The iPhone 4S has sold like hotcakes in the first couple of days of its availability and we have no reason to believe the interest for the handset has slowed down afterwards, but, sadly, it's still not offered on T-Mobile, the US fourth-largest carrier. To use it on T-Mo, or any other GSM-based network you'd need to unlock the iPhone 4S, which up until now was a daring task.
Michael Capozzi of the Chronic Dev Team however stumbled upon a very easy way to unlock the iPhone 4S (and iOS 5-injected iPhone 4 or iPhone 3GS for that matter). It doesn't require you to jailbreak the device, but it would require you to have an AT&T SIM card. We can imagine a big part of US users wishing to unlock to be on AT&T, so this shouldn't be the biggest hurdle. So after inserting your SIM card, you'd just need to follow the instructions below:
Insert original carrier AT&T SIM card
Dial 611 for AT&T customer service hotline and drop the call
Turn on Airplane Mode
Take out AT&T SIM card
Insert T-Mobile SIM card
Make sure WiFi is off ( also tap on ‘Forget this Network” to make sure it doesn’t connect automatically later)
Switch off Airplane Mode and iPhone will search for network. This is followed by the Apple splash screen appearing.
Activation Required will be displayed on the screen
EDGE network will activate automatically – notice the ‘E’ on the top left corner of the screen
Wait for about 20-30 seconds and turn off the phone
Turn on iPhone and the same Activation Required screen will be displayed
When you see one signal bar, tap on Use Cellular Connection
Eject SIM card
Activation Required screen will be displayed the second time
Insert SIM card
Unlocked!
No jailbreaking and now complicated hacking as you can see for yourselves. Now, we should also note that this would need to be redone every time you reset the handset, but that's the price you currently have to pay for simplicity. Finally, we can't help but wonder how did Capozzi exactly came up with this unlock method, but what matters is that it should work. Check out the instructions below and try it on your own risk – it looks very safe, but there's always the chance of messing something up, so some caution would help.
