Guide to unlocking your iPhone with a Turbo SIM
Thu, Aug 16, 2007
Since receiving my Turbo SIM yesterday and successfully getting it to work with O2 Ireland, I thought I’d write up a clear, easy to understand guide outlining the process.
Disclaimer: If you break something it’s your own stupid fault jerkface.
What you will need:
An iPhone
Your iPhone will need to be Jailbroken, have SSH installed and it will need to have been activated using at&t’s ICCID (use iASign). If you don’t know what any of this means, do some reading. There are a million zillion guides out there explaining the procedures for doing these things. If, after reading, you still don’t know what any of this means, this method is not for you. Wait for a software based unlock.
A Turbo SIM - Available here (sold out at the time of writing)
As explained in previous blog posts, this little device is sandwiched between your carriers SIM and itself. It’s capable of running small SIM level applications, one of which, Applesaft, is capable of unlocking the iPhone by exploiting a flaw in the iPhone’s baseband. I’m not going to explain how this works because anytime I do I get strange looks from people as though I’d just asked them if they’d ever been abducted by aliens. At the time of writing this, the poor small team at Bladox churning these little devices out have become inundated with orders and have had to temporarily close their online store.
Some software
applesaft-0.92.tar.gz & turbo-cable-utils-iPhone-0.7.0-rev1.tar.gz
Steps:
- Extract the contents of turbo-cable-utils-iPhone-0.7.0-rev1.tar.gz to somewhere on your computer
- Upload the contents of /bin-iPhone from the file you just unpacked to /bin on your iPhone (through SCP or SSHFS, whichever you prefer)
- SSH into your iPhone
- Run “cd /bin/”
- Now you’ll need to change the permissions for each of the binary applications which you just uploaded to /bin/ using the command “chmod +x turbo-appname“. There are 10 applications in total which you need to do this for.
- Extract the contents of applesaft-0.92.tar.gz and copy the applesaft.trb file containted within to your /bin/ folder on your iPhone the same as you uploaded the turbo cable utilities mentioned above. You can remove this and the turbo-whatever files later. Run “chmod 777 /bin/applesaft.trb” to give the file the permissions it needs.
- Download and edit (or edit on the iPhone locally if you have something like VIM installed) the file com.apple.CommCenter.plist located in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ on your iPhone.
- Disable the commcenter by placing “<key>Disabled</key><true/>” after “<key>OnDemand</key><false/>” and copy the file back/save it.
- Reboot the iPhone.
- Now comes the tricky bit. Carefully CAREFULLY remove your Turbo SIM from its plastic casing. Seriously, Jesus Christ be careful. Oh god you’re going to break it WHAT ARE YOU DOING.
- Take your at&t SIM card out of your iPhone using a paperclip and carefully trim it according the the printed instructions on the Turbo SIM’s packaging. Don’t be afraid to trim it really tight around the SIM’s contacts for a snug fit.
- Carefully sandwich the trimmed at&t card with your Turbo SIM and place them both into the iPhone’s SIM tray. You’ll have to be gentle here as there’s just barely enough clearance for both devices to fit snuggly into the SIM tray.
- The carrier name area at the top left of the screen will continue to say “No Service”, this is fine. If it says “No SIM” the contacts between your SIM and the Turbo SIM aren’t properly seated, fiddle with it a bit to make sure they’re square atop of one another.
- SSH into your iPhone again and run the following command to ensure the iPhone can communicate properly with the Turbo SIM - “turbo-info”. Assuming everything is correct, this command should return “OK” along with the serial of your Turbo SIM.
- Now, lets install the applesaft application. Run the following:
turbo-app /bin/applesaft.trb
If all goes well you should receive an “OK” after some initial messages about the modem being initialised. - Alter the com.apple.CommCenter.plist file we edited above and remove the line we added “<key>Disabled</key><true/>” and reboot.
- On your iPhone, go to Settings>Phone>SIM Applications>Apple Saft and press “SET”. A prompt should indicate that the IMSI and ICCID of the at&t SIM has been read and recorded successfully.
- Now, remove the Turbo SIM and at&t SIM.
- Trim your carriers SIM card just like the at&t one and insert the sandwiched pair into the iPhone.
- Reboot the iPhone.
- Pray.
