Be warned, this is beta stuff and we haven’t been able to test it ourselves. However, a number of breathless tipsters and commenters are reporting a successful jailbreak and unlock of their iPhone 3GS. The magic begins with a 3GS jailbreak released by GeoHot. See, George is fed up with the Dev-Team’s insistence on waiting until Apple releases iPhone OS version 3.1. As he puts it:

Normally I don’t make tools for the general public, and rather wait for the dev team to do it. But guys, whats up with waiting until 3.1? That isn’t how the game is played. We release, Apple fixes, we find new holes. It isn’t worth waiting because you might have the “last” hole in the iPhone. What last hole…this isn’t golf. I’ll find a new one next week.

Meeeeow. After performing the jailbreak, ultrasn0w should then take care of the unlock although we haven’t seen official comment on this by GeoHot or the Dev-Team yet. Good luck, backup, and kiss the children goodbye — it could be a long weekend if you brick your new iPhone. Now hit the read link if you must.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

iPhone 3GS jailbreak released by GeoHot ahead of Dev Team originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The GSM version of Palm’s Pre looks all set for a UK announcement next week on O2. Now we get this, a Pre spotted on the support site for Dutch carrier Hi in The Netherlands. Fine, but what you may not know is that O2 and Hi (part of KPN) are also deeply intertwined with Telefonica — O2 being owned by Telefonica and KPN being an “integrated carrier” with a long history of Telefonica courtship rumors. So, putting two and two together might equal a September launch if that previous Telefonica rumor was true.

[Via Tweakers, thanks Harm H.]

Filed under: Cellphones

Palm Pre in cahoots with Dutch provider Hi? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Packard Bell recently overhauled its logo in an effort to keep up with the times, but are its offerings up to the same task? The new imedia lineup immediately recalls the recently announced M-series desktops from Acer, and that’s no accident. The innards are remarkably similar too, with the top models sporting Core 2 Quad or AMD Phenom II X4 processors, a 1.5GB GeForce GT230, HDMI out, Blu-Ray combo drive and a maximum of 8GB DDR3 memory and 1TB of storage. While none of the specs are on the blistering edge of innovation, there’s plenty of power there and keen pricing could make them an attractive proposition. The entry-level Celeron-based units start at £299 ($490) in the UK.

Filed under: Desktops

Packard Bell imedia lineup gets an Acer-inspired refresh originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Drawing faces is hard; and as children suckled at the teat of MTV we posses neither the patience nor the discipline required to learn the skill. So imagine our surprise to discover the Self-Portrait Machine, a device that snaps your photo and then forces you to draw your own face by dragging your bound hands around until the portrait is complete. Jen Hui Liao’s project is the result of an observation that “our personal identities are represented by the products of the man-machine relationship.” So it’s like art and the intersection of philosophy… only it’s not — it’s just a robot too lazy to make the portrait itself. See the video after the break.

Continue reading Video: Self-Portrait Machine binds your hands then bends your will

Filed under: Robots

Video: Self-Portrait Machine binds your hands then bends your will originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While AT&T’s still claiming MicroCell will be out before the year’s up, Sprint’s bringing out the big words by boasting to Unstrung it’ll be beating everyone to the market with its 3G femtocell solution. Company VP of device and technology development Mathew Oommen is pretty light on some of the finer details — like actual release date, hardware supplier, pricing scheme, and pretty much every other piece of information we’d want — but he did imply there’d be multiple options available for the CDMA EV-DO Rev. A extender, including a device more tailored for enterprise use. Look, you two can fight all you want over who gets first, but in the end, we just want our Pres and iPhones to live together and home in perfect-reception harmony — think we can get that in time for Christmas?

[Via Slashgear]

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Sprint swaggers, promises to be first to release 3G Femtocell in US originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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