CutYourSim & Others Offering Permanent iPhone Unlock Service, No Jailbreak Required

Tired of waiting tirelessly for a version of UltraSn0w to come out that supports your updated baseband?

Is your iPhone 4 more like an iPod touch because you can’t use it to make traditional phone calls?

Ladies and gents, your worries might be over, that is if you have $169.99 lying around. CutYourSim.com is now offering permanent iPhone unlocks, no jailbreaking required.

You can even update your baseband, and your iPhone will remain unlocked; what’s more, is that it can be unlocked remotely.

Just how is this being accomplished, and better yet, is it even legit?

Obviously these are a few questions that anyone who is considering parting with $169.99 would like to know. Per CutYourSim.com:

The solution we offer is a permanent solution. Jailbreaking, or unauthorized hacks are NOT required. This unlock will carry on forever, you can now update your phone to the newest version without worrying about waiting for an unauthorized unlock to be released. The unlock will work with any iPhone version, and any baseband version, no need to worry about updating to the latest version anymore, your phone will be unlocked forever!!!!!

100% Guaranteed to Work!  This method is 100% Guaranteed, and the only time we will offer a refund is if you provide video proof that the phone did not get permanently unlocked with our method.

Okay sounds good, but how can we be sure? Thankfully, a few high profile developers from the iPhone Dev Team, the folks behind the jailbreak unlock UltraSnow, are vouching that CutYourSim’s methodology for unlocking your iPhone is legit.

On the other hand, they also remind us that Apple has the ability to go in and revoke an unlock if they wanted to.

The process is apparently accomplished via whitelisting the iPhone’s IMEI — the number used by GSM carriers to identify valid devices on their network.

For that reason, you might want to keep in mind some of the caveats that go along with pursuing this method of unlocking, including the possibility of losing your unlock just by updating your iPhone’s firmware.

So while it looks as if it’s legit, any repercussions from using this method on your iPhone are still relatively unknown at this time.

One thing you can do to as a precautionary measure is to backup the activation auth (NCK) with the SAM tool available on the following Cydia repo: http://repo.bingner.com. You can read more about that here.

According to @veeence:

It will make sure you will remain unlocked when Apple “blacklists” your IMEI. It serves as some sort of NCK SHSH blob to ensure activation.

Of course that means that you would have to jailbreak your iPhone, but if you’re considering this, you most likely already do that anyway.

If your iPhone has basically been serving as a paperweight for quite some time, it might be worth taking the plunge. In the case of CutYourSim.com, the turnaround time is said to be about 2-5 days.

Will you be trying this method to unlock your iPhone, or will you continue to wait for a free software unlock?

[iClarified]