT&T, but Hotz has changed the game completely. If users can buy an iPhone and use it anywhere on any network, Apple doesn't have as many bargaining chips as it once did.
For its part, the Internet isn't waiting for CertiCell to begin selling unlocked iPhones. A $100,000 reward has been offered by an anonymous source to the first person to give away an unlocking solution free to the masses. Since Hotz unlocked his iPhone, a few different unlocking methods have surfaced, most of which require you to pop open the iPhone and monkey around with the wiring. Two companies have come forward claiming to have developed software-only methods, though they're selling those secrets to the public for a fee. We'll see if $100,000 is enough to convince them to give it away. After all, that's more than enough for a Nissan and few iPhones.
From AOL News and Engadget
Related Links:
_thumbnail.jpg "Vintage Keyboards")
