By now you are probably sick of hearing about the iPhone, and what’s an iPhone doing on a computer blog anyway? (It has an Operating System). So, how about the Palm Centro? It is a really cute little phone with a QWERTY keypad. There’s one somewhere in the pile on my desk, recently unlocked for someone. The Centro has a real Operating System, the Palm OS, which has been around since 2002, but has had multiple revisions since then. Ah, but the Centro only has EDGE data support, not 3G – it doesn’t really need it with a 2.25 inch screen with a resolution of  320 by 320 pixels.

Hang on, there’s a message for me. Okay, the Apple iPhone 3G it is then.

The second generation iPhone, the iPhone 3G has proved much more difficult to unlock via software. The “iPhone Dev Team” (no affiliation with Apple) finally released a software unlock for the iPhone 3G earlier this month. A SIM card based unlock has been available since not long after the iPhone was released.

With the official Apple App Store having hundreds of applications, why bother with Jailbreaking? Simply because the applications available to a Jailbroken phone are able to do things prohibited by Apple, such as tether your iPhone to a laptop and use it as a modem.

Unlocking is still done for the same reasons – to use the iPhone 3G on the carrier of your choice. However, here in the US you lose the 3G speeds because T-Mobile and AT&T make use of different UMTS frequency bands for 3G support.