It appears that the iPhone unlock software does work, as shown by Mr. Paul Taylor, the first person to purchase and successfully install the unlock. A few things did go wrong but after some troubleshooting, it was discovered that the software unlock does not work with all SIM configurations. Basically, the PIN in the SIM card needs to be disabled by another phone before you can attempt to use that SIM on the iPhone.

The iPhone SIM Free software is going to go retail soon (at $99 in the US and around $50 in Australia), but the question remains: is it worth buying?

PROS

The problem encountered by Paul Taylor turned out to be a bug in the code that was related to whether or not the SIM card’s PIN is unlocked. It has been resolved by the iPhone SIM Free team and the solution they provided in the new simfree.app is universal. This means that even if your SIM security can’t be disabled, the software will still work.

The iPhone Development team doesn’t intend to reverse-engineer the hack, even though the unlock software is based on their work. Also, the iPhone SIM Free guys have been verified as legit.

CONS

There’s no guarantee that the software is future-proof, meaning if Apple’s firmware version 1.03 proves to be hostile towards the unlock, the software may no longer work.

If any new problems are discovered, it may not be resolved as quickly since technical support is the responsibility of the reseller. Resellers, however, expected more support from the iPhone SIM Free team; Paul Taylor had to get help from Gizmodo for the installation process and to figure out why the unlock didn’t work.

The iPhone Dev Team is hard at work on the “true” free unlock so you might as well just be a little patient and wait for that to come out instead of shelling out cash for the iPhone SIM Free. After all, it’s not like the iPhone’s going to disappear!

[via gizmodo]