Kiwi successfully hacks first NZ iPhone

A Kiwi software developer has become part of a global elite after successfully hacking an Apple iPhone allowing him to use the device on Vodafone New Zealand's network.

John Ballinger, a director of IT Auckland company Bluespark, says the hack took him six hours of hard, sometimes painful work to get the phone apart and to accept a Vodafone SIM card.

Ballinger and friend Shaun O'Donnell's achievement is probably the first in New Zealand and one of a small, but growing band around the world.

The hack essentially follows the groundbreaking work of US teenager George Hotz, who was the first to successfully unlock the iPhone so it could be used on networks other than AT&T in the US. The 17-year-old famously swapped the enabled 8GB phone for a brand new Nissan 350Z and a paid consulting job with Certicell, a mobile phone repair company. Hotz documented his hack on his blog, iphonejtag.blogspot.com.

Ballinger says his phone is not 100 per cent in working order - he cannot get YouTube, the GPS or the email client to work - but he can make calls and send and receive text massages on the Vodafone network.

"I was given the phone on Thursday by a client in New York and within two hours was working on it," he said.

"Activating the phone was the definitely the hardest part, but I was amazed at how hard taking the actual phone apart was. It's beautifully put together. The tolerances on it are amazing. Probably one of the most challenging aspects to the phone is the number of Apple-branded parts. Some of the chips are found only in this phone, so their function is a real mystery."

Ballinger said this one of only a few devices he had hacked. "I put Linux on my iPod and OS X on some PCs, but this is one of the few devices I really wanted to hack - and I love gadgets."
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