2007年VOA标准英语-iPhone Modified for Any Mobile Service（在线收听）

By Todd Grosshans
Washington
06 September 2007
 

The Apple iPhone
The Apple iPhone
The very popular iPhone must be used with the not so popular cellular network AT&T. People using other networks must break their contracts to switch to AT&T. That can cost up to $250. But a teenager has modified the computer code in an iPhone, freeing it from its corporate master and letting it work with other carriers. VOA's Todd Grosshans has more.

Apple advertisements read: "There's never been an iPod that can do this.

17-year-old George Hotz
17-year-old wiz kid, George Hotz
No there certainly has not. The iPhone, the most hyped mobile phone ever, has been hacked by this guy: 17-year-old-George Hotz, making the phone potentially usable on networks all over the world. "It's very technical, and it requires opening up your phone, soldering a wire, the two points, and then running some software that I wrote, putting your iPhone back together. Inserting any sim card that you want, and then just using it."

It can cost over $200 to get out of a contract with a cell phone company and switch to another. So people pining for an iPhone but stuck with, say, a T-Mobile contract, are out of luck unless they pay the penalty fee. In this case, Hotz placed a T-Mobile SIM card, a small chip that identifies a phone to a network, in an iPhone. Voila...This was a high tech feat using some low-tech tools.

The trick to opening the iPhone case -- there's an official Apple case opener tool -- guitar picks. "Some guy told me," explained Hotz, "that when we first started, when I first got the iPhone, 'Hey dude, to open it up, just slide a guitar pick right in there.' Sure enough, pops right open."

A mobile phone repair company in Kentucky gave Hotz a car, a Nissan 350z, for his hacked phone.  CertiCell says they bought the phone as a piece of cell phone history and has no plans to commercially market the phone or its reworked software.

  原文地址：http://www.tingroom.com/voastandard/2007/9/43075.html