How to add the "Phone" to the iPhone

In the previous iPhone series I covered how to activate & jailbreak the iPhone 1.1.2 OTB (Out of The Box) on Windows. However, there was no software trick to unlock the device and use the phone functionality if the iPhone runs the 4.6 bootloader version. Although some contests gave an incentive too find a solution, it seems there is no software trick available yet. Therefore, my friend Esteban ordered and recently got his iSIM, a hardware SIM "card" that can be used together with your standard SIM card in order to use the phone with mobile operators different from AT&T (or the other Apple's European telecom partners).

One of the first set of tools you may want to install inside the iPhone is the BSD Subsystem. Connect to the wireless network from the iPhone, and select the "Installer" icon on the Springboard. Click on the "Install" button, go to "System", and select and install the "BSD Subsystem" (v.2.0 at this time). This package includes the standard Unix tools for the iPhone.

If you (still) doubt about your bootloader version , you can check it following these steps (they are not required to use the iSIM):

1. From step 4 of the guide, we have an SSH server running on the iPhone. Turn it on through the SSH icon on the Springboard.
2. You need to find and download from the Internet a tool called "bbupdater". Google is your friend! It seems the file MD5 value is 846e1ddada152947cc317a23de671525.
   
3. Enable your wireless network, and connect to it from the iPhone. Then, transfer the "bbupdater" tool from your computer to the iPhone as root (into "/usr/bin") using a SSH client for Windows, such as "pscp" (PuTTY): "pscp bbupdater root@10.0.0.100:/usr/bin"
   
4. Login as root on the iPhone through SSH using PuTTY, change the permissions on the file to make it executable, and run the "bbupdater" tool. The last line of the output displays the bootloader version.

After checking the version, restart the iPhone by typing the "reboot" command. You can turn off the SSH server if you are not going to connect back to it.

The process to use the iSIM and unlock the iPhone by hardware is very simple:

1. Prepare your standard SIM to "accommodate" the iSIM. You will need to follow the instructions from your iSIM vendor, that in Esteban's case, required to cut a corner of the SIM to fit and install both together inside the iPhone.
   
2. Install the iWorld application. Connect to the wireless network from the iPhone, and select the "Installer" icon on the Springboard. Click on the "Install" button, go to "Tweaks (1.1.2)", and select and install "iWorld". This package fixes a bug in the iPhone that limits the device to use the phone or SMS capabilities with non-supported SIMs. If you try to call to any number at this point without iWorld, the phone or SMS applications crash.
3. Once installed, select the new "iWorld" icon from the Springboard and select your country. The iPhone will reboot to set your country settings.
   
4. Click on the "Phone" icon on the Springboard, type a number, and... establish your first call from your iPhone!!
   

NOTE: At the time of this writing, the "Installer" will ask you to update to a newer version, 3.0. I recommend you to update.

It is important not to confuse the iSIM hardware SIM card (or TurboSIM, etc) with the iSIM software tool. The iSIM tool is available through the Makayama repository, "http://tinyurl.com/2t8cax" (add this URL to your "Installer" sources if you want to use it) and provides capabilities to manage the contacts between the iPhone and the SIM card. Go to "Installer", select the "Install" button, then "Utilities" and install "iSIM" (v1.03 at this time).

The next thing I'm going to get from Apple is the i-Jam ;)