Art Of Geek

A glossary of terms for iPhone hacking newbies

November 19th, 2007 at 02:26pm madgunde

For those not up on the iPhone hacking lingo, here’s a glossary of important technical terms related to hacking and/or using the iPhone. If you’re fairly tech savvy or have already done some research into hacking the iPhone, you probably won’t benefit from reading on. If you are completely new to the iPhone and hacking however, this may make it easier to understand a lot of the stuff you will read on the internet about unlocking or hacking the iPhone, including some of my own articles, which often assume you already know the basics. I was inspired to write this glossary after I noticed a lot of the same questions being asked in article comments and internet forums.

This really is ‘the basics’ and is designed to be a README FIRST for someone who just started thinking about buying and unlocking an iPhone. This glossary assumes you know what an iPhone is, are pretty familiar with cell phones and their features and are a competent computer user. If you’re the type of person who can’t get anything done on your computer or cell phone without calling someone for help, then this isn’t for you, but if you were that technically challenged, you probably wouldn’t be reading this in the first place.

So without further ado, on to the glossary!

Jailbreak

Apple designed the iPhone to make it difficult to hack for both security reasons, and so they could maintain greater control over how it was used. As such, they have not provided any means for end users to modify the built-in OS X operating system or install additional applications. Jailbreaking refers to the act of circumventing those controls or locks to enable write access the the iPhone’s OS and storage. An iPhone that has had this done to it is considered jailbroken.

Activation

Activation is the act of plugging your iPhone into your computer and running iTunes in order to ‘activate’ it’s features, something you need to do when you first take it out of the box or restore it’s firmware using iTunes. Activation in iTunes is usually a one-click process, but only if you have an officially supported carrier SIM card inserted. If it detects your SIM card is not an approved one, it will simply not allow you to activate your iPhone, which makes it pretty much useless except for placing emergency calls (e.g. 911). This is where the activation crack is needed. You need to jailbreak before you can crack it’s activation since it requires you to modify the iPhone’s software. Often the tool you use to jailbreak will also crack the activation.

Unlock

Most cell phone providers in North America sell mobile phones that have been locked to only work on their own cellular network in order to make it inconvenient for customers to switch to competing cellular providers. The iPhone is no exception. So if you buy an iPhone from the U.S., it’s locked to only work on the AT&T network in the U.S., even though the GSM technology the iPhone was built on was originally designed to make it simple to switch networks simply by swapping out a little chip called a SIM card. Basically, if a non-AT&T SIM card is inserted in an unmodified iPhone, it will be rejected by the phone and you won’t be able to connect to any cell phone network for voice or data. Unlocking is the act of modifying an iPhone to make it function with SIM cards from other GSM providers.

There are several different methods that can be used to unlock an iPhone, including a hardware unlock which requires you to physically open the iPhone and solder some connections, a “TurboSIM” method, which uses a special SIM card which must be purchased and most popularly, software unlocks which simply require you to run an unlock program on a jailbroken and activated iPhone. There are both commercial (e.g. iPhoneSimFree) and free (e.g. AnySIM, iUnlock) software unlock solutions available.

Firmware

The firmware is simply the iPhone’s operating system and software that makes the iPhone work. Apple periodically releases firmware updates which fix bugs and add new features via iTunes for Mac OS X or Windows. So far, Apple has not forced users to update their iPhone to newer firmware versions, but that doesn’t mean it might not happen in the future. Updating is of course mandatory if you want to take advantage of any new features they contain.

So far, each new iPhone firmware update Apple has released has undone the jailbreak and activation crack, requiring new solutions to be developed. Even restoring your iPhone with the current firmware requires you to re-apply the current jailbreak and activation crack, which sometimes requires you to downgrade your firmware first. The unlock may or may not have to be re-applied however, depending on which solution you use. So far the iPhoneSimFree solution has survived every firmware update Apple has released to date, and this is the one I’ve used on mine and my wife’s iPhones. Newer free unlock programs seem to survive now as well, but don’t have as proven a track record as the commercial iPhoneSimFree solution and even got a bit of negative publicity for rendering iPhones inoperable when firmware version 1.1.1 was first released, although a fix was eventually released weeks later.

Keep in mind that just because an unlock has survived firmware updates in the past, that’s no guarantee that it will survive all future firmware updates, but it does bode well. As always, unless you’re the adventurous type and doesn’t mind being the guinea pig, wait for others to update their firmware and run the new jailbreak/activation cracks and give the all-clear before proceeding with it yourself.

Baseband modem firmware

Like most complex gadgets these days, the iPhone is made up of many smaller complex components, each of which may have it’s own little bits of software driving them. One such component is the iPhone’s cellular modem or ‘baseband modem’, which is what allows the iPhone to connect and communicate via voice and data on the GSM network. The baseband modem has it’s own firmware (often referred to simply as baseband, or the baseband) that is periodically updated by the main iPhone firmware updates. You shouldn’t really have to worry about dealing with this at all, unless something has gone horribly wrong and you now either have a corrupt or damaged baseband modem firmware, or a firmware version mismatch, which happens when you downgrade the iPhone’s firmware in iTunes, since iTunes will not downgrade the baseband modem firmware. In either of these cases, symptoms will generally be problems or a complete inability to accept/make incoming or outgoing calls, SMS messages and access EDGE data services.

EDGE

EDGE is the cellular data network that the iPhone uses to connect to the internet from almost anywhere you can make a cell phone call. Any iPhone data application such as email, Safari, the Stocks and Weather widgets, YouTube and iTunes Store will use the EDGE network, if available, to connect to the internet and send/retrieve information. Note that like all other cellular services, you do have to pay extra for EDGE data usage, and it can be VERY expensive, especially if you don’t have an EDGE data plan, or you go over your plan limit. You can check your EDGE data usage under Settings–>Usage from your iPhone’s main screen. Accessing the EDGE data network normally requires you to have the correct APN settings entered in Settings–>General–>Network–>EDGE. If you want to make sure you never access the EDGE network, to avoid usage charges for instance, simply leave these settings blank.

Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi is your common wireless computer network that many homes, schools and businesses use to network computers. The iPhone will prompt you to connect to any available Wi-Fi network it detects when it attempts to connect to the internet BEFORE it will use an available EDGE network. This is great, since using Wi-Fi doesn’t incur any airtime charges on your cellular phone bill. The downside is free Wi-Fi networks may be limited where you go, especially outside of urban areas. Some Wi-Fi networks cost money to use, but are easy to spot, since you’ll be prompted by a web page to log in or purchase time when you try to visit any page in Safari. Many hotels, airports, coffee shops, conference centres and even some large urban areas have such paid wireless networks available and they can be really worthwhile if you have some time to kill or really need to get access to some web sites where EDGE would be too expensive. You’ll have to do the math and decide for yourself depending on your carrier’s rates and your data plan, if any.

Epilogue

I’m guessing that if/when my carrier here in Canada (Rogers) officially begins offering the iPhone for sale, that I will no longer have to deal with cracking the activation of my iPhone since iTunes will recognize my Rogers SIM card as an approved one. From that point on, if I have no desire to install my own software hacks, I should be able to upgrade my firmware without having to worry about re-hacking my iPhone. Since Apple has already committed to opening the iPhone to 3rd party software development beginning sometime early next year, my days of hacking my iPhone to install the programs I want on it will hopefully be numbered. I really look forward to the day when updating my iPhone’s firmware is as simple as Apple intended, but in the meantime, I’m thankful to all those hard working individuals who have made it possible for me to own and use this wonderful device in Canada now.

Entry Filed under: Apple, Computing, Gadgets, Software, Tips, iPhone, iPod/iTunes