- All going well, your iPhone should now properly register on your carriers network and everything should pretty much work straight away. To get EDGE/GPRS working, alter the settings in Settings>General>EDGE to use your carriers APN/Username/Password.
- Pat yourself on the back.
Tags: Turbo SIM
August 20th, 2007 at 1:44 am
Hi again:
in this moment where I can buy a TurboSim card Bladox, the web page “BLadox”, for shop is closed
August 21st, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Thanks Jason, this is a great article and really good news for us in the UK who can’t yet get the iPhone. One small question for you; where did you source the iPhone?
August 22nd, 2007 at 11:51 am
Hey Ben,
I had an uncle in New York who very kindly picked one up and sent to back to me.
August 26th, 2007 at 7:45 am
Hi Jason,
Your site is very helpful, however I am having trouble with Tsim+At&t sim card together part. I never get “No Service” message, I just get nothing in the corner, just get 4 little bar.
How tight does the TurboSim and AT&T Sim card have to be together?
August 27th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Thanks! A real help! I’ve basically spent the last 24 hours on this and was having problems with the last push. Now I get o2 - uk in the top left hand corner. Weeeeeeeeeeee!
August 27th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
Anybody have any luck with O2 gprs?
The settings don’t seem to work for me
August 28th, 2007 at 9:04 am
@Shad
I’m sure you’ve probably already fixed this, but the contacts need to be aligned pretty much perfectly. Even a millimeter off and you’ll run into trouble.
@Diz
Assuming O2 Ireland and O2 UK use the same APN, the APN should be “internet” and the username and password fields can be left blank.
September 6th, 2007 at 4:58 am
Hi Jason, thanks for the reply. I got everything working, sms, call-in, call-out. I do have 1 major problem thought, when I dock my ipod with iTunes, my 8GB capacity is only 265MB. Should I restore the original settings by clicking Restore or what should I do?
September 10th, 2007 at 3:51 am
hi, I used Turbo Sim method with my iphone.
And I want to have Nes Roms with it too.
Will I re-lock my iphone if I use ifantastic to unshackle my iphone during the procedure ?
September 10th, 2007 at 3:53 am
As I’m a mac user. Or any alternate method to add Nes Roms to my iphone? Actually I ‘m affraid of re-lock my iphone if I use ifantastic to do file management…
September 10th, 2007 at 9:51 am
@Shad
A restore is probably in order. Your Turbo SIM will continue to work after a restore but you’ll need to activate your iPhone once more.
@Ken
If you use ifantastic to unshackle your iPhone your device shouldn’t relock. A better option to transfer files to the iPhone is to install OpenSSH and use Macfuse/SSHFS to connect to the device to modify files. It’ll mount the iPhone as a normal readable/writable filesystem.
September 15th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Jason, would it possible to get you to unlock the phone for me? I have the ipone and the turbosim but am not sure about trying it myself. could you give me a ring or send a text on 086********. The lads in the apple shop here said that they will do it but I would prefer to have it done on a pc
September 16th, 2007 at 4:02 am
Dear @Shad… i have one question: I have transfered 10 songs (everyone with an own cover) to my iphone.
when i play them and turn my iphone to widescreen the coverflow function doesn´t work! it shows only the cover of the current song - but no coverflow like in iTunes.
Wouild you please help me to solve this question?
I used turboSim.
December 17th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Thanks for the guide, worked perfectly :)
December 20th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Jason i have 3 iphones and i am useless on a computer,would it be possible for you to unlock them for a fee my mobile is **********
December 20th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
@Liam,
I don’t unlock iPhone’s for anyone anymore. If they’ve been recently purchased it’s likely they are impossible to unlock at this time (well, without a SIM proxy).
January 8th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
I have just got my turbosim and i’m quite impressed, a place in dublin have them - phonevolts.ie
February 14th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
No need for Turbo-SIM, X-Sim or Stealth-SIM’s anymore. I ordered a stealth-sim from ebay but got sent an x-sim which didn’t work. But since then I have unlocked 1.1.3 running on Vodafone in Ireland including 3G/EDGE working. No other device comes close to the iPhone.
June 4th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
hi, I have unlocked my iphone, removed my at&t sim card and inserted my “orange” sim card from the UK… now what?