soft-unlocking nearing an end?

[fullmanfullninj]

As the title suggests...do you guys think soft unlocking is coming to an end? Ultrasn0w hasn't been updated to any new basebands for over a year now due to the dev who got it to unlock 01.59 basebands being out of the scene.

Fast forward from that ultrasn0w release and you have Gevey SIM cards which are pretty much untethered (furiousmod/Gevey Ultra on 4.3.5 and below). Now users can buy iP4S devices factory unlocked (albeit for a bit more).

I dunno, I never was optimistic about a new soft unlock for the iP4 when I got mine at the beginning of 2011. But there was always a bit of hope...but now that I reflect back upon it, there doesn't seem to be much need. I'm sure users would rather have their A5s jailbroken and stuff. Soft unlocks just don't seem like it's worth the time for devs to develop, as much as I would love one. I mean, for iPhones in Europe, you can request your carrier to unlock it as well.

Thoughts?

 

[TriJetHero]

thoughts:

The A5 JB is imment, probably within a week.

Musclenerd has been working an an unlock for the 4S for awhile.
"Crazy Thanksgiving weekend! Very promising 4S unlock (http://twitpic.com/7kku4t) is in the works (Not i4, just 4S..that's crazy part)
27 november"

I would say the unlock for the 4S will not be far behind the JB.

So no its not dead at all!

 

[fullmanfullninj]

Yeah, I remember reading his tweet and pod2g's tweet about A5. But look at how it's slowed down. I'm not calling it dead (yet ) but 1.25 years down the road of the last ultrasn0w iteration, we finally see musclenerd's potential soft unlock.

I'm excited for it, hopefully he is progressing well with it. But the time in between is rather long. A majority (actually all with the exception of the original 01.59) of iOS4's basebands seemingly stumped devs in terms of an unlock. I still remember the earlier days when someone (i forgot who) promised a soft unlock for then-baseband 03.10 or 02.10? Never came and no one knows why.

While it's great that musclenerd is progressing, it just seems like Apple is catching up too and beginning to put an end to soft unlocking. iOS 4 seemingly ended soft unlocks...1.25 years later musclenerd potentially has one. But who knows what future iOS5 basebands will render this unlock unusable and stump devs once again. You know what I mean? Haha. Just seems like Apple is beginning to be on top of their game (even closing the furiousmod / Gevey exploit in iOS5b2).

 

[Grolubao]

I prefer buying factory unlocked not to worry about this, but I live abroad, so it makes sense that it's mandatory the unlock

 

[TC25]

This topic has come up several times before, but with all the duplicate threads, it quickly gets pushed off the first page.

Forget about whether it's technically possible, the fact is the market for both the software unlock and the Gevey SIM is disappearing. Why? The availability of factory unlocked phones. Now that US carriers are offering unlocked phones, why bother with either of the aforementioned solutions? If I really needed an unlocked phone, I would not depend on (1) Small group of hackers to develop a software unlock or (2) A kludge solution, my opinion, like Gevey.