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Teenager Unlocks iPhone, Now on eBay for $2,750

Friday, August 24th, 2007 at 2:45 PM - by

A New Jersey teenager spent 500 hours over the summer developing a technique to unlock his iPhone. He collaborated online with several others, including two Russians, and the iPhone, now enabled for T-mobile, is for sale on eBay for US$2,750. The history of the exercise was detailed in George Hotz's Blog.

"The current method involves taking apart your phone and doing some complicated soldering, with a high probability of a bricked phone. Although after the phone is unlocked all the hardware can be removed," Mr. Hotz wrote.

Mr. Hotz noted that the technique he used is very similar to previously developed methods to unlock the Siemens phones that have the S-Gold2 chipset. That precedent may have helped kickstart the project.

In his Blog, Mr. Hotz noted that he leaves for college in a few days and said: "I have no intention of ever starting an unlocking service." The phone is currently for sale on eBay and the bidding as of this writing is at US$2,750.00.

In the process of reporting on this, the Associated Press, noted that last year Congress specifically excluded cell-phone unlocking from coverage by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). So while what Mr. Hotz did was fun, educational (for him and Apple) and terminated his warranty, it seems to have been perfectly legal.

19 comments from the community.

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Aug 24, 2007 3:48 pm

He might to too late to get a big payday if people read this:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/24/iphone-unlocked-atandt-loses-iphone-exclusivity-august-24-2007/

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Sir Harry Flashman said:

member since 08 Feb 2007 with 792 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Fri Aug 24, 2007 4:14 pm

So he is asking $2750.00 for something that it took 500 hours to create. If he gets his asking price he worked for $5.50 an hour. He could have put his talents into a tech job over summer and maybe make twice that, if not more.

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Aug 24, 2007 4:20 pm

Over 3 thousand now, don't think he's gonna miss out on his pay day.

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Aug 24, 2007 4:50 pm

Sir Harry Flashman wrote:
So he is asking $2750.00 for something that it took 500 hours to create. If he gets his asking price he worked for $5.50 an hour. He could have put his talents into a tech job over summer and maybe make twice that, if not more.

He was, you know, tooling around with the summer's hottest device and was able to break it open and unlock the device. Now he has blogs and tech sites around the country drawing attention to the work he did. That intangible attention is worth more than extra thousand or two you say he could have gotten. Of course, the bid is up to $4,550 now, so you math is already invalid with about a week left on the auction. That's $9.10 an hour, but still more valuable is that he's not even in college yet and has a reputation in the tech industry.

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Aug 24, 2007 5:22 pm

Okay, now it is $10,000. This kid knows how to make good use of his time.

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Sir Harry Flashman said:

member since 08 Feb 2007 with 792 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Fri Aug 24, 2007 6:18 pm

Anonymous wrote:
Sir Harry Flashman wrote:
So he is asking $2750.00 for something that it took 500 hours to create. If he gets his asking price he worked for $5.50 an hour. He could have put his talents into a tech job over summer and maybe make twice that, if not more.

He was, you know, tooling around with the summer's hottest device and was able to break it open and unlock the device. Now he has blogs and tech sites around the country drawing attention to the work he did. That intangible attention is worth more than extra thousand or two you say he could have gotten. Of course, the bid is up to $4,550 now, so you math is already invalid with about a week left on the auction. That's $9.10 an hour, but still more valuable is that he's not even in college yet and has a reputation in the tech industry.

Good points

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Intruder said:

member since 07 Jul 2004 with 3149 posts, TMO Mac Specialist, send him a message or view his profile

Fri Aug 24, 2007 7:27 pm

Does anybody really think that the $10,000 bid is legitimate?

It is being run up by kids bidding with no intent to pay. Happens all the time on eBay.

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Aug 24, 2007 7:33 pm

it's up to 25 million.......is this a joke?????

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gslusher said:

member since 13 Nov 2002 with 2088 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Fri Aug 24, 2007 8:05 pm

Anonymous wrote:
it's up to 25 million.......is this a joke?????

It's up to $99,999,999.00 now. Yes, that's a joke, but a sick one that can end up costing the jokester/bidder a lot of money, perhaps even jail time. When you submit a bid on eBay, it's a form of contract. You CAN withdraw a bid under some circumstances, but not always. What's more surprising is that, apparently, some of the insane bidders are experienced at eBay. One cannot see their IDs, but one can see the feedback score range via the colored stars. One who bid $28,100,000 has a score between 500 and 999. That's a lot of auctions, as one can get only one point per unique buyer or seller. Also, to bid more than $15,000, you have to submit a credit card or verify your ID. (Most experienced buyers and sellers have already done this, however.)

It will be interesting to see what eBay does.

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Intruder said:

member since 07 Jul 2004 with 3149 posts, TMO Mac Specialist, send him a message or view his profile

Fri Aug 24, 2007 10:48 pm

Those are most likely hijacked accounts.

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A guest said: (hide)

Sat Aug 25, 2007 1:59 am

The news of this auction was on CNN, so it's possible that some of the million plus bids are real. I'm very interested in what happens with this.

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Intruder said:

member since 07 Jul 2004 with 3149 posts, TMO Mac Specialist, send him a message or view his profile

Sat Aug 25, 2007 12:14 pm

There is not a snowballs chance in hell that those bids are real. Nobody is so stupid as to buy a readlily available $600 item for $99M.

The auction will get pulled.

EDIT: As of 0915 PDT, the auction was pulled and reset. Price is $540 with no bids. Reason: fraudulent bidding.

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gslusher said:

member since 13 Nov 2002 with 2088 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Sat Aug 25, 2007 12:42 pm

Now, there are a lot of auctions of unlocked iPhones on eBay, as well as the Chinese clones.

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akcarver said:

member since 23 Oct 2001 with 144 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Sat Aug 25, 2007 1:22 pm

Yeah, the auction's been pulled due to multiple fraudulent bids. You'll have to contact him directly if you want to purchase it for the low low price of $540

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A guest said: (hide)

Sat Aug 25, 2007 8:19 pm

Saw on ebay got up to $99,999,999 today listing is over, what happened? seller is no longer an ebay user.

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Intruder said:

member since 07 Jul 2004 with 3149 posts, TMO Mac Specialist, send him a message or view his profile

Sat Aug 25, 2007 8:25 pm

Anonymous wrote:
Saw on ebay got up to $99,999,999 today listing is over, what happened? seller is no longer an ebay user.

Because the vast majority of the bids were bogus.

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A guest said: (hide)

Sun Aug 26, 2007 1:03 am

It isn't worth anything more than the original price minus a hundred bucks for being used. If he really hacked it, it is worth less because now the warranty is no good either.

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A guest said: (hide)

Sun Aug 26, 2007 10:47 pm

The phone is worth what people are willing to pay for it. So morons were able to screw things up for the kid this time, but after reading some of the postings on this site, the morons arn't limited to ebay!

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Intruder said:

member since 07 Jul 2004 with 3149 posts, TMO Mac Specialist, send him a message or view his profile

Mon Sep 10, 2007 8:49 pm

Anonymous wrote:
The phone is worth what people are willing to pay for it. So morons were able to screw things up for the kid this time, but after reading some of the postings on this site, the morons arn't limited to ebay!

Nope. Some come here posting as guests.

